Page 56 of Lady Beast's Bridegroom
“Here! What are you on about?” George demanded. “She ain’t no Lady Ransome. Leastwise, that’s what that there lord said.”
Mrs. Parker advanced on the men, and although they were bigger and taller than her, they both backed away. “Go on. Hurry up with you. And don’t barge in here when you get back. Put the bucket outside and call through the door.”
Arthur scurried away. George grumbled some more, but he left.
“I’m sorry about that, dearie,” Mrs. Parker said. “They’re not bad men. Just stupid. Now, you are not to worry. This place is not as bad as some others. The doctor says the patients are to betreated as guests. Not that I would keep a guest in a room like this, but still.”
“Will you help me?” Arial asked.
“As much as I can, my lady, but you can’t expect me to risk my job, now, can you? I’m just going to get you a clean shift to put on after your wash. I’ll lock the door while I’m gone and take the key with me, so you need not worry.”
The warder’s repeated advice not to worry was rather alarming. Arial was pleased to hear the tumblers fall into place as Mrs. Parker kept her word and locked the door.
Arial continued standing. She did not want to sit on the bed, or even the chair, until she was clean. She was still nauseous and dizzy from the remnants of whatever they had given her to make her unconscious. She wanted nothing more than to lie down, pull the blanket over her, and go to sleep.
No. That wasn’t true. She wanted nothing more than to be safe and Peter’s arms again. She began praying he was unharmed. The thought of a world without him was too dismal to contemplate.
She offered a few prayers for herself and for the baby. For Mrs. Parker was a questionable ally, and she had no others in this place.
*
Peter stood backas the king’s men, the magistrates, hammered on the Earl of Stancroft’s front door, and banged on it again when there was no immediate response. It was near dawn, the sky sporting ribbons of pink and color slowly seeping into the landscape below.
Three hours ago, Peter and John had reached the inn where Arial had stopped for the night, to find that the search for Peter’swife had been fruitless. No one had seen her taken. No one knew who took her.
Her own people suspected the Earl of Stancroft and his wife, who had left the inn shortly before Arial arrived. But the local constables dismissed their claims as nonsense, and had done nothing to pursue the couple, and the local magistrate had agreed with them.
The search he ordered had found Sergeant Miller, in a ditch a couple of miles out of town. His throat had been slit. “Did you not find it suspicious,” Peter asked the magistrate, “that the last man seen with my wife was found dead on the road that leads to Stancroft’s family seat?”
“Can’t question an earl without better cause than that, my lord. What did we have to go on? He and his cousin don’t like each other. He left the inn before she arrived. No evidence there.”
If they had found Arial in Stancroft’s carriage, no questioning would have been necessary, Peter thought. Despite his annoyance, he moved past the point. “We have a witness who heard him and another person planning my murder—which would have occurred if they hadn’t been so clumsy—and the abduction and imprisonment of my wife. Is that sufficient cause?”
Which brought them here. Standing in the earl’s forecourt, while the magistrates from three different parishes made a racket to be allowed in. One was the man investigating the kidnap. The jurisdiction of the other two straddled Stancroft’s lands, and they had insisted on both being present. Perhaps, Peter reflected, to hold one another up, since all three of the men were wary about demanding answers from an earl.
A sleepy butler in a nightcap, his bandy calves showing under the hem of a clumsily tied overcoat, opened the door. He was crowded to one side by the magistrates and John and Peter, whostarted forward at the first sight of movement. The magistrates’ constables, John’s ex-soldiers, and the footmen and grooms Peter had brought with him all followed behind, joining the crowd in the earl’s front hall.
“Now see here—” exclaimed the butler.
“We are here to see the Earl of Stancroft, in the name of the king,” declared the oldest and most pompous of the magistrates—the one who had refused to question Stancroft without evidence.
The butler bowed to combined authority and force and scuttled up the staircase to awaken his master. The local magistrate led the rest of the crowd in his wake.
Peter held John back. “Let’s go up last.” It would be interesting to see Stancroft’s reaction to Peter’s continued existence.
It was even better than Peter hoped. Stancroft was sitting up in bed, thundering about the invasion of his house and an Englishman’s inviolate rights when Peter made his way through the constables. Lady Stancroft stood in a doorway to one side of the bed, quivering with indignation. She saw Peter first. The blood drained out of her face, and she dropped in a faint.
“See what you have done?” Stancroft ranted. “My wife—” as he swept his gaze across his audience, he saw Peter. His mouth dropped open. He pointed, and stammered, “But you are dead. Flora had you killed.”
It should have been easy after that. He had condemned himself out of his own mouth. But he and a subdued but obstinate Lady Stancroft denied kidnapping Arial and disavowed any knowledge of the plot against Peter.
The magistrates ordered them arrested, to be held in their own rooms. They questioned the servants, particularly the grooms and coachman. They searched the earl’s study for incriminating papers. They stayed irritatingly close, so Petercouldn’t follow his burning desire to beat Arial’s location out of the Earl.
They did not stay close enough to Stancroft. Those deputed to guard the earl permitted him to go to his study and stood in the door watching him. When he pulled a dueling pistol from his desk drawer, they were too late to prevent him from pulling the trigger.
Lady Stancroft, informed of her husband’s demise, went into strong hysterics. Peter despaired of finding anything that would lead him to his wife.
Then the butler asked Peter for a private word.
