Harlequin Historical May 2020--Box Set 1 of 2

by Sophia James

  The calm which she had completely and shockingly lost hold of in the park with Simeon was returning and she knew she had to remain friendly because otherwise Alexander might simply run off and she would never see Charlotte again.

  Was he crazy? Had his mind tipped from his more usual oddness into something else entirely? Could he have hurt Charlotte? Please God, please make her be unhurt. Her fingers reached for the gold cross, a prayer on her lips.

  ‘Take me to her, Alexander. I need to see her.’

  She followed him, because to do anything else might relegate her sister to being gone for ever. But as he went he stopped to speak with a man who was selling food near the Abbey. A girl hawking flowers sat on the road nearby and, wrenching off her cross and chain, Adelia pressed the piece into surprised hands.

  ‘Go to Carlton House Terrace to the house on the corner and ask for Mr Morgan. Give him this and he will pay you well, I swear he will. More than you will make by pawning it. Much more. Please. Tell him where you saw me.’

  Alex had turned now and Adelia walked on, not looking back just in case he realised she had sought help. Her hands were shaking and she wrapped her arms around herself and swallowed, summoning calm, praying for deliverance.

  The room they finally arrived at was tiny and dank, a small table in the middle and an unmade bed to one side.

  Charlotte was tied to the bedpost with a long leather strap, her face white with fear as Adelia reached for her, a gag of blue fabric stuffed into her mouth.

  ‘I am here to take you home, Charlotte.’ Adelia’s fingers pulled at the leather and then at the fabric, one nail tearing in her haste. She couldn’t believe that Alexander hadn’t stopped her from freeing her sister and only when she had done so did she turn to face him.

  ‘We were always meant to be together, Adelia, you know that now, don’t you? Your mother told me as much and the money you sent to me was confirmation.’ His voice was high and desperate.

  Adelia did her very best to smile.

  ‘Of course I do.’

  ‘But you went and did not come back.’

  ‘I can come back now, Alexander, since you are here, and we will go home. Charlotte must be sent away, though, for Mr Morgan will stop at nothing to find her. He does not care for me, but my sister is a different story altogether. Is there someone here who could be trusted to accompany her home to Carlton House Terrace and see her safe?’

  Alexander put his head out of the door and called, and a stout, kind-faced woman appeared.

  ‘Mrs White, I need your help.’ He fumbled in a purse at his waist for coin and handed her a generous amount. ‘Will you take this girl back to Carlton House Terrace, for I am leaving London immediately. Do you know this street?’

  ‘I do, sir.’

  Her eyes flickered across to where Adelia stood. She managed a smile to allay any alarm and the woman relaxed. All Adelia wanted was for Charlotte to be taken to safety and away from Alexander. She would deal with her own security after her sister had left. She was crying now more loudly and Adelia held her close before letting go, but while Alexander was distracted she whispered to her sister.

  ‘You need to listen, Charlotte. You need to do this for me. Tell Mr Morgan where I am. Tell him to come and find me. And tell him to hurry.’ She pulled the emerald ring from her finger and closed it inside her sister’s fingers for safekeeping. She did not want Alex to see it as a symbol of Simeon’s claim on her and become enraged.

  Charlotte nodded, the pale curls the exact colour of her own coming loose from the tie that held them.

  Then she was gone, and Alex loomed before her again, watchful and strange.

  If she could keep him talking, the flower girl might deliver her cross to Simeon and he would come looking for her. With any luck he would find Charlotte on the way back. At least the children would be safe.

  The clouds had begun to thicken and it felt colder. Without a cloak or shawl she shivered, and Alex reached for the blanket on the bed and wrapped it around her.

  ‘We will find transport when we can, but we will leave now. It is dangerous here for us. Hold my hand, my love, and I will help you.’

  She gave him her fingers, but was not prepared for what happened next. He had retrieved the tie on the bed and he now wrapped the leather around her arm and tethered it to his.

  ‘For safety,’ he said as she looked up at him. But she could see other darker things there crawling in his eyes and she knew that going anywhere with him was a dangerous thing to do.

  He caught her chin with his fist even as she struggled and then all she knew was blackness.

  * * *

  ‘There is a street seller at the door, sir.’

  Harris’s voice broke into Simeon’s quest to find a warmer cloak and sturdier boots before going out again. ‘She has Mrs Morgan’s gold cross in her hands and asks to see you.’

  He was at the door in a moment, the girl who stood there young and scared.

  ‘The pretty lady said to give it to a Mr Morgan and that he would pay me.’

  ‘Where and when did she give it to you?’

  ‘At the front of the Abbey, sir, about an hour ago. She said I was to come straight here and so I did, but it took me a while to see to it that my flowers were left somewhere safe and then I had to find the house.’

  ‘Who was she with?’

  ‘A man, sir. A tall man with brown hair and blue eyes and he spoke nice. She were following him, sir. They were going south when last I saw them.’

  ‘Did she look scared?’

  ‘A bit, I think, though she were trying not to show it. She weren’t altogether happy, though. The man stopped at the barrow by the main path and he got some food. He were in a hurry ʼcos he told old Vern to quicken it up. He had a bite on his hand and there were blood, though he’d tried to hide it with the cuff of his jacket, but I notice those things.’

  ‘Was there anything else?’

  ‘No, sir. I didn’t see nothing else at all.’

  Simeon handed over two gold coins and the mouth of the small flower seller dropped open, her hands snatching the bounty before it was taken away and running down the stairs and up the street, ragged skirts twitching.

  He had a lead and it was a good one. He knew vaguely where Adelia had been taken.

  Grabbing his hat, he strode out of the door, understanding now just what fear truly was. If he lost her… No he could not think like that.

  Her last words to him in the park were worrying, but then she was out of her mind with concern and blaming their intimacy and happiness on all the mayhem transpiring. Did she truly think that their joy in the marriage bed was the reason for the children’s misfortune?

  He could not think of this now. He needed to concentrate on finding his wife and her sister and bringing them home to safety.

  * * *

  Fifteen minutes later he spotted Charlotte along Birdcage Walk beside a woman and crying. When he stopped the carriage and leapt out, she began to run towards him, falling into his arms with relief just as Flora had done, tears streaming down her cheeks.

  ‘Mr Thompson has Adelia. He made her come with him. She gave me this.’ The ring was placed in his hand. ‘She wants you to come and find her.’

  ‘Where is she?’

  ‘In a small room that this woman, Mrs White, rents out.’

  He turned to the older lady looking on with amazement.

  ‘What is the address of your house?’

  ‘On Great Peter Street, sir. Near the corner of Horseferry Road. The man came two days ago and has hardly been home until today when he brought back the girl. I didn’t know nothing of any of it, sir. He paid me for the lodging and said he was leaving London. They won’t be there any more, I don’t think.’ She gave him the number of the house, though, just in case.

  ‘Can you take Charlotte back
to Carlton House Terrace and deliver her safely home, Mrs White?’

  ‘I can, sir.’

  Another few gold coins were dispatched and then he left them. The weather was worsening and he had only a few hours left until dusk.

  * * *

  He found the house the woman had mentioned, but on looking through the rooms he saw no sign of anybody. A youth near the front door said he’d seen the couple leave, the man carrying the woman because she was sick. He gave their direction as a southern one.

  Fear congealed in Simeon’s throat. If the bastard had hurt Adelia, he would kill him. His fingers clutched the hilt of the knife he had taken from the drawer in his library and he felt the man he used to be return suddenly and completely. Cold. Hard. Violent.

  Sending the carriage back, he scoured the smaller alleys about him for signs of his wife, but ever moving southwards. The rain was falling now, but he barely noticed it. She would be here somewhere, he knew it, because anyone on the run would use the daylight hours to travel. Perhaps Thompson was making for someone he knew or perhaps he just felt this direction was a better one to put people off his trail. Simeon had expected him to strike out north.

  His first luck came when a beggar sitting in a doorway gestured to him.

  ‘If you be looking for the man who is dragging a woman behind him and has blood on his shirt, he went that way, sir, about half an hour ago. I knew someone would be along to look for them soon and you have the face of one who is.’

  ‘Was she walking?’

  ‘Dragging her feet a bit. There was a strap holding them together, which I thought strange…’

  He tossed the man a coin and hurried on.

  * * *

  An hour later he found them, tucked in under a shelter and around a fire with a number of other men, men without their own abodes, rough-looking and unfriendly.

  Adelia was wrapped in a blanket and was just sitting there, the tie the beggar had mentioned dangling from her left arm. The one whom he presumed was Alexander Thompson spoke to the others, though Simeon noticed he often looked over his shoulder at her. He was a tall man and surprisingly big.

  Understanding the lie of the land, Simeon moved forward, his cloak billowing in the rising breeze.

  ‘I am here to take my wife home,’ he said firmly when he was close enough and all the faces turned, reminding him so forcibly of his childhood scraps that he almost smiled.

  Adelia stood, her face disbelieving, but Thompson stopped her.

  ‘She’s with me now.’

  ‘No.’ She tried to run towards him, but Thompson caught at the long leather tie and pulled her back off her feet. She fell hard on the cobbled road as Simeon charged, catching the man unawares and pinning him against a wall behind before slamming him in the face.

  Another fellow was there now, his fists raised, and lifting his leg Simeon kicked back hard, the second offender going down in a heap behind him and staying there. The third man was easier again. A slam across the face and a push and he was out. With his attention off Thompson for a few seconds, though, the man had grabbed a piece of wood beside him, the weight of it brought down across Simeon’s back with a crunch.

  Adelia screamed, but even pain meant little as he delivered a right upper cut to Thompson’s chin.

  This time he knew the man was finished with and he simply left him there, unconscious on the road with the rain on his face, and strode across to his wife.

  They came together hard, his hands on her, tracing the bruise on her chin gently.

  ‘He hit you?’

  His old accent was back, but he could not seem to find the new one. ‘Did he hurt you anywhere else?’

  She shook her head and simply clung to him. The other men about the fire had scurried away and all that was left now around them were the inert bodies of the three men who had challenged them.

  Then a constable was there and others milling about to see what had happened. When Simeon told the man his story he went straight over to Alexander Thompson, who was just coming to with a groan, and lifted him to his feet. Another constable had joined him, too, and the pair of them heaved him off, but not before asking for Simeon’s name and address.

  ‘Can you walk to the main road?’ He asked Adelia this quietly. ‘I can find a cab there to take us home.’

  Five minutes later he waved down a hackney and they slipped inside, the silence welcomed, all threat gone.

  Giving the driver his address, he drew in a breath before turning to Adelia.

  * * *

  She held on to him, her fingers clutching at his clothes as if they might never let go.

  ‘Is Charlotte…?’

  ‘Home and safe. A woman brought her back.’

  Adelia hated her tears, but try as she might she could not stop them from coming. It was the shock, she thought, and the sudden relief to be here, safe, with Simeon.

  ‘Why did Thompson do it?’ She knew this question would come from him, but she had no true answer.

  ‘All that he said was that he got too lonely and had come to London to find me. He said he loved me and that I loved him. He said it over and over again, for he is mad, I think, and blames everyone around him for his problems.’ Her voice broke, and she swallowed, trying to get the next words out. ‘I hoped beyond hope that you’d find me, but I couldn’t believe it when you came, Simeon. I looked up and there you were in the shadow of the fire and rain and you fought them all so easily.’

  ‘It’s one of the things Angel Meadow teaches you. If you don’t learn that, then you don’t live long.’

  Her hands were on his face, checking for damage, and then his lips came down on hers, warm and safe in a world that was not. They were both alive and together and that was all that mattered. Just them.

  It was a careful kiss, a gentle kiss, the violence of the past hours far from this tenderness. He kissed her as if she was breakable and fragile and in a sense she was.

  ‘I have always been afraid,’ she said when he pulled back, her head fitting in the space beneath his chin and in the place above his heart. She liked listening to the beat for it pulled her back into life. ‘Ever since I can remember my fear has got in the way of everything. It did again…today…in the park. I thought it was my fault, that the happiness you gave to me was why Charlotte and Flora had been lost. But you can’t hold your breath for that long or keep on thinking that it is your fault without dying inside and I think I did that, too, died inside, until yesterday, until the night before last.’

  Now that she had started to speak she could not stop, for she wanted him to understand her more than anything.

  ‘I have to live again and not be afraid. I have to know that I am worth it, Simeon, that I am a person who is worth it and that I am enough.’

  She wondered if she was making sense or if he thought her as mad as Alexander? She was glad that it was dark and that they were alone and that they were not yet back at the town house with all of the questions she knew would be waiting there. ‘You are not afraid of anything and I admire that.’

  He laughed quietly, she could hear the rumble of it in his chest. ‘Everyone has things that scare them, Adelia. If you didn’t, you wouldn’t be human.’

  ‘What are you frightened of most, then?’

  ‘Losing you.’

  Two words she could not believe he had said.

  ‘Me?’

  He placed her aside and knelt on the carriage floor, finding her ring in his pocket and holding it in his fingers so that she could see it.

  ‘Would you marry me, Adelia Hermione Josephine Bennett?’

  ‘I already have. Once.’

  He smiled and tried again. ‘Give me your hand.’

  His fingers were cold as he placed the ring on the fourth finger and pushed it down.

  ‘Last time it was a forced choice. This time it’s becau
se I love you, Adelia.’

  ‘You love me?’

  ‘With all my heart and soul.’

  Her tears were becoming a nuisance, but as she folded her hand around his ring she knew a permanence that was true and honest.

  ‘I love you, Simeon, and I will for ever.’

  And then he rose and kissed her again, holding her on his knee, his lips brushing away both hurt and fear.

  ‘So I’ll take that as a yes?’

  ‘Yes. Yes. Yes.’

  He loved her and she loved him back and it was not a small love, but a huge, big, all-encompassing one of shared opinion and respect. And lust, she added with an inward smile, as she felt him beneath her, his body saying things that were easy to interpret.

  ‘When did you know you first loved me, Simeon?’

  ‘At the dinner party when you held me in your arms and taught me to waltz.’

  Delight assailed her.

  ‘What of you? When did you know?’

  ‘I think I always knew. From our first meeting when you held me close. I dreamed every night of you again and again and when you said nothing of my foolishness in coming to your town house alone despite my lies and deceit…’ She hesitated before continuing. ‘We have wasted so much time…’

  He began to laugh. ‘But no longer. From now on we will enjoy every moment of being together.’

  He kissed her then softly, careful of her bruised chin. He kissed her as though she was made of china and infinitely precious.

  ‘I have your cross at home, Adelia.’ He said this after a few moments. ‘A young flower seller brought it back.’

  ‘All these people who have helped us.’

  ‘See, the world is not as bad as you think it. With love there is always a way home.’

  ‘Take me there now, Simeon. I want to hold the girls and afterwards…’ She stopped, her heart beginning to thump more quickly.

  ‘We will go to bed and celebrate our marriage properly?’

  ‘You promise?’

  ‘With all my heart.’

  EPILOGUE

  Richmond, 1843

  It was Christmas Eve and the snow in Richmond was thick on the ground, the river steel grey and the trees brown and bare.