“Besides,” she muttered, “Chivers is the man we need.Nothing happens in this house without his knowledge.”
There was no obstacle to their entry through the kitchen door.A whole gaggle of people were discovered in the servants’ hall, enjoying a well-earned rest around the table.No doubt supper was all prepared and laid out in the ballroom’s large ante-chamber, giving the servants the remainder of this dance—music could clearly be heard drifting over from the ballroom—before they would have to serve it.
At sight of Tabitha and Meade, they all leapt to their feet in varying degrees of horror and alarm.Chivers surged toward them.
“My stepdaughter is missing,” Tabitha snapped at him.“Where is she?”
“Perfectly safe, my lady,” Chivers soothed.“She is with the mistress.”
“Where?”Tabitha demanded, although with marginally less fear.
But Chivers’s eyes swivelled.“I am not at liberty to say, my lady.”
“You will not be at liberty at all if you don’t,” Tabitha said savagely.
He looked positively frightened now.“But it is a wedding, my lady...”
“Withoutme?”
Chivers’s eyes widened.He swallowed.
“You must speak,” Meade said, every inch the army officer in command.
“I cannot imagine the mistress meant to exclude your ladyship.”
“Where?”Tabitha demanded.
Chivers sagged.“The library, my lady.Let me show you in.”
Neither Tabitha nor Meade waited to be shown.They flew up the servants’ stairs and across the hallway to the closed library door.Meade turned the handle.
Suddenly, Tabitha was terrified what she would discover on the other side of the door.
“It’s locked,” Meade said.
“I’ll fetch the key,” Chivers said, and bolted.
Inside the room someone cried out.There were frightening, scuffling sounds and grunts and someone saying in an unnaturally high, pleading voice, “Isbourne!Jack!Jack,please...”
Of course he would never agree to this wedding, but what in God’s name were they doing to him?
Tabitha raised both her fists to the door and thumped desperately once before Meade said curtly, “Stand back.”
He didn’t trouble with knocking, merely lifted his smart, military boot, and kicked viciously, twice.
The wood splintered and the door flew open.
Jack, his hair tangled and his coat ripped at the shoulder, was wrestling and heaving in the hold of Carily and Cousin Ralph.Close by, Lord Hazlett appeared to be wringing his hands.Louisa had covered her face in horror and Sir Peter, white faced, was commanding helplessly, “Stop this!Stop this now!”
At the sight of Tabitha, everyone froze, like a Hogarth drawing of some disreputable scene.Through it, Jack’s wild, furious gaze clashed into Tabitha’s.
As though he couldn’t help it, his face broke into a blazing smile that stole her breath.
Carily, taking advantage of his captive’s stillness, swung back his fist.
Meade strode forward, and grasped the fist, wrenching it hard behind Carily’s back.“Unhand my friend,” he snarled.
Jack, freed so abruptly on one side, backhanded Carily almost casually in the mouth while pulling free of Ralph.He strode straight to Tabitha, and she to him, grasping both his hands.
