Ghost of the Thames (31 page)

She recalled some of their
stories. They had all been taken against their will. Some were sold
for money by their families, thinking they’d be allowed to stay in
India and work as
nauch
girls. To be used and ill-treated but allowed to
stay in their homeland was a world better than the unknown life
they were being taken to.

She’d confronted the captain of the
ship, knowing he would not dare harm her. There had been no
answers—no solution offered.

“I was a fool, a blind fool,” she
muttered, lifting her face off the blanket and trying to blow her
nose.

Priya’s eyes were partially open. They
were watching her.

“Are you awake? Are you with me?”
Sophy asked.

The bony fingers crawled out from
under the blanket and reached for her hand. Sophy grasped them
tightly in her hands and brought them to her lips.

“Please, I need you. I need
answers.”

Priya opened her mouth, but nothing
came out. Her lips were dry. Some wine had been brought for Sophy
with the supper. She hurried to the table and poured a cup for
Priya. She didn’t trust what had been left on the bedside table.
Holding the cup to the old woman’s lips, she watched Priya struggle
to sip some of it.

Lying back on the pillows, she seemed
more awake than Sophy had seen her since reuniting the day before.
Sophy glanced at the clock. Dawn was near. She feared there would
be servants sent to the room soon.

“What happened during that last night
on the ship?” Sophy asked in Bengali, sitting down beside her on
the bed.

Priya’s confused expression reminded
Sophy that the older woman had no idea that she’d suffered a loss
of memory. In a few words she explained what she could and couldn’t
recall.

“He was going to poison
you.”

“My uncle?”

Priya nodded. “One of the ship’s
hands, a Bengali cook’s mate. They thought he spoke no English.
Overheard it after your uncle returned to the captain’s cabin after
dinner. He told me. And I warned you.”

Sophy knew Priya was fluent in
English, too. But she never let it be known to those she didn’t
trust.

“Why?”

“You complained to him after dinner
about finding the compartment below and the people they’d brought
over.”

The night, the
conversation, all came back to her then. They were docked at
Gravesend, and she was having dinner with John Warren. Peter
Hodgson was there, and the captain of the ship, too. The storm was
growing stronger, outside, lashing at the small windows of the
cabin. She’d asked her uncle to step out with her after dinner.
Speaking privately, she’d told him of what she’d witnessed. She’d
been furious, demanding action. And he’d acted appropriately
horrified.
Liar!

“They were afraid you would make
public what you saw after you arrived in London.”

She would have, too, even if it meant
implicating herself and her father’s name.

“This was part of our family’s
business, wasn’t it?” she asked through a painful knot in her
throat.

“Sadly, yes.”

“And my father was part of it.” Fresh
tears gathered in her eyes, knowing of the answer.

“Your father was a good man. A fair
man. He treated all of us much better than any other Englishman. He
loved my country and he showed it in the way he raised you. He
instilled in your education and upbringing what he couldn’t
practice himself. But so long as he didn’t have to see the women
and children who were taken or get involved directly, he turned his
face and let it happen.”

Sophy felt the weight of the world
descend on her shoulders. The prospect of a future with Edward went
up in flames and disappeared like smoke in the wind.

He was a man of honor who planned to
build a political career. She was a slave trader.

“It was the long arm of your uncle
that ran that part of the Warren business, not your
father.”

It made no difference. Her father was
guilty of it, as Sophy would be if she didn’t try to stop it. She
stabbed away the tears and focused on the present and what she
still had control over.

“And then I jumped off that ship into
the river.”

“To escape him.” Priya nodded again.
“You thought you had no choice. You could see the shore. And you
were a good swimmer.”

“I was wearing men’s
clothing.”

“Easier to swim. You had a bag with
you containing money and your own clothes to change into once you
were on shore.”

None of that was with her when Amelia
saved Sophy from the river.

“I didn’t know anyone in London. Where
was I going to go? Who did I think could help me?” she asked,
confused.

“Your godfather.”

This was perhaps the last piece of
puzzle she’d been missing. But it fit perfectly. It all made
sense.

“Lord Beauchamp,” Sophy whispered,
remembering.

CHAPTER 37

“The girl didn’t notice anything wrong
until after she gave the Bengali woman her medicine, sir,” the
butler explained in a rush. “The door to Miss Warren’s rooms was
closed. She knocked, wanting to ask if Miss Catherine was ready for
breakfast. There was no answer and when she tried the door, it was
locked.”

John Warren was in his dressing room
when he received the news. Now, putting more weight on the cane to
try to lengthen his steps, he hurried down the hallway. It would be
too much to ask to have Catherine do something as helpful as taking
her own life. Of course, it would need to look like an
accident.

In fact, he thought as they approached
the wing where her rooms were located, if the bloody chit hasn’t
done it herself, something of the sort might still be arranged for
her.

“Do you have your keys?”

“Yes, sir.”

A handful of servants were standing
around in Priya’s room, giving the place the look of a circus. The
old woman, though, looked dead to the world.

“What about the other doors from the
hall?”

“We tried them all, sir,” one of the
girls chirped nervously. “But she has something pulled in front of
them, blocking the doors.”

Warren motioned to the butler to
unlock the door. The key turned, but they couldn’t push it
open.

“There is something up against this
one, too.”

“What do I pay you gorillas for,”
Warren shouted to the servants who were standing around. “Take it
down.”

An uncomfortable feeling burned in
Warren’s stomach as he watched the men struggle. She’d definitely
put something large on the other side of the door, for there was a
harsh, scraping sound of it on the floor.

“Trunks,” one of them said.

“She must have stacked them up against
it.”

Warren reached around them, pushing
the door with the tip of his cane, as if that would make a
difference. There was a great deal that could go wrong if she
somehow managed to escape. There was a two-story drop from her
window, but he didn’t consider himself lucky enough to have her
break her neck. And there were watchmen posted in the garden and by
the gates to the street. She couldn’t leave the grounds
unseen.

Doubt continued to pester
him, though. If she was able to manage to get out of here
undiscovered, Warren had no doubt that she’d run to Seymour. They’d
probably go off immediately to Gretna Green. Having married without
his blessing, Catherine could still stand to lose her inheritance,
but not without a lengthy and bloody expensive court battle. That
was something that Warren wanted no part of.
Damn the girl
.

“Open this!”

His shout caused the servants to give
the extra shove. Something large and heavy tumbled and crashed to
the floor on the other side. The door opened slightly and with
another shove, one of the men was able to crawl through and move
the trunks.

Warren used his cane to clear the
servants out of his way and went through into the apartment. A cold
wind was blowing in from an open window. The sitting room was
empty, but beyond it in the bedroom he could see the dance of the
sheer curtains.

The butler reached the windows before
Warren.

“She climbed out of this window,
sir.”

Warren seethed with anger as he
approached. A sheet was tied to the foot of the bed. Other knots
connected the fabric to the next piece. With his cane he struck the
servant who was leaning out the window and blocking his view. The
man scrambled out of his way. Warren looked out.

The makeshift rope ended some ten feet
above the courtyard. There was no sign of her below that he could
see from here. Most of the leaves were gone off the trees and the
bare shrubbery offered little as far as a place to hide.

“Gather those useless idiots outside,”
Warren bellowed. “They all will be feeling it.”

People scattered, running. He moved to
where the Bengali women lay unconscious. Warren pointed the tip of
the cane at the two servants remaining in the room.

“You will stay with her around the
clock. My niece will be back for her.”

He lured her in once after the
servant—he needed a plan to do it again.

He went out of the room with the
butler on his heels. Shouting angrily, he made sure one and all
could hear his displeasure through out the house.

“Bring the carriage out to the
front.”

By the time Warren reached the foyer,
Hodgson was arriving. It was apparent that he had already been told
of the development by the footmen outside. He didn’t shed his cloak
or remove his hat. He held out a newspaper.

“Miss Catherine’s
discovery is on the front page of the
Times
today. I assume this is the
novelist Dickens’s doing.”

Warren snatched the paper and glanced
at the headline. “Warren Heiress Found Alive.”

He knew what they were doing. They
were trying to make her case so public that his every decision
would be scrutinized. He shoved the paper back into Hodgson’s
chest.

“Sir, do you think she will go to
Captain Seymour or Miss Burdett-Coutts?”

“To Seymour.”

“I have a carriage in front. I am
ready to go.”

Warren moved within a
couple of inches of Hodgson’s face. “You are not going anywhere
near Seymour. He’ll cut off your head with a cutlass and make you
carry it like a melon. No, Hodgson. Y
ou
are the problem. You have no
courage, no charm, no looks, no wit. My mistake was to think you
could do me some good as a potential suitor. No, that was a waste
of time, and you know how I hate to waste anything.”

Warren put on his cloak and hat as he
watched the younger man’s face turn a dozen shades of red. As
usual, the overpaid clerk kept his mouth shut tight.

“The most useful you can be now is to
stay here and make sure no one steals the old woman upstairs. Can
you manage that?”

“I can, sir.”

CHAPTER 38

“But don’t you see? She is in
danger!”

“You cannot rush into that
house and rescue her, Edward. He will not harm her. He would not
dare,” Angela Burdett-Coutts reasoned. “Not after all the witnesses
that claim Sophy is alive. Not after that article in the
Times
. His plan of
forcing her to marry a man of his choice is enough for Warren. With
that, he gets what he is after. And he told me he is having the
banns posted immediately. So we have three weeks.”

Edward was furious that everyone had
waited until he’d come back to London to act. Telling Edward of the
abduction as he entered the house, Reeves also told him that Angela
had been waiting two hours for his arrival.

He trusted his staff and his friends
to keep Sophy safe. And now she had been taken by the one person
who truly intended to do her harm.

“I cannot let Sophy remain in her
uncle’s clutches as the police bring him to bay,” he snapped
angrily.

“Do you have proof of his illegal
activities?”

“Yes, I do.” Edward didn’t want to
share any of the details with Angela at this time, but Captain
Lewis had named John Warren specifically as the person who had made
the financial arrangements for the transfer of the women from the
Far East on his last crossing. He’d also offered the names of other
Royal Navy officers who were employed in similar activities by
Warren. The disgraced captain had been very cooperative in offering
up his friends as well as information on the operators of
warehouses along the Thames where the human cargo was
delivered.

Captain Lewis claimed he knew nothing
of Henry Robinson’s murder and had no involvement in it. But the
police were just beginning to gather up civilian culprits, and it
was only a matter of time before some of them started talking and
pointing fingers.