They waited, Coffen on foot, Prance seated on his mount, both listening, peering down the road and into the dense darkness of the forest. Coffen decided he should get on his horse, too, in case a chase was involved.
Neither of them heard the kidnapper’s stealthy track through the forest. The man was waiting at the blasted oak for Marchbank. Otto spoke quietly when he handed over the valise.
“Where is she? Is she safe?” he asked.
The masked man nodded, then said in a gruff voice, “She’ll be home at one o’clock, as promised. Don’t worry, sir. She’s perfectly safe.”
Then he took the valise, hefted it but didn’t even look inside, and vanished on foot. His horse was waiting deeper in the woods. Otto heard a gentle whinny, followed by hoofbeats. Just one horse. He looked around and called softly, “Luten! Luten, are you there?”
Since the kidnapper had come alone, Otto expected that Luten would leap out at him with his pistol in his hand and demand the money back, unmask him, and reveal the face of evil. Where was Luten? Otto called again and paced forward, looking past the trees, where the mist was a great impediment to seeing. After a few moments he gave up. His gig was waiting by the side of the road. He climbed in, turned the horse around, and headed out of the forest.
Prance waited a moment to make sure Otto wasn’t being followed, then cantered forward, followed by Coffen.
“What happened?” Coffen demanded. “How many men were there? Did Luten catch the bounder?”
Otto drew to a stop. “Only one man, on foot, with a horse nearby. I saw no sign of Luten.”
“The man got away with the money?” Prance asked.
Otto lifted his hands helplessly. “I gave him the money. He left. He says Susan is safe, she’ll be home as promised. I didn’t hear Luten follow him. There might have been more than one man. Perhaps the accomplice discovered Luten hiding and knocked him out. So long as he sends Susan home safely ...”
“This is a fine how-do-you-do.” Coffen scowled. “While we sat with our hands in our pockets, patting ourselves on the back for doing our bit, they went and got Luten. We’d best go in and search for him, Prance.”
Otto frowned and said, “Surely they wouldn’t have harmed him.”
“Perhaps they’ve kidnapped him,” Prance suggested, and giggled nervously. “Come along, Pattle. You go on home, Otto. You will want to be there to greet your niece.”
Otto jiggled the reins, and the gig moved forward. Coffen looked down the road. Seeing no sign of Corinne and the bloodhounds, he went into the forest with Prance.
“Luten planned to hide close to the blasted oak,” Coffen said. “We’ll start there.” He looked around in confusion. “That giant oak used to stand out a mile. It’s hard finding a tree that ain’t there. It was that way, I believe.”
They rode toward the meeting spot, Coffen in the lead, as the trees were too dense to ride abreast. When they found the blasted oak, they began to look around, behind nearby trees. It was Coffen who made the discovery.
“I’ve found him!” he shouted, and leaned down to ascertain that the body was only unconscious, not dead. The deep breaths were regular. “I do believe he’s foxed!”
“Luten disguised at such a crucial juncture? I don’t believe it. You’re overwrought with excitement.”
“I’m underwrought if anything.”
They felt for a bump on the head and for possible bloodstains. Prance noticed the bottle of coffee, still half-full, and held it up to show Coffen. “It can’t be a sleeping draft. Simon made the coffee.”
Coffen tilted the bottle and tasted the dregs. “You’re basically right, but you’re dead wrong. The coffee
is
drugged. Simon made it, but Malboeuf boiled the water, I expect.”
“We’ll have to get him home. I wonder where he tied his mount.”
“I’ll have a look about,” Coffen said, and stomped through the trees, whistling and calling. Luten’s mount whinnied a welcome at the familiar sound. Coffen followed the sound across the road and into the trees and eventually led the mount forward.
It proved extremely difficult to get Luten’s inert body over the saddle, especially with Coffen handling the legs.
“Dash it, Pattle, we’re not trying to get his feet in the stirrups. We’ll have to hang him over the horse’s back like a sack of oats.”
“Luten won’t like it.”
“Would he prefer that we leave him here?”
After a frowning pause, Coffen said, “I shouldn’t think so, no.”
“It is not necessary to answer rhetorical questions.”
“Then why do you bother asking them? There, that ought to do it.” He picked up Luten’s hat, found it refused to remain on Luten’s head when the head was hanging down to the ground, put the hat on top of his own, and led the mount out of the forest.
As they came out onto the main road, Coffen saw Corinne, with the leashed bloodhounds running before her.
Prance, who was unaware that Coffen had hired the dogs, said, “Corinne! What on earth—”
“Lafferty’s bloodhounds,” Coffen said. “A bit late, I fear. Still, better late than never.”
Corinne recognized the body hung over the saddle and leapt down. “Luten! What happened to him? Is he hurt? He’s not—” A strangled gasp choked the words to silence.
“We think there was laudanum in his coffee,” Coffen said. “Mine was all right.”
She tried to cradle Luten’s head in her arms, murmuring sympathy and encouragement, but it was difficult. “You’re sure he’s just drugged?”
“His breathing is steady. Deep, but steady,” Prance assured her.
“Can’t we sit him up properly? This is so... demeaning.”
“Dear girl, if you are implying that I should hold a dead weight of thirteen stone while riding through the fog in the dead of night—well, we would both end up in the ditch,” Prance sniffed.
“Oh, very well, but let us get him home before he wakes up.”
Coffen had seized the ropes holding the bloodhounds. “I’ll just get the lads to work,” he said.
Prance shook his head. “It may come as news to you, Pattle, but bloodhounds require a scent to follow.”
Coffen waved a handkerchief under their noses. “That’s why I doused the corners of the valise with vanilla,” he said.
Prance pouted. “Oh. Well done,” he said grudgingly. “And do you mean to go alone to confront the kidnappers?”
“There’s only one. Otto said so.”
Prance looked from Luten’s inert body to Corinne to Coffen. “I really should go with Pattle,” he said. “What comes first—courtesy, as in accompanying a lady at night, or common sense?”
“Common sense,” she said. “You go with Coffen. I’ll get Luten home.”
“I don’t envy you your job—when he awakens,” Prance said, and laughed. “He will be in a rare pelter.”
Chapter Twenty-three
“You
lost
it!” Susan exclaimed. “You lost my twenty-five thousand pounds! Oh, Rufus, how
could
you!” Tears brimmed in her blue eyes and splashed down over her rose-petal cheeks.
“Dash it, I never wanted to send the note. You are the one who insisted.”
The conversation took place on the back doorstep of Greenleigh, where Susan had been awaiting his return. She wore Rufus’s greatcoat over a blue-and-white muslin gown. The coat was noticeably too big for her; the gown was soiled and wrinkled.
“What else could we do when Corinne told you they were all wondering why no ransom had been demanded?” Susan asked. “You are the one who said it was cruel to make Otto suffer. Besides, I think Luten was suspicious. Why else did he call twice at Greenleigh? He would have searched your house before long. What would you have said when he found me in your attic?”
“I wish I were dead.” Rufus moaned and held his head in his hands.
He felt something warm and hot on his fingers. When he looked at it, he saw it was blood. Susan saw it, too.
“Oh, Rufus, you’re hurt!”
“I told you, the man coshed me with the butt of his pistol after he snatched the valise, to stop me from following him.”
“How did he know about the meeting with Otto?” she asked, gnawing her lip. “If I had not told Peggy to put a good strong dose of laudanum in Luten’s coffee, I would think it was Luten who had taken the money. It would be just like him,” she said testily.
“It might have been Luten for all I know. The fellow was wearing a mask. But what’s to do now, Susan? No one knows I collected the money. You can just go on home and say nothing. They’ll think the kidnapper got away with your fortune. No one need know what a pair of greenheads we are.”
“You’re the greenhead! You should have insisted on marrying me at once after I went to all the bother of spending the night under your bachelor roof.”
“Dash it, I didn’t even know you were there, in my attic. That’s gratitude for you, after I went scrambling into your house to get you clean clothes.”
“And got the wrong ones,” she reminded him. “Corinne is much larger than I.”
“I put her reticule back,” he said apologetically. “Come, we must go. Otto will be worried. He looked like death when I met him in Ashdown Forest.”
“But where shall I say I have been all this time?”
“You were kept blindfolded the whole time. You don’t know where you were.”
“In a horrid cold barn,” she invented. “Shivering and fed on bread and water.”
“To say nothing of pounds of sugarplums and honey cake and those lemon drops you stole out of Lady deCoventry’s reticule.”
She adopted a moue and took his hand. “Don’t be angry with me, Rufus. I only did it so you would stop being so proud and stupid and
have
to marry me. I am practically penniless now,” she said, peering to see if he was weakening.
“I wish we had gone for the whole thirty-five thousand while we were about it. Then I could marry you.”
“They would have suspected it was me if I’d asked for thirty-five. Everyone thinks my dot is only twenty-five. Ten thousand is not much,” she said. “And you own Greenleigh. It’s not as though you are a fortune hunter, after all. Come with me, Rufus. I cannot face it alone. I shall say I was dumped at your doorstep and called on you for help. They’ll believe that. Your house is right on the main road.”
“How shall I account for this lump on my head?”
“Smooth your hair over it. No one will notice. Come with me, Rufus,” she wheedled, batting her eyelashes shamelessly.
Rufus was no match for her. “I had better do it, or you will pitch yourself into some other imbroglio. Hussy.” The last word was a caress.
She took his hand and led him through the park to Appleby Court.
* * * *
Luten did not awaken from his slumber until Tobin and Simon had got him onto the sofa, fanned his brow, and sprinkled him with cold water. When he opened his eyes, he smelled the pungent odor of burning feathers that Corinne had used in an effort to revive him. A glass of brandy was held to his lips by a black-haired sorceress who gradually took on the lineaments of Lady deCoventry. The dim saloon of Appleby Court was draped in shadows. He saw another form hovering nearby, but did not recognize Otto at first.
“Where am I?” he asked in a faint voice.
“Home safe, Luten,” Corinne said, and smoothed the wrinkles from his brow with cool, gentle fingers.
He wanted just to lie there, luxuriating in her tender touch and the loving sympathy in her dulcet voice. But something nagged at him. He sat up, shaking his head and looking around. “Susan! The money—”
“You had best drink this,” she said, urging the brandy on him.
“They got away with the money,” he said in a hollow voice. “What happened?”
“We think there was laudanum in the coffee you took with you,” she said.
“Impossible! Simon made that coffee for me.”
“Well, the laudanum didn’t get into the coffee by itself, and Simon didn’t put it there either.”
“Malboeuf!”
“There hasn’t been time to look into it. I cannot believe she ...” Yet who else could have done it? “I don’t know,” she said in confusion.
“What time is it?” He drew out his watch. “Five to one. Susan hasn’t come back?”
“Not yet,” Otto said. He held his watch in his hand. His eyes only left it to travel to the door into the front hall.
“Where are Coffen and Prance?” Luten asked.
“Following the kidnappers,” Corinne replied.
Otto went to the window, lifted back the curtains, and peered into the misty darkness.
“Did the kidnappers have much of a head start?” Luten asked.
“There was only one. About ten minutes, I think,” she replied.
“They’ll never catch him.”
“Coffen had bloodhounds,” she said vaguely, not mentioning her own part in the matter.
“I should go and help them.”
“We have no idea where they are.”
Before more could be said, Otto cried out in joyous accents, “She’s back! Susan is back!” He raced into the hall and flung open the front door.
Within seconds, Susan came in, leaning heavily on Rufus’s arm, while Otto held on to her hand. Tears fell shamelessly from his aged and rheumy eyes.
“I believe I shall have a glass of wine now to celebrate,” he said after a moment. He poured himself a large glass and nearly emptied it in one thirsty gulp. “Sit down, poor child, and tell us all about it.”
Susan allowed herself to be seated on the sofa. She immediately put her face in her hands and began sobbing. “It was horrid, Uncle. A horrid ordeal.”
He sat down beside her and patted her shoulder. “Poor baby,” he crooned. “Poor child. It is all over now. There, dry your eyes, my dear. You are home safe. Nothing else matters.”
“Did you get a look at him?” Luten asked her.
“No, I was blindfolded the whole time,” she said.
“How many of them were there?”
“One. I only saw—heard one.”
“Any notion where you were kept?”
“In a barn. It was dreadfully cold. I had to sleep on the ground, with only a bit of smelly straw for a mattress. I was kept alive on bread and water.”
Luten noticed she looked remarkably robust after her prolonged diet of bread and water. When Otto tenderly removed the greatcoat from her shoulders, her gown showed no sign of hay or earth, or such dirt as might be picked up in a barn. It was dusty, and the front stained with food. Not the sort of stains bread and water would leave. They looked like gravy, and perhaps tea or wine. Now, why the deuce was she bamming them?