Ghost of the Thames (24 page)

“This is preposterous.” His hands
dropped from her shoulders. “You have taken this game too far. You
are talking about my niece. A child who is out there and who is
going to come back to us.”

She stepped back. Her words came out
as a sob. “You are right. Only madness can make me imagine all of
this.”

Sophy went around him and ran from the
room.

Anger burned in him. He kicked a
nearby table and sent it crashing against the wall. He didn’t
believe her. She was talking nonsense. She had taken too many blows
to the head.

She must have met Amelia on one of
those bizarre jaunts through London. Or she knew someone who knew
Amelia.

In his mind he played back the events
of the night that Sophy had stepped in front of his carriage. He
remembered her words.

She saved me from the
river. She didn’t have to but she was there. She knew my name. She
asked me to follow her.

His head sank into his hands. He
recalled the other nights when she had put herself in danger in the
city. The night on the Isle of Dogs. For someone who never had been
in London in her entire life, she had somehow known exactly where
to go to find those enslaved children in the warehouse. She had
somehow found her way to Hammersmith Village and to that
tavern.

Sophy had risked her life to save
strangers. And tonight. There was no way she could have known where
to find Amelia's hidden jewels. She was speaking the
truth.

Spirit. Amelia was dead. The
realization brought with it a crushing grief. He'd failed his
sister. The promise to protect her only child.

“Pardon me, Captain.”

The pleading voice of one of the
servants jerked his attention toward the door. “What is
it?”

“Mr. Reeves needs you downstairs,
sir.”

He pushed up to his feet. “What’s
wrong?”

“It’s Miss Sophy, sir. She is
demanding to be let out of the house.”

CHAPTER 27

From the very first night when she had
crawled out of the river and into Edward's path, Sophy had been
directed by the spirit of Amelia. Driven by the apparition of his
niece into all kinds of dangers. Edward knew that. He'd witnessed
her struggle. Her helplessness. He knew how, against all odds, she
had been taken to the exact place where help was needed. If there
was anyone who could testify to the guided purpose in her actions,
it was Edward.

Sophy had bared her soul. Spoken the
truth. Only to be told by him that she was a liar.

She could endure almost any wound but
that. She would not stay a moment longer. She needed to get away
from Edward. Away from him and the searing pain his words and
actions inflicted.

Her voice shook. “Are you telling me
that I am a prisoner in this house, Mr. Reeves?” Sophy was angry
enough to try to remove the old man physically from her path.
Changing into her battered riding clothes in a rush, she just
wanted to get as far away from this place as she could.

“No, miss. I have ordered a carriage.
The servants will open the door for you as soon as it
arrives.”

He was lying. She knew it. From the
time she came downstairs, the doormen had refused to let her out
until the butler was summoned. And no one had called for a
carriage, either. The same two men now stood behind Reeves,
blocking her way.

“I will wait at the curb. Stand
aside.”

“It’s raining, miss. If you would be
kind enough to wait just a few moments more.”

An expression of relief washed over
the aged face of the man as Sophy heard footsteps coming down the
steps. She didn’t turn around. Her attention was focused solely on
the door and how quickly she could get out of this
house.

“Leave us.” Edward’s sharp order
scattered everyone in her path.

She didn’t hesitate, but hurried
toward the door. As she reached for the handle, her arm was caught
in his viselike grip.

“Let me go this instant,” she said
thinly under her breath.

He turned her around. “Don’t be
ridiculous. You are injured, and you are not leaving this house in
the middle of the night.”

“I will do as I wish.” She tried to
shake him loose. His grip only tightened. She avoided looking onto
his face. She did not want to see the hurt she’d seen in his eyes
upstairs. “Let me go.”

“We need to talk.”

“I am finished talking. Release me,
Captain.”

He started pulling her toward the
library, and she lost her temper completely. She kicked him hard on
the shin, and as he let go of her arm, she dashed across the foyer
toward the door.

Once again, she was only a step away
when he caught her, this time lifting her by the waist off the
ground and hauling her toward the library.

“Put me down.” Suspended in the
midair, she tried to hit him, but he was holding her with her back
to him.

“You're making a scene,
Sophy.”

“I
am making a scene? You have no right to be manhandling
me.”

He went through the door, shutting it
behind him. She heard the turn of a key. Crossing the room, he
dropped her on a sofa and walked away. She sat up and watched him
use a taper above the dying fire to light a lamp. She bolted for
the door.

“The key is in my pocket.”

She tested the doors. They were
locked. She banged against them, knowing that no one would answer
it in this house. Defeated, Sophy leaned her forehead against the
cool wood and tried to control her emotions. Sorrow, hurt, anger,
confusion.

“Please. I beg you to let me
go.”

She winced when she felt his hands on
her shoulders. Sophy hadn’t heard him approach. She didn’t fight
him when he turned her around to face him.

“But I want you to stay,” he said
quietly.

Sophy looked up into his
grief-stricken face and fell apart. Sobs overwhelmed her as he
gathered her tightly against his chest. She held on to him, her
emotions wracking her body. It wasn’t her own loss that Sophy cried
for, but for what she had seen tonight of Amelia in that open pit
of a grave. She wept for Edward’s young niece. She could not tell
him that his Amelia would never be found. She was lost somewhere
among the bodies of scores of nameless women. Women who had to have
kin, as well, who have worried and mourned for them, never knowing
what had become of their own beloved children and mothers and
sisters.

And her tears had an added bitterness,
for Sophy knew that she too would have been one of those bodies.
Pulled out of the water or gathered up from the muck of the
riverbank, she would have been thrown without ceremony into a mass
grave, if it had not been for Amelia’s spirit.

She didn’t know how long she stood
there, wrapped in his arms, before Edward led her to the sofa.
Sinking into the cushions, he gathered her again to him. His shirt
was wet from her tears. She accepted his handkerchief and tried to
wipe her face clean, but there seemed to be no end to
them.

“You see her.”

Sophy understood that he would have
dozens of questions. She looked up into his face. The grief showed
in his eyes. “You believe me?”

“You have nothing to gain by telling
an untruth. And I know you wouldn’t hurt me.”

She pressed her cheek to his chest and
listened to his heart beating.

“Talk to me, Sophy.” His hand caressed
her back.

“Yes, I see her. But not all the time.
She only appears to me when she has a task to accomplish. Her
directions are always the same. She tells me to follow
her.”

“Until tonight, I never made the
connection that the spirit appearing to me might be your niece,
Amelia.”

“So she is dead, then.”

Again she saw the image of the grave.
She couldn’t tell him, though. Not when she had no way to help him
find the place or the body.

“Yes, she is. Tonight was the first
time I heard your niece’s name from Mrs. Perkins. You have never
said anything to me of her disappearance or your search. And even
after I was told, I didn’t make the connection that she was the
same person who had saved me from the river.”

“And she was here tonight.”

Sophy nodded. “She appeared to me in
the bedroom. She wanted me to help her clear her name. I had no way
of knowing that the room across the hall was Amelia’s. She led me
there and showed me everything. And then she told me what I should
say as I gave you the box.”

“Is she here now?”

Sophy lifted her head off his chest.
Through bleary eyes, she looked about the large library. The light
from the dying fire and the single lamp he’d lit did not reach the
far corners of the room. “No. She disappeared after I gave you the
box.”

“And no one else sees her.”

“You have been with me several times
when Amelia has led me places. She is invisible to
others.”

His tone told her that he was puzzled,
but there was not a hint of condemnation.

“And she came to you the first time
when you were in the river.”

“I was underwater and suddenly became
conscious. I knew I was drowning. I might have already been dead.
But she told me it was not time. She helped me out of the river.
She knew my name. She led me to you.”

“You have never mentioned her since
that night. Why?”

Sophy sat up on the sofa and wiped at
her face again. “I myself doubted what happened in the river until
she appeared to me again. If I told you, you would never have
believed me. Even now, you are struggling to believe me.” She
looked into his eyes. “I am not mad, Edward, and I am telling the
truth.”

“I know.” He gently
touched her cheek with the backs of his fingers. “But I am still
tormented by thoughts of where Amelia went and, if she is gone,
what happened to her. And I cannot understand how a
sixteen-year-old girl who led a protected life of wealth and
privilege could know so much about this sordid side of London. Or
why she would want to expose
you
to it.”

“I have asked myself the same
question. Why did she choose to save me? And why did she call me
Sophy?”

“Because your name
is
Sophy,” Edward told
her. He took her hand. “Your name is Catherine Sophia Warren. She
knew who you were when she reached in that river.”

She looked at him, confused. “You know
who I am?”

He nodded. “Now it is your
turn to be angry with
me
. I learned of your true identity
the day after we visited Professor Acton at the Geographical
Society. Actually, Dickens was the one who pieced the puzzle
together. You are the Warren shipping heiress who supposedly fell
off the deck of a ship during a storm. You were just arriving from
India.”

She stared at him. Of course. That was
why she knew the language, the history, the culture of India. Most
of what she could recall consisted of memories of her childhood in
India.

“Your uncle, John Warren, is the man
who stands to gain the most from this situation. He is your
guardian, and he oversees your inheritance, until you turn
twenty-one. The papers have been reporting his efforts to have you
declared dead, and that your death was accidental.”

Sophy’s spine stiffened. She felt
cold. She pushed herself to her feet and walked toward the
fireplace. Standing in front of it, she could feel no heat from the
dying embers.

“You have every right to be furious
with me for not telling you all of this before. But I was afraid
that you’d return to John Warren too soon, and—if he is the villain
I think he is—I didn’t want him to have the chance of finishing
what he started.”

Catherine Sophia Warren. Snatches of
memories began coming back--singly, at first, and then more and
more. In her mind the name danced to a familiar tune. Sophia. She
was always Sophia when she lived in Bengal. She had been
transformed to Catherine when the man with the limp and the
ivory-headed cane stepped onto the deck of the ship. He’d called
her Catherine. The taste of bile climbed into her mouth. She had no
recollection of his face, but she remembered disliking
him.

And she remembered her
ships.
Her ships.
Her father had always spoken of her ships, of the ports.
There was so much that he taught her of the business that was to be
hers. But she could not remember him.

She turned to Edward. “Is this John
Warren my only relative?”

“Your father died suddenly last
spring. In Bengal. You have other relatives on your mother’s side
of the family. Some distant cousins that you’ve apparently never
seen, Dickens says. John Warren is your closest kin. He had been
running the London side of the shipping company for your father,
and he will continue to run it until you come of age.”

“When will that be?”

“
Mid-January. Two and half
months from now. That is when, by law, you can take over the
management of your inheritance. But if there is any suggestion of,
well . . . insanity or mental incompetence, he could potentially
strip you of that control.”