by Jane Feather
Why the hell had Jack insisted on going to London? she thought even though she knew it had been the best thing—the only thing—to do. In a curious state of paralysis she stayed at the window watching as Sir Mark descended from the carriage and then handed down his wife. The dogs, recognizing old friends, jumped up at the window barking excitedly, then raced to the door, gazing back impatiently at their mistress.
Arabella knew she ought to run out to the street, greet Meg’s parents in person, but she still didn’t know what to say. In essence Meg had been in her charge and she had lost her.
Of course, it was ridiculous to imagine that she could be responsible in any real way for a grown woman who had always cleaved to her own path, and Arabella didn’t think that Sir Mark or his lady would hold her responsible—they knew their own daughter well enough—but the reflection did nothing to assuage her panicked guilt.
Lady Barratt held on to her bonnet as a gust of wind from the sea threatened to lift it from her head. She grabbed her husband’s arm with her free hand and almost dragged his tall stooped figure towards the door, her agitation obvious on her round, pink-complexioned countenance.
Arabella forced herself to move. She crossed the drawing room and the dogs shot between her legs as she opened the door, nearly unbalancing her. She entered the hall just as a footman was opening the door to their guests, Tidmouth standing behind him in readiness to greet them. Boris and Oscar pranced on the black and white marble tiles, their nails skittering.
“Sir Mark . . . Lady Barratt.” Arabella hurried towards them, hoping the rising panic didn’t sound in her voice. “How good of you to come so quickly.” Stupid . . . stupid thing to say, she castigated herself. There was nothing unusual or praiseworthy about parents rushing to an ailing daughter’s bedside. She embraced Lady Barratt.
“Oh, my dear Bella. How is she? Meg is never ill.” Her ladyship hugged the duchess tightly, oblivious of the prancing dogs. “Is it a fever? Pray God it’s not the typhoid. Or smallpox, I have been in such a worry . . . couldn’t sleep a wink last night.”
“No, it’s definitely not typhoid,” Arabella said, shooting an agonized glance at Tidmouth even as she submitted to Sir Mark’s paternal kiss on her forehead. He snapped his fingers at the dogs, who were the progeny of his favorite bitch and well known to him. They sat obediently, open mouths panting, huge black eyes glowing, long feathery tails thumping.
Lady Barratt’s voice continued without cease, asking and answering her own questions. “Has the physician been? Oh, but I’m sure he has. You wouldn’t neglect such an attention, my dear, of course you wouldn’t.”
Tidmouth coughed and said, “Perhaps your ladyship would like to go into the drawing room. You’d like some refreshment after your journey, I’m sure.”
“Oh, I must go straight to Meg,” Lady Barratt said. “Sir Mark, will you come?”
Sir Mark’s sharply shrewd green eyes, eyes that his daughter had inherited, had been on Arabella from the moment she’d appeared, and he had intercepted the glance between the duchess and her steward. He said now, “We’ll go up in a minute, my dear. Let’s go into the drawing room and compose ourselves first. You wouldn’t wish to agitate Meg with your anxieties, I’m sure.”
His wife took a deep breath as the calm voice of reason soothed her. “Yes, of course, I’m sure you’re right, sir.”
Arabella took her arm. “Come, ma’am, you must be cold and tired if you left at dawn. Tidmouth will bring coffee to the drawing room. Sir Mark, would you prefer madeira or sherry?”
“Sherry, m’dear, thank you.” He was still regarding her with a question in his eyes, and a deep frown now drew his thick gray eyebrows together over the bridge of his long nose.
Arabella ushered them into the drawing room, the dogs racing ahead of her. “Let me take your bonnet and cape, ma’am. Sir Mark, let me take your stick and your cloak.” She beckoned to a hovering footman. “John, please, take Sir Mark and Lady Barratt’s cloaks.” She was beginning to feel less panicked but she still wished Jack had returned in time for this.
“When did Meg fall ill, Bella? It wasn’t clear from the duke’s note.” Sir Mark stood before the empty grate, his hands laced at his back beneath the long tail of his brown wool coat. Boris and Oscar sat sentinel on either side of him.
Arabella didn’t immediately answer as Tidmouth entered with a footman and her guests were provided with refreshment. She was relieved to see that Lady Barratt was less agitated under her husband’s calming influence and took her coffee with a hand that trembled only slightly.
She waited until the door had closed on the departing servants, then said, “I don’t quite know how to tell you—”
“Oh, my dear, she’s dead. My girl is dead,” Lady Barratt declared, her complexion as white as marble. The coffee cup clattered in its saucer and her husband moved quickly to take it from her.
“Hush, hush, my dear,” he said laying a hand on her shoulder. “Let Arabella speak.” He looked at Arabella and there was alarm in his eyes despite his apparent composure and his voice was sharp as he demanded, “Come, Arabella, let’s hear it.”
“Meg’s disappeared,” she said, opting for the bald truth. “Three days ago. We were walking on The Leas, I came home, she went to the lending library, and no one has seen her since she left there.”
“Disappeared?” Sir Mark sounded incredulous, ignoring the soft moan from his wife. “How could she possibly disappear? She’s a grown woman, more than capable of taking care of herself.”
“Dead,” his wife moaned. “Murdered by footpads.”
“Ma’am, don’t be ridiculous,” her husband said briskly. “They’d have found her body by now.”
This didn’t appear to comfort his lady, who fell back against the sofa cushions, fanning herself with her hand. “She could be in the sea . . . thrown into the sea.”
“I’ll fetch the sal volatile,” Arabella said hastily, seeing that Lady Barratt was about to swoon. She hurried to the door. “Tidmouth, will you send Becky for sal volatile, Lady Barratt is not feeling very well.”
“I anticipated as much, your grace.” Tidmouth produced a small brown vial. “Should I send Becky to attend her ladyship?”
“No, there’s no need. Thank you.” She closed the door again and went back to the couch, taking the stopper from the bottle. “Sniff this, ma’am, it will help.” She waved the bottle beneath her ladyship’s nose and the sharp vapor made her own eyes stream.
Sir Mark was tapping his feet impatiently while Arabella attended to his wife. Finally he said, “Where’s your husband, Bella?”
“London,” she said, rising from her knees beside the sofa. “He left yesterday to enlist the Bow Street Runners.”
Sir Mark’s ruddy huntsman’s complexion lost a little color. The Runners were inevitably associated with scandal of some kind. “I suppose he thought it was for the best.”
“Jack said we couldn’t waste a minute. If the trail went cold . . .” She let the sentence fade. “I’m so sorry . . . I don’t know . . .” Tongue-tied, she wrung her hands and looked helplessly between Meg’s parents.
“It’s hardly your fault,” Sir Mark said. “Meg was not in your charge, Bella. Or your husband’s. She’ll be thirty next birthday.”
Lady Barratt began to weep softly into a lace handkerchief. Arabella knelt beside her again. “She’ll come back, ma’am. She has to.”
The drawing room door swung open and Jack stepped in, dust coating his boots and forming a fine powder on the shoulders of his riding coat. He tossed his curly-brimmed beaver onto a settle as the dogs hurled themselves at his knees with adoring barks. “Down!” he commanded sharply, pushing them off him. “Sir Mark, Lady Barratt, I’m glad you were able to come so quickly.” He kissed his wife quickly before bowing to the weeping lady on the sofa and shaking hands with Sir Mark.
“The Runners are looking for her in the countryside,” he said. “I’ve had every square inch of the town combed already, but they
’ll go over the ground again. In the meantime, we have put it about that Meg is ill and taken to her bed. If you wish it, we could say that you came for her and took her home to recuperate.”
“Your staff?” Sir Mark queried.
Jack raised an eyebrow. “My staff, sir, will say only what I tell them to say.”
The assurance appeared sufficient for the baronet. He allowed Jack to refill his glass. “I think it would be best for us to remain in Folkestone for a few days. My wife . . .” He gestured to his still-weeping wife.
“Yes, of course,” Jack said, pulling the bellrope beside the fireplace. “Much better for you to be here when she comes back.” He turned as the steward entered. “Tidmouth, Sir Mark and Lady Barratt will be our guests for a few days.”
Tidmouth bowed. “Yes, sir.”
“Prepare the Chinese Bedchamber,” Arabella said. She smiled at Lady Barratt “It’s at the back of the house, away from the noise of the street, ma’am. And Becky will look after you.”
“You’re very kind, my dear,” Lady Barratt said, trying for a watery smile. “I think perhaps I’ll lie down for a few minutes. The shock . . .”
“Yes, of course. I’ll come with you.”
The two women left the drawing room and Sir Mark said, “Tell me honestly, St. Jules, what do you think has happened?”
Jack pulled at an earlobe. “Quite frankly, sir, I’m at a loss. The distance between the lending library and this house on The Leas is no more than half a mile. It was raining very heavily, and maybe Meg took shelter somewhere, but if so, surely we’d have heard something? Someone would have seen her.”
Sir Mark was silent. He sipped his sherry, then said, almost to himself, “Is it possible she left of her own accord?”
“She wouldn’t have subjected Arabella to this agony,” Jack stated.
Sir Mark nodded. “No, she wouldn’t.”
“Or her parents either,” Jack said.
“Probably not.” Sir Mark sighed heavily. “I don’t know what to think.”
The sound of the great knocker rumbled through the silence and then they heard Arabella’s voice. She sounded puzzled, then surprised. She came into the drawing room, looking at a letter in her hand. “This is very odd. Some man just delivered this for me.”
“A postman, a courier?”
“He wasn’t dressed like either,” she said. “He was very elegant in green silk and he was riding a handsome bay. He didn’t speak like a postman either.” She took up a slim paper knife from the dainty French secretaire and slit the wafer, unfolding the sheet. Her mouth opened. Slowly she looked up.
“It’s from Meg.”
“What?” Sir Mark bounded forward. “Let me see.” He almost snatched the sheet from her. He stared down at it in some degree of incomprehension. “What does this mean? It’s not Meg’s handwriting.”
“May I, sir?” Jack held out his hand. He too stared at the rather masculine script, then looked across at his wife. Her face was radiant with relief, but there was something else in the tawny eyes. A mischievous amusement that he knew well. He looked again at the letter. It read: An accident befell me but I’m safe and well. In the top corner was inscribed the single word Gondolier.
“Why is it so short?” Sir Mark demanded. “And why did she not write it herself? Can we believe this?”
“Oh, yes, we can believe it,” Arabella said flatly. “Meg may not have penned it but she had a hand in its wording, I can promise you.”
“I suspect by its brevity and the unknown handwriting that the note came via a rather unorthodox carrier,” Jack mused, turning the paper over to examine the back. “It reads as if it was originally written in code . . . to be carried by a pigeon for instance.”
“Good God, man, what’s my daughter doing with a pigeon?” Sir Mark shook his head in disbelief.
“I suspect only Meg can tell us that,” Jack said. “Or maybe Arabella can?” He raised an eyebrow at his wife, convinced now that she knew something the rest of them didn’t.
“I have no idea,” Arabella said, trying to keep a note of slightly hysterical laughter out of her voice. “But at least we know she’s all right, and I’m sure that whatever the accident was, it’s prevented her from coming home immediately. So we must deal quickly with any possible gossip. But first I’ll go and tell Lady Barratt the good news.” She whisked herself out of the room before her inconveniently perspicacious husband could ask any more awkward questions.
It was over an hour before she was able to leave a somewhat reassured but still very bewildered Lady Barratt. She closed the door to the Chinese Bedchamber softly behind her and then turned around slowly. Jack was lounging in a window embrasure next to the chamber door, his arms folded, and there was an uncomfortable gleam in his gray eyes.
“So, madam wife, what is the significance of a gondolier?”
“Oh, hush,” she said, looking around. “Sir Mark could appear at any moment. It’s a miracle he didn’t notice himself, I’m sure Meg meant it for my eyes only.”
“Maybe so, but you’ll share it with me.” It was an uncompromising statement.
Arabella covered her mouth to stifle a laugh. “Come away then,” she said. “I’ll tell you in my boudoir.”
He followed her into a pretty sitting room at the rear of the house. The windows were open onto the small town garden below and the faint sounds of waves breaking on the stones of the beach drifted in. Arabella fussed with a bowl of heavy-headed peonies on the round Chippendale table in front of the window while Jack waited with every appearance of patience.
“Do you have the note?” she asked.
“No, I didn’t feel I could take it from her father,” he said. “But it matters little. You know what it said. I know what it said. Explain gondolier.”
Arabella brushed a wavy lock of dark hair from her forehead. “It means that Meg is in the middle of some kind of romantic adventure,” she said.
Jack stared at her, anger flaring in his eyes, a muscle twitching in his cheek. “So she left on purpose . . . put us through this hell for some—”
“No,” Arabella interrupted quickly. “Of course not. Meg would never do that. Something happened.” She shrugged. “I have no idea what, but it was nothing she could help. However, she’s saying that its consequences are proving not . . . not unpleasant,” she finished with another shrug.
The anger died out of his eyes. Jack knew enough of Meg now to believe that his wife was right. She would never have caused such pain to her friends and family deliberately. But the mystery was nowhere near solution.
“What are we supposed to do now?” he asked.
“Stop worrying,” Arabella said. Her eyes gleamed with mischief again. “I expect she’s been abducted by an Arab sheik and is having a wonderful time in his harem in the desert.” She could see from her husband’s expression that he didn’t appreciate her flight of fancy. “More to the point, why would she send a message by pigeon . . . if you’re right, that is?”
Jack frowned. He was beginning to think abduction was not such a far-fetched explanation after all. Pigeons were used when land transport couldn’t be. “I have a feeling Meg is no longer on English shores,” he said slowly. “She’s either on a ship somewhere, or on the French coast. There’s no other reason to use a pigeon.”
“And you’re certain it was brought by a pigeon . . . oh, not the messenger who came here. He was far too elegant to be mistaken for a pigeon, but the original?”
“Sometimes, Arabella, you have a very misplaced sense of levity,” he said severely. “Get your pelisse, we’re going to walk the dogs down to the harbor.”
“Why the harbor?” She fetched the required garment with alacrity.
“Naval stations rely on courier services. Meg’s been gone less than three days, so this message has to have arrived somewhere close to Folkestone. I have it in mind to make some inquiries.”
“You think Meg’s with the navy?” She couldn’t hide her incredulity.
&n
bsp; “I don’t think anything, my dear. I’m merely following a hunch.”
“Oh, well, I’m happy to follow it with you.” She fastened the top button of her pelisse and arranged a very fetching straw hat on her dusky curls. “Wherever she is, at least I know she’s amusing herself.”
Chapter 10
Cosimo?”
“Meg?” He looked up from his charts with a quick smile as she hovered in the cabin door. “What can I do for you?” He infused the question with such languorous sensuality that her knees turned to butter.
“Don’t look at me like that for a start,” she said. “I want to talk about something serious.”
“Oh.” He put down his pen.
She came across the cabin and looked down at the charts and the unreadable notations he’d been making. “Are you plotting a course?”
“Mmm.” He ran a finger in the groove of her bent neck, up beneath her hair, enjoying the shape of her small skull against his palm.
“For when you leave tomorrow?”
“Mmm.” He bent to kiss her nape. “Your skin smells of the sun.”
Meg moved her head aside. Every time she’d prepared herself to open this depressing yet increasingly urgent subject, he’d worked some of his magic to banish the issue from her mind, or at least to persuade her temporarily that it was too soon to cast a shadow over the idyll. But the discussion couldn’t be put off any longer.
“No, Cosimo, we have to talk. Have you given any thought as to how I’m going to get off this island and go home? You can’t just put me ashore when you leave and forget all about me.”
“Oh, I don’t think I could ever manage to forget all about you,” he said with a lascivious grin, catching her chin between finger and thumb and turning her face towards him.
“Cosimo, do listen to me,” she exclaimed, jerking her chin free and moving rapidly out of range. “I’m serious.”
He had done his best to prevent her broaching this subject until it couldn’t be avoided. Every minute he had to draw her deeper into their liaison was to his advantage, and he had intended to use their lovemaking that night as a natural introduction to the idea that she stay with him for a while longer. However, it seemed he’d have to deal with it without the benefit of lust’s softening.
