Dangerous Lover, page 6
With a jolt, Nicholas remembered a conversation of months ago and wished he’d paid more attention.
“You have cellars here,” Tizsa said.
“I do. They are locked from outside, and only the small wine cellar is accessible from inside.
Tizsa crouched and moved something with his hand. An iron ring attached to the ground. He glanced up at Nicholas in silent question.
“I have no idea,” Nicholas answered slowly. Or did he?
It was awkward, with four people surrounded by thick, overgrown bushes and a tall, mossy stone wall, but they all pushed back among the rough branches, and Tizsa pulled the iron ring.
Dirt poured off it as a square door in the ground lifted. The four of them stared down into darkness.
“A sewer?” Mrs. Tizsa asked doubtfully.
“Not this time,” her husband answered, which made little sense to Nicholas. “I can’t smell it. I think it’s another cellar or tunnel of some kind. There’s at least one rung and a shaft.”
“But she can’t have gone down there,” Miss Battle exclaimed. “How could she have hidden the door under those twigs and branches if she did?”
“It’s possible the servants kicked stuff over it by accident when they were searching,” Dragan said. “But on the whole, I think it’s unlikely.”
“She’s afraid of the dark,” Nicholas said in anguish. “She would never have gone down there willingly.” Oh, dear God, please, no…
“And no one heard her shouting,” Miss Battle said quickly. “I can’t imagine her going anywhere without a fuss. And we saw no one in the bushes or climbing the wall, so if she was taken from here, it must have been quick.”
“Very quick,” Tizsa agreed. He straightened and jumped at the wall, hauling himself up until he sat astride it and gazed down the other side.
“Give me a hand up, Alex,” urged the unexpected Mrs. Tizsa.
Without a word, Miss Battle joined her hands as though boosting someone into a saddle. Lady Grizelda stepped onto them, her husband stretched down one hand, and in a moment, she sat on the wall beside him.
“I suggest you investigate down there,” Tizsa said, nodding to the hole in the garden. “We’ll see what we can learn from this side.” With that, he dropped down with a thud, and an instant later, his wife cast herself after him.
On any other day, Nicholas would have thoroughly enjoyed such eccentric behavior. On this day, he was in no condition to enjoy anything. He crouched by the hole, felt with his foot for the first rung.
“I’ll fetch a lantern,” Miss Battle said, ever practical, and forced her way out of the bushes.
By the time she returned with a lit lantern, he had climbed down several rungs and called his daughter’s name several times into the darkness. Miss Battle knelt and handed the lantern down to him. Wordlessly he took it, shining it down the shaft. In fact, he was only one rung from the floor. He shone the lantern around.
He stood at the edge of what seemed a storage cellar, stretching back toward the house and narrowing. Crates and boxes of various sizes were piled as far as the light would stretch.
“Are these your things?” an amazed voice asked beside him. The intrepid Miss Battle, clearly, had followed him down, despite her impeding skirts.
“No. I didn’t know this existed, though perhaps I should. I suppose she could have fallen down here.” He shone the light on the ground and strode forward, his heart in his mouth. The chamber narrowed into a passage that must have led under the garden. And there was the wall, the blockage he normally looked at from the other side. “My father must have blocked this off,” he murmured. “For security. But he never told me, and it doesn’t show on any of the house plans.”
“Do you suppose it was used by smugglers? Bringing things in via the Thames and avoiding duty?”
“Yes. It seems it still is.” He handed her the lantern, then extracted a penknife from his pocket to pry off the nearest lid. “Brandy.”
“At least Evelina did not fall down here or get trapped,” Miss Battle said.
Another evil possibility struck him. “But she could have been brought here.” He couldn’t breathe, yet somehow, he fell on the next box, prying off its lid, too. “And hidden to…” The words died in his throat, but she clearly understood, for without a sound, she took something from her pocket and began levering open another box.
A governess who carried a penknife in her pocket. He must have said it aloud, for she murmured prosaically, “I spend a great deal of time sharpening pens and pencils.”
And these were the only words between them, as they worked, urgently, grimly, heaving and ripping open every crate, every time terrified of finding a small, lifeless body, or at least a gagged and terrified little girl in the darkness. They did not stop until the last crate was opened and revealed to hold nothing more than spices.
Abruptly, he sat down on the filthy floor and buried his head in his aching, blistered hands. He didn’t even know if he was glad or sorry. Or if it was all just soul-gutting guilt. If only she is unhurt, if only she is alive…
A great, heaving sob racked his body, and suddenly, soft arms were around him, hugging him, a gentle voice assured him desperately that it would be fine, that Evelina would be fine, and they would find her soon. He felt her cheek, damp with her own tears, pressed to his. And this was the woman he had blamed, in his anger with himself, in his pointless petulance. Yet his was the blame. His.
Abruptly, he clutched her to him, the only rock in his crumbling life. There could not be comfort, but at least there was steadiness.
“I’m sorry for what I said,” he ground out. “I didn’t mean it.”
“It doesn’t matter,” she assured him.
Was she actually stroking his hair? It was a distracting thought, enabling him to pull himself together. He could wallow in guilt and stupidity later when Evelina was found. With a deep breath, he drew back from the governess’s arms, which fell immediately to her side.
“I wonder what Griz has discovered?” she said, jumping to her feet and swinging up the lantern.
Chapter Six
Griz and Dragan had discovered tracks and footprints on the other side of the garden wall. The lane itself seemed to have no purpose, except as a footpath or a lane for a pony and small cart. Mostly, it seemed merely to separate the Swan house and garden from the tenement building next to it.
Griz gazed up at a windowless gable end. The narrow lane led from the front of the buildings down to the wider alley where the Swans kept their carriage house and stable. A few other storage places for goods and animals lined this alley, and it led directly onto Craven Street.
“So, this narrow lane would hardly ever be used,” Griz mused. “There isn’t really any need of it. The Swans’ servants would take horses and carriages the other direction to the front of the house and back again.”
“And yet,” Dragan said, rising to his feet, “there are hoof prints here and cart tracks. From where we came over the wall, leading down to the mews.”
As one, they followed the tracks into the mews alley, where it was impossible to distinguish them from those of other traffic. Everything was scuffed and manured. And quiet apart from clucking chickens, and, somewhere, a snorting pig.
The mews alley ran to Craven Street at one end, and the other curved into the distance.
“You looking for the little girl?” a woman’s voice asked.
Griz swung to face her. A middle-aged woman in a shawl and cap, carrying a bucket, had come out of a small pen where a pig snouted at scraps on the ground.
“Yes,” Griz said eagerly, “did you see her?”
“No, I told the maidservant and the other chap that asked. I was here, cleaning out his sty around the time, but I saw no little girl. Not on her own, and not with nobody else neither.”
Dragan came up to join them. “Perhaps you saw a vehicle of some kind? A small cart, perhaps drawn by a single pony or a donkey? Coming out of that path?”
The woman began to shake her head, from habit, Griz suspected. Then she paused and frowned. “Actually, yes, I did see a donkey come out of there, pulling a wagon with one man driving it. No little girl with him. Though I suppose she might have been inside.”
“Inside?” Griz said quickly.
“Inside the tarpaulin. It was a little covered wagon. Seen it around here before, though I don’t know where the blokes work. Came out the path and turned that way.” The woman pointed away from Craven Street.
“Thank you!” Griz called over her shoulder, already trotting after Dragan, who was striding up the mews alley.
The wagon could have stopped and been hidden at any of the small buildings they passed. It could have cut down Villiers Street, or any of the other crossings leading to the Strand. The alley seemed to run more or less parallel with the Strand, just a couple of narrow streets behind it.
“She could be anywhere between Swan’s house and here,” Griz said unhappily.
“Would you kidnap a child and hide her somewhere so close that the police would be beating down your door?” Dragan demanded.
“No,” she admitted.
“Besides, this does not feel planned. They can’t have known she would be in her garden, and why would they have been there in any case?”
“To use the secret door beneath the garden?”
“Probably. It seems likeliest they came upon her by accident and probably snatched her to stop her screaming. They must have had the wagon waiting to receive something. And with the girl as well, I think they would have aimed to get away as fast as possible without being seen.”
“But they could more easily be invisible among all the traffic in the Strand than on a quiet muse,” Griz protested.
“Except the woman with the pig says they are familiar figures here. She didn’t even think of them until I pointed to the path. But you’re right, they might have risked being seen by more people in the hope of being lost in the throng. In any case,” he added, nodding ahead, “it looks like the alley ends at the Strand.”
And from there, Griz thought bleakly, gazing up and down the busy, noisy road, they could have gone anywhere.
Almost directly opposite where they had come out of the alley, on the other side of the Strand, was another narrow street. If their donkey and wagon had actually come this far, there was a maze of streets they could have vanished into.
“Crossing the road, Missus? Sweep it for you!” an urchin offered Griz with an engaging grin.
“Tell me the truth first, and I’ll pay you double,” Griz offered. “Did you see a donkey pulling a covered wagon here, about an hour ago? Maybe two now.”
“Saw two,” the boy said happily. “Does that mean you’ll pay me twice?”
“Depends if you saw where they went,” Dragan said severely.
The boy hastily tugged his forelock, though he didn’t actually seem much intimidated. “One went straight up the Strand. I’d been saving half a carrot for him—he’s a friend.”
“Who does he belong to?” Griz asked quickly.
“Mr. Jarvis, got a fruit and veg shop near Covent Garden.”
“And the other donkey?”
“Don’t know him, but he was making a racket and playing up. Gave me the chance to sweep for two smart gents while he held up the traffic. Right to-do there was.”
“And where did this donkey go?” Griz asked.
“Up there,” the boy said, pointing to the lane opposite.
Griz looked at Dragan. “Try along there first, and then move on to Mr. Jarvis’s fruit and vegetable shop?”
Dragan nodded and flipped the boy a coin. Immediately, the boy stepped into the street with a practiced hand signal and began sweeping from one side to the other. Griz and Dragan followed his track between the filth to the far side, where Dragan gave him another coin.
“You’re an observant lad,” Dragan told him. “I’m always happy to pay for useful observation.”
The boy grinned, and as they left him, Griz acknowledged that they had added another link in their growing chain of watchers.
As they set off up the next, nameless lane, Griz said, “What do you think of Sir Nicholas Swan?”
“I think he is genuinely frightened for his daughter’s safety and not ignorant of the dangers that could befall her. Beyond that… I would say he is a man of secrets and layers. Does your Alexandra like him?”
“I don’t know. I don’t think she does.”
Dragan glanced down at her. “You trust her?”
“Yes,” Griz said in surprise. “Oh, Dragan, you don’t think she had anything to do with this, do you?”
“I don’t know. She was in charge of Evelina when the girl vanished. And Evelina is not the only well-born child to have vanished. Governesses know each other, don’t they?”
“Some do, some don’t, but I can’t imagine Alexandra hurting a child!”
“Hmm,” Dragan said noncommittally. “I think this lane winds all the way to Covent Garden.”
“I don’t think I would care to come this way at night.” She glanced from darkened doorways to blank windows that seemed to close in on them, and strange, ill-dressed men loitering without purpose. “Or alone at any time.”
“Listen out for the braying of donkeys,” Dragan advised. He didn’t appear tense, but she knew that peculiar, alert poise. He was prepared for anything.
When one of those loiterers moved casually toward them, Griz threw caution to the wind and bestowed upon him a smile that she hoped was dazzling. Certainly, he looked taken aback, which allowed her the moment she needed.
“Good day!” she said brightly. “I’m looking for a donkey, and a boy in the Strand told us someone up this way wished to sell one.”
“It ain’t me,” the man said, staring.
“No, but perhaps you know someone who wants to sell a donkey?”
The man looked stunned. “No. What does the likes of you want with a donkey?”
“When I can afford a carriage and four horses, I’ll buy them for her,” Dragan said drily. “Until then, a donkey and cart must do.”
For a moment, Griz thought it hung in the balance whether he would try and rob them or help them. In the end, he shouted at the nearest window. “Daisy!”
A woman with a child in her arms leaned precariously over the sill and peered down at them. “What?”
“We know anyone with a donkey?”
“Nah.” She was about to shut the window again when she said. “One went that way about an hour ago, though.” Holding the baby in one hand, she pointed up the lane in the direction Griz and Dragan were already traveling.
“Thank you!” Griz said with genuine gratitude and to the man melting back into his doorway. “And to you. Wish us luck!”
The man made a sound that might have been a laugh. As if he didn’t quite know why he’d helped them rather than rob them.
“We’re still on the right track, then,” Dragan murmured.
“If Evelina is in the wagon. If she isn’t, we’re wasting a lot of time.”
“I know,” Dragan said grimly.
It haunted her that the child was afraid of the dark, for she knew there were monsters in the city that a sheltered little girl could not dream of in her worst nightmare.
*
Hugging Sir Nicholas had been a purely instinctive gesture of comfort, such as she would have given a distressed child. But with her arms around his broad, muscular shoulders and her cheek pressed to his hair, he felt nothing like a child. He was every inch a big, strong male, smelling of soap and sandalwood and just a trace of recent sweat, an attractive, desirable man. And when his arms came up and held her close, her body answered.
Shocked that such things could even cross her mind in the present circumstances, she was relieved when he released her, even if part of her screamed with disappointment.
“We should go back to the house,” he said abruptly. “Someone might have news by now.”
She went first up the ladder while he held the lantern. Once above the ground, she took the lantern from him and lit his way out. The sun had moved. Although nowhere near dark on a summer’s day, it reminded her that time marched inexorably on.
In silence, they hurried toward the house. Of course, Evelina was not home. Someone would have shouted the good news to them.
“I’ll send tea up to the library,” Mrs. Dart said.
Sir Nicholas looked as if he were about to refuse, so Alexandra said quickly, “Thank you.”
“I should be out looking for my daughter,” he uttered, climbing the stairs with impatience, “not swilling tea.”
“Swilling tea will give you energy to look longer,” Alexandra said calmly. “And while you are swilling, you can be thinking where best to look that is not already covered by everyone else who is out searching.”
He cast her a furious look that softened suddenly into rueful amusement. “You are always so sane and sensible, Alexandra Battle. How did my household get by without you all these years?”
“Very well, by all I have witnessed and heard.”
He made a sound like a snort as he strode into the library and threw himself into his usual wingback chair. From there, he regarded Alexandra under lowering brows. “Sit, for God’s sake. Help me to think straight. Where should I be looking that is not a systematic quartering of the surrounding streets?”
Alexandra chose a hard chair, some distance from him. “Does she know anyone in London that she might have suddenly decided to visit on her own? Your brother, perhaps? I understand he lives in London.”
“Ralph? She doesn’t know him, has never been to the Brook Street house.”
Even as she took that in, it seemed odd. Of course, Evelina might not be considered respectable, being illegitimate. Sir Nicholas, no doubt, was not considered respectable for the same reason and many others.
“And as you have already noted, she has not played with other children here.” He sat up suddenly. “Do you suppose she followed some children? To play with them?”
