by Rebecca King
“Last chance,” he warned before lowering his head and capturing her lips in a persuasive kiss that stole all her thoughts and doubts.
Dean gave her time to change her mind, until the persistent needs of his mind and body demanded satisfaction. He opened his eyes to look at her but saw nothing more than wanton curiosity staring steadily, boldly, back at him. He knew then that it was already too late to deny either of them. With a muffled curse, Dean lowered his head and removed the last of their doubts.
“Where in the Devil’s name could he have gone?” Roger growled when the men had all mustered at the Star Elite’s base, Chandler Cottage, at seven the next morning - except for Dean.
Hamish yawned and slumped into a chair before the fire. Tipping his hat low, he covered most of his face, crossed his arms, and tried to catch a few winks before they set out again.
“Hamish.”
“I didn’t see him. When I left, the tavern owner was just rising and said he had no idea whether the man was still in the tavern. I went to his room, number three. Dean wasn’t there, but his horse was. He must be in the village somewhere. Maybe he found a lead.” It was evident from the bored disinterest in his voice that Hamish didn’t really care where Dean was.
“Did you look around for him?” Joshua demanded.
“He is a big boy. He can take care of himself don’t you think?” Because he sensed disapproval from his colleagues, Hamish sighed and lowered the hat. “I looked around the stable yard, up and down the main street, and searched the lower floors for him, but the last time I saw him he was still in the busy tap room. He was, however, chatting quite amiably to a stunning young woman. I don’t know who she was, or where she came from, or if she worked at the tavern or was just passing through. He is a big boy. She didn’t look dangerous. It isn’t my fault if he has had a little too much fun. Can’t we just carry on with this investigation without him and wait until he catches us up?”
“He is the only one who knows where Morton’s hide-outs are. He was the only one who spoke to our contact in Oakley Bridge, don’t forget. We need him,” Roger snapped.
“Was this woman someone from the tavern?” Luke demanded.
“I have just told you that I don’t know. I just know that he wasn’t up and about this morning.”
“But his horse was still at the tavern,” Daniel pressed.
“Yes, his horse was there and probably still is. I didn’t bring it with me because I have no idea if Dean went back to this woman’s house, or to her room. He would be livid with me if I rode off with his horse,” Hamish warned.
“Well, that settles it, we are going to have to go and fetch him then and wake up the whole damned tavern until we find him,” Roger growled, snatching his cloak off a peg beside the door.
The men all surged to their feet. As he passed, Ronan nudged Hamish’s broad shoulder and nodded toward the door the men were filing through. With a muttered curse, Hamish forced himself to follow them.
“Damn it,” he growled when he stepped out of the house and slammed bodily into the last woman he wanted to see. Glaring down at her, he side-stepped out of the way. “Sorry.”
“Too much ale, is it?” Letitia smiled.
“Too many women,” Joshua growled and watched Letitia’s smile dim. He knew he was being cruel because the woman had a huge crush on Hamish, but each time Hamish saw her he ended up in a surly mood and he was grumpy enough already.
“Morning,” Hamish muttered before slamming his hat onto his head. He stopped beside his horse long enough to tighten the cinch before climbing awkwardly into the saddle. It was instinctive to look for her as he turned his horse around to follow the others, but he didn’t speak to her again. There really was nothing to say. He had made his decision that Letitia was the very last woman he could get involved with and it had to remain that way.
“It is nothing to do with her being Roger’s sister-in law,” Hamish growled when Daniel rode up beside him.
“You are going to have to talk to her about it at some point. The woman has been staring at you with doe eyes for years,” Joshua warned.
“It isn’t going to happen,” Hamish warned. “Shouldn’t we concern ourselves with finding Dean and getting on with this investigation?” He hoped that a change in topic would stop his colleagues from getting any more involved in his private life.
“You didn’t seem to be all that bothered about him when you left the village,” Ronan warned.
“There is nothing wrong with him,” Hamish snapped.
“He was told to be here by seven this morning,” Roger growled. “In all the years I have known him he has never been late for one of our meetings.”
“That was before he met her,” Hamish mused with a sly grin.
“Oh?” Daniel’s brows shot up.
“God, she is stunning,” Hamish warned them all. “She has the most wonderful smile.” Hamish went on to describe the young woman’s many attributes but knew that he hadn’t done her justice. That was going to happen when his colleagues set eyes on the woman Hamish suspected had just made Dean forget that he was a member of the Star Elite – for the time being at least. He couldn’t be annoyed with the man for it, mostly because he suspected that the young woman in question was going to need the Star Elite’s help before the day was over.
When they arrived at the tavern an hour or so later, they found the place in chaos. Doors were being slammed by disgruntled patrons who had been roused out of their beds by a persistent inn keeper.
“What’s wrong?” Roger asked of one of the sleepy looking patrons in the main tap room.
“A woman has gone missing.”
Roger’s worried gaze slid to his men. He knew they were all thinking the same thing; her disappearance was the reason why Dean hadn’t appeared for the meeting.
Hamish stepped forward and stopped the frazzled looking inn keeper when he descended the stairs, on his way to deal with the angry protests coming from the private parlour. There were too many voices coming from the room to be able to identify what was being said but it was evident that the people inside were angry rather than upset.
“It’s that young woman,” the inn keeper told Hamish. “She vanished sometime in the night.” He threw an annoyed look at the back room as if going in there was the very last thing he wanted to do. He heaved a sigh when another shriek for someone called ‘Francis’ echoed around the entire tavern.
“If that young woman belongs to that horrible mob of women, I don’t blame the damned chit for running away. If you know what is good for you, let her go. She will be far better off. We all will,” one dapperly dressed gentleman grumbled to the inn keeper before he ascended the stairs to return to his room.
A chorus of agreements rippled around the customers as the group dispersed until the main entrance hall was occupied by just the inn keeper and the Star Elite.
“Have you seen my drinking companion from last night?” Hamish asked the man.
There was a knowing look in the inn keeper’s eyes that made Roger shift uncomfortably and turn to study the empty tap room a little more closely. “Which room is his?”
“Number four, but I have tried knocking on the door and there is no answer. I don’t know if he is in there. He was drunk last night and stayed up for a good hour after you had gone to bed to drink some more,” the inn keeper reported to Hamish. “I have no idea what time he went to bed or if he left, but he was in a worse state than you.”
“I’ll go and see if I can get him up. He might have seen this young woman leave,” Joshua growled before stomping up the stairs.
“Who is that?” Roger demanded with a nod toward the back room, and the screeching that was still coming from within.
“It’s the missing woman’s relations,” the inn keeper sighed.
They all listened to the din for a few moments. Strangely, the noise wasn’t the wailing and weeping one would expect to hear from a devastated family. One robust voice rang out louder than all the rest but w
as objecting to the selfishness of someone called Pheony.
“Is that the missing woman’s name?” Daniel asked with a scowl.
“I can’t blame her for going. The damned group have been a pain in the proverbial since the moment they arrived,” the inn keeper warned. He hesitated, as if there was something he wanted to say.
“You had better come in here and tell us what you know,” Roger warned, stepping into the now empty tap room. He nodded to the private parlour. “Ignore her for a few moments.” He guided the inn keeper into the room and urged him to take a seat beside the entrance while his men took up guard in the doorway to block anybody else from entering the room. “Now, tell me what you know. I am Roger Monteys from the Leicestershire branch of the Star Elite. Hamish and the drunkard upstairs in room four are my men. I want you to tell me what you know about the young woman who has gone missing.”
“She planned to run away.” The inn keeper shifted uncomfortably in his seat. “She asked for my help, but I refused to give it. She told me that she couldn’t stay with them and asked me how to get help from someone.”
“Was she being hurt by them?” Joshua asked.
“Is that her mother back there?” Ronan interrupted when the noise from the back room became momentarily louder when someone opened the door.
“No, the loud woman you can hear is her guardian, I think. I cannot be sure. One doesn’t really get to talk to a woman like that. She just talks - shouts - at you,” the inn keeper replied. “I just know that the missing woman arrived with them yesterday but kept herself apart from them as much as she could. There was some sort of altercation in the hallway between the missing woman and one of the younger ones, but I have no idea what was said. I was busy in here at the time.”
“Did she give you any idea of what she had planned? How she was going to run away? When?”
“She just said that she needed to get out of here before they left in the morning.” The inn keeper daren’t tell the Star Elite everything just in case something had happened to her. His involvement looked suspicious even to him. He shifted and glanced around the empty room. “I think you had better go and have a word with that coachman of theirs. He was in the stable yard until late and talking to the chit. Maybe he can tell you something.”
Roger nodded his thanks. “I am just going to have a word with that woman in the parlour.”
“Are you sure?” the inn keeper looked sceptical.
“Well, what are you doing there?” An indomitable, matronly lady demanded suddenly. She was standing beside Daniel, and positively quivering with outrage. “How dare you just sit there when you have gone and lost her? I should have known someone who runs this kind of establishment would be lax.”
“He is talking to me until we were rudely interrupted,” Roger replied smoothly, raking the woman with a scornful look. “And you are?”
Augusta Snodgrass was a rather rotund lady with an ample bust and wide hips which when confined in a voluminous black dress, the top of which reached up to her neck, made her look inflated and severe. Further, the woman’s narrow eyes, pinched lips, and bulldog expression made her look spiteful. Roger wondered if her physical quivering was because she was struggling to contain the urge to slap someone. He didn’t doubt that she was the kind of woman who would do something like that if she felt that she had been crossed. It was evident in her clenched fists and boxer’s stance.
“And who, pray tell, are you? Are you the magistrate?” The woman slid a dismissive look over him.
“I, madam, am with the Star Elite.” The young women standing behind the matron began to titter and simper and offered the men coquettish smiles. Little did they know that most of the men in the group were now happily married. But in the presence of a group of such powerful men, the women did their best to attract the latest arrivals’ eyes.
“I understand that you have lost your ward,” Daniel muttered.
Not that I can blame the young woman from running away from someone like you, Roger thought, wondering if he should give her some money to make sure that she managed to get as far away as possible.
“Yes, the stupid girl obviously got lost. She is always wandering around when she should be with us. She is far too headstrong. I don’t know what I thought I was doing when I agreed to take her on, I really don’t,” the old woman moaned.
“You are her guardian then, not her mother.”
“No, thank God. My beautiful girls would never behave like that wayward young heathen,” the older woman spat.
“I am sorry, you didn’t give me your name,” Roger pressed.
“Mrs Augusta Snodgrass.” The woman tipped her chin up as if it were something that she should be proud of. She peered at Roger, clearly expecting him to say something but when he didn’t, she looked at each of the men as if sizing them up as potential suitors for her daughters. “Let me introduce you to my daughters.”
The woman pointed to a younger woman standing right beside her, a smaller copy of herself. Although the younger version of herself was dressed in brighter clothing, clearly designed to put her ample assets on display, the look in her eyes was just as mean and spiteful as her mother’s. Carlotta had an arrogant air about her, and a sly smile that Roger didn’t trust. He squinted suspiciously at her and watched her grin widen when she realised that he was looking at her. Rolling his eyes, he threw her a dark, unimpressed look of warning before glaring at her younger sister, Sophie. Sophie was the one who looked least like her mother. However, the differences of her features weren’t any more appealing than those of the matron, Augusta Snodgrass, and her other two daughters. In fact, the rather uneven, odd looking young miss seemed strange in looks as well as character. She was staring off into the distance as if many miles away, and flinched as if scared when Augusta boomed: “Well? What are you going to do about finding my damned ward? I mean, I would just go home but my carriage is being fixed. As soon as it has been repaired, we must be on our way. We cannot just sit around here all the time waiting for that stupid girl. She must be found!”
“Nobody expects you to wait around here,” Hamish drawled, more than a little annoyed at how readily the woman criticised the missing woman.
“What is the name of the missing woman?” Roger pressed.
“Pheony. Miss Pheony Storley. No relation.”
“How did you become her guardian if you are not related to her?” Roger asked.
The older woman looked outraged at being questioned. “What does that have to do with anything? You must find her. Get on with it.”
“Excuse me?” Roger felt his temper begin to burn at the woman’s arrogance.
“She could be miles away.”
“So why haven’t you gone out there to look for her yourself?” Hamish demanded. “Or your daughters for that matter?”
“I can’t have them going about the streets by themselves,” Augusta protested.
“We never suggested that they go alone but there are three of them. They would be perfectly safe as long as they stick together,” Ronan argued, glaring maliciously at the young woman called Sophie who kept smiling at him as if she wanted him to engage her in conversation.
“I am not having my daughters go out and trawl the streets for her. That is what you are here for,” Augusta snapped, glaring malevolently at Roger. “Now, are you going to stand around here all day asking us impertinent questions, or are you going to get out there and find her so we can resume our journey?”
“Is your carriage repaired?” Daniel hoped so.
“How should I know?” Augusta snapped.
“So how do you know if you can resume your journey yet?” Ronan lifted his brows and glared at the young woman called Francis who kept sidling toward him. The squint he levelled on her was enough to make her get the message and sidle back to her mother’s side, but she didn’t stop gazing at him like a love-struck adolescent.
“What was Miss Storley wearing?” Roger asked.
Augusta blinked at him. “What d
oes that have to do with anything?”
“It helps us to know what she was wearing so we know what to look for,” Peregrine replied with a heavy, put-upon sigh.
Augusta looked askance at him before lifting her brows at her daughters. They all shook their heads and shrugged.
“You must remember what she was wearing the last time you saw her,” Roger prompted.
Francis coloured and shrugged again when her mother stared pointedly at her. Sophie shook her head frantically as if to ward off evil. Carlotta squinted into the tap room when she felt her mother glare accusingly at her.
“I can’t remember,” she protested, sounding panicked. “I-It was bl-blue, I think. Her dress. Yes, that was it. Blue with a yellow shawl.”
Roger’s brows lifted. He doubted that anybody would wear a yellow shawl with a blue dress. “Light blue or dark.”
“Dark.”
“Light,” Francis and Sophie replied in unison, then looked at each other blankly.
“I thought neither of you could remember, or saw her?” Roger pressed.
“We aren’t responsible for her disappearance,” Augusta retorted.
“Now, why would you feel the need to say that?” Hamish challenged. “We never suggested you might be.”
Augusta slid a look around the hallway. Her jowls quivered when she opened her mouth before closing it with a snap. “I demand you go and find her,” she growled.
“Oh, we will, madam, but first I want to know from you if there is anything that we should know about your domestic arrangements that might make her want to run away from your care,” Roger warned, his tone cold.
“I have just told you,” Augusta blustered. “The silly girl was always wandering off.”
Roger sucked in a deep, fortifying breath and struggled to restrain the urge to run a frustrated hand through his hair. “I suggest you and your daughters retreat to the private parlour and stay there. One of the tavern maids will pack your belongings for you.”
“I would much rather go to my room, thank you very much,” Augusta sniffed. She turned to try to usher her daughters up the stairs only for Hamish to step sideways and block her path.
