“She’s got Her Grace’s ring. And there she is coming out of the dining room and heading, I suspect, for her chamber.”
“I’ll send Henrie after her,” Cromarty murmured and strolled off toward the ballroom.
Marcus entered the poetry salon, quietly edging around the rapt listeners to sit in the window seat. From there, it was quite easy to drown out the tortured verse while gazing down onto the courtyard.
Only a few lines into the next poetic offering, something moved in the shadows outside. The fence. It was almost time to strike.
*
“Someone’s coming,” Horatio hissed, bolting back around the corner with Eliza to join their brothers and Helen.
As the footsteps approached, Helen held her breath, and sure enough, they paused at the Marshalls’ chamber door. There was a rustle and then the sound of a key in the lock. Clearly, Phoebe had learned the lesson of Helen searching her room at Audley Park.
Helen edged forward, just in time to see Phoebe’s yellow gown whisk into the room.
“Time to summon the chambermaid, I think,” Helen murmured.
Obligingly, George sped off to the back stairs, but then another set of footsteps hurried along the passage, and everyone jerked back around the corner out of sight. They waited, but the footsteps kept coming until Helen feared they would all be caught skulking. She tried to think of an excuse for playing hide and seek in her evening gown with the children who were no longer her charges.
Horatio peered around the corner, and Helen tugged him back by the shoulder.
“Mr. Marshall,” he mouthed.
An instant later, Phoebe flitted out of the chamber, her reticule looking considerably lighter as she hurried back along the passage.
So, it was Philip, not Phoebe, who would meet the receiver. Helen wasn’t sure how she felt about that. She didn’t want Phoebe to get away with what she’d done, and she didn’t want the woman casting all the blame on Philip.
“Where is she, Miss M.?” Henrietta, Lady Sydney breathed behind them.
Helen pointed around the corner. And then at the side wall of the bedchamber and mouthed, “Philip Marshall.”
Henrietta nodded and scampered back the way she’d come.
A moment later, Philip emerged and locked the door behind him. As his footsteps faded along the parquet floor, Helen peered around the corner, the twins popping their heads around beneath her. Philip wore his greatcoat and his pockets were bulging.
“Gone to take the air,” Helen murmured just as he veered around a dark, narrow passage that only the servants used. “Where does that lead?” she asked the children.
“To another back stair,” Horatio said. “Even the servants don’t use it, so it will be in total darkness.”
“Is there a door at the bottom?”
“Yes,” Eliza said decisively.
“Well, they’ll find him,” Helen said with a satisfaction she didn’t really feel. Since she didn’t want the children following him when he could turn like a cornered cur, she urged them back to their bedchambers and let them see her returning to her own. She wanted to make sure that the Carluke children were all asleep.
They were, even the baby, although a maid dozed in a chair in the chamber with her.
Helen waited only a few moments more before donning her cloak and slipping out again with a lit candle and following in Philip’s footsteps to the dark, narrow passage and the stairs beyond.
She could see no light at all as she crept down, but at the bottom, she found an unlocked door that opened easily. Listening intently, she heard nothing, so crept up the few steps to ground level and instinctively followed the line of the building away from the lights at the front of the house, the terraces, and the drive. Philip would not exchange his stolen goods where anyone of the upper class was likely to see him.
The wind blew out her candle almost immediately, so she was soon blind and finding her way by feel. Warily, she rounded a corner and became aware of low voices alarmingly close. There was also light from a partially-shaded lantern, by which she glimpsed two figures close to an outhouse wall. Fortunately, the light also showed her an arch cut into the wall beside her, and she slipped into it out of the men’s sight. There was a narrow door beside her, back into the house, which might yet come in useful.
No one seemed aware of her so far, and she was able to edge closer again and peer out from the arch. One of the men was definitely Philip. He was unloading things from his pockets into a canvas bag held open by a second man with his back to her.
There followed a short, whispered argument, presumably over price, and then the second man handed over a roll of banknotes, which Philip hastily pocketed.
Suddenly, there was more light from lanterns and flaring torches. Marcus was there, looking large and grim and uncommonly dangerous, as was Alvan and several rougher looking men who might have worked for Alvan or the magistrate.
Both Philip and his receiver backed instinctively away, but another group of men led by Sydney Cromarty and Richard Maybury hurried past her archway and spread out, cutting them off.
Holding her breath, Helen must have been so absorbed in the scene outside that she did not register the click of the door behind her. Until an arm snaked around her from behind, pinning her arms to her sides, and something cold slid along her throat.
“Now what on earth can you be up to?” wondered a familiar, feminine voice, not bothering to disguise its spite. “Nosey little creature for a disgraced governess, aren’t you?”
“I may be curious, but the disgrace is yours,” Helen retorted before the cold thing pierced her skin, and she realized it was a dagger. A dagger with an expensively jeweled hilt, no doubt stolen from the duke’s historic collection. Her blood chilled.
Phoebe Marshall laughed softly. “Yes, I still hold all the cards, and this time, there is no mercy for you. Move.”
Phoebe pushed her forward—to use her as a hostage to free her husband, Helen could only suppose with some despair and considerable recrimination. That she should be the one to mess up this effort which would have benefited her the most.
But as she stumbled forward in Phoebe’s hold, the woman gasped, halting abruptly as she took in the scene of several men laying hold of her husband and their fence. And instead of crying out that she had a hostage, she seemed stunned. Phoebe truly hadn’t expected this. She had imagined their plans were foolproof, her only minor problem being the nosy governess.
Helen knew the woman’s inaction was only temporary, as her brain adjusted to these new and unexpected obstacles. So, before she could recover, Helen threw back both elbows, propelling herself forward out of Phoebe’s hold. The dagger scraped across her skin, but without thought, she reached for it, tearing it from Phoebe’s hold and spinning around to face her.
And there was Marcus, white-faced with a fear she had never imagined him capable of.
“You’re bleeding,” he said hoarsely.
Ridiculously, she could only smile in wonder and happiness, because all his care was for her.
She touched her throat, feeling the scratch, the dampness of a small trickle of blood. “It’s nothing.”
“Idiot!” Phoebe yelled at her captured husband. “Fool! You’re on your own now!” And with that, she ran back the way she’d come.
From instinct—rather than her conscious desires which were all to stay with Marcus—Helen bolted after her, through the arch and the narrow door beyond. Feet pounded behind her as she sped as quickly as she dared along a dark passage, up some stairs to another, lighter passage. And then Phoebe burst into the great hall.