The Heir (30 page)

They arrived after dark, which was why they had trouble finding the address given in the letter. There weren’t many people out and about at that time of the evening whom they could ask, and they were twice given wrong directions from the few who were. It was near midnight when they did finally locate the residence.

Alice and Hilary were going to wait in the
coach, close to hand. The letter stressed that Sabrina must come alone so no one would get hurt, but they absolutely refused to just leave her there. And she was to scream very loudly if she needed help. Mickie, their coachman, had been apprised of their task and had brought along a pistol as well as a very nasty-looking club. For that matter, Sabrina’s aunts each had a weapon as well. She had managed to keep from laughing when she’d seen them tuck the very small pair of matching pistols, one each, into their reticules before they left home.

All the precautions were silly in her opinion, though. She fully expected to find the house vacant, or another letter waiting for her on the porch laughing at her foolishness in coming there. The utter darkness inside the dwelling supported that contention. Not a single light, not even a dull one, showed at any of the windows. And it was a nice looking house, two stories in height, not overly large, but no small cottage either. Hardly the setting one would imagine for nefarious deeds like holding people captive for ransom.

There was no letter on the porch. She tried the front door, but it was locked. As it should be for an empty house, she told herself. She thought about going around to the back to see if there was another door that might be open, but figured she’d probably trip on something in the dark, and besides, she wasn’t exactly trying to keep the fact that she was there a secret. So she knocked on the door, quite briskly. The sooner it was confirmed
that no one was in the house, the sooner she and her aunts could return home.

The door opened. That was Sabrina’s first surprise. The second was being yanked inside and hearing the door close behind her. It was still utterly dark, but she could hear a lot of breathing and feet shuffling. And then there was light when a cover was removed from a lantern. The lantern had yet another cover on it, thinner, though, so it wasn’t very bright, just bright enough to see by.

She was surrounded, literally, by four men. She had to turn about to have a look at them all. She wasn’t impressed, though she had to admit that the letter she had received might not be a joke after all.

They were a ragtag bunch, clothes in ill repair, three of them so skinny she had to wonder if they might not be used to eating on a regular basis. They were unkempt, dirty even, which suggested baths might be as irregular as meals. Their ages could have ranged anywhere from younger than her to her aunts’ age—it was hard to tell under all the filth.

The fourth man was a bit different, at least he had made an effort to look presentable. He was clean, in his mid-twenties, his hair slicked back and long enough to be clubbed at the neck. His clothes were in better repair, too, though they weren’t good quality to begin with. And he didn’t look like he was starving, cut a fine figure, actually. He was also the only one out of the four who
wasn’t
pointing a pistol at her. Those other three
weapons, quickly noted, was why she remained silent for the moment.

She supposed they could be criminals, though if they were, they obviously weren’t very successful at it. Actually, the guns alone suggested they were up to no good. None of them looked like they had worked in a while. All of them looked out of place in such a nice house.

Her surprise was wearing off, in time to note that a couple of the men had shown surprise, too, at her own appearance. It didn’t take long to realize why, though, when they started talking around her, all at once, so it was a bit hard to keep up.

“It be another lady.”

“Is, ain’t it? You thinkin’ wot I’m thinkin’?”

“We can send the other one to collect a ransom for this’n, I’m thinkin’.”

“Was thinking the same thing.”

“Glad we think alike.” This was said with a chuckle. “This could turn into a mighty fine line o’ work, it could.”

“Not to mention, I’m in no hurry to give up that soft bed upstairs.”

“You have the money, lady?”

It was the first remark directed at her. She was still grappling with the notion that they were thinking of keeping her there, if she had understood their meaning correctly. She hadn’t figured out a way to reasonably dissuade them of that notion yet, so a bit of stalling was in order.

“Well, now, I’m not so sure I know what you’re talking about,” she replied, then tried a bluff. “And just what are you doing in my house?”

“Your house? The gent said it were his house.”

“What gent?”

“The one we tossed in the cellar, which is where you’ll be heading if you ain’t got the money.”

“Well, when you put it that way, I’m sure I can come up with some money,” she told the last speaker. “How much did you require?”

“Is she fooling us? You didn’t get a letter that brought you here?”

“A letter? Why, yes, but, well, I broke my glasses this week, and so I wasn’t able to read it. Was it to let me know you apprehended someone breaking into my house? If so, you are to be commended, and indeed are in line for a reward. Is that the money you’re talking about?”

They stared at each other, baffled for a moment, until one of them said, “Lady, just answer yes or no. Do you have forty pounds on you?”

That odd number made a bit of sense now, forty to be divided four ways, yet still a laughable amount. “Why, yes, as a matter of—”

“A simple yes or no!”

“She said yes,” was pointed out.

A frustrated growl. “I heard her, but it weren’t going to be simple.”

“She’s batty,” was said behind her. “Don’t even try to understand her.”

“Just make sure she has the money.”

Her reticule was grabbed from her hand. She objected to that, most indignantly. “Now, see here—”

“It’s empty,” was the next complaint from the
grabber. “Now, why would she carry an empty bag?”

“Tol’ you not to try to understand nabobs. They’re all batty.”

Another frustrated growl from her left side. “Where’s the money, lady?”

“In my pocket, of course. Honestly, any simpleton would know not to carry money in her bag, when bags are a prime target of bag snatchers. You
just
snatched my bag, didn’t you? I rest my case.”

They again stared at each other, but in some serious annoyance this time. In fact, she wasn’t all that surprised when her arm was grabbed in the next moment and she was marched directly upstairs.

She supposed she shouldn’t have tried her silliness tactics on them. They weren’t the least bit appreciative of it. But after hearing that they were thinking of keeping her there, she really did need a bit more time to examine all the ramifications of that. That she did at least in part, and didn’t like her conclusions at all. So she now needed to figure out a way to not be kept.

That was paramount. After all, if she didn’t come out of the house soon, her aunts would no doubt be coming in, and then they’d be kept, too. And if they were all three kept, who would there be to fetch a ransom from? Certainly not their distant relative who had gotten her great-grandfather’s title and refused to even acknowledge them as relatives.

Being thrust into an upstairs bedroom and having
the door slammed behind her gave her the bit of undistracted time to think that she needed, or it would have—if Mavis Newbolt weren’t also there.

Forty-three

T
he room was dark. The only thing that told Sabrina she wasn’t alone was the cranky voice that she recognized, coming from somewhere in the middle of the room, complaining, “What do you want now?”

“It’s me—Sabrina,” she said in the general direction of the voice. “Weren’t you expecting me?”

“Oh! Yes! But what took you so long? I gave them the letter to mail days ago.”

“I only just received it today.”

“Bah, those idiots,” Mavis said derisively. “I should have known they wouldn’t know how to post a letter. Well, no matter, you’re here finally. And I can’t tell you how much I appreciate your coming.”

“Don’t mention it,” Sabrina replied. “I’m just
surprised that you would contact me. I really thought the letter was a joke.”

A sigh. “If only it was. But I’m sorry, Sabrina, truly, to have involved you in this. I simply couldn’t think of anyone else to contact nearby. It would have taken so long to reach my parents, and besides, they think I’m still at Summers Glade and I didn’t want them to think otherwise. They’d be quite upset with me to know I left there but didn’t come straight home, and then that
this
happened.”

Sabrina decided not to mention yet that they already knew their daughter wasn’t where she was supposed to be. She wanted to assure herself that Mavis was all right first, and she had to see her to do that.

“Is there no lamp in here that can be lit? It seems rather odd, talking to you in the dark.”

“There are several, yes, but I didn’t think to be conservative. I’ve already used up the fuel in them, and they won’t replace it—probably wouldn’t bother to look for the store of it, the lazy sods,” Mavis added bitterly.

A moment later, though, moonlight streamed into the room as Mavis opened the curtains at both windows. Since Sabrina had been several minutes in the total dark, that little bit of moonlight was almost as bright as a flamed light.

“Better?” Mavis said, coming back to sit on the edge of the bed where she had been.

“Much,” Sabrina replied, and moved to sit next to her for a closer examination.

Mavis looked fine, though, if quite rumpled. She was fully dressed, but in the same clothes
she’d been wearing when she left Summers Glade, and it looked like she hadn’t removed them once. She’d been sleeping in them, and just using the bed as more of a pallet, not turning down the covers, even though they would have given her some welcome warmth. The room wasn’t too cold, though, which suggested the fireplace had been fueled earlier and had just burned down to nothing. That Mavis had her coat near to hand meant she was probably used to the cold intruding late in the night.

“Have they been feeding you?” Sabrina asked with concern. “Treating you well?”

“Yes, I’ve been fed, but mostly with loaves of bread they steal, I don’t doubt, since I can’t imagine them baking them. The house wasn’t well stocked with food, just a few stores, and they no doubt went through that very quickly. As for how I’ve been treated, well, I’ve been kept locked up here and left alone for the most part.”

“What exactly happened here?” Sabrina asked next. “Is this your house?”

“No, it belongs to my cousin John. We arrived late at night, having come here directly from Summers Glade. The house was somewhat of a mess, which is why John suspected it had been broken into. We didn’t expect to find the intruders still here, though, and sleeping upstairs. They were as surprised as we, actually. They’d apparently found the house empty and decided it would make a nice place to live for the winter, or until the owner showed up. Vagrants, the lot of them, or so I’ve gathered.”

Sabrina had come to that conclusion as well. “I take it there was no time to summon the authorities?”

“There was no time to think of anything
logical,
if that’s what you mean. That should have been our first recourse. I know it. You know it. But John was too furious to be thinking of doing things in the proper order, I suppose. Understandable, of course. They had broken into his house, were still here. He really was livid. But he really shouldn’t have tried to physically evict all four of them himself.”

“All
four?”

“I know, even if he was a bloody Corinthian, which he’s not, those odds are a bit much. And they were scrambling to escape, after all. So everything might have been fine if John hadn’t chased after them in his rage. When he tried to trounce one of them, the other three came to their friend’s rescue and John ended up being the one trounced.”

“Was he hurt bad?”

“More his pride than anything else, I imagine. Their victory over him emboldened them, though. They tied him up and put him in the cellar, then locked me up here. It was another few hours before they came up with the ransom scheme and I was ordered to write that letter—for a mere forty pounds. Can you believe it?” she added with an indignant snort. “My parents are worth—”

“I know it’s a silly amount,” Sabrina cut in.
“But probably not to them, and redundant. They have guns. Did they have them before?”

Mavis frowned, hearing that. “No, I saw no weapons before. My, my, they’re really embracing the criminal path, aren’t they? They must have acquired the guns since this started, probably stole them like they have the bread. That was really stupid of them. Someone might really get hurt now.”

“As long as it isn’t us.

“Oh, I wasn’t worried about us. They’re more likely to shoot each other. They
do
seem like complete incompetents. I doubt they’ve ever done anything like this before, so they don’t really know what to do. I wouldn’t even be surprised if this whole ransom thing was just a delay so they could stay here longer. They do seem to love it here, but then, of course, they would, if they’d been living in the streets.”