The Kidnapped Bride (Redcakes)

by Heather Hiestand

  “I take it ye still don’t remember me.”

  He seemed hurt, as if he should be memorable. His looks certainly made him so, but she’d made a habit of fading into the woodwork for so long, she’d probably not even looked at his face if he came to her door.

  “You had some business with Freddie? Mr. Cross, I mean.”

  “What business was he in?” Mr. Alexander asked instead of answering her question.

  She sighed, deciding to finish her ham, then butter a scone. He ate as well, then took the knife from her fingers and sliced into another scone. All too soon, nothing but crumbs and a rind decorated the plates, and the teapot was empty.

  “Shall I order in another round before I find dry clothing?” he asked courteously. “I expect breakfast will be laid out in another hour or two. It’s still quite early.”

  “Clothing,” she said. Maybe she could close her eyes for a few moments while he arranged for them. Longingly, she dreamed of a hat, but getting her hands on outdoor clothing was unrealistic.

  “Very well. Ye still look half-drowned. Just close your eyes for a bit.”

  Her eyelids drooped at his soothing tone, but then flew open when she felt his arms slide under her knees and shoulders. Her senses roared to life as his strength overwhelmed her weak defenses. “What?”

  He picked her up and deposited her on the sofa as if she was no heavier than a cat. And he seemed to take no more notice of her than that. “Take a nap. I’ll have a bedchamber prepared. We both could sleep for a few hours.”

  She could not help but agree with him, even as she found herself missing his damp warmth as he stepped away. Yawning, the day catching up with her again, she thought she’d take her rest now. Then, while he slept, she’d leave this house, find her street, drop in at the pawnshop, and then retrieve Hester. Perhaps she could spend tonight at Mrs. Shaw’s. No one would think to look for her there, as long as she stayed out of sight. Then, tomorrow, she could find new lodgings with her stolen funds. She yawned again, and her thoughts drifted down a deep, dark well until they turned into dreams.

  She could feel feathers inside her quilt. Turning her head, her cheek brushed against soft, heather-scented fabric. She clutched the blanket with her fingers and blinked her eyes. As her vision focused, she found herself staring at the back of a rose-patterned chintz sofa. That didn’t look right. Her mother didn’t like patterns. She preferred fabrics in the shade of rose, not roses on white fabrics. Sitting up, she took in the room and realized she was in Morningside, not London.

  She jumped up from the sofa, frantic, the motion setting her head into a fretful thump of pain. How could she have forgotten Hester for even an hour? She needed to return to Edinburgh. Under the warm blanket someone had placed over her, she felt the work-worn fabric of her clothing was still somewhat damp, but at least her skin was dry. She wrapped the afghan she still wore around her shoulders more tightly, turning it into a shawl, then glanced around for her own wool shawl.

  “Looking for this?” a man’s voice drawled. One of the armchairs close to the fire pushed back, and she saw Mr. Alexander, her shawl bundled in his lap.

  Her hands fisted as she realized he must have discovered the candlestick. Why wasn’t he asleep, as she had been? She glanced out of the window, seeing she must have slept for hours. From the position of the sun, vague as it was behind clouds, she guessed it was well past noon.

  “I’ll take ye to your brothers myself,” Mr. Alexander said gently. “You don’t need tae steal. I should tell you that your flat was pretty well destroyed. Those slavers, or someone else, made a hash of your belongings. There isn’t likely to be anything worth returning for.”

  “No?” Had Mr. Alexander been hired by her brothers? He wasn’t a slaver?

  “I retrieved one cache the thieves missed,” he allowed. “But what I found clearly included ill-gotten gains. I would hate for ye to be interviewed by the police, a gently born lady like yourself. You need tae trust yourself to my care.”

  “The police?” she said numbly. But she hadn’t even managed to leave this house with the candlestick. Surely he wouldn’t take her to the police for attempted theft.

  “Yes. The contents of the bag I found might be the spoils of Manfred Cross’s exploits.”

  “What do you mean? He worked for a lawyer.” Her confusion was mounting by the second.

  “Come, Lady Elizabeth, surely ye know he failed as a clerk.”

  “I know nothing of the sort,” she said, digging into her past for a haughty tone. “Who do you think I am?”

  “As I’ve told ye, we’ve met once before. I was working for the police, searching for a jewel thief. Your employer, Mr. Cross, the man who refused tae marry you.” His tone was patient.

  She pressed her lips together, not wanting to remember old pains.

  “I can’t imagine why. Such a pretty girl,” he mused. “He insisted there was someone else, you know, when I saw him at Newgate.”

  “Freddie’s in Newgate Prison?” Beth cried, quite forgetting the rest of his incredible story.

  “I’m afraid so. I need to get ye back to your brothers, so they can begin tae repair the damage this young man did to your life.”

  “I’m not going anywhere with you,” she insisted.

  He held up the silver candlestick. “Ye won’t get far without me. There’s no money in that flat, and who can say if Mr. Cross’s associates will come for you again? I suspect they’d consider you payment for some debt you don’t even understand. Or perhaps you do.”

  “I have to go back,” she said.

  He shook his head. “That would be exceedingly foolish. But ye needn’t worry. Your brothers hired me. I thought I had failed them, after searching for you for so long, but here we are.”

  “You are some kind of hunter?”

  “A private inquiry agent,” he said comfortably. “Now, Lady Elizabeth, we’ll say no more about the candlestick. I think we’ll even hold off changing clothes, so as tae be expedient. To catch the train, we’ll need to leave now.”

  “No,” she said, trying to hold back her frantic fears behind a smooth, aristocratic mask. She had to get to Hester. But what could she say? She couldn’t imagine being able to escape him in another cart, or in a train station. No, he had to be asleep. She was too exhausted to get away if he was paying attention to her.

  “No?” he said, standing. He put the candlestick back on the mantelpiece.

  “No,” she said. A light dawned. “We need to bury that poor dead girl. It’s not as if we’ll be able to find out who she was.”

  “How do ye know that?”

  Right, he was a private inquiry agent. “Well, before she spoils, then. You could leave and get a photographer to come here to take her photograph, then go to the local kirk and . . . well, I suppose she should be buried in consecrated ground.”

  “Ah,” he said. He stared at her intently, as if to determine the inner workings of her mind.

  “It could have been me,” she pointed out. “I’d want my body to be treated with respect, and there’s none but us to care for her.”

  He stared at her for a moment longer. “I’ll send a footman into town tae get a photographer and then go to the kirk. But we’ll never get to the train on time. Don’t ye want to go back to England, now that your life here is irrevocably over?”

  Not on your life. “There is time to discuss that after the funeral. I assume we are safe here. After you send the footman, do you think you could have that dry apparel fetched for me?” She gestured to her clothing.

  He sighed. “We might as well settle in for the night. I’ll send a telegram to your brothers.”

  “No need to do that,” she said hurriedly. “Seeing me in person will be a more impressive triumph for you.”

  “What I don’t understand is why ye didn’t return to them when Mr. Cross disappeared. You’ve had a month.”

  “I had no money.”

  “But there was plenty under the floorboard.”

/>   A sharp pain lanced through her chest. She hadn’t known of it. Was this the cache that he’d spoken of earlier? Yet she couldn’t blame Freddie. He’d had no chance to tell her of it, and they’d been comfortable enough until he disappeared. She’d never had need to ask him for anything beyond her modest housekeeping allowance. Of course, she’d been a bit extravagant at first, used to her mother’s ways, but she had learned, and eventually that pinched spot between Freddie’s eyebrows had disappeared.

  “I see,” Mr. Alexander said, seeming to read her emotions. “Well, no reason to have searched your own flat. I’ll assume the jewelry was not yours, then. An emerald necklace? A sapphire ring?”

  She stared at him. “No, I mostly had pearls. They are long gone; we pawned them months ago.”

  He nodded, clearly not surprised. “Very well. I extend tae you the hospitality of my brother, the Baron of Alix, for the night. We’ll have the girl buried and deliver you to your brothers in a couple of days. We can take the night train tomorrow.”

  Mr. Alexander and his brother’s household offered Beth no opportunity for escape. The housekeeper took her to a room up in a tower. She didn’t want to think about the struggle the servants had getting a steaming bath ready so high in the mansion, but she enjoyed it nonetheless. The clothing they’d found for her consisted of little more than a nightdress, and they’d taken away her damp clothes, saying they’d be dried and brushed for her. She had nothing to dress her hair with, either.

  After she finished her bath, she donned the combinations she’d managed to keep and the nightdress, then fashioned a bedsheet into something resembling an overdress. Finally, she made a shawl out of a lap blanket draped over a rocking chair. She had no stockings or shoes, which was a definite problem. Maybe she’d be lucky enough to find a dressing room on her way to the ground floor as she sneaked out.

  But that wasn’t so simple. Her door wasn’t locked, but when she went down the steps from the tower, she discovered the door to the main part of the house was.

  The baron’s brother had locked her in! He hadn’t bothered to tell her she was his prisoner. For a moment, she thought black thoughts about her brothers. Did they know they’d hired a man so willing to mistreat her? And her without so much as a hairpin with which to try to pick the lock.

  She went to a window on the landing and peered out, but the locked door was still a couple of levels aboveground. No handy trellises or such existed to help her down safely. All she could see were fields and outbuildings.

  She scrubbed her hands over her eyes, praying that Mrs. Shaw was taking good care of Hester. How long did she have before the woman took Hester to the workhouse? Sad to say, there was nothing for her to do tonight but gain strength. She resolved to crawl into the sumptuous bed in the tower room and go to sleep instantly. It might help the persistent headache that plagued her.

  But tomorrow she’d be going to Edinburgh, not London, to retrieve her ward.

  Birds chattered outside the window when she woke the next morning. A ray of light hit her face, shocking her sleep-fogged eyes. A maid was pulling back curtains. A tray with a steaming teapot already waited at a pie crust table near the freshly stoked fire.

  The maid removed a cloche covering a bowl of oatmeal and a rack of toast. Beth wondered if this meant she was to be kept in captivity until the moment they left for the train station. But she couldn’t go back. She’d rather be dead than ruined, forced to live out her life in a tattered suite like Aunt Mary had all those years after her fiancé died, getting old and bitter like her mother had in her disappointments.

  She could never explain Hester. Her oldest brother would not allow her to keep a prostitute’s orphan. He was too conscious of his role as an intimate of the royal family. Most people would believe Hester was her illegitimate child, and that would be insupportable to Hatbrook. Judah might understand. He’d tried to take an orphan under his own wing, but that was before he married the status-conscious Magdalene.

  No, she had to make her own way. Too bad she had no money of her own, only the jewelry that had long since been squandered. Before Hatbrook had restored the estate’s finances, she’d only thought of the possibility of being Aunt Mary’s heir someday, but Aunt Mary had revived when her mother died and probably had quite a few good years left to her.

  “After you dine, Mr. Alexander would like to see ye in the parlor. Do you think you can make your way there?” the maid asked.

  “Not if I’m locked in,” Beth retorted.

  The maid didn’t react. “The door isn’t locked, miss. At least it wasn’t when I came up this morning.”

  “Not the bedchamber door, the one at the foot of the stairs.”

  “Oh, it sticks something terrible, miss. I don’t think it was locked.”

  A likely story, but it didn’t matter now. She’d lost almost two days. “What about my clothing?”

  The maid pointed to a table, where she recognized her gray dress and shawl. Even her stockings had reappeared.

  “And my shoes?”

  The maid hesitated. “I will find them for ye. The bootblack is a lazy one.”

  “Thank you.”

  The maid left, and Beth ate quickly, making sure to down every morsel before donning her warm, clean clothing. It felt heavenly to be presentable again, even if it was a maid-of-all-work sort of presentable, rather than the sister-of-a-marquess kind. She wished she could stop longing for certain aspects of the life she’d chosen to leave behind, namely the endless fresh clothing and abundant food. Hester was more important than fripperies and luxuries.

  She left her room, thankful that the good food seemed to have banished the last remnants of her head pain, wondering if the door at the base of the stairs would stick again, but it wasn’t even closed. Honestly, what kind of idiot did they take her for? Used to large houses, she had little trouble finding her way back to the parlor where she’d napped the day before.

  Mr. Alexander stood by the fire. She noticed his shoes had been returned to him. In fact, he wore different clothes than he had the day before, she suspected. His finely tailored dark suit appeared to be of a slimmer cut than the one he’d worn yesterday. These were probably his family event clothes, rather than his work clothes. Though the man was lean, she could see the way the fabric bunched around his compact muscles as he moved toward her. He didn’t have an ounce of fat on him. No, he was all hard, spare, dangerous muscle.

  “Ready for the funeral you ordered?” His left brow quirked.

  “Don’t make fun,” she said sharply. “That girl took a bullet meant for you.”

  “Not necessarily,” he said calmly. “Unless ye have some knowledge of that operation. I’m sorry to say she was already hurt rather badly before she was shot.”

  Beth pressed her lips together. “You are most unfeeling.”

  “On the contrary. I took better care of ye than you wanted to take of yourself.”

  “By locking me into the tower?”

  “I didn’t lock ye into anything,” he said. “You were dead asleep.”

  “You came into the room?”

  “I checked on you, yes. You had a head injury after all.”

  He stepped so close to her that she could smell the clean spice of his soap. Taking her chin prisoner in his long-fingered hand, he pointed her face toward the window. “Your eyes look fine. I don’t think you have a concussion.”

  She wrested her face away from him. “Let us go to the funeral. Then we need to go back to Leith, to the police, and tell them what happened. We can show them the warehouse so they can get to the bottom of what happened. What if there are more women there?”

  “We’re going tae do nothing of the kind. I’m taking you back to your family.”

  “I’m not going to leave Edinburgh. There are lives at stake! They were bringing in women at regular intervals. They are probably still collecting for their next shipment.” She had planned this argument while she ate, hoping she could escape him and get back to Hester. But whet
her she could or not, he did need to go the police. Those other women didn’t deserve to be forgotten.

  “Ye are going to do as you are told,” he said. “You have lived one misadventure after another since running away, and that is at an end. I’m taking you back tae your brothers so they can decide what to do with you.”

  “My life is none of your business.”

  He took her upper arm. “I’ve been paid very well to make it my business, Lady Elizabeth. And home is where you’re going.”

  She attempted to wrench her arm away, but his grip was too strong. “Let go of me, you beast.”

  He gripped her tighter in response. “My lady hoyden, you will obey. There is no other alternative.”

  She swayed in closer to him, unable to resist his grip, then fixed her gaze on him. Something in his eyes softened. Just as he must have thought she’d given into him, she stomped on his foot, hard.

  “Ow,” she cried, as the pain from stomping on hard leather reverberated up her unprotected foot.

  He glanced down. “It’s no use attempting tae hurt a man wearing shoes when you haven’t any yourself.”

  She was still too much of a lady to swear, but she opened her mouth to give him the tongue-lashing he deserved.

  Instead of letting her speak, he grinned at her, then kissed her full on the mouth.

  Chapter 5

  His fingers slid up her arm to her shoulder as his mouth pressed against hers. Distracted by his fingers caressing her cheek, she didn’t close her lips fast enough, and his tongue swooped in to stroke hers in a firefly dance.

  Her attempt to scream did nothing but open her mouth more, and bend her head back so he could plunder more thoroughly. She grabbed his fingers and wrenched them away from her jaw. His breath caressed hers as his tongue broke contact.

  “How dare you!” she yelled when he pulled back. She could feel puffiness where his lips had suckled on hers. The kiss had lasted but a second, yet he’d taken her mouth thoroughly, even giving her a taste of the maple syrup on his tongue.