Jasper came into the study to urge her to think about leaving pretty soon, and as much as she dreaded going without Beau, Cerynise realized that she couldn’t refuse his plea and perchance be the cause of some harm coming to her son or to the men. She didn’t want to countenance any responsibility in that area, for she knew the servants would feel obligated to stay with her if she refused to leave. The vivid reminder of the tree that had fallen and killed her parents during a storm gave her enough cause to acquiesce to the butler’s suggestion. Even so, it was with a heavy heart that she climbed the stairs and went to fetch her son and the satchel that she had prepared for him.
Holding her son close, Cerynise lifted the bag with her free hand. The baby whimpered a little, and she paused to cradle him close to her. He fussed, nuzzling her breast as if he wanted to nurse. A few moments’ delay wouldn’t hinder their departure, she decided, and was just reaching up to unfasten her bodice when she heard the front door slam.
“Beau!” With a glad cry, she rushed from the nursery and crossed to the door of the master bedroom. Sweeping it open, she hurried to the landing and, from over the balustrade, searched the central hall for her husband, confident now that the fears and memories of her parents’ death, which she had been struggling to hold at bay all day, wouldn’t trouble her any longer now that Beau was home.
The relief that had momentarily filled her vanished abruptly when she glimpsed, not her husband, but Alistair Winthrop and Howard Rudd moving around in the front foyer. Worse yet, Jasper, who had apparently gone to answer the door, was sprawled unconscious on the floor near the central hall. It looked as if he had been dragged back from the entrance, and at the moment Alistair was smirking as he slowly squeezed the trigger of the pistol he was pointing at the butler’s head. With a gasp Rudd bolted forward and knocked the gun aside.
“Are you so bent on killing that you can’t even realize that by shooting Jasper you’ll alert everyone in the house?” the solicitor hissed in a rage. “We’ll lock him in the kitchen pantry. If he comes around, he won’t be able to get out.”
“How many servants do you think are here with the girl?”
“Can’t be more than one in the house besides the girl with the chef gone and that old tar and the driver tied up and gagged in the carriage house. With everyone scurrying around all day, I lost track. Have to take care of Cooper once we let him out of the privy. He’ll set up a row when he realizes we wedged that timber against the door and he can’t get out. How many did you count off?”
“About the same.” Alistair sounded more than a little smug as he continued. “’Twas convenient of the neighbors to vacate their house so we could watch the captain’s house from their bedroom upstairs. Still, I’d have preferred waiting until dark before venturing over here. Someone could’ve seen us come over and gone to warn the captain.” The man rubbed a hand over the natural concavity between his bony hipbones. “I’m still tender from that hernia he gave me a week ago. The bastard nearly tore me insides apart.”
“Couldn’t wait. The servants were getting ready to leave with the girl,” the solicitor argued none too patiently. “Besides, the longer we delayed, the more likely our chances of being caught by the captain. He’ll likely kill us if he finds us here again, so I’d rather get this damn fool thing over with as soon as possible. So far, a third of your aunt’s fortune has served as an excellent incentive, but if I’m dead, the whole of it wouldn’t do me a bit of good.”
“Too bad I can’t gut the captain like I did that Wilson fellow,” Alistair muttered sourly.
Upstairs, Cerynise bit into a knuckle to keep from moaning aloud. She had known the two men were evil, but she hadn’t actually counted on them actually being capable of murder.
“That was a necessity,” Rudd rejoined acidly. “If Wilson had killed the girl, then there wouldn’t have been much for us to take back to England. The captain’s death would only be a passing pleasure, but if we don’t hurry, it may become a requirement, hopefully one we’ll be able to perform with our skins still attached. There’s no doubt about it. Abducting the girl will be a lot easier without having to confront that damned Yankee.”
“Could’ve blown me away by sheer surprise when he went off to his ship this morning. Sure saved us a lot of worry trying to figure out how we’d slice his throat on the sly so we could seize the girl. It seems the brave and mighty captain is just as nervous about a little storm as the rest of the people living in this area. Frankly, I don’t know why everyone is in such an uproar. If you want my opinion, they’re a bunch of spineless cowards.”
“Maybe they know something we don’t,” Rudd reasoned in a terse whisper. “But no matter. We’ll hide out in the country just like the rest of them until our ship sets sail. That ol’ tumbledown shack gives us a good view of the road, and so far, we’ve had plenty of time to skedaddle under the bridge whenever we’ve seen the sheriff coming. After we gave our clothes and a couple of coins to those two vagrants and told them to wander along the wharves and onto that ship bound for England, we haven’t been bothered much. Perhaps our ploy actually worked to distract everyone. In any case, I don’t expect there’ll be too much chance of the sheriff finding us after we take the girl. He’ll likely think it was someone else’s doing. Carting her aboard the ship in a trunk will be easy enough once we render her unconscious.”
“We’re being put to a lot of bother to keep her alive.” Alistair sighed heavily, deploring the trouble to which they were being put. “What I wouldn’t give to be able to break her beautiful little neck right here and now. Perhaps Wilson had the right idea.”
“Wasn’t his idea, remember?” Rudd retorted impatiently. “Or are you forgetting what we overheard in our room that night? But that’s neither here nor there. It’s ridiculous to think of killing the girl before we’re able to claim your aunt’s wealth, so don’t start getting any ideas in your head about how easy it would be to put her out of her misery. If you kill her now, nobody would be able to confirm her identity by the time we got her corpse back to England. Besides, we wouldn’t be able to hide the stench overlong in the close quarters of a ship. The captain of the vessel would surely become suspicious and come searching.”
“You know, Rudd, you’ve become quite accomplished in the field of murder since we’ve been together. Nowadays you no longer cringe when we talk about killing people.”
“Aye,” the barrister agreed derisively. “You’ve taught me well. I just hope I don’t hang for it.”
“Cheer up,” Alistair implored with a soft chortle. “Once we snatch the girl, we’ll be sailing home to a fortune. Then we can do away with her and have pleasure doing it.”
Cerynise’s skin crawled as they casually talked of her death. Slowly, carefully, she backed away from the balustrade, hoping Marcus wouldn’t make a fuss. Somehow she’d have to free Cooper before he arrived at the same fate as the other three servants. But the longer she thought about that idea, rational reasoning seemed to argue against her risking exposure to let the servant out of the privy. It was she whom the two wanted, not Cooper, and if they saw her with him, they’d then have no further reason to be wary of gunshots. They might even kill him. Better for all their sakes if she remained hidden with her baby.
Cerynise fled into her bedroom just as another bolt of lightning rent the sky and cast strange elongated streaks of light into the house through the slats of the shutters. She was caught in a nightmare, virtually alone except for a helpless baby, at the mercy of a storm and the demons that were intent upon destroying her and everyone she held dear. Somehow she had to do something to win the day for all concerned.
She acted on pure instinct, with her free hand turning down the wick in the lamp until the bedchamber was plunged into total darkness. Only the lightning provided her glimpses of the interior. Without pause, she hefted the baby’s satchel, dashed into the dark nursery and closed the door behind her as quietly as possible. She didn’t pause but with thumping heart eased open the door lea
ding into the central hall. The corridor ran the full length of the house and, about midway, passed the balustrade and the two short corridors encircling it, one of which led to the landing near the door of the master bedroom.
A pair of wall sconces had been lit at each end of the main hall, and after setting down the valise, Cerynise crept stealthily down the hall in both directions to snuff the lights. Retracing her steps, she picked up the satchel and slipped into the little cubicle that served as a connecting hallway between two adjoining bedrooms on the south side.
Blessing the knowledge she had of the house, Cerynise carefully opened the door of the large walk-in linen closet located against the back wall of that short passageway. Carefully she slipped the key from the latch, stepped within, closed the door behind her and quietly locked it. Alone with her baby in the darkness of the interior, she dragged several sheets off a shelf and made a bed of sorts on the floor for her son. Then she sat down beside it, realizing only then that her legs were shaking beneath her. For a panic-filled moment, the mere awareness of her fear threatened to collapse her self-control, but she pressed trembling fingers to her lips, resolving to overcome her trepidations by her own will and fortitude.
Marcus started fussing, and Cerynise immediately put him to her breast. Nursing him gave her time to put her thoughts into clear perspective, and she began to form a plan to thwart the villains’ intentions, based upon the hope that Marcus would fall asleep soon after his feeding. Her husband might be arriving home anytime now, and those men would kill him if they could. For once, it was up to her to save him, and she prayed that she could do half as well as he had in the past whenever he had come to her rescue.
It was not long before Cerynise became aware of Alistair and Rudd wandering through the rooms upstairs. She could hear their cautious footsteps and, beneath the door of the closet, could see a thread of light from the hurricane lamps they carried. She held her breath when one of them paused near the closet door and mentally offered a prayer of thanksgiving when they moved on without testing the knob. After exploring the two bedrooms on either side of the closet, they finally went downstairs again to continue their search there.
When Marcus had finished feeding, Cerynise laid him over her shoulder and patted his tiny back until a soft burp came from him. Taking every precaution she could to make sure he wouldn’t wake because of some discomfort, she changed his diaper, immensely thankful that in the dark closet she didn’t have to worry about anything more than it being wet. Slowly she rocked him until he fell asleep. Dropping a loving kiss upon his silken head, she held him for a moment more, dearly hoping that it wouldn’t be for the last time. She laid him upon the makeshift bed, covered him with a blanket and left her cubbyhole, taking care to lock it behind her. It was most convenient that her gown had deep, concealed pockets into which she could deposit the key. Not only did the key open all the linen closets in the house, but it also unlatched the pantry door, where the two villains had talked about hiding Jasper.
Cerynise entered her bedroom once again, removed the pistol from the drawer of Beau’s bedside table, and slipped it into her right pocket. There was no need for her to check the loading. Since the appearance of the dog, her husband had gotten into the habit of examining the pistol almost nightly before turning out the light.
“Where’s the bitch gone to?” Alistair muttered from the lower level as Cerynise crept cautiously from her bedroom. “She’s not down here, and she doesn’t appear to be upstairs. Her baby is gone. Do you suppose she could have left?”
“In this rain?” Rudd scoffed. “She wouldn’t take a baby out in this weather unless it was by carriage, and that’s still here. No, she’s in this house all right, probably hiding from us.”
Although many of the lower rooms were still lit, both men were holding lamps to aid in their hunt for her. They approached the stairs, and silently she flitted past the balustrade to the main hallway. Slipping into the bedroom that Beau’s parents preferred to use when they came, she pushed the door almost closed behind her, leaving a slit wide enough to allow her to watch the entrance of the narrow cubicle behind which she had hidden her son.
Hardly breathing, Cerynise peered through the crack as the pair of miscreants reached the upper level. They went down the hall toward the nursery and then, to her horror, Alistair turned in the opposite direction, entered the corridor between the two bedrooms and rattled the doorknob of the closet.
“This door is locked,” he hissed, tossing a glance toward Rudd.
“Perhaps she’s in there,” the lawyer suggested, joining him.
Immediately Cerynise flung open the door behind which she had been hiding, letting it slam against the wall to gain their attention as she raced around the nearest side of the balustrade. She amazed herself by her own swift descent and sprinted into the kitchen. Hearing the rapidly drumming footfalls of her adversaries following in pursuit, she unlocked the pantry door and yanked it open, hoping to find Jasper conscious and fully alert. The lanterns in the kitchen illumined the interior of the pantry clearly, and she almost groaned in despair, for there was now not only the butler lying crumpled in the narrow space, but Cooper as well. Both men were unconscious and of no help to her.
Gingerly she closed the pantry door, afraid of making a sound, and then darkened the room. For barely an instant a stroke of lightning lit the kitchen with narrow slices of light cast through the shutters. As she paused near the dining room door, she caught the sound of footsteps advancing through the room. Stealthily she tiptoed to the far end of the kitchen and slipped past the swinging door into the hall. She flitted down its length, turning down the wicks in the wall sconces as she went until the corridor was nothing more than a dark tunnel. Upon reaching the main hall, she heard the men’s voices drifting down from the kitchen.
“She’s been here, all right,” Alistair announced in an angry tone. “The lamps are out now when they weren’t a moment ago. I bet the bitch went outside to the carriage house.”
“I didn’t hear the back door being opened, and the way the hinges squeak, I’m sure I would have noticed it,” Rudd assured him. Then he thrust out an arm. “Look over there! There’s another door! Come on!”
Cerynise dashed from the hallway and, once again, ascended to the second story. Even as she reached the long table standing against the wall near her bedroom door, she heard Rudd urging his companion.
“Got to hurry. The captain could return any second.”
“Where the devil has she gone now?”
“Upstairs, I think. She’s leading us on a wild-goose chase, and this time I think the goose is winning.”
“She’s only a woman,” Alistair sneered, sprinting ahead of the lawyer. Reaching the stairs, he flung a question over his shoulder, “What can she do against the two of us?”
Rudd heard a sound directly above them and lifted his head in time to see a massive vase stuffed with fall flowers plummeting toward his confederate. “Look out!”
It was Alistair’s folly that he had to see what was coming. He glanced up when the heavy urn was only a short distance above his head and tried to jerk aside, but he wasn’t nimble enough. He felt the weighty porcelain painfully grazing his scalp. The bottom of one of the delicately decorated handles broke just as it hit the top of his head. In the next instant Alistair let out a fierce roar of pain as the upper portion of the broken handle gouged his scalp and, upon passing his ear, promptly sliced it off. A second later the vessel shattered on the stairs, sending shards of broken glass flying like needles into their legs.
“The bitch! I’ll kill her!” Alistair cried at the top of his lungs, clasping a hand over the bloody stub of his ear. “She maimed me!”
After prying a piece of porcelain from his own calf, Rudd picked up the severed piece of flesh and solicitously passed it to his partner-in-crime. “Maybe you can have your ear sewn back on.”
“So it can rot?” A snarl came from Alistair as he rejected the notion. “So help me, when I catch t
he bitch, I’ll rip hers off with a saw!” he threatened, his voice fraught with pain. The jagged piece of glass sticking into his shin came out with a small spurt of blood. It trickled down his leg, but he hardly felt it with the agony he was suffering otherwise.
“If we catch her,” Rudd offered, beginning to doubt that they were the crafty ones in this cat-and-mouse game. In fact, the girl had seemed pretty confident of her aim when she had peered down over the railing. He was sure he had glimpsed an expression of gleeful anticipation on her beautiful face.
Compresses were applied to the ragged nubbin that remained of Alistair’s ear. Then his head was swathed in a towel to hold them in place. In dire distress now, he had lost the verve for adventure in this chase which he had heretofore been enjoying. He was out to seize the wench, and with every word he muttered he made it clear that from the moment they caught her, her life would be a hellish, torturous torment until the day she died.
The two wandered through the upper rooms, looking into every nook and cranny. It seemed weird but in the midst of their lofty search, they heard a siren’s faint, melodic call from the lower depths. After creeping downstairs, they stepped cautiously to the marble floor, trying to avoid the larger pieces of broken glass that threatened to pierce the soles of their shoes. Even so, Rudd had to pause and set his lantern down to pick out one such splinter.
The lamps in all of the rooms had now been snuffed, and though the two men peered into the surrounding darkness, seemingly from out of nowhere a white specter soared toward them, emitting a shriek that was definitely of a female origin. Warbling screams of fright erupted from the two men, and in goggle-eyed fear they retreated from the winged demon that flew at them from the darkness, stumbling over their own feet in their haste to scurry out of its way.