“Really, Sir Myles, what a Banbury tale,” Genevieve drawled. “I am sure you are having us on.”
“Lady Genevieve!” He pulled a face of mock indignation. “Do you mean to say you don’t believe me?”
“I make it a policy to believe only half of what you tell me, and I suspect that is rather too much,” she replied. She turned toward the door and saw Damaris enter with Rawdon, and her expression tightened. “Mrs. Howard. I hope you are feeling more the thing.”
“Yes, thank you. I apologize for imposing on you this way.”
“Mrs. Howard.” Sir Myles swept her an elegant bow. “What a delightful surprise to find you here.”
In the luxurious surroundings of their drawing room, faced with the fashionable perfection of the Stafford women’s clothes and hair, Damaris was once again acutely aware of the miserable state of her own appearance.
“It is very kind of you to say so, Sir Myles. I fear I must look a fright.”
“Has something happened?” Myles asked solicitously. “May I be of some assistance to you?”
“We have it in hand,” Rawdon told him crisply. “It seems there is a change of plans for us, Myles. Mrs. Howard has been accosted by ruffians, and we are going to find them.”
Myles looked startled, but quickly agreed. “Of course. What happened?”
“I shall tell you as we go,” Rawdon promised. “Time is of the essence.”
“Rawdon, this is most irregular,” the countess protested.
“I know, Grandmother, but I fear we really must make haste. I shall tell you all about it when we return, I promise.”
“But surely Mrs. Howard is not accompanying you.”
“I would have her stay safely here as well,” Rawdon assured his grandmother, though Damaris suspected that the woman was far less concerned with Damaris’s safety than with propriety. “However, I need her help to identify the men.”
Lady Rawdon looked as if she would offer further argument, but Genevieve said, “I am sure there is no reason to worry. Rawdon knows what he is about; they won’t be in any danger. Sir Myles will be along to help him, and I am told he is an able pugilist.”
“For all my other sins,” Sir Myles murmured, shooting Genevieve a sardonic glance. Genevieve ignored him, saying, “Pray take my shawl, Mrs. Howard.” She stepped forward, taking off the wrap of warm blue cashmere and handing it to Damaris. “At least you will not have to go about with Rawdon’s jacket hanging off you.”
“Thank you,” Damaris replied, shrugging out of the coat, even though truthfully it cost her a pang to part with the garment.
Sir Myles joined Damaris and Rawdon as they left the drawing room. When Rawdon handed him one of the pistols and pocketed the other one himself, Myles made no comment, merely took the gun and stuck it in an inside pocket of his coat.
“Ruins the lines of one’s jacket, doesn’t it?” he commented drily, straightening his lapels.
“Perhaps you should carry a knife in your boot instead, as Rawdon does,” Damaris tossed back, and Myles chuckled.
“The man’s a barbarian,” Myles told her confidentially. “Border lord, you know.”
“Are you on about that again?” Rawdon said. “One would think we were still raiding cattle from the Scots, to hear you and Morecombe talk.”
“Mm. Or landing your longships on the northern shore,” Myles riposted.
Rawdon tossed him a wicked grin that, in Damaris’s opinion, did little to deny the notion that he was descended from ancient Viking raiders. He stepped aside to give
instructions to one of the footmen, then joined them at the front door.
Outside, Rawdon waved for a hack, saying, “Better to be anonymous, don’t you think, if we are going to be driving up and down some rum streets?”
“No doubt I would agree, if I had the slightest notion what we were about,” Myles retorted.
So Damaris recited the story of her abduction again, and she was pleased to note that she was able to review it in a more calm and collected manner. Even so, Myles’s brows lifted with each detail until she thought they might soar into his hairline.
“Good Lord,” he said finally as a hackney stopped and they climbed in. “I rather thought Rawdon was jesting, at least in part. What a dreadful ordeal for you. Do you have any idea who the men were?”
“No, none at all,” Damaris confessed.
“But it was not random,” Alec put in grimly. “One of the louts called her by name.”
“He knew who she was?”
“Or he wanted to make sure he had the right woman.”
“Ah, yes, of course. In that case… you think he was hired by someone else to capture Mrs. Howard?”
“That would be my guess. We’ll get it out of them soon enough—provided we can find them.” They drove past Damaris’s house first to see if her attackers might again be lurking around. However, they saw no one loitering about nor any carriages near her home.
“I should go in and let the servants know I am all right,”
Damaris said, struck by guilt that she had not thought of it earlier.
“I sent a footman to inform them,” Rawdon assured her, and told the coachman to drive on.
Damaris backtracked along the route she had taken in her escape as best she could in the dark streets. More than once she mistook a turn, but eventually in their meanderings they came upon the yard in which she had sought shelter, and from there, it was an easy enough task to return to the place the abductors’ carriage had stopped.
“This is it.”
“You’re certain?” Alec peered out of the window at the rather ordinary street.
“Yes. We stopped just beyond that red door. I know that.”
Rawdon exited the carriage, calling up to the driver to wait. Damaris and Myles got out after him, and for a moment, they stood glancing around them.
“Somehow I was imagining someplace far… seedier,” Myles commented. “By the wharves, perhaps.”
“Yes, it seems fairly respectable,” Rawdon agreed. “But I doubt the abductors live here. Which door shall we try first?”
“I don’t know which house they were planning to enter,” Damaris said. “There was a cart of some sort in front of us, so it could have been that house they were going to rather than the one right in front of us.”
“We’ll start with this one,” Rawdon decided, and glanced at Damaris. “Perhaps you should—”
“I am not going to wait in the carriage,” Damaris replied bluntly, forestalling him. “It will hardly help if I cannot see to whom you are speaking.”
Rawdon had to admit the sense in her reasoning, though he looked as if he would have liked to argue the point. “Very well, but stay behind us.”
There was no answer to their knock at the narrow house in front of them, so they went to the red door, which led into a small entry with an inner door and a stairway, indicating that each floor contained a separate flat. Rawdon pounded on the inner door, again receiving no answer, but after a moment there were heavy steps above them, and a man appeared at the landing above them.
“‘Ere! Wot d’you think you’re doin’? A man can’t sleep around him for all that noise you’re makin’.”
Rawdon turned, his eyes narrowing. “I have a few questions.”
“Do you, now?” The other man crossed his arms over his chest. “And wot makes you think I’ll answer ’em?”
Rawdon was across the entryway and up the stairs before the other man could even take a startled step backward. He grabbed the man’s shirtfront in his left hand and twisted it, tightening his grip to hold the man firmly in place. “Because I can see from your face that you are an honest fellow. Aren’t you?”
“Happen I am,” the man retorted, setting his jaw. “Don’t mean I’ll be flapping my gums to some swell like you just ’cause you ask.”
“Ah, but I intend to do more than ask.” Rawdon bared his teeth in what could only loosely be termed a smile. He glanced down at Damaris. “Is he one of them?”
“No. He’s not,” Damaris said hastily. “There is no need to threaten him.”
“Then you don’t know Rawdon,” Myles told her drily, and went up the stairs to join the other two men, who were glaring at each other pugnaciously. “Please, allow me to help. It may surprise you, Rawdon, to find that a friendly face opens more doors than a doubled fist.” He turned to the man in Rawdon’s grasp. “Perhaps you could help us. We are making inquiries about a certain incident that took place in front of this house earlier this evening. Mayhap you chanced to witness it—two men pulled a young lady from a carriage, and she took off running, with them giving chase.”
“Wot? ’Er?” The man looked down the stairs at Damaris. “The swell mort?”
“Did you see her?” Rawdon asked curtly.
“Never seen ’er in me life,” he replied in a surly voice. “Now be on your way, why don’t you?”
“What about the people who live on the ground floor here?” Myles went on.
“Wot about ’em?”
“Who are they? The sort to go about abducting young ladies?”
“‘Ow should I know?” His gaze turned crafty. “And if I did, why should I tell you?”
Rawdon released the man and reached into his pocket,
pulling out a coin and holding it up. “I believe this, Myles, is what opens doors most efficiently,” he said in an aside to his friend, then turned back to the other man. “Does this give you sufficient reason?”
“Best in the world,” the man replied, looking a good bit more cheerful, and nipped the coin out of Rawdon’s fingers. “Wot you want to know?”
“The people downstairs.”
“Family—man and wife and a passel of little ones. Usually runnin’ about shriekin’ all hours.”
“Doesn’t seem likely. What about the house next door?” He pointed in the direction of the first house they had tried.
“It’s to let. Been empty awhile. Some swell like you owns it.”
“Have you seen this ‘swell’?”
“Nah. Just ’is agent, wot comes round to get the rent ever week.”
“Did you see anyone there recently? This afternoon or evening?”
He shrugged. “No. Like I said—” He paused, looking thoughtful. “No, wait, I lied, I did see a bloke there earlier, ’bout the time I came home. Only one, though. And she weren’t there.” He nodded toward Damaris.
“What did he look like?”
“Oh, regular, like.”
“Could you be a bit more specific? This information is hardly worth a shilling, let alone a crown.”
The man sighed and twisted his face up in thought. “Well,
’e ’ad medium sort of ’air. Blue eyes—not like yours,” he added, looking at Rawdon. “More…”
“Regular?” Myles suggested.
“That’s right.” The man nodded. “Sort of this tall.” He gestured. “Brown jacket. Oh!” He brightened. “The bloke ’ad a big nose. I remember that.”
“Did he?” Rawdon reached into his pocket and pulled out his card case. “Here is my card. Should you see this fellow at that house again, there’s a Yellow Boy in it for you if you come tell me. I’d very much like to have a chat with him.”
The card disappeared into the man’s pocket with the coin, and he nodded. “I’ll remember that.”
“Sounds like your fellow,” Rawdon commented to Damaris as they left the house.
“Yes, his description fits—though I suppose it could fit a number of other men as well. Do you think there’s any chance of his returning?”
“I don’t know. But if he does, I think our friend will come running to tell me. Let’s see if there might be anyone else here who saw the men.”
They spent some time canvassing the houses across the street and on the other side of the house in question, but they could not discover anyone who had noticed either the men or Damaris at the house earlier. Finally, they got back into the hackney and returned to Rawdon’s house.
When Alec got out and turned to offer Damaris his hand to exit the carriage, she looked at him in some surprise. “But I am returning to my house.”
“Nonsense. You are staying right here.”
Damaris’s eyebrows shot up at this autocratic statement. “I beg your pardon?”
Alec grimaced. “Don’t balk, Damaris. I am sorry to be blunt; Genevieve always tells me I am lacking in diplomacy. But surely you must see that it is impossible for you to return there until we locate your abductors and put them in jail. What is to stop them from trying again?”
“I cannot stay here!”
“Why not? There is plenty of room. I told Genevieve to have a chamber made up for you. And if you are worrying about the proprieties, there is no need. My grandmother’s presence makes it perfectly respectable. Not to mention my sister.”
“No hint of impropriety would dare attach itself to Lady Genevieve,” Myles agreed with a grin.
It was not the propriety that made her hesitate, Damaris thought, so much as the fact that she was sure his grandmother and sister both disliked her. However, she could hardly say that to Rawdon. The truth was, she would prefer not to go home; she knew that if she did, she would probably lie awake all night, listening for odd noises. With Rawdon nearby, she felt safe. And
that
was something she had even less desire to admit to him.
“But my clothes—my maid—” she began, castigating herself for her weak attempt at refusal.
“Are already here,” he finished for her. “The servant I sent to your house earlier was charged with telling your maid to
pack some of your things and bring them here for your stay.”