A Duke for Christmas

by Cynthia Bailey Pratt

  He was awakened by a frenzied shaking. Mrs. Lindel bent over him, shaken out of her habitual calm. “I can’t find Sophie. She’s not in her room, and those maids are gone, too.”

  “Did they go for a walk?”

  “No, why would they?”

  “Did you ask Tremlow?”

  “He doesn’t know anything. He muttered something about a ham and a parcel and half holidays, then hurried

  away. Very unlike him.”

  When they were all gathered together, Dominic addressed the household, with Kenton’s permission. “There are only two choices. One, that Mrs. Banner left this house of her own accord and without a word to anyone. Two, that she left under some sort of compulsion.”

  Maris clung to her husband’s arm. “What are you saying?” she asked. “Do you believe she’s been abducted? By her maids? They didn’t seem to be that sort of girls.”

  Parker, the upstairs maid, raised her hand hesitantly, egged on by some of her cronies. “Begging your pardon, your Grace ...” She faltered, looking about her for support.

  “If you have anything of substance to add, Parker, pray do so,” Tremlow said in his old majestic way, though his face looked drawn and pale.

  “I’m in the room next to those girls, and one night, about two days after they’d come, I thought I heard a man’s voice in their room.”

  “Why didn’t you say something about this, Parker?”

  “I did, Mr. Tremlow. I asked the one that spoke better English about it, just teasing like. She looked awful fierce and, having been dusting the desk which I was showing her how to do despite it not being my proper duty...”

  “Go on, my dear,” Dominic said, forestalling Tremlow’s incipient outburst.

  “She picked up the paper knife and stabbed the blotter, Your Grace. I was that frightened, she didn’t look hardly human.”

  “That’s what she told me,” piped up the nursery maid.

  “Why didn’t you tell Mr. Tremlow or Mrs. Lemon?” Maris asked.

  For the first time, Parker looked abashed. “The other one, Lucia, gave me some ribbons and begged me not to say anything. And Mrs. Banner... well, she’d asked me to be kind to ‘em.”

  “Thank you, Parker,” Dominic said. “If anyone has anything else to add? No?” He looked at Kenton, who started to dismiss them, when Mrs. Lindel spoke.

  “Simms, the day after the baby was born, you said something to me about strange men in the halls.”

  “Did I? Oh, yes, I did,” Simms said, cradling the heir of the house in her arms. “I saw a man, someone I didn’t know, in the upper hall a few days after Mrs. Banner arrived.”

  “What did he look like?” Dominic demanded.

  “Ever so strange, Your Grace. I said to myself, ‘You look ever so strange.’”

  Mrs. Lindel spoke in a whisper to Dominic. “She’s making that up, now that she thinks there’s something wrong. She probably didn’t think he looked unusual at all. She just didn’t recognize him.”

  “Thank you, Simms,” Dominic said. He glanced at Kenton, who dismissed the servants.

  Tremlow stayed behind. He expanded upon the disappearances from the house, the ham, the manuscript, and the irritating way in which the Ferrara girls came and went at their own sweet will, now aggravated by this new mystification. “I don’t like mysteries,” Tremlow said firmly, quite forgetting honorifics. “They make for an unsettled household and I have always striven for calmness, serenity, and order. I will search out those responsible and I trust they will be instantly discharged. Your Grace, my lord, my lady, Mrs. Lindel, pray accept my apologies for these occurrences.”

  “Not your fault, Tremlow,” Dominic said and the others echoed his sentiment.

  “On the contrary, Your Grace, a butler is like the captain of a ship. Anything that happens is ultimately his responsibility. We butlers accept this unquestioningly. I will wipe out this blot upon my honor,” He bowed and departed.

  “I never realized Tremlow was such a preux chavalier,” Mrs. Lindel said in admiration.

  Dominic paced up and down, his hands rucked behind his back. Somewhere in his mind a tiny voice was screaming out panic and alarm. He couldn’t silence it entirely, but he could refuse to listen. “She’s somewhere,” he said. “Somewhere nearby. Mrs. Lindel, go to Finchley. Ask everyone if there were any carriages passing through last night. It’s the only road they could have taken, correct?”

  “Yes, they would have had to pass through town in anything heavier than a drag,” Kenton answered.

  “I don’t need to ask everyone,” Mrs. Lindel said. “Just Miss Menthrip. I’ll tell her the whole tale. She may be able to suggest something.”

  “I’ll come with you,” Maris said. “I care not a jot for the conventions.”

  “No,” Mrs. Lindel said in that motherly tone that admits no argument. “Your baby needs you. I can handle Miss Menthrip.”

  “We’ll await events,” Dominic said “Then the guilty had better watch out.”

  Chapter Fifteen

  Sophie wanted to wake up. She wandered lost in a dream in which she walked among people she knew well, speaking to them, dealing with them in an ordinary way, yet fully aware all the time that each face was only a mask hiding some horror. Darkness seemed to follow her. Yet when she turned to confront it, there would be nothing there. She struggled as if in deep water, striving helplessly to rise through her dream to waking day.

  She lay facedown with her head upon a pillow, her hair hanging over her face like a mat of ivy upon a wall. She lifted her head, reaching to paddle her hair away, but could not move her arms. She tried again and felt rope scratch her wrists. Her feet, too, were bound.

  She fought to roll over and sit up on the bed. The quilt she lay on was pieced together from blue toile and flowered dimity, old bedroom curtains and dresses her mother had worn as a girl. She knew it well. It had covered her bed at Finchley Old Place for as long as she could remember. What was it doing here?

  Rolling over made lights explode behind her eyes. She groaned without realizing it as she sat up slowly. Her hair was driving her mad, in her mouth and eyes, but to flip it aside meant bringing on the pain again. Nevertheless, she tossed her head, her hair flying back to lie in place again.

  When she came to a second time, she lay on her back, looking at a ceiling she’d seen more mornings than she could count. The bulge in the far corner of the ceiling was as well-known to her as her own nose. What was she doing at Finchley Old Place and in such a condition?

  Her hair was out of her face, thank heaven, but her hands and arms were all pins and needles. More cautiously this lime, Sophie sat up. The pain in her head seemed more localized, radiating out from a spot behind her right ear.

  Sophie tried to draw her memory down to the present and failed. She remembered coming within a moment of kissing Dominic, the expression in his eyes as he leaned down, and then the sharp pang of disappointment as Kenton entered. She’d excused herself and retired to her room. She could remember with great vividness her hand resting on the doorknob as she paused, wondering if it would be terribly obvious for her to return downstairs, ostensibly searching for a book. Wouldn’t it be plain that she was hoping to be alone with Dominic again?

  After that, everything else was blank.

  Longcloth curtains hung over the east-facing windows, glowing with yellow light. Sophie struggled up and rested her sore head against the cool iron post of the bedstead. It was morning, by the looks of things, and she’d retired not much later than half-past ten on the previous night. At least, she hoped it was the previous night. At a minimum, she’d been missing from Finchley Place for eight hours.

  Her mouth was parched. The tingling in her hands increased as circulation was restored. She flexed her fingers to encourage it as she gave her mind a problem to solve. Never mind who had abducted her. The question of escape came before all. One element was in her favor. She knew this house. She knew which stair riser creaked, which doors led to the exter
ior and which to rooms with no other exits, which windows slid up noiselessly and which shrilled like the souls of the dead.

  Sophie drew her feet close to her thighs and tried to work her arms from behind her. If she couldn’t manage to slip the rope off, then she’d gnaw it, if that’s what it took to be free. Before she’d half begun to wiggle, she heard footsteps beyond the door and muffled voices speaking fast.

  Sophie froze, unsure of whether to feign sleep, but the footsteps and the voices moved off. Perhaps she should have shouted. Perhaps they were looking for her. Then she wondered why she was not gagged. If she shouted, who would hear her? Who, for that matter, had brought her here?

  Whoever it was hadn’t proved much of a hand at knots. The rope separated before she’d brought her hands under her feet. Sophie sat up, rubbing chafed wrists, and began working on the rope that held her feet. Though she broke nails picking at the knot, it took only a few minutes before she was upright and striding across the floor as quietly as possible to fully restore her cramped limbs.

  With a lift of the heart, she found her shoes on the floor, just as if she’d slipped them off before getting into bed. Holding them in her hand, she listened carefully at the door. She heard nothing. To redouble precaution, she bent and peeped through the keyhole before venturing to open the door slowly and with great care.

  She stepped out into the hall, keeping to the center of the boards. Three doors to pass and she would be at the head of the steps. A moment to hurry down them, avoiding the fifth step which groaned rather than creaked, and out the door. She might not even stop to put on her shoes until she reached the woods.

  “I’m glad you’re awake, Sophie,” a man said from behind her.

  She jumped, startled, but did not utter a sound. Turning, she saw Clarence Knox sitting on a straight-backed chair just out of sight of the open door. He’d rocked the chair back on its rear legs to rest against the wall while he pared his nails with a wicked-looking clasp knife. He wore a buff waistcoat, a none-too-clean white shirt, and riding breeches with a piece missing from the knee. A black leather satchel lay on the floor, two or three familiar papers disgorging from it.

  “I thought I saw you yesterday,” she replied, not wishing to give him any further evidence of consternation. Impossible to imagine being afraid of Clarence Knox—short, not in condition, and with those pale blue, almost childlike, eyes.

  “Did you? And you didn’t say hello?”

  “You disappeared so quickly, I wasn’t even certain I’d seen you go into the Royal Oak.”

  “Ah, yes. The Ferraras are very good sort of girls but they simply refused to bring me anything drinkable. It seems it’s acceptable to steal food, but not wine; Well, when bitten by such a thirst, what risks will not a man take?” He lowered the front legs of the chair. “Whom did you tell about seeing me?”

  “No one.”

  “No one?” He stood up, keeping the knife open in his hand. “Why don’t I believe you? You’d best do better than that. I have so many questions, and I don’t like it when people lie.”

  “Questions? Regarding what?” Sophie did not want Clarence Knox to come any closer. Not because she was afraid, but he looked... unclean.

  “Sicily? Specifically, Bronte in Sicily. Broderick found something there.”

  “How do you know?”

  “How do I know?” he asked with a giggle, pointing the knife toward himself. “I was there. How do you know?” The knife turned toward her, the light playing along the sharp edge.

  “I don’t know anything.”

  He came a step nearer. “Lying again, Sophie. No, don’t run. Stand very still.”

  Something in his voice, some giggling menace, told her to obey—for the moment.

  “You’re so pretty,” he said. “When I first saw you, I thought that Broderick was blind not to see how pretty you are. He talked a lot about your soul; he was always talking about souls.”

  In a small voice, Sophie asked a question. “How did he die? It wasn’t an accident, was it?”

  “Clever girl. Of course, they all believed it. He’d been so sick. What was a sick man doing tramping through such dangerous places? Easy to believe he’d lost his head and fallen, and if there was one more head wound than was obvious, well, that would be my cleverness against their stupidity.”

  “So clever,” Sophie said evenly, nearly sick at this casual confession. “Yet he found it, not you.”

  “That wasn’t cleverness,” Clarence Knox said, saliva spraying. “That was luck. One day when we were out scrambling over those filthy roads, it started to look like rain. Great black clouds blocking the sky. I wanted to go back. I hate thunder. He went on, leaving me to walk back by myself. That’s when he found it. He took shelter in a cave and there it was.”

  “What? What did he find?”

  “Treasure.” Clarence Knox’s eyes glittered as he remembered, glittered like the knife he balanced on his forefinger, a dirty bandage wrapped around the nail. “He showed me one thing, a broken thumb from a saint’s hand, as big as a real one. It was pure gold with an opal set in the nail. He said that the rest of the hand was there and that it was the least of all the treasure. I sold it to pay my passage for an eighth of its value. I’ll do better next time.”

  “He showed you where the treasure was?” Sophie felt as if she stood trembling on the point of a compass needle. If it swung, if Clarence Knox’s mood changed, she’d fall.

  “No, curse him. Curse him. He fell ill from getting soaked through. He said the cave was cold. He fell ill, fever burning him up. He talked, babbling of heaven and miracles and gold. The patron of the inn wanted to turn him out. I tended him; I sat by his bedside and listened.”

  “You were his friend,” Sophie said softly, but he went on as if he hadn’t heard her.

  “When he recovered, I asked him questions, but he pretended not to know what I meant. Even when I showed him the thumb, he pretended that he’d forgotten, that the fever had burned it out of his head. I knew he hadn’t. When he got better and started to walk around again, I followed him everywhere. One day, he went to a cave. I thought he’d led me to the treasure at last. I imagined what it must look like. All that gold. All those jewels. On the way back, I... he fell.”

  She knew what he meant. “It was the wrong cave,” she said.

  “Yes, curse him. What business had he leading me to the wrong cave? Him and his wild ideas. He wanted to give the treasure to the people of the island. He didn’t want to be like Elgin, raping treasures away from the people. The people? Peasants, living like pigs. What good will any of it do them? It will be mine. I will live like a god.”

  The knife, carelessly toyed with, became a living thing, charged with malice. Clarence Knox pointed it at her. “You know where they are.”

  “No. I don’t.”

  “I searched his luggage. I searched the house he shared with that strumpet. I searched your house. Only afterward did I realize that the answer must be in the poems. He wrote no letters after he was ill. It must be in the poems.”

  “But you have the poems. The ones that didn’t make it to the post.”

  He looked surprised, drawn out of his obsession with the treasure. “You discovered that? Bet you don’t know how I got them. Why, my dear little wife brought them to me. You didn’t know I married Angelina while still at Rome, did you?”

  Sophie shook her head. Would she have time to turn and run down the stairs? Could she open the front door before he could catch her? He seemed terribly comfortable with that knife. Could he throw it? All too paralyzing to picture the blade in her back and her life leaking away with her blood. And she would never see Dominic again, not even for one instant to tell him all that she felt.

  The thought of Dominic drove the fear out that held her impotent. Though now certain that the Ferrara girls were somewhere in the house, Sophie didn’t know where they were. Would they stop her? Did they know Clarence Knox had been driven mad by greed? Did they care?

&nbs
p; Clarence Knox took another step toward her. “I’ve read the poems, Sophie. Broderick couldn’t write a decent line, but he was clever. There must be some secret hidden in the poems. A code. You’re going to tell me what it is.”

  “I don’t know ... wait! There was one thing that struck me as odd.”

  “Yes? Yes?”

  “I can’t explain. I shall have to show you. Do you have the poems here?”

  He couldn’t help himself. He turned his head a fraction to look at the satchel beside his chair.

  Instantly, Sophie ran and jumped onto the banister, praying to the gods of fools and children that she’d lost none of her old skill. She felt the wind pulling at her hair as she rode down, unable to restrain a whoop of triumph. As she landed, she stumbled, losing a precious second. She ran to the door, fumbling at the locks.

  She’d opened it, pulling it with all her strength when Clarence Knox threw himself against it, slamming it closed when she’d been only inches from freedom. He seized her hair in his fist and banged her head hard on the oaken panel. Dazed from the second blow in less than twelve hours, Sophie felt her bones dissolve as she slid down to the floor.

  She did not lose consciousness. She could see through the shadows before her eyes and hear despite the buzzing in her ears, but she couldn’t make her body

  respond to any command. The Ferrara sisters came running in, curious about the noise. Though they spoke

  Italian, Sophie heard it as if in English.

  “What have you done, you madman?” Lucia demanded, throwing herself down beside Sophie.

  “Don’t talk to him like that,” Angelina said. She turned to her husband with a warm smile, touching him caressingly. “Are you all right, my darling?”

  “Shut up,” he said, throwing off her hand. “She’s not hurt,” he said, panting like a man who’d run a long way.

  “No?” Lucia spread open the fingers of the hand that had been exploring the back of Sophie’s head. “What do you call this? Marinara sauce?”

  “Oh, the poor lady. We’ll take care of her.”