He dropped to the floor with much less grace than Caro had used when arranging herself.
“Really, Mick.” Caro shook her head at his clumsiness. “I’d expected more fight from a man like you.”
“Just another in a long line of men who underestimate ladies,” Kate said, shaking out her arm.
Caro got herself up from the floor and brushed off her gown. “We have to search for Effie now while we have a chance.”
“Agreed.” Kate bent down to remove the key from Mick’s hand and slipped it into her own dress pocket. Then, moving to the table beside the bed, where poor Mr. Thorn lay looking no better, she picked up a candleholder and lit the taper with a match from the box nearby.
While she did that, Caro walked quickly to the curtains, and one at a time she removed the thick cords being used to hold them back from where they hung on hooks on either side of the window. “We can’t afford for Mick to wake up and hurt Mr. Thorn again, or come after us,” she explained at Kate’s questioning look. Crouching on the floor, she bound first the prone man’s hands, and then his feet. Silently, she sent a prayer of thanks to the groom who’d taught her to tie a sturdy knot in case she ever had to secure a horse with rope instead of a bridle.
Rising to her feet, she noticed that Kate still held the small shovel in her hand. “You’d better exchange that for the poker. I suspect it will be easier to swing in a pinch.”
Kate did just that and the two peered out into the hallway beyond.
It seemed deserted. They stepped out and went in search of Effie.
A glance down the hall showed them that there were three additional rooms, and the stairs led up to another floor above.
Their room had been on the east side of the house facing the street. Quietly, they tried the door to a room facing the back garden. Kate held the candle high so they could see inside, but the room was empty of both furniture and people.
The other two rooms on the floor were the same.
Silently, Caro pointed above them and Kate nodded. They made their way as quietly as they could to the level above.
The layout there was identical to the one below. Four rooms off a narrow hallway.
Going in the order they’d followed before, they first tried the room above the one in which they and Mr. Thorn had been imprisoned. This room also had bedroom furniture, but it was empty of anyone.
Unable to hold back the desperation filling her, Caro gritted her teeth. Where was Effie? Had they removed her from the house after locking Caro and Kate away? If that was the case, they might never see her again.
Kate laid a hand on her upper arm and gave it a squeeze. “We’ll find her,” she mouthed.
Nodding, Caro kept going toward the room facing the back garden. When they reached the door, however, she heard a faint cry. Her pulse quickening, she tried to turn the knob, but it was locked.
Afraid to make any noise lest she alert Gert and Tate that they’d escaped, Caro gestured silently for Kate to use the key from Mick. Silently, Kate turned it in the lock and they pushed gently on the door.
“Who is it? Who’s there?” a voice called from inside the room. “I won’t let you touch me, Tate. I thought I’d made that plain enough. Now, leave me alone!”
When she saw that Caro and Kate had entered instead of Lord Tate, Effie—her hair disheveled and her clothing wrinkled—gasped. Her red-rimmed eyes widened and she began to cry.
“Thank God you’ve come,” she wept as Caro rushed to her side and hugged her close. “I was so frightened. They’ve got Francis. We must find him.”
* * *
Once Val mentioned his father to the man who served as solicitor for both the duke and Lord Tate, it was a matter of minutes before he and Eversham were back out in the street hailing a hansom cab for Portland Place.
“Having a duke for a father must be a useful card to have up your sleeve.” Eversham glanced at Val once they were in the carriage.
“You could have your grandfather to use on such occasions if you’d get that stick out of your backside and reconcile with your father’s family,” Val said with a sideways glance of his own. Eversham’s father, a country vicar, was the son of a baronet but had been cut off by his family when he’d chosen to marry below his station. Though his parents had long ago reconciled with the family, Eversham was unwilling to make nice with the people who had rejected not only his parents, but by extension him.
“Not for the wide world.” Eversham shook his head. “There are too many expectations. I’m content with my parents and Kate. And when I have need of assistance from the upper crust, I have you.” This last he said with a broad wink.
“I’m just happy my father’s name was enough to get us the address of Tate’s property.” Val tapped his hand against his thigh in agitation, unable to forget the reason for their errand.
From the set of Eversham’s clenched jaw, he hadn’t forgotten either.
“They aren’t foolhardy,” Val said aloud. “Do they take risks I wish they wouldn’t? Yes. But they are clever and I know Caro can talk her way out of any scrape.”
“You sound as if you’re trying to convince yourself, my friend,” said Eversham wryly. “I know because a similar litany is running through my head, only it has to do with Kate’s resourcefulness.”
“If I hadn’t been so quick to believe Tate’s claim that he’d been in Brighton that day, we might have caught him sooner,” Val said darkly. “I thought myself such a good judge of character.”
“I’ve been with the Yard for years.” Eversham clapped him on the shoulder. “While I do have a sense of when I’m being lied to, it’s not foolproof. No one is right one hundred percent of the time. That’s why we gather evidence to prove cases rather than simply jumping to conclusions based on gut instinct.”
“Well, I should have gotten some damned evidence, then.” Val thought back to how he’d left Caro to question the maid. If he’d insisted on Tate allowing her to be present when he’d questioned the man, might she have seen through him? The possibility filled him with regret at his decision to accede to Tate’s wishes that day.
It wasn’t the only instance he wished he’d behaved differently.
Why hadn’t he told her he loved her that afternoon as soon as he’d realized it? That he’d very likely never stopped loving her. Foolishly he’d thought there would be time later. Now he might not ever get the chance.
By God, if—no, when—he found her, he’d tell her so.
“They’re fine, Val,” Eversham assured him. “We don’t even know for sure that they’ve found Tate’s love nest.”
“We don’t know that, no. But as we’ve both agreed, they’re too clever for their own good.”
Eversham cursed.
They were silent for the rest of the drive, each man locked in his own grim thoughts.
When the cab stopped a few doors down from 24 Portland Place, it was in the gloaming, that time when the last light of the day cast an otherworldly blue sheen on the world.
The lamplighter was still making his way down the street and hadn’t reached this end yet.
Paying the cabbie, they disembarked and looked down toward the house where they suspected Tate was holding Effie.