Chapter 18

CHAPTER 18

Georgina ripped open the entrance door and darted into the night. She was halfway down the stone stairs when the carriage lantern lights illuminated the figure.

Disappointment constricted her.

Mr. Oswald.

Alone.

The heaviness sank her down to the stone steps, and she curled her fingers around the rough edges. The stars. An absent thought. She craned her neck back and stared at them, blinking in the velvet blackness, because if she did not look at something, she'd die.

"A gentleman could grow fond of coming home to such a sight." Mr. Oswald's shadow moved next to her, though he did not sit.

She smelled vanilla and sherry so strong it roiled her stomach. "You did not find him."

"A rather embarrassing defeat, I admit. I searched London over."

"Tomorrow we must look again."

"Impossible, I fear. I have a meeting with fellow Whigs tomorrow, where we'll do more drinking port and gambling than discussing constitutional monarchism, I imagine."

She stood. "Then I shall go alone."

"I think you shall find your search as futile as mine."

"He has to be somewhere. He cannot have…he cannot have simply disappeared."

"You are a trusting creature, Miss Whitmore. I hope your confidence is not misplaced."

What did he insinuate?

"I had a cuckoo bird once." He moved closer. Moonlight paled his features, making his skin a glowing white. "I used to lay seeds on my balcony railing and watch her feed every morning."

She tried to turn, but his hand touched her shoulder, and he spoke faster.

"I was a perceptive child. I had every intention of discovering the cuckoo's nest so that I might observe the process of her motherhood and hatching, perhaps even claim one for my pet."

"Mr. Oswald, it is late."

"I was most startled by what I discovered. The cuckoo mother did not build the proverbial home for her own. She laid her eggs in a goldfinch nest and flew away. I never saw her again."

"What are you saying?"

"One who disappeared once might do so again."

"Simon would not forsake his children."

"Only his mother, his father, and his own intended, I suppose?"

Georgina ducked under his arm, out of his touch, and started down the steps.

He reached the bottom quicker than she did. "Mr. Fancourt is hardly the man you think him, Miss Whitmore."

"It is late. Please move."

His hands found her arms, his face dipping closer. Too close. The reality that she was alone with him—without servants or guests inside the house—raised her skin in bumps of discomfort.

"Man has peculiar ways of bearing reality, Miss Whitmore. Some disappear from their responsibilities. Others play them away with strong drink and dancing and"—his gaze flicked to her lips—"and passions, of sorts."

"I wish to leave now. You will send for me, of course, if Simon returns during the night?"

"I think you must come to terms with the fact that he, like the cuckoo, has left his young and flown."

"You are wrong about Simon." Despite the words, old fears reared within her. " Very wrong."

"We shall know, I wager, soon enough. But do not despair, my dear." He released his grip and took a step back, his wonted grin already flashing in the moonlight. "Like the goldfinch, I am more than willing to take charge of what the cuckoo left behind."

Another fist snapped Simon's head back. The chair overturned. His face scraped gritty stone, and he tasted dirt before the chair was yanked upright again.

The room spun.

Blackness everywhere, save for the lantern swinging and creaking from an overhead beam. Crates were stacked along grimy brick walls. Bottle stands, chimney ornaments, embroidered pole screens. The overwhelming aroma of too many perfumes, mingled with the metallic scent of his own blood.

The fist struck again.

Then again.

With the third strike, Simon's chair thudded the wall behind him, wood splintering beneath him, pain screaming along his face. He strained against the ropes, vision blurred. "My children."

"The letter."

"My children first—"

"Your children nothing." The figure scurried into a dark corner of the room. When he returned to the sphere of lantern light, he brandished a stout wooden board.

Shadows played on his face. He was thin, tall, middle-aged, with gleaming black hair fluffing over his ears. He wore rolled-up shirtsleeves and black trousers, with an expression that seemed almost…similar to someone else.

"We can go on much longer," the man panted.

"Go ahead."

A swing, a sickening thud, pain exploding at Simon's temple. Blood gushed down the left side of his face, and though he tried to hold up his head, his chin slumped to his chest.

The man raised for another—

"Enough."

From the gray-splintered stairs across the room, a figure watched from the shadows. One Simon had not noticed before. The voice rang with familiarity, one he knew well, too well, but numbness was already seeping across his brain.

"He will talk tomorrow" was all Simon heard before the world went void.

"Hmm, that is odd." Mamma scooped a dollop of orange marmalade onto her toast. "Is that not odd, Byron?"

"Yes. Quite." From his seat across the breakfast table, Mr. Lutwidge kept his gaze on his plate. Anywhere but at Georgina.

Mamma seemed oblivious to the strain. "Well, perhaps Mr. Fancourt is off to Astley's Amphitheatre. While ladies flit away to balls and millinery shops for pleasure, men are always skipping to ridiculous mills or circuses. Yes, I imagine the amphitheatre is just where he is gone."

The steaming eggs and brown toast increased the turmoil in Georgina's stomach. She wished Mamma was right. She wished Simon was so absurd as to run off to the circus. Or that he had abandoned everything, as Mr. Oswald believed.

But it could not be true.

He would not leave.

Not like this.

"One who disappeared once might do so again." The words nettled her for the hundredth time. Was it possible Simon had returned to Sowerby yesterday? That he had gathered together his children, dismissed the butler, and departed?

But why lock the door?

"My dear, you shall be mere bones if you do not eat more than that." Mamma waggled her spoon. "Men are entirely more fond of corpulent wives, you know."

She would never be a wife, so it hardly mattered. "I am not hungry."

"Tut, tut. Eating is a delightful diversion, whether your appetite calls for it or not."

Scooting from her chair, Georgina heaped her napkin on the table.

"Excuse me, Mamma. Mr. Lutwidge."

"Where are you going?"

"Mr. Oswald and I shall be riding together at Hyde Park, as the weather is so pleasing." Which was not true, of course. Mr. Oswald had not agreed to meet her, and the weather was as dreary outside as the foreboding in her heart.

But Mamma only laughed and called her a dear girl, then went back to rubbing spilled marmalade off her fichu.

Georgina hurried upstairs. She found Nellie in Agnes' old chamber, dusting furniture long untouched, patting the wrinkles away from a bed not slept in for too long.

She tried not to acknowledge how much that niggled at her. If ever she needed Agnes, it was now.

"Hurry and have the carriage prepared, Nellie."

The maid straightened. "Going out alone, Miss Whitmore?"

"I shall have accompaniment soon." She hoped. First, she would arrive at Sowerby House and inquire after Simon. She would plead for Mr. Oswald's assistance.

Then she would begin her own search, with or without him.

Because one way or another, she would find Simon.

She could not lose him the same way twice.

John and Mercy would not understand.

The helplessness of that thought pricked like the thousand needlelike jabs at his face. Everything hurt. He'd lost consciousness sometime in the night—whether from the head injury or exhaustion, he was not certain—but he'd awakened to shocking cold water splashing his face.

The man appeared different in daylight.

Early, pinkish light fell through the cracks of high-boarded windows, gleaming off the brass bucket he slung to the ground. The ping, ping, ping rattled Simon's brain.

"Sit straight." In his modest green tailcoat, brown breeches, and worn-but-clean buckled shoes, he seemed more average in appearance than menacing. The sort of man who should be nodding a friendly smile from a church box pew, not stealing away children.

"I said sit straight."

"What did you do with them?" Simon blinked hard against the frigid water dripping from his face. "I want to know where they are."

"Where you'll never see them again, if you don't do as I say."

He wiggled straighter. "Who are you?"

"Someone you should have left alone."

"The prisoners—"

"That was over anyway. We were finished with the last ship. Seems you sacrificed everything for nothing." The stranger massaged his bruised knuckles. "Now. The letter."

"Not until my children are—"

"I get the letter, you get them back."

Doubt swarmed Simon, drying his mouth. The letter was less revealing than the man seemed to think. Still, it was something. With the right barrister on the case, perhaps the initial, combined with Father's untimely death, would be enough to pinpoint those responsible.

The voice.

Last night raced through Simon's mind with lightning speed. The shadow on the stairs. Why could he not remember? Sir Walter. The chapel. The crooked spectacles. The W.

Yes, Sir Walter.

Of course it was him.

Because when Simon had heard the voice last night, in some muddled and ludicrous way, he had been soothed. As if the voice was wont to bringing him comfort. Something he trusted in. Someone he loved.

"If I surrender the letter, my children will be set free?"

"You'll be placed on a ship back to America. All three of you." The man's jaw tightened, as if the idea was not his own. "But if you ever come back, I'll kill you myself. Now where is it?"

Sowerby House was deserted.

Georgina knocked for the sixth time, impatience echoing louder than the brass door knocker. She peered in a window. Had Mr. Oswald not already employed servants? Had he even stayed here last night?

A disheartened sense of being overwhelmed sagged her shoulders.

As little as she cared to admit it, she had hoped Mr. Oswald had not yet left for his meeting. That he would assist her. That he would somehow take the measures necessary, use his resources, and search in all the ways she could not.

I do not know. She started back down the stairs, splotches of rain discoloring her blue-muslin dress. I do not know where to look.

The docks perhaps.

At least then she would know if he departed back for America.

"Miss Whitmore?"

She whirled, jaw slacking. "Mr. Wilkins."

"I am so sorry." The butler hurried out from the house, the buttons of his coat undone, eyes blazing. "I was removing the last of my personal belongings from my chamber and only just spotted your carriage out the window."

"The children." Georgina raced for him. "Where are the children? Where have you been? I thought you were—"

"Come inside." He tugged her within the house, and only then did she see everything. The vigorous tremor of his hands as he locked the door. The pallor of his face. The sheen of sweat on his forehead. "Miss Whitmore, I…ahem, I fear something most dreadful has happened. You must help me."

"Where are they?"

"The children have been taken. If I were not so weak, if I were not such a wretched coward, I might have stopped it from happening."

"You cannot be blamed. None of this is your fault." Georgina grasped his arm and squeezed. "Where are they? Where is Simon?"

"There is a carriage waiting outside the kitchen entrance. I shall take you." He took her elbow, but she pulled back.

"Should we not first enlist help?"

"There is not time." His eyes pooled. "Not if you wish to save Simon and the children both."

The air outside the open carriage windows smelled of smoke and street dung. Rain pattered in, lending the already dirty and musty carriage interior a choking dampness.

"Perhaps we should close the windows." Georgina spoke for the first time, glancing at the butler's face.

He did not glance back. Instead, he stared out the window, rain wetting his cheeks, watching as they turned down a brick street with towering warehouses and shops. "They do not close. I am very sorry. The carriage is old."

"I did not know you owned one."

"My brother's."

Silence again, save for the creaking carriage wheels on the cobblestones and the distant cry of "Fair lemons and oranges!" from a street hawker. God, keep them safe. Over and over. Please, protect them. Please.

The carriage jerked to a stop.

Then the door banged open.

The man who had been driving the carriage—as tall, gangly, and black-haired as Mr. Wilkins—handed her out. "Inside that door. Hurry."

She bristled at his sharp tone and would have resisted, but the rain was drenching her. She ducked under the shop awning. A shingle, hanging from the yellow-brick side of the building, read W ILKINS P ERFUMERY AND T OY W AREHOUSE .

Confusion swirled in her stomach. "Mr. Wilkins, I thought—"

"I shall explain inside." The butler came up behind her, his hand on the small of her back, and guided her through the door.

The room was spacious, shelves lined with multicolored perfume bottles, while wood-carved counters sported an assortment of small jewelries, glass trinkets, watch fobs, chimneypieces, and other utilitarian items.

"Rupert, you should have assisted the lady with an umbrella." Bustling forward with a child on her hip and a tot behind her skirts, a stout blond woman clicked her tongue. "Forgive my husband. Those two brothers have not the sense to do anything right. What do you care to look for, miss? I have any amount of needlework paraphernalia."

"Forgive us, Phoebe." Mr. Wilkins took Georgina's arm, led her toward a back door. The brother called Rupert had already disappeared. "We have a matter to handle in the—"

"Wait." Georgina steeled her feet. The overpowering perfume scents caused her head to throb, eyes to water. "You said you were taking me to Simon."

"I am."

"Then why are we—"

"We cannot talk here, Miss Whitmore." Mr. Wilkins dug his fingers harder into her flesh, and the urgency in his stricken eyes rang alarms throughout her body. "I need you to trust me. I know this is all dreadfully confusing, but I promise we are not here without purpose."

Too many warnings stampeded her at once. She had a faint thought of ripping free and bursting her way back into the rain, but she allowed him to tug her through the back door anyway.

She feared she would never see Simon again if she did not.

"It was not there."

Simon's hands clenched the arms of the wooden chair. Dread plummeted his heart. "I left it locked in the desk drawer."

"It was already open."

"No one else had the key."

A fist slammed Simon's nose. Cartilage cracked. Blood spewed, warm and coppery and bitter on his already-busted lips.

"You lie." Another clout. The man kicked over Simon's chair, then barreled a boot into his stomach. Pain burned through him like a wave of fever.

He grunted even though he tried to pull back the sound. He could not breathe. Could not move. He counted the boot thuds, the rib cracks, because if he did not focus his mind on something, the severity would yank him under. Seven. Eight.

Blackness tugged at him anyway.

Nine. Ten.

No.

Eleven.

"Rupert, stop."

Simon would have opened his eyes had he strength. The world spun as his chair was dragged upright again. He focused on breathing, pulling air in and out of his bloody mouth, bracing himself for another blow.

Instead, something soft and easy framed his face. "Simon."

"Here's the chain." Iron clinked against iron. "Lock her to the beam."

Her.

Ruth.

Yet the hands were too soft for Ruth. They were creamy and gentle and cool as they supported his head from falling to his chest.

"Simon, can you hear me?"

He opened his eyes as the hands were yanked away. His head lolled forward. He forced it up. Georgina.

The stranger dragged her to a beam across the room, slung her to the ground, and bound one wrist with a chain that circled the beam.

Then someone stepped before his vision.

Someone who stuttered the terrorized beating of his heart. Mr. Wilkins.

The protector Simon had left to safeguard his children. The butler who had scolded his younger self for sliding down newly polished banisters. The friend he—and Father—had never had reason to doubt.

No. Hurt sliced through him greater than the injuries. No. No.

Mr. Wilkins buttoned his coat, eyes twitching, lips flat and without expression. "Rupert, go and pacify your wife. I think it best you send her and the children to her sister's until this is over."

"What about them?" Rupert jabbed a finger toward Simon.

"They shall be here when we return." Mr. Wilkins blinked hard and fast. "And if Master Fancourt wishes to spare Miss Whitmore from what he has endured himself, I think he will comply. This time with the truth."

She could not look at him.

The wrist shackle was cold, heavy, like the weight of terror pressing into her. Upstairs, footsteps scurried. Sometimes light. Children. Other times heavy and stomping, followed by gruff orders or Mr. Wilkins' even-toned pitch.

Then the last door slammed shut.

Silence.

They were alone—she and Simon—and despite every plea against it, she glanced up at his face. Her chest hitched.

Terrible, swelling bruises discolored his face. Blood matted his hair, crusted and dark. His lips were torn. Skin white. Eyes hazy and blinking and narrowed on her with so much intensity she wanted to weep. What had they done to him?

"I am sorry." She shuddered. "I should have left sooner. I should have realized. I should have gone for help."

He shook his head. The slight movement must have caused agony. His eyes slid shut. "I do not have what they want."

"What do they want?"

"A letter." He attempted to smear the fresh blood on his shoulder sleeve. "I left it locked in a drawer at Sowerby. It is gone."

"Who could have taken it?"

"I do not know."

"Perhaps if you tell them—"

"I tell them a lie, and we won't live through what they do to us." His chest worked faster. His cheeks blazed. He looked at her different, with everything about his face changed, all the hard lines softened.

She saw depth and rawness and anguish and pity and—

No.

She pulled back the word on the edge of her consciousness, because Simon Fancourt did not love her. He pitied her. And in the throes of what they were about to endure, he feared for her life.

But he could not love her.

His eyes only lied as if he did.

"The ropes are loosening." He strained against them, the chair squeaking, hands working behind his back. He pulled and tugged for nearly ten minutes before his head drooped, each breath labored.

"Simon." Apprehension circled her gut. She scooted to her knees, as far from the beam as the chain reached. "Simon, are you well?"

"Yes." But his voice lacked strength, and his head remained slumped.

"What is it?"

"Dizzy."

"I am sorry." Perhaps she had already said as much. She could not remember. "For what they…for how they hurt you."

"I'll live."

But he wouldn't. Neither of them would. They would die down here amid the old crates and dusty toys and morphed scents of mold, orange blossoms, and amber.

Mamma would not understand. She would weep an entire day in her bedchamber, and Mr. Lutwidge would feign care and bring her tea.

But they would not visit the graveyard. They would go on with their parties and their trips and their promenades in the park. Even Agnes would not grieve.

Tears brimmed.

That no one would bemoan Georgina settled like a rock in her stomach, and she wiped her eyes dry before Simon could see.

The drawing floated back like a ghost.

The one of Ruth.

She should not have thought of that now, but every loving stroke returned to her. The fondness in the way he had captured his wife's face. The tenderness he immortalized in that one rustic expression.

To be loved and grieved and remembered by such a man would be worth dying.

"Do not cry, Georgina."

She had not realized tears tracked her cheeks again. The gentleness in his whisper nearly undid her. She turned her thoughts aside. "Did they tell you of John and Mercy? What was done to them?"

"No."

"Mr. Wilkins would not have hurt them." She spoke with confidence, as if she believed it was true. Why could she not wrap her mind about such a deceit? How had they all been deceived so long? How could anyone pretend to be so loyal, so sincere, while their heart was black with betrayal?

Upstairs, a door slammed.

Simon stiffened as she rushed air into her lungs. Every footfall jarred her panic. The need to run, to hide, was so overpowering she flattened her back against the beam and drew her knees to her chest.

"Georgina, look at me."

She met his eyes with so many tears she could not even see him.

"I will do whatever it takes."

The lock rattled, then two sets of boots clomped down the stairs.

Mr. Wilkins hung a lantern from an overhead beam, even though the room was still light enough to see. Rupert shrugged off his wet tailcoat and slung it to the floor.

Then he towered over her, hoisting her to her feet.

"Let her alone." Simon's words shrilled. "I'll give you what you want if you let her go."

"You tried that before," growled Rupert. "Didn't work."

"I told you the truth."

Mr. Wilkins nodded in her direction. Rupert's knuckles plunged into her stomach, pain exploding. She doubled over with a cry, but his knee smashed between her eyes.

Blackness dimmed her vision.

Vomit hurled to her mouth, as her body was slung back against the beam and hands circled her throat. Ringing reverberated in her ears, but then it faded, and she comprehended the noise.

Simon writhing like madness at the ropes.

Roaring so loud the veins protruded from his neck, and fury reddened his face, and his chair teetered on two legs with his last raging lunge.

Both men turned on him, one with a gun.

Georgina screamed.