The Secret of the India Orchid

by Nancy Campbell Allen

  Lady Lissa was looking at Anthony, who had entered the room near the pianoforte, which was unfortunate. His gaze traveled the room until he found Sophia, and there it stopped. He smiled slowly, and she sucked in her breath.

  “He has got to stop doing that if he wants to keep anyone from suspecting he has feelings for you,” Rachael muttered. “Therein lies the problem. I’m not certain he cares one way or the other anymore about keeping it secret.”

  Sophia elbowed her in the ribs. “Do be quiet.”

  “He was fine to break your heart when his concern was keeping you safe, but now that he seems to have thrown caution to the wind—”

  “Rachael.” Sophia turned to her, prepared to lecture her friend on the wisdom of not lecturing friends when she saw Rachael’s smile.

  “Which is why I have devised a plan for you to sit next to him for at least thirty minutes.” Rachael stood and pulled Sophia up with her. “Lord Wilshire, you must join us,” she said as Anthony reached them. “We are bound for the library where I understand there is a fast-moving game of whist at play.”

  Anthony’s lips twitched. “A fast-moving game of whist? That truly must be a sight.”

  “Come, come,” she said, taking one of his arms and leaving the other for Sophia. “Dylan is there already, and I promised not to keep him waiting long.”

  “And here I had assumed the two of you dallied for the music.”

  Sophia pinched the back of his arm as they exited into the hallway, and he pulled it away from her with an incredulous laugh and a look of remonstration she was certain he intended to be gruff but fell well short of the mark. She raised a brow at him in admonition, and he chuckled at her. When they were safely away from prying eyes, he winked at her.

  There were a few groups of people already in the library when they arrived. Several officers from the military compound played vingt-et-un at another table and a few Fleet ladies filled the room with the comfortable, quiet hum of conversation.

  The game of whist was, of course, not fast moving at all. In fact there hadn’t been one in play until they reached the library and Rachael pulled Major Stuart away from his conversation with Lord Pilkington to begin one.

  Clergyman Denney immediately took Stuart’s place across from Lord Pilkington. If Pilkington’s expression was any indicator, the conversation had begun with the evils of drink.

  “Poor Pilkington,” Anthony murmured to Sophia as she took her seat at a game table and patted the chair next to hers. “Though perhaps he is secretly relieved we have diverted Stuart’s attention. I do believe the major is tightening the screws.”

  Sophia knit her brow. “Does he suspect Lord Pilkington of something nefarious?”

  Anthony shook his head. “We are spinning our wheels, as it were. I believe he is as frustrated as I. We keep thinking that if we manage to overturn the correct stone we will discover something useful.”

  Rachael quickly took the seat across from Sophia, declaring, “Sophia and I must be partners, for you and I always lose, Dylan.”

  He cocked a brow at her but took his seat by her side. “I suppose that pairs us, old boy,” he said to Anthony.

  “We are not truly invested in this game,” Rachael whispered.

  “You don’t say.” Dylan glanced at Anthony, who slid his chair closer to Sophia’s.

  Sophia glanced about the room, and more importantly at the faces who were decidedly not looking in their direction, and leaned a few delicious inches closer to Anthony. He glanced at her from the side, his lips twitching in a smile. He angled his shoulder so it brushed against hers.

  “That will be enough of that.” Dylan snapped the cards together and whispered to Anthony, his brows drawn close. “You will never convince anyone you don’t care for her if you don’t maintain some distance. Are you a lad fresh from Eton, Wilshire?”

  Anthony cocked a brow at Dylan and smirked. Sophia regarded her would-be protector with a bright smile. “Come now, Major Stuart. Surely you’re acquainted with the heady rush of new love?”

  He narrowed his eyes at her. “I do remember, and therein lies the problem.” He glanced left and right, and then leaned forward. “I must add it is a sad state of affairs when I, of all people, must act as chaperone.”

  Rachael sighed and nudged her cousin. “You have become rather a stuffy old fellow, darling.”

  “And what about after you’re married?” Dylan persisted. “You should know how gauche it is to be demonstrative with one’s spouse in public. I suggest you rein it in now, my friend.”

  Sophia turned a pout on Anthony. “So such will be the case with us, then?”

  “I never have claimed to be de rigueur.” He grinned. “In fact, I do tend to fly in the face of convention.”

  Sophia laughed, but then spied Amala Ayah at the door to the library, her face a mask of terror. The nanny motioned desperately to her, and Sophia stood so quickly she knocked her chair askew. Anthony grabbed it to keep it from crashing to the ground.

  Sophia ran to the door, heedless of the starts of surprise from others in the room, and pulled Amala into the hall. “What’s happened?”

  “Miss Sophia, Charlie is missing!”

  Sophia barely caught Amala as she crumbled, her face pale and her breathing shallow. The woman’s eyes rolled back in her head, and Sophia lowered her awkwardly to the floor. She glanced up as Anthony, Dylan, and Rachael appeared in the doorway.

  “She must have run all the way down here,” Sophia said quietly, desperately trying to still the furious pounding of her heart. “Anthony, help me elevate her feet.”

  Anthony grabbed a stool that sat just inside the library door and placed Amala’s feet on it. “Did she say anything?” His voice was low, tense.

  “Charlie is missing.” Sophia fought back a wave of nausea and put her hand over her mouth, taking a few shallow breaths through her nose.

  “Here, now, what’s this?” Pilkington entered the hallway, and a few curious faces peeked from behind his shoulder.

  “Your nanny, my lord. She has distressing news, I fear.” She looked down at Amala, wanting the woman to come to and give her more details.

  “We must take her back upstairs,” Pilkington said.

  “My lord, if I may?” Rachael stepped around Pilkington, sank down next to Sophia, and reached into her pocket. “I have salts.” She produced them and waved the small packet beneath Amala’s nose.

  The nanny breathed deeply, blinked, and coughed. Anthony placed his arms behind her shoulders, and Sophia pulled gently on her wrists to seat her upright.

  “Amala.” Sophia looked into the woman’s wide and unfocused eyes. She waved a hand in front of her face and repeated her name. “What has happened?”

  Amala blinked again. Then she clutched Sophia’s hand and looked up at the small crowd. Her face crumpled, and tears gathered in her eyes when her gaze landed on her employer. “My lord, Master Charles is not in his bedchamber. We have looked everywhere he might have gone but cannot find him.” Amala sobbed a gasp and put her hand over her mouth. Her other hand clutched Sophia’s so tightly her knuckles were white. “Please help me find him!”

  Sophia nodded. “Of course.” She looked up at Lord Pilkington, deferring to his position and expecting him to begin giving orders. He simply stared down at Amala, his face blank.

  “Pilkington,” Anthony said firmly, standing. “Where shall we begin?”

  Pilkington seemed to search for words he couldn’t find.

  Dylan cleared his throat and Anthony stepped around Sophia to address Pilkington directly. “Major Stuart can dispatch runners to the post and bring reinforcements. We’ll begin an immediate search.”

  “Probably just hiding . . .” Pilkington managed to say, and cleared his throat. “Charles likes to play hide-and-seek. He must be hiding. Amala Ayah, you must look in all of those places! I cannot
fathom that you would cause this sort of worry without looking there first!”

  Amala’s eyes widened, and Sophia felt her tremble. From the set of her mouth, she knew the nanny’s reaction had nothing to do with fear of her employer and everything to do with outrage. “I did look,” she bit out, and Pilkington blinked at her firm tone. “He is not here.” She fumbled awkwardly and tried to stand. Rachael and Sophia aided her, and Amala smoothed her hands over her sari and took a deep breath.

  “My lord, I have searched every single hiding place where Charlie used to play, but hasn’t for the past week. I have even searched places he likely would never have thought to hide. He is not in the house. We must have additional help searching for your son.” Amala’s face was still deathly pale, but she stood straight and did not blink away from Pilkington’s shocked attention.

  Sophia noted the slight tremble that still vibrated through the woman’s frame, but realized that she and Rachael alone were likely the only two to see it. The nanny was fierce, and, in spite of Sophia’s thick, suffocating fear for Charlie, she internally cheered Amala Ayah.

  Pilkington seemed at a loss—undoubtedly a servant had never spoken so firmly to him before, and Sophia hoped Amala would still have a position come morning. Of course, if they couldn’t find Charlie, the point was moot.

  Sophia drove the thought away and put a trembling hand to her forehead. She looked at Anthony. “The first step. What shall be our first step?”

  Anthony addressed Pilkington again, as the man was still as befuddled as a fish out of water. “With your permission, my lord, I’ll set the plan in motion. Suppose you go to your study and pour a glass of whiskey. I’ll join you straightaway once I’ve conferred with Stuart, here.”

  Clergyman Denney addressed Anthony. “We would be better served to remain here in the library where there is more room to gather people.”

  Lord Pilkington frowned. “But my best whiskey is in the study.” It was as though the man could focus on only one small, inconsequential detail at a time.

  Denney glowered at Pilkington. He opened his mouth, likely to blast a rebuke, when Anthony held up a hand.

  “Take him to his study,” Anthony told the clergyman in an undertone. “I shall meet you there presently.” Then he and Dylan stepped aside, their heads together in low conversation.

  “Come along, my lord. I shall accompany you.” Denney took Pilkington’s arm and led him away. The remainder of the guests milled about and whispered.

  Sophia turned to Amala, struck by a sudden thought. “The study!”

  Amala shook her head. “I searched already. I couldn’t imagine him going there but I looked anyway.”

  Rachael turned to Amala, patting her on the arm. “Can I get you anything?” she asked quietly.

  Amala shook her head, and enormous tears pooled in her eyes. Sophia handed her a handkerchief while Rachael helped smoothed the woman’s dress.

  Sophia glanced down the hallway, which was slowly filling with more and more people, questions bouncing around in the air. She felt the moment word began to spread. It was a wave, crashing through the entire house and filling each corner with worry and tension.

  Think. Think.

  “We will need a command post, of sorts,” she said, thinking of the clergyman’s suggestion. “Lord Pilkington’s study is not as big as the library.”

  Amala agreed. “Perhaps half that size.”

  “Suppose we gather people—” Sophia paused as Lady Seadon, the matron, let out a small shriek from her position at the drawing room door. The news was traveling fast. “Suppose we gather useful people here in the library,” Sophia said to Rachael. They maneuvered Amala into the library and sat her in a chair by the hearth.

  Amala rubbed her hand along her forehead. “I put him to bed. Lady Pilkington hasn’t done it for some time, and I’ve worried Charlie will feel as though he isn’t important. I tuck him in and sing a song my mother taught me as a child.” Her voice broke. “Tonight I retired to the servant’s sitting room. An hour later, I checked on him, and he was gone. I don’t know how long he has been missing.”

  Sophia nodded. “I shall find Antho—Lord Wilshire—in Lord Pilkington’s study. He may have more news for us by now.”

  “I will stay here with Amala.” Rachael brushed Amala’s hair away from her face. “We will find him, dear lady. He is little—he cannot have gone far.”

  “Unless someone has abducted him and taken him in a carriage,” Amala whispered.

  Sophia fought back a new wave of panic that image produced.

  She left the library on shaking legs and spotted Abdullah, who stood in the main hall with Himmat, his face creased in worry. She gave the butler instructions to provide tea to Amala Ayah in the library and asked Abdullah to gather as many servants as were available. She then wound her way to the study.

  She approached the study just as Major Stuart exited the room. He gave a grim head-nod in her direction and walked quickly down the hall.

  Anthony was in the study with Lord and Lady Pilkington. She was as baffled as her husband, and Sophia suspected that once the shock of the pronouncement was no longer fresh, emotion would flood. Beneath her exterior, and sometimes notably closer to the surface, Lady Pilkington was a nervous woman.

  Sophia knew she loved her son and had high hopes for his future. She suspected that was partly the reason she had stayed away from Charlie of late; he was in pain, bothered so profoundly by something she was at a loss to explain that she left his care entirely to others and instead immersed herself deeply in things she did understand, could control.

  Sophia stepped just inside the study door and stayed against the wall where she could unobtrusively observe. He cannot have gone far. He cannot have gone far. She hoped if she repeated the sentiment enough times in her mind, it would be true. She couldn’t think in terms of an abduction, or worse. Not yet.

  “Once Major Stuart returns with reinforcements, we shall divide into teams and begin searching the rooms and the grounds.” Anthony addressed the Pilkingtons, but also Clergyman Denney and Professor Gerald, who had followed closely on Sophia’s heels.

  “You are certain the child is not in the mansion?” Gerald asked.

  Anthony looked at Sophia, a brow raised.

  She shook her head. “We cannot be certain as the mansion is extensive, but the child’s ayah has searched every place she thought he might be. I have asked Abdullah to begin gathering servants in the library in order to give instructions to everyone at once and also have a designated gathering place to report when finished searching.”

  Anthony nodded. He spoke again with Lord Pilkington, and Sophia slowly approached the large desk where Amala had found Charlie hiding the night of the costume ball. She hoped to see his little body crouched there again, but as she leaned to peer underneath, the space was as empty as she had known it would be.

  Anthony finished his conversation with Pilkington and made a slow perusal of the room, stopping to examine the statues of two Hindu gods on the mantel: Vishnu, the preserver, blue with multiple arms, and Kali, the goddess of death, her tongue dripping blood and adorned in a necklace of human skulls. Sophia frowned. Lady Pilkington had mentioned once on a tour of the mansion that her husband favored his décor in groupings of three. The man was fairly exacting in his habits—she would hazard a guess that there should have been three statues on the mantel. A missing god statue?

  She frowned at the mantelpiece, thinking back to the multitudinous statuary she had seen at the marketplace. The statues were usually beautiful carved by the locals and painted with the brightly colored dyes the country produced in vivid abundance. There were dozens of Hindu gods, but Sophia knew a few of the most easily recognized ones.

  Vishnu, Kali, . . . and Brahma? She didn’t know why the detail mattered. It probably didn’t signify anything at all, except that a man had been murdered in this
room with a heavy object, and finding it might lead them to the attacker.

  She joined Anthony at the hearth, passing both Clergyman Denney, who looked like a nasty thundercloud, and Professor Gerald, who was speaking with the Pilkingtons. On a whim, she pushed lightly on the statue of Vishnu. It sat solidly in place until she put greater pressure on it, using both thumbs. It budged a quarter of an inch.

  The statue stood perhaps just under a foot tall, and though she wasn’t an expert, she presumed it was carved from sandstone since she was able to nudge it herself with relative ease. There was some heft to it, and she bit her lip in thought, feeling a rush of cold through her limbs despite the stuffy air in the study. She couldn’t wield it as a weapon . . . but perhaps if she were threatened? In some sort of altercation? She could grab it with both hands and swing. She fought down a shudder and realigned the statue, then surreptitiously nudged Kali. They were likely produced by the same artist—the dimensions matched.

  “What are you doing?” Anthony whispered.

  “How heavy are these, do you suppose?” she whispered back, still looking at the statues as though admiring them.

  He paused—glanced at the Pilkingtons—and then moved Kali, lifting it slightly from the mantel and placing it gently back down. “Fifteen, twenty pounds, perhaps.”

  She scooted closer to him, and he leaned his head down to hers. “Could you kill someone with one of these, Anthony?”

  “Please do not touch the statues,” Pilkington said suddenly, and Sophia jumped back, knocking her head against Anthony’s nose.

  “Forgive me, my lord. We were admiring them.”

  His eyes were wide and he shook his head. “I prefer they not be touched.”

  “I’ve told you they are not appropriate for display in the home of a man of faith, Pilkington,” Clergyman Denney said, eying the statues on the mantel with clear disgust, his color high.

  “Mr. Denney, I’ll not have you dictating to me in my own home!” Pilkington’s own cheeks were flushed.