Page 59 of The Secret Word
Once again, her common sense and her instincts conflicted. On the one hand, Martha had betrayed her before—though not, to her knowledge, recently. On the other hand, Clem would swear that Martha loved the babies. And there was the matter of her engagement to the footman…
“I am trusting you with my heart,” she told the maid.
“I would never betray you or Mr. Satterthwaite, or the twins,” Martha declared, and Clem believed her.
Downstairs a second cascade of knocks followed the first, louder and more peremptory.
“Go,” Clem said. They went by the servants’ door, which would take them downstairs to the basement. Clem didn’t ask where they were going. She had no practice lying. If she knewand lied about it, her father would see it on her face, and she had no idea what he might do.
She returned downstairs, and nodded to the footman. “Answer the door as soon as I am in the parlor,” she said. “Then send my father to me.”
Father entered the front door ranting about the footman’s tardiness and threatening him with dismissal. She hoped her servant knew it was an empty threat even if he hadn’t been following his mistress’s orders.
More footsteps sounded behind Father’s.
She didn’t hear what the footman said, but she heard Father’s reply. “In the parlor? Good. She can stay there. You two, guard the parlor door. You two, follow me.”
Clem darted out of the connecting door to the dining room and from there peered into the hall. A glance told her that the footman was attempting to forbid Father the stairs, but two of the men with him were forcing him out of the way.
Hurrying down the service passage that connected dining room to kitchen, she told the servants there to arm themselves with brooms or anything else they could reach and to follow her.
“I believe Mr. Wright has come to take away my son,” she said. She could not think of any other reason for this assault.
She sent the boot boy, to the stables for reinforcements, and then she raced up the servants’ stairs, her servants behind her. They took the door into the main passage through the bedchamber section, fearing that Father would be before her, but the boot falls from the floor above told her that the intruders had continued upstairs to what would normally be the nursery floor.
Thank goodness!That gave them a bit more time. All they would find was the perfectly appointed nursery Father had been shown on his visits, ready for when the babies no longer needed to be fed during the night.
Good.The more time Martha and Ann had to get away, the better.
“Search this floor and then the rest of the house!” Father roared. “I want my grandson!”
“Mary, Gareth, with me,” Clem said, her mind racing. “The rest of you, back to your work. Don’t try to prevent the search. If anyone asks you where the babies are, say you don’t know.”
“We don’t know,” said the cook, either in obedience or because that was the truth.
Before the tramp of feet reached the staircase again, Gareth had taken both cradles down to the storeroom in the basement, and Mary and Clem had hidden the bedding and anything else that looked as if it might belong to a baby under the bed, which had been pushed into a corner, but was now back in the center of the wall, with a dust sheet thrown over it.
At a cursory glance, the room was now unused.
She and Mary left the room by the servants’ door just as Father and the men with him began searching that floor. Clem had one more thought. “Mary, send a groom to go after Mr. Satterthwaite. Tell him that Father has come to try to take Master William away from us.”
That done, Clem settled herself in the parlor, and took out some needlework. Her heart was pounding. Her mind went over and over every step she had taken. What next? The babies would need feeding again within the next two hours. Could she put Father and his men off before then?
Where had Martha taken the children? Would she give them up to Father? The questions were all unanswerable. She could only wait, sitting there calmly with her mind racing frantically while her father rampaged through her house.
No! This is a mistake!This is not the way she would behave if she was innocent of hiding her children from her awful father. She put the needlework aside, and opened the parlor door.When she tried to step out, one of the men on guard put an arm out to stop her.
“Sorry, ma’am. We can’t let you leave this room.”
“How dare you,” she said. “This is my house. Who are you, and what is all this noise?”
“I don’t know who they are, Mrs. Satterthwaite,” said her footman, who was standing in the hall, glaring at the intruders. “They arrived with your father. He and three other men are upstairs.”
Clem raised her voice. “Father! Come down here and explain yourself! You cannot come in here and rampage through my house without so much as a by-your-leave. I shall have the law onto you. See if I don’t!”
The two guards exchanged glances. One looked worried, the other smug.
Father’s roar preceded him down the stairs. “Clementine Wright! Where is my grandson!”
