Mary Nichols – The Captain's Kidnapped Beauty (страница 11)

The chair arrived very quickly so Martin must have found one close at hand. She climbed in and directed the chairmen to take her to Piccadilly. It had been a busy day and what with her father being intent on his journey, she had been left very much to her own devices and that meant walking round the various workshops making sure the men were working as they should, meeting customers who had come to collect their vehicles and keeping her ledgers up to date. She was very tired, but it was a satisfied kind of tiredness and she was looking forward to having a couple of the maids fill a bath in her room so that she could soak the tiredness from her. That it was considered eccentric to bath so frequently did not deter her. Having no company, she might ask Barbara, her maid, to join her for supper afterwards.

It was several minutes before she realised she was not being taken to Piccadilly. The chairmen had turned down a dark alley and were trotting at a pace that was bone-shaking. She put her head outside and commanded them to stop. They ignored her; if anything, their pace increased. She shouted at them again, but it soon became evident that they had no intention of obeying her. Now she was very frightened indeed. Where were they taking her? And why? Captain Carstairs’s warning came to her mind. She was being kidnapped!

After several more minutes, they stopped outside a dilapidated tenement and let down the chair. She hurried to open the door to escape, but they had anticipated that and grabbed her arms and dragged her, protesting loudly, into the building, along a corridor which was dark as pitch and into a candle-lit room, where a woman rose from a chair to face them. ‘You got her, then?’

‘We did, Molly, we did. ‘Twas as easy as winking, though she made a deal of noise.’ He was a big man with a weatherbeaten face, a moulting bag wig and bad teeth. He was also the man who had grabbed her bridle in Hyde Park. Captain Carstairs had been right in saying they might try again. Oh, how she wished she had listened to him. But he had said nothing about not hiring a chair and how was she to know the kidnappers would use that ruse?

‘And I shall continue to do so until you take me home,’ Charlotte snapped at him.

His answer was to push her into a chair. His companion, smaller but no less unprepossessing, produced a rope and they proceeded to tie her down. She struggled ineffectually, and when his hand strayed too close to her mouth bit it as hard as she could. He snatched it away and swore. ‘And for that, you will pay extra,’ he yelled and stuffed a dirty piece of rag into her mouth.

She almost choked and had to force herself to breathe evenly through her nose, but assumed from his words that she had been kidnapped for a ransom. Though the thought of spending a second longer in the company of these three was anathema, it gave her a little hope. Her father, hearing of their demand, would undoubtedly pay to have her safely restored to him. And then she remembered her father was from home. Would Barbara have the good sense to alert someone that she was missing? Or would she be kept here until her kidnappers were able to contact her father? Would he be able to trace her movements through the chair she had taken? Would he think of that? Oh, if only someone would come to her rescue!

‘Mama, I am summoned back to town,’ Alex said, studying a letter the mail had brought to the Five Bells. It had been marked urgent and the landlord had sent the potboy up to the Manor with it. ‘I am needed to solve another kidnapping. It appears Miss Gilpin has disappeared, most likely abducted.’

‘Oh, how dreadful for her,’ she said. ‘But can no one else be asked to look for her?’

They had left the Five Bells to move into a part of the Manor that had been made habitable and were in the morning room, drinking the tea Davy had made for them. The chimneys had been swept and the house cleaned by an army of women he had hired from the village, supervised by the butler and housekeeper, Mr and Mrs Wharton, who were now back in residence. There was still a great deal to be done. The whole house needed painting, ill-fitting doors needed replacing, rattling windows must be refitted and re-glazed and new carpets, curtains, furniture and kitchen utensils purchased. Apart from one or two good quality items of furniture and some pictures and ornaments, the rest would have to go. When all was done, he must decide how many servants he needed, but that could wait until the work was finished and Mrs Wharton would see to the hiring of them.

‘Lord Leinster has been making preliminary enquiries,’ he answered his mother. ‘but I have done this kind of thing before and James thinks I am the best person to undertake the task’

‘Do they know who has her?’

‘No, that is for me to discover. Mama, do you wish me to leave you here, or shall you go home? I can take you if you do, but you must be ready to leave in an hour.’

‘I shall be ready. I do not want to stay here without you. This is your home, not mine, and I miss my little cat, and the church. But can you leave the refurbishment here unattended?’

‘It is not urgent. Mr Boniface and Mr and Mrs Wharton will carry the work forward in my absence. I will return as soon as I have Miss Gilpin safely back with her father.’

Mrs Carstairs hurried to tell her maid to pack as quickly as possible and stayed to help her, while Alex sent a man ahead on horseback to bespeak post horses. He had come to Foxlees at a leisurely pace, using the same horses throughout, but he was in too much haste to return the same way. The greys would be sent back to the Manor from their first stop and the new groom would look after them until he returned. After that he went round the house with Mr Wharton, pointing out things that needed to be done in his absence. Within the hour they were on their way.

Alex sat back in the coach, glad that he had purchased a well-built vehicle because Davy was driving at a spanking pace and they were being thrown from side to side over the bumpy roads.

‘Mama, is the jolting too much for you?’ he asked. ‘Shall I have Davy slow down?’

‘No, I know you are in a hurry. Do not mind me.’

‘Betty?’ he queried, addressing the maid.

Betty was looking very white, but she managed a wan smile. ‘I wish only for the journey to be over, my lord, so by all means make haste.’

Alex sank back into his seat, contemplating the task ahead of him. The letter had said nothing about how Miss Gilpin had been kidnapped, nor if there had been a ransom letter. It was usually the ransom letter that furnished the first clue about where a kidnapped victim was being held. Without one the case would be doubly difficult.

He found himself wondering how Miss Gilpin had come to be taken. Had she gone out alone after his warning about the dangers? How he wished he had defied her wishes and told Henry Gilpin what had happened in Hyde Park. He felt a surge of guilt that he had not done so, for if he had, her father would have made sure she was always escorted and she might not now be in the hands of abductors.

He found himself imagining all manner of horrors: Miss Gilpin manhandled, struck perhaps, even molested. He shuddered at the thought of that beautiful, proud, self-assured woman being subjected to that. His heart went out to her and he felt the anger bubble inside him, not only anger for her abductors, but anger at Henry Gilpin. The man had more or less abandoned her at Lady Milgrove’s concert, which both he and Jonathan had thought was strange. She would have come to no harm there, but was it an example of the off-hand way he had of dealing with his daughter? Did he think she could be treated like a son? Alex smiled inwardly at that; Miss Gilpin herself would undoubtedly accept that as her due, even been glad of it. He would wager she was not feeling glad now. She would be frightened, unless, of course she had manufactured the abduction herself, perhaps to meet a lover who did not meet her father’s strict provisos.

Could they have taken themselves off to Gretna Green, where the law requiring three weeks’ notice of a marriage at the churches of both bride and groom did not apply? It would not be the first time he had chased after a kidnap victim to discover she had not been kidnapped, but had run away. Somehow he did not think that would apply to Miss Gilpin. He thought she would always face up to her problems. What did apply? His brain went round and round all the possibilities and he wished the coach could take to the air and fly.

‘You are very worried about her, are you not?’ his mother interrupted his thoughts.

‘Yes. I cannot help feeling guilty. I foresaw what might happen and I did nothing to prevent it.’

‘How could you have prevented it? You were not even there.’

Alex explained what had happened in Hyde Park. ‘I felt sure they would try again and I begged Miss Gilpin not to go out alone any more.’

‘If she did not heed your advice, that is surely not your fault. She is a veritable hoyden by the sound of it.’