by Lori Bond
“The last time I saw Lady Caroline,” Mrs. Turnton started without preamble, without even waiting for the door to the corridor to shut, “was upstairs. She was still in conversation with that soused Kimbley woman when I came down here. While I redonned my attire, I sent Olive to ask around upstairs. No one there had seen her.”
Olive nodded in agreement. She seemed to be getting paler by the minute, and Jerry remembered that only yesterday she had been recovering from her illness. He guided the little maid over to a chair where she sat with a small thump.
Mrs. Turnton didn’t comment on his chivalry. She stayed focused on the problem on hand, her face a mask of forbidding disapproval. “If I understand correctly, then both Lady Caroline and Wellburn seem to have gone missing.”
Chapter 37
Caroline awoke with a dull throb at the back of her head and a terrible crick in her neck.
She rolled her neck and opened her eyes to a nearly pitch-black room. She couldn’t believe she had fallen asleep sitting up. She turned towards Olive’s bed to ask the girl what had happened, when Caroline realized the room was too dark and shaped wrong.
Unfortunately, she couldn’t worry about that. Rolling the crick out of her neck had set her headache from a dull bang to a full roar. She groaned and tried to lift her hands to grab her head. That’s when she discovered she’d been tied to the chair.
The curative properties of a healthy dose of fear were truly unsung miracles. One moment her brain felt as if it were trying to dislodge itself by drilling a hole through the back of her head. The next panic flowed through her entire body so hard and so fast, that she could barely feel anything at all, not the ropes biting into her wrists of her lower arms or the additional ropes she found wrapped around her lower legs. She went to scream, but there was a gag across her mouth that kept her from doing more than making disturbing grunts. Her headache must have disoriented her more than she had thought if she’d been gagged and not noticed.
She stopped flailing around, partly because there wasn’t far she could go trussed like a Christmas goose. Caroline tried to breathe through her nose in an effort to calm down. At least she’d worn a looser corset this evening. Mrs. Turnton had been correct. Her waist might not be quite as fashionable, but she wasn’t in danger of falling into a swoon.
She shut her eyes for a moment, but that made her heart rate start to increase again. She opened them and took stock of the room.
It was similar to the one where the Kimbleys had stored their art. She took a flying leap and deduced that she must be in the other cargo hold on the port side of the ship. Very little light filtered in from the portholes, so she figured it must still be night.
In the gloom she could make out the crates and trunks around her. Her hands grabbed the part of the wooden chair she could reach. She couldn’t feel much through her corset, but there seemed to be slats behind her. Her best guess was that she was bound to a wooden ladder chair, similar to the chairs found in the Second-Class Dining Room, although since she’d been knocked on the head so close to dinner, this chair had probably come from somewhere else like the Crew Mess. Since their mess and the crew’s quarters were on the same deck as the cargo holds, that made more sense.
Caroline took a deep breath and strained to listen in the silence. The boat shifted and creaked as it bobbed across the ocean, but she didn’t detect another person breathing or the sound of someone moving. She seemed to be in the cargo hold alone.
This more than anything helped her calm down a bit. She took in another deep breath through her nose and considered her predicament. The first thing she felt now that the panic had ebbed was a growing sense of anger and a distinct impression of ill-use. She had only hours before convinced Jerry to not worry over her well-being, and here she was kidnapped like a gothic novel heroine. She’d be lucky if the man ever let her out of his sight again.
A slow warmth crept up her face and set her head to banging once more. There would be worse things than spending every moment with a handsome man that seemed to adore her.
She shook her head to bring her mind back from his lips to her present situation. Besides, if she extricated herself from her present predicament, there was always the chance he would never need to know about it.
Caroline tried to be logical, but none of her governesses had ever prepared her for a situation like this. The novels she read were a bit more useful—the heroines in those were kidnapped with startling regularity—but they were always rescued by the dashing hero who was promptly rewarded with a kiss.
Caroline promised herself that if she should manage to save herself from this predicament, then she would see that Jerry rewarded her with a kiss—even if she had to be the one brazen enough to steal it.
The heat climbed through her again, only this time she realized it wasn’t from the memory of Jerry’s lips on hers. An unladylike drop of sweat gathered at her hairline before running down her face. The room had grown hot. For a moment she feared fire, and the panic threatened to engulf her once again, but she realized that a fire would be accompanied by light. Her room seemed as dark as ever. There was also no hint of smoke. A clanging banging had started up though, and Caroline realized the source of both the noise and the heat most likely came from the ship’s massive boilers and engines. She didn’t have the layout of the ship memorized, an oversight she would never make again, but she suspected this cargo hold sat closer to the ship’s engines than the one on the starboard side of the ship.
Caroline frowned as much as her gag would allow. She couldn’t permit herself to be distracted by minor issues. She needed to focus on getting her hands free.
Each arm had been tied to a side of the chair meaning that her hands could not reach one another. The chair she sat upon was both flimsy and light so she was able to hop and scoot her way over to the nearest crates. She made a great deal of noise between her grunts and the chair’s clunking against the floor, but the noise from the engines covered her efforts, not that there appeared to be anyone around to hear.
Moving her chair to the crates didn’t do Caroline much good. There were no sharp edges for her to use to attempt to whittle away at her ropes. Whoever had bound her had been expert and thorough. There was no wiggling her hand up and out of her constraints. She mentally accused the Russian spy of being much too good at his job. Of course, it was minutely possible that this was someone else’s handiwork, but she couldn’t fathom why anyone else would have stowed her like so much baggage amongst the rest of the cargo. If the repellent Mr. Bickle had been behind this, she wouldn’t have found herself tied to a chair. She refused to allow her mind to continue along that path.
So, clearly, she’d been caught by the Russian agent. What concerned her most was the fact that the spy had suspected her of being involved in his pursuit. Their little group must not have been as circumspect as they had hoped. Fear gripped her heart again as she realized that Olive or Jerry or even Wellburn or Mrs. Turnton might be kidnapped next.
She didn’t panic this time though. She steeled herself to the only logical next step. She would have to break the chair to free herself.
Chapter 38
Jerry took the confirmation that Caroline was missing better than the others expected. At least Olive and Mrs. Turnton looked as if they had expected him to run charging from the room and tearing down the halls shouting in a primal rage. And he did feel that urge, but years of keeping a stiff upper lip had taught him a greater measure of self-control than that.
It was not that he feared being unseemly so much as he recognized the futility of such an exercise. Instead, he merely let the twitch that had developed under his left eye be the only thing that gave his fear and emotion away. He would have liked to have hidden even that, but uncontrolled muscle spasms weren’t the sort of thing a gentleman could will away.
Besides, if Caroline had gone missing, there was only one logical culprit on this boat.
“Bickle,” he hissed.
Mrs. Turnton’s brow ra
ised in surprise, and even Olive looked a bit doubtful.
“He isn’t the most refined man,” Mrs. Turnton said, “but he doesn’t strike me as the sort to kidnap a lady on a boat in the middle of the ocean. What would be the point?”
“He threatened Olive.” Jerry waved at the little maid who had cowered a bit at the memory.
Mrs. Turnton wrinkled her nose in disgust. “He made Olive uncomfortable when he looked at her. He said some not quite proper things. It’s disgraceful and horrid and,” she sighed before finishing, “no different than half the entitled men in this realm who seem to think maids are hired for more than keeping a house tidy.” She shook her head and patted Olive’s hand to show her sympathy. “It shows a lack of moral fiber, I grant you, but it doesn’t show a propensity for kidnapping. And where would he hope to keep Caroline for the rest of the journey? He would have to know we would notice her absence.”
“He might not have thought that far.” Jerry glowered at her, daring her to contradict him. She didn’t. She nodded her head in acquiescence. “I would hear what the man himself has to say.”
Without waiting for the women’s permission, he stormed out, headed for the reprehensible Bickle’s room. He and Wellburn had established its location that very first day in case the man continued to give the girls any trouble.
He knocked on the man’s door, but based on the way Olive flinched, it was possible that his polite knocks better resembled a brawler’s pounding.
“What the devil,” Bickle began, flinging open his door only to stop dead when confronted by Jerry’s towering anger.
To his surprise, Jerry discovered that being confronted with Bickle’s beady eyes in his squat face caused his impeccable breeding and drilled in manners to evaporate as if they had never been. Jerry drove Bickle back into the room until the man all but cowered against the far wall. Jerry hadn’t laid a finger on the industrialist; he hadn’t even come within six inches of the man, but his uncontained fury lashed out where his fists hadn’t. “Where is she?”
The shuddering Bickle’s eyes darted about the room, looking for an escape. Finding none, he sent beseeching looks to the women behind Jerry. “They won’t help you,” Jerry told him in a quiet, cold voice several magnitudes more threatening than a shout would have been. “And if you have harmed a hair or even so much as torn a flounce of lace on her dress, even the Lord won’t be able to save you from me.”
Behind him the women gasped at his blasphemy, and Mrs. Turnton made a tutting sound that Jerry ignored. The cowardly Bickle sank further into himself in an effort to create a greater distance from the enraged peer before him. “I, I don’t know.” The Bickle stammered and seemed to have trouble forming words. The belligerent man from the docks had been replaced with a quivering mush. For the first time, Jerry realized that he held his hand in a raised fist near his own head. He had never had any intention of pummeling the man, not really, but perhaps he had become more carried away than he realized. He slowly began to lower his arm. One of the women behind him gave a small sigh of relief, but he didn’t turn to see which one. He never took his eyes off Bickle.
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.” With the lowering of Jerry’s arm, Bickle seemed to regain the use of his wits. “What ‘her’? Do you speak of your bride?” The man stood and seemed to be regaining a bit of his usual surety, but then Jerry’s eyes narrowed. The color once again drained from the odious Bickle’s face.
“I have not seen the girl since she exited dinner on your arm,” Bickle all but begged. “Besides, why would I want her? She isn’t my intended.” Bickle’s own eyes narrowed. “Is she?”
Jerry didn’t bother with a response. Instead he crossed his arms over his chest and waited in the silence for the man to continue.
He had judged correctly. The weasely Bickle wasn’t the sort to go long without talking. “Doesn’t matter anyway at this point. The whole point of marrying her was to open up the upper reaches of Society. I doubt the scandal can be avoided at this point, meaning Society is closed to her, and therefore me, if we wed.”
Jerry stared at the man wondering how he could be so naïve yet still have made so much money at business. To the finest houses, the man would always stink of trade and Caroline’s alliance would only have brought her down, not him up. Some doors might have opened but not as many as he thought.
Something about Jerry’s expression must have struck the millionaire as being less threatening. He stood all the way back up and his brow creased with worry. “If your lady truly has gone missing, I promise she’s not here with me.” He pointed around the room. “There’s nowhere I could hide her.” His brow furrowed even more. “But there’s no shortage of places on this ship someone could stash a small girl like her if they meant mischief.” He paused, and then looking as if he regretted what he was about to say, Bickle asked, “Do you need aid?”
Jerry stood himself until he towered over the smaller man, considering his offer. For all his pursuit and trying courtship of Caroline, for all of his unwelcomed glances at Olive, he had never once touched either or offered either girl a true offense. Jerry and Wellburn had interrogated both girls carefully to make sure this had not been the case. The unpleasant Bickle had never touched either girl, a low measure to be sure, but one many men didn’t manage to exceed. The man’s manners were lacking, but he was neither a rake nor a rogue. Jerry narrowed his eyes. The man was despicable, true, but there were only three of them to search an entire ship. Even if they found Wellburn, an extra pair of hands would not be amiss.
“Mr. Bickle, your goal is to elevate your standing in the eyes of Society, correct?”
Bickle nodded.
“Help me find my wife, and I’ll make sure that every door the Danvers name can open will be thrown wide for you.” Jerry held out his hand, and after a moment, Bickle reached out and shook it.
Chapter 39
Caroline studied the chair she sat on. She couldn’t see much in the gloom, but she could tell it was flimsy. Truly, it couldn’t be that hard to break. In the normal way, she could probably hit the thing against a wall and it would crumble into matchsticks. She tried standing in an odd, bent-over crouch. Since the chair was still tied to her, that meant it was mostly resting on her back. It was awkward and hard to move. She pivoted on the balls of her feet and did her best to swing the chair against the crates nearest her. She connected, but the force was too feeble to do more than knock her off her feet, back into the chair’s seat.
The gag in her mouth kept her from shouting the colorful curses she’d overheard a steward use, but Caroline screamed them inside her head. She shut her eyes for a moment in an effort to regain her temper. While calming, she realized that the chair had given an ominous creak when she had landed back in it. Perhaps, she needed to destroy the chair by slamming it down from above.
Caroline rocked forward until she stood again with the chair balanced on her back. Using all her strength, she jumped as high as she could and tilted backwards so that she might impact the chair against the floor as hard as she was able.
The result was that she did not manage to break the chair, but she nearly broke her head against one of the ladder rungs in back. Luckily, she did not hit the same spot her mysterious assailant had struck before, but she did set her head ringing.
The sweat from the continued heat next door rolled down her face and had begun to soak into her dress. Her throat and mouth felt dry, and Caroline wished for nothing more than a cooling lemonade or even a lukewarm sip of water. Alarm began to course through Caroline, different from the blind panic she had experienced before. Up until now, her fear was that the Russian spy would come back, perhaps to torture her for information, possibly to dispose of her for knowing too much. She had considered being abandoned in the hold to be the most preferable outcome.
However, now she realized that abandonment came with its own risks. They still had five days before they reached New York. Once Jerry and Olive and the rest realized she was missing
, they would tear the ship apart for her, it was true. But how long would it take for them to notice she was gone? Would Olive notice before bed? Or would she assume Caroline had stayed out late? Would Jerry even know before morning? And then how long would it take them to find her in the cargo hold? Surely it wouldn’t be the first place they searched.
Caroline made the sobering realization that she had never taken Jerry’s warnings of danger very seriously. Yes, he had mentioned them on the train. Yes, he’d gotten overprotective and annoying the day before yesterday, but even then she hadn’t thought there was anything to his anxiety. She had seen Wellburn and Mrs. Turnton’s unflappable demeanors and had written off his concerns as overreactions. She had understood they sought a murderer, but she had thought it in the abstract. She hadn’t truly believed the spy to be a threat to solid British citizens that stood in his way.
She had been a fool—a bubble-headed, vapid fool as dense as the persona she’d pretended for Mrs. Wickingham. She was unbelievably lucky the spy hadn’t slit her throat when he realized that Mrs. Kimbley had confirmed his identity. That made Caroline pause for a moment from berating herself. Her eyes narrowed, and she stared out at the cargo hold without seeing the shadowed boxes or trunks. How had the man known that Mrs. Kimbley had confirmed that Bryce and Hillard were one and the same? There was no chance he could have overheard them in the Woman’s Parlor, and there was no evidence that anyone knowingly colluded with Bryce. For that matter, there hadn’t been time for anyone to tell him. Caroline had only just learned the information herself.
If she hadn’t been kidnapped because she posed a threat, then why had she been taken? And why now? Caroline thought on all that had happened that night. She had been preoccupied with Jerry while on deck, but there had been the mysterious light, the one that might or might not have been sending a message in code. What if her absence wasn’t about removing an obstacle? What if she was a distraction?
