The Vanishing of Lord Vale

by Chasity Bowlin

  She laughed bitterly. “It was a sad and desperate attempt and it failed fantastically. He knew that I betrayed him—and because of that, he owned me. He said that I would never be free of him and that, for the rest of my life, I would either serve in his bed or help him to obtain other young women to do so. This is my punishment for defying him. To be enslaved to him forever. And now, with all that I’ve done, the abductions, and even more things I don’t dare even tell you for fear you will turn your back on me for good… I would be hanged at Tyburn before the ink on the sentence was dry if he were to but whisper in the right ears.”

  Dylan stepped forward, but he didn’t sit on the bed with her. He dropped to his knees in front of her and clasped her hands in his, pulling them to his chest. “Then let us kill him and be done with it. I can put a pistol ball between his eyes and free us both,” Dylan urged.

  “It would never work. There are records, Dylan. He’s kept a detailed account over the years. If something were to happen to him, that account would be made public. We are stuck, my darling, well and truly. Or at least I am. You could be free of it all… you have but to walk away right now. I would understand. It would not change my feelings for you.” It nearly broke her to offer him his freedom that way, to imagine the endless loneliness that would be her constant companion if he were to take that suggestion. She didn’t know that she would be able to live without him, but she also knew that she could not condemn him to continue on the same dark and unholy path that was her destiny.

  “I’m not leaving you, Zella. Not till the good Lord or the Devil himself sees fit to part us,” he vowed. “I’ll do what he wants done… I heard him talk about the fire. I’ll get Fenton and, in the wee hours, tomorrow night, when everyone will be asleep, we’ll do it. They’ll all come rushing out to safety. Once the smoke sends them all into the street, he can take Miss Masters and we will be long gone from here.”

  “Where we could we possibly go?” she cried.

  “By the dawn two days hence, my love, you and I will be on the road to Liverpool. But we’re not stopping there. Take everything that we can, all the money, and anything we can sell or pawn. We’re taking the first ship to America and that bloody toff be damned.”

  “Do you really think we could outrun him? He has eyes everywhere!” she protested. “He’s a man of wealth and power, with an unholy obsession to avenge himself on anyone he thinks has betrayed or wronged him. He would follow us to the ends of the earth.”

  “Let him then,” Dylan stated passionately. How she loved the fire in him!

  “America is a different country,” he continued.

  “There, we are not bound by English law. It’s a wild place, filled with wild men and there are places there where the only law that exists is the one you make and enforce with your own guns or your own fists. Let him come.”

  Zella closed her eyes then and, for the first time in decades, she prayed to a God she’d all but forgotten.

  Chapter Thirteen

  Elizabeth entered the breakfast room the following morning and found herself face to face with Mr. Mason. He was clearly feeling much improved.

  “I see you are much recovered,” she said coolly.

  He inclined his head in greeting and rose to sketch a slight bow. “I am recovered enough to take a meal at a table rather than in my bed like a sickly old man. Is this the normal way of things? For a companion to eat with the family?”

  “It is not in most houses,” she answered as she took a plate from the sideboard and began to fill it. “But Lady Vale always breakfasts in bed and I am unwelcome in the servants’ quarters. They find it unnerving to have one of their ‘betters’ dining in the kitchen with them. They’d find it equally unnerving to have to serve my meal on a tray in my room as if I were a guest. So a breakfast is laid out, I eat, and whatever is left is taken to the kitchen and garden staff.”

  His response was not flippant or cold, but thoughtful and clearly heartfelt. “It is difficult for you… living between two worlds. Raised in a genteel manner but working in a position that is still not quite a servant, but far below what your upbringing prepared you for—I am sorry, Elizabeth.”

  “Miss Masters,” she corrected.

  “No,” he replied. “I will not pretend we are strangers. Not when you have cared for me, not when we have kissed.”

  Elizabeth gasped and glanced around the room. Thankfully, the footmen were all out in the corridor and no other servants appeared to be lingering at the moment. “Will you kindly not say those things? What if someone heard you?”

  “What if they did?” He placed his fork on his plate with enough force that it clattered. “You are a young, unmarried woman and I am a young, unmarried man. People would be more shocked if we’re not engaged in a flirtation than if we were!”

  “What you are suggesting goes beyond flirtation,” she replied. “And I am not that sort. Not anymore.”

  He frowned at her. “What did he do to you? Did he break your heart, Elizabeth? Did he hurt you physically?”

  “He lied. He lied about everything,” she answered hotly. “And when he betrothed himself to another woman, he assumed that I’d be happy to exchange my expectations of matrimony for the reality of being his mistress. I declined.”

  “There is more to it than that,” he insisted.

  Elizabeth had seated herself at the table but, with the topic of conversation, her appetite had left her entirely. Pushing her plate away, she then threw her hands up. “Fine. If you must know, Freddy was most displeased at what he saw as my rejection of him… he told everyone. The gossip followed me from Hertfordshire to London and back again. It followed me into my first position as a companion and again in my work as a governess. It wasn’t until I came to work for Lady Vale who disdains society completely that I have managed to free myself from it.”

  He settled back in the chair. “He deserved a thrashing if not more.”

  “Well, he won’t get it. He’s a lord and my father was not. He was simply a local landowner who made the grave mistake of not holding on to his wealth. Being poor left me with few marital prospects, being foolish left with me even fewer.”

  “And your family? Did none of them stand for you when this all came to light?” he asked. There was no pity in his tone and a kindness that she had only seen in him that day in the Square.

  Elizabeth shrugged. “Why should they have? All that they taught me, every lesson about decorum and morality that they attempted to instill in me, I had tossed away for nothing. My father insisted I leave and, luckily, one of my aunts was kind enough to help me find a position. I haven’t spoken with any of my family since.”

  “Do they not even write you?”

  It was a painful admission, made all the more painful by the fact that only a few days earlier her last letter to them had been returned, unopened and refused. “No. They do not. They have made it quite clear that they wish nothing more to do with me. The least that I can do is attempt now to be the dutiful daughter I should have been all along and respect their wishes.”

  *

  Benedict studied her expression, looking for any crack in the veil she wore. There was none. She believed it, he realized. She was utterly convinced of her own wickedness and the fact that her family was right in disowning her.

  “Judgmental prigs,” he said.

  Her eyes widened at his coarse language. “Mr. Mason!”

  “They are,” he insisted. “I told you once before, I only look like a gentleman. I learned to speak as one, dress as one, and comport myself as one because it’s good for business. It afforded me opportunities to support myself and my sister in a way that would allow us to be comfortable and to have options. But I thank God that I do not now and will never think like them. The lot of them are fools!”

  “You only say that because you don’t understand—”

  He shushed her. “I operate a gaming hell. I assure you, I do understand them. I see them when they come in betting money they don’t ha
ve, losing land, losing family heirlooms, writing markers for more than all their properties together will earn in a year. They drink, they game, they whore. And then they turn around and do it all again regardless of whatever consequence they’ve had to face because of it.”

  She clammed up then, unable to refute what he was saying.

  “But you,” he continued, “by virtue of being a woman, are allowed not even one mistake… not even one ill thought out and impulsive affair because you believed yourself in love. Am I correct?”

  She continued to stare at him wide eyed. “You’re only saying things you think I wish to hear. You may describe yourself as egalitarian if you choose, but I cannot believe that anyone is truly that accepting!”

  “Then I am very sad for you, indeed, Miss Masters, because it appears that no one has shown you any mercy or understanding in your life. And that is an utter shame.”

  “I find I am no longer in the mood for breakfast. Excuse me, Mr. Mason. There is some correspondence for Lady Vale that I must see to,” she said stiffly as she rose from her chair.

  “Don’t,” he said.

  “Don’t what?”

  “Do not run away from me… do not assume that I am like the people you knew before. There is a connection between us, Miss Masters. It was there from the moment you first barreled into me in the Square. Tell me you do not feel it… I dare you.”

  “It is nothing more than a simple attraction,” she denied. “And whether you are who you claim to be or who Lady Vale believes you to be, there is reason enough on both counts not to indulge in it.”

  “Because I’m not a gentleman?” Was she as small-minded about such things as the people who pushed her into her currently lowered status?

  “No. Because we are barely acquainted and such forward conversations do not serve either of us well. And also because it is quite apparent to me that you are not a man with marriage on his mind, and I am not a woman who can afford to entangle herself with any man who wants less than that,” she insisted. “Excuse me, Mr. Mason.”

  There was a finality in her voice as she said it then, a tone that brooked no argument. Her head was high and her back was completely straight as she walked out of the room. She was right, of course. He did not have marriage on his mind. It was something that he assumed he would do one day as all men did, but he had not yet in his life met a woman who had immediately brought the topic to mind. Until her.

  He’d heard Mary waxing poetic about love at first sight. The idea that a man and woman might be destined for one another, two halves that would make a whole in anything more than a physical sense, had always seemed silly to him. He found himself less certain of that now. In the face of his immediate connection to her, her ability to alternately arouse and infuriate him, the fact that he seemed to have a nearly identical effect on her—all of that supported the notion that whatever existed between them was something significant, something larger than they themselves were and something that was simply meant to be.

  He’d come to Bath to find Mary. It seems all he’d found were other women to vex and drive him mad. Between Lady Vale’s delusions, Miss Masters’ prickly nature and Mary’s foolishness in placing herself in harm’s way, he was at his wits’ end.

  Benedict pushed his own plate back, his appetite gone. He rose slowly, still moving with far less speed than he was accustomed to. His shoulder ached, but the throbbing of the wound that marked it as fevered had finally abated. Within a matter of days, he would be able to once more search for Mary himself. Until that time, he would simply have to remain dependent upon Lady Vale’s hired investigators.

  Leaving the breakfast room, he prayed fervently for Adler to find something that would lead him to his sister’s whereabouts. Until that time, he would just make peace with the current Bedlam he found himself in.

  Chapter Fourteen

  Elizabeth had stayed with Lady Vale in the woman’s chambers for most of the morning, writing letters and seeing to her normal daily tasks as if their world had not been turned upside down. Lady Vale had taken her daily sojourn to the baths afterward and Elizabeth had pleaded a headache to avoid going.

  She didn’t want to admit it, but fear played a large part in her reluctance. The events that had occurred outside of Madame Zula’s had left her shaken and had reminded her of just how vulnerable she was. Lady Vale had studied her for a moment, concern etching her features, and had then nodded her agreement with an expression of both pity and understanding in her eyes.

  Of course, retiring to her room for the afternoon had other benefits, as well. She could continue her intentional avoidance of Mr. Mason. Their charged exchange at breakfast had left her shaken. His very presence was enough to rattle her. When he began espousing ideas that were contrary to everything she’d ever learned about the world and her own place in society—well, it was a bit much to take in.

  A soft knock on her door brought Elizabeth out of her reverie. Lady Vale could not have returned so quickly. She had been gone from the house for less than a half-hour which was hardly time enough to get to the Pump Room.

  Opening the door, she met the suspicious gaze of Calvert.

  “Forgive me, Miss Masters, but I thought perhaps, given Lady Vale’s absence from the house at this time, that you should be informed of Mr. Adler’s arrival. I have shown him into the library.” The butler was stiff and cold as always, more than just a hint of his disapproval showing in his sour facial expression.

  “I see. Has Mr. Mason been informed?” she asked.

  Calvert sniffed in disdain. “Not yet, miss. I thought to inform you first. Should I not have?”

  “No, Calvert. That is quite all right. I will attend to Mr. Adler immediately. But please do have Mr. Mason fetched to the library. I’ve no doubt that Mr. Adler has some information that will be of use to him,” she said.

  “Very well, miss. I will see to it.”

  As Calvert turned on his heel and disappeared down the hall, Elizabeth took a deep and fortifying breath. She was not prepared for another encounter with Mr. Mason, but she was also very keen to discover what Adler may have found. Had he located Miss Mason? Had he determined what Mr. Mason’s origins might be?

  Taking just a moment to tidy her hair and brush the creases from her gown, not that it did anything to improve its degree of attractiveness, she left her room and headed for the stairs. Mr. Mason, Benedict, was waiting for her at the top.

  “It’s difficult to be nosy and intrusive while still avoiding me, isn’t it?” he asked slyly.

  “Must you always be so provoking?” Elizabeth fired back.

  “I wouldn’t have to provoke if you only stopped repressing your true nature,” he replied evenly. “What could be more natural than to be a passionate woman with an inquisitive nature?”

  Elizabeth glared at him. “Stop. Stop acting as if there can be something between us when we both know it’s impossible!” With that, she turned and marched down the stairs.

  “Improbable, I will grant you. But not impossible,” he corrected, descending behind her.

  Nothing more was said between them as they entered the library to find Mr. Adler awaiting them. He had what appeared to be a valise with him.

  Elizabeth noted that Benedict’s demeanor changed instantly. “That belongs to my sister.”

  Adler nodded. “I found the woman she’d been staying with… where her letters had been posted from. What did she tell you brought her to Bath again?”

  Benedict’s gaze remained locked on the bag as it was clearly a tangible reminder of the fact that his sister was missing. “She stated she wished to visit a friend of hers from school, a woman by the name of Mrs. Simms. She was recently married to a merchant here in Bath.”

  Adler nodded. “Mrs. Simms was not a friend of your sister’s from whatever school you had enrolled her in. There was no Mr. Simms who was a cloth merchant. Rather, Mrs. Simms is a widow who lets rooms to young women that are in the city seeking employment… of which your sister profe
ssed to be one,” Adler explained.

  “How did you find this out?” Benedict asked.

  “The posting on the letters. I found the shop near Trim Street where the letters had been posted from. They directed me to Mrs. Simms’ house. It’s not uncommon for them to see young women of varying degrees of impoverished gentility there, posting letters and asking after positions in local homes as either governesses or companions. Your sister stood out in their memory because she never once asked about a position… only about whether or not Lady Vale was much in society in Bath,” Adler explained.

  An ugly suspicion was birthed in Elizabeth’s mind then. Was Mary Mason even missing? Was this all some elaborate scheme to get Benedict close enough to Lady Vale for them to attempt to carry out their grand confidence game of passing him off as a missing heir? “How on earth would Miss Mason even know who Lady Vale is? More to the point, why would she even care?” Elizabeth asked.

  “I’m rather curious about that myself, Mr. Adler,” Benedict answered. “My sister and I live comfortably off my income but we do not move in such exalted circles. Even if we did, Mary would have no reason to interact with Lady Vale at all.”

  Adler opened the valise and removed a simple, leather-bound volume from it. “Your sister’s diary… apparently she did not meet Lady Vale, but had seen her. They were frequenting the same bookshop in London only one month ago when Lady Vale was last there.”

  Elizabeth recalled that shopping trip. She also recalled that they’d encountered a pretty young woman with blond hair in that shop. She’d taken one look at Lady Vale, her eyes had widened and she’d dropped every item clutched in her hands. That girl, near her own age, had looked at Lady Vale as if seeing a ghost.

  Benedict sank down onto one of the nearby chairs. He appeared perplexed and incredibly worried. “It was about that time that Mary’s curiosity, I’d even go so far as to say obsession, with finding out where we’d come from—who our true families were—had begun. But, there is still no good reason for her to have lied. I would not have prohibited her from coming to Bath even if that was her motivation.”