Emma’s stomach dropped into her shoes, but she forced herself to remain strong, for she knew that whatever she was feeling, Belle was feeling it a hundred times worse.
“Are you stupid? Of course ’e’s gonna notice if we touch ’er. Damn it, if you ruin this fer me, I’ll kill ya. Don’t think I won’t.”
A scuffle ensued. Slightly panicked, Emma knocked on the door.
“What the hell?” An unkempt man whipped open the door. Belle was sitting on a bed by the far wall next to the other man. Next to the bed was an open window. Emma noticed that her cousin wasn’t moving a muscle, and she strongly suspected that the man next to her had a pistol pointed at her back.
“Beggin’ yer pardon, sir,” Emma said quickly, bobbing a curtsy. “But the innkeeper was wonderin’ if you’d be wantin’ something ta eat. ’E thought you might want it up ’ere in yer room.”
“I don’t think so.” The door started to close in Emma’s face.
“Hey! Wait a minute. Did ya ever think that I might be ’ungry?” The man on the bed glared viciously at his partner.
“All right. Bring us up a meal. Meat pie, if you got it. And some ale.”
“Thank you, sir. Oi’ll get it up ta you as soon as oi can.” Emma bobbed another curtsy, afraid that she’d overdone the accent. She waited by the door for a few moments after it closed, listening to see if the villains suspected anything. They only continued to bicker, so Emma was convinced that she’d carried off her charade. Besides, Belle hadn’t even recognized her.
Once Emma returned to her room, she sent Ames down to order some meat pie and ale. He brought it back to her on a tray about ten minutes later. “Wish me luck,” she whispered, and disappeared down the hall.
Taking a deep breath, Emma knocked on the door again.
“Who is it?”
“It’s me, sir, bringin’ ya some meat pie, jest like ya asked fer.”
The door opened. “Come on in.”
Emma entered and put the tray down on the bureau, taking the plates one by one to a nearby table. She had to prolong her precious few minutes in the room. She needed to let Belle know that help was on the way. But her cousin had her gaze fixed on one of the bedposts and wasn’t moving.
“Could you believe the rain we ’ad yesterday?” Emma said suddenly. “Oi swear, it was a tempest out there, don’tcha think?”
The villain by the door gave her a funny look. “Yeah, I s’pose.”
Emma brought the third and final plate over to the table. “And everybody got so upset about it. Personally, oi thought it was all much ado about nothing, but ya know, some people won’t listen to reason.” She moved back to the tray and picked up a mug of ale with two hands. Out of the corner of her eye she saw Belle’s eyes narrow. “Oi don’t know,” she continued brightly. “It all turned out fine in the end. Don’tcha think? And that’s all that matters, right? All’s well that ends well, that’s what oi always say.”
No doubt about it, Belle had definitely torn her eyes away from the bedpost and was now regarding Emma curiously.
Emma, meanwhile, was still holding the second mug of ale. “Some folks, though, they just like ta complain, an’ there’s nothin’ ya can do about it. My sister Cymbeline, she just went on and on about the rain. I thought my brother Julius was gonna kill ’er. When Julius sees ’er wailin’ it’s like the devil’s gotten inta ’im.” Emma paused and put the last mug of ale on the table. “But my other sister, Emma, she stepped in afore Julius could ’urt poor ol’ Cymbeline. She took care of everything.”
Belle started coughing uncontrollably. Her fit seemed to jolt the villains, who had been almost mesmerized by the strangeness of their serving maid, back into reality. “Listen you,” the one by the door said. “We’ve got a lot to do. Get on out of ’ere.”
Emma bobbed another curtsy. “As you like it.” And she was gone.
Through the door she could hear the men yelling at Belle. “Whatsa matter with you now? Yer not getting sick on us, are you?”
Belle’s coughs petered out with a few feeble clearings of her throat. “It must have been the rain.”
Bottomley rode like the devil himself was on his tail. He sailed through villages big and small, pushing his horse nearly to exhaustion. If he hadn’t been convinced of the urgency of his task when he left, he certainly was by the time he arrived at Westonbirt. The hard, unrelenting pace of his ride had slowly pushed him further and further into a state of panic, until he was certain that the very fate of the world depended on his reaching the duke.
Sliding off his horse onto wobbly legs, he ran into the house, gasping for breath and shouting, “Yer grace! Yer grace!”
Norwood appeared instantly, ready to upbraid Bottomley for his complete lack of decorum, not to mention his use of the front door. “Where is his grace?” Bottomley gasped, clutching Norwood’s shirtfront. “Where is he?”
“Get a hold of yourself,” Norwood bit out. “It’s hardly seemly—”
“Where is he?” Bottomley demanded, shaking the butler.
“Good God, man, what is wrong?”
“It’s her grace. She’s in danger. Terrible, terrible danger.”
Norwood paled. “He’s gone to London.”
Bottomley gasped. “Lord help us all.” Infused with the urgency of his mission, he drew himself up tall. “Norwood, I need a fresh horse,” he said in quite the most imperious tone he had ever used.
“At once.” Norwood himself dashed out to the stables, and five minutes later Bottomley was on his way back to London.
Chapter 24
Emma strode down the hall and barged into Shipton and Ames’s room. “I found her. She’s in room number seven.”
“Does she look all right?” Ames asked quickly.
Emma nodded. “She hasn’t been hurt. Yet.” She took a breath and tried to still the nervous churning of her stomach. “But there are two awful men guarding her. We have to get her out of that room.”
“Maybe we ought to wait for his grace to arrive,” Shipton suggested hopefully.
“We haven’t got time.” Emma wrung her hands together as she paced the room. “I think that she’s been kidnapped by Woodside.”
At Ames and Shipton’s blank looks, she said, “It’s a rather long story, but he’s somewhat obsessed with Belle, and I think he may want revenge against our family. I—I insulted him once.” Emma gulped as she remembered how she had laughed in Woodside’s face when he had said he would marry Belle. And there was no doubt that he was furious over the loss of the gambling voucher. Ned had accused him of trying to collect the debt twice, and he had been publicly humiliated. That surely stung even more than the loss of the money. The more Emma thought about it, the more worried she became. “We’ve got to get her before he arrives.”
“But how?” Shipton asked. “Ames ’n me, we’re not as strong as those thugs.”
“And they have pistols,” Emma put in. “We’re going to have to outwit them.”
The two footmen looked at her expectantly. Emma swallowed nervously. “There was an open window,” she said. She rushed to the window, threw it open, and stuck her head outside. “There’s a ledge,” she said excitedly.
“Dear God, yer grace,” Ames said, horrified. “You can’t mean to—”
“There is no other way to get into the room when the men aren’t there to let me in. I don’t have any choice. And the ledge isn’t too narrow.”
Ames poked his head out the window.
“See, it’s about a foot wide. I’ll be fine. I just won’t look down.”
“Lord have mercy on our souls, Shipton,” Ames said, shaking his head. “Because his grace is going to kill us.”
“What we need is a diversion. Something that will make them leave the room.”
The threesome sat in silence for a few minutes until Shipton finally ventured, “Well, you know, yer grace, men do like their ale.”
A small ray of hope began to form in Emma’s heart. “What are you saying, Shipt
on?”
Shipton looked a little uneasy, unused to having his ideas listened to with such attention by the nobility. “Well, I’m just saying that men do like their ale, and it’s a fool who passes up a free drink.”
“Shipton, you’re a genius!” Emma cried out, spontaneously throwing her arms around him and giving him a big kiss on the cheek.
Shipton turned beet red and started stammering. “I don’t know, yer grace, I just—”
“Hush. Here’s what we’re going to do. One of you is going to go down to the street and start hollering how you’ve just become rich. Someone died, or something like that, and you’ve inherited some money. Then start yelling about how you’re going to buy drinks for everyone in town. There’s a tavern downstairs. The other one of you will stand guard in the hall and wait to see if the men leave. If they do, I’ll sneak along the ledge and go through the window, get Belle, and come back here. Are we agreed?”
Both men nodded, but their eyes looked dubious.
“Good. Then which one of you wants to buy the drinks?”
Neither said a word.
Emma grimaced. “All right then. Ames, you’re more flamboyant so I want you to do it.” She pressed several coins into his hand. “Now get going.”
Ames frowned, took a deep breath, and then exited the room. A few minutes later, Emma and Shipton heard his shouts.
“I’m rich! I’m rich! After twenty years o’ service, the old geezer finally croaked an’ left me a thousand pounds!”
“Quick, Shipton, go out to the hallway,” Emma whispered urgently as she ran to the window and peeked out. She didn’t have a direct view to the street, but if she looked down the alleyway, she could see Ames as he passed by on his way to the entrance of the inn.
“It’s a miracle!” he shouted, starting to laugh hysterically. “A miracle! A sign from God himself! I’ll never have to wait on another hoity-toity lord or lady for the rest of my days!”
Emma smiled, deciding that she’d forget about the hoity-toity comment. If he succeeded in getting the villains away from Belle, he’d be able to retire for life on the bonus his hoity-toity employers gave him.
Ames fell to his knees and started to kiss the ground. “Good Lord,” Emma murmured. “The man missed his calling. He should have been an actor. Or at the very least a swindler.”
Just then, one of the two villains stuck out his head, two windows down. Emma quickly pulled hers back in and began to pray. Out in the street, Ames got down to business. “I wanna buy drinks for every man who’s had to work for a living. Every man who has had to toil, to use his hands. To The Hare and Hounds! We’ve earned our reward!”
A goodly amount of cheering followed the last statement, and Emma heard the sounds of a horde of people rushing into the inn. As she waited for Shipton to give her the word, the temptation to hold her breath was so great that she had to keep reminding herself to exhale.
An eternity passed in thirty seconds until Shipton burst back into the room. “They took the bait, yer grace! Left an’ went downstairs. Looked plenty excited, too.”
Emma’s heart started pounding wildly. It was one thing to talk about sneaking around on ledges; it was quite another to do it. She looked out the window. It was a long way to the ground. If a fall didn’t bring death, it would almost certainly mean many broken bones. “Just don’t look down,” she muttered to herself. Taking a deep breath, she climbed out of the window and balanced herself on the ledge. Thank goodness she wasn’t facing the street. In the alley, no one was likely to notice the rather odd sight of a woman pressed up against the side of the building, two stories up.
Taking small steps, she crept along, breathing a silent apology to Eustace and his companion as she passed by their room. Finally, she reached Belle’s window. She bent her legs very slowly, concentrating on her balance, and then hurled herself through the open window, landing in a somewhat painful bundle on the floor.
Belle let out a little yelp of surprise as Emma came flying into the room, but it wasn’t very loud because she’d been tightly gagged. “I’ll get you out of this in no time,” Emma said quickly, gulping down her furor over the sight of her cousin bound to the bedposts. “Damn it,” she muttered. “These knots are tight.”
Belle jerked her head, trying to motion to the bureau across the room.
“What? Oh.” Emma raced over and found a knife sitting on the bureau next to the tray she had left there not very long ago. It wasn’t very sharp, but it did the trick, and less than a minute later she had Belle free. “I’ll get that gag off of you back in my room,” she said urgently. “I want to get out of here as soon as possible.” Emma slipped the knife into her pocket, grabbed Belle’s hand, and pulled her through the doorway.
Once they got back to Emma’s room Shipton slipped outside to stand guard, and Emma quickly cut the gag away from Belle. “Are you all right?” she implored. “Did they hurt you?”
Belle shook her head quickly. “I’m fine. They didn’t touch me, but…” She took a deep breath, trying to compose herself, and then promptly burst into tears. “Oh, Emma,” she wailed. “I was so scared. I think it was Woodside who arranged the whole thing. And I couldn’t stop thinking about him touching me. It made me feel so dirty, and…” Her words trailed off into a stream of hiccups.
“Shhh,” Emma crooned consolingly, putting her arms around her cousin to soothe her. “You’re fine now, and Woodside never got near you.”
“All I could think was that I was going to have to marry him, and then my life would be ruined forever.”
“Don’t worry,” Emma murmured, stroking Belle’s hair.
“I couldn’t even divorce him.” Belle hiccupped and inelegantly wiped her nose with the back of her hand. “I’m sure I couldn’t get one and besides, I’d be banished from society. Alex probably wouldn’t even let you see me anymore.”
“Of course I could still see you,” Emma said quickly, but she knew that most of what Belle said was true. There was no place in London society for a divorced woman. “It matters not anyway. You’re not going to have to marry Woodside so there’s no point discussing divorce. Unfortunately, we’re stuck in this inn because we’ve only got one horse. I had one of the grooms ask around and there isn’t a horse or carriage for hire in the entire town.”
“What about the stage?”
Emma shook her head. “It doesn’t pass through here. We’re going to have to wait for Alex, I’m afraid. He shouldn’t be too long, at any rate. Bottomley left for Westonbirt over an hour ago. I don’t think we’ll have to wait much longer than an hour.” She peered nervously out the window. “I think it would be safer to stay here behind a locked door than to venture out on foot.”
Belle nodded, sniffling loudly. She blinked a couple of times, finally taking in Emma’s strange appearance. “Oh, Emma,” she giggled. “You look hideous!”
“Thank you!” Emma said enthusiastically. “It’s a brilliant disguise, don’t you think? You didn’t even recognize me at first.”
“And I wouldn’t have if you hadn’t started dropping Shakespeare into your every sentence. It’s a good thing that my captors were illiterate. It was all I could do not to scream with laughter once I realized what you were up to. But the one thing I was wondering was—how did you get here in the first place?”
“Oh, Belle, we were so lucky. I went to visit Sophie yesterday and decided to stop by to see you today. I just happened to turn the corner as you were getting into the carriage. When you didn’t go to the Ladies’ Literary meeting I grew suspicious.”
Belle sobered as she realized the degree to which Providence had played in her rescue. “What do we do now?”
“I’m going to get out of this awful costume. Those men might come looking for you, and it wouldn’t do for me to look like anyone other than the woman who checked into the room a few hours ago.” She pulled off the wig, letting her bright hair tumble down her back. “There. I feel better already.”
If Bottomley had been
tired when he got to Westonbirt, he was utterly exhausted by the time he reached Alex’s London townhouse three hours later. He had never been to Alex’s bachelor’s lodgings before, but he had grown up in London, so he located it easily from the address that Norwood had given him.
With desperation-filled eyes, he ascended the front steps and pounded on the door. Smithers answered almost immediately. “Deliveries,” he said imperiously, “are made in the rear.”
Before Smithers could shut the door, Bottomley wedged himself into the doorway, gasping, “That’s not why I’m here. I—”
“As are inquiries for employment.” Smithers’s glare turned even frostier.
“Will you shut yer mouth for a second!” Bottomley burst out. “I work for his grace at Westonbirt. Drive his carriage.” He paused, still breathing heavily. “It’s her grace. She’s in danger. Her cousin’s been kidnapped. I’ve got to find his grace right away.” Bottomley sagged against the doorframe, barely able to stand.
“He isn’t here,” Smithers said anxiously.
“What? They told me he was comin’ to London an’ I—”
“No, no, he’s here. He’s just not here. He went to White’s. You’d best get to him immediately. Let me give you the address.”
Thirty seconds later, Bottomley was back on his horse, feeling even more tired after his brief rest than he had before it. He soon reached White’s but the man at the front door refused him entrance.
“You don’t understand,” Bottomley pleaded. “It’s an emergency. I’ve got to see his grace right away.”
“I’m sorry, but only members are allowed to enter.” The doorman sniffed disdainfully. “And you are obviously not a member.”
Bottomley grabbed the man by the lapels, his eyes wild with exhaustion and panic. “I need to see the Duke of Ashbourne now!”
The doorman paled at Bottomley’s unbalanced demeanor. “I can send for him if you wait just a—”
“That ain’t good enough. Aw, hell.” Bottomley pulled his arm back, punched the doorman in the face, stepped over his body, and rushed into the sacrosanct halls of the club. “Yer grace! Yer grace!” he called. And then realizing that there may very well be several yer graces present, he started hollering, “The Duke of Ashbourne! I need him right away!”