“I will send someone to fetch Duncan and any of the others who are available. You search the room for the least thread of evidence or any clue left behind. I will learn who on the hotel staff might have been in this area in the last two hours. For now, set your regrets behind you: You are a trained agent of the Crown. Find us a clue to where we might locate Lady Emma. She is frightened and she is depending upon us to rescue her once again.”
“It was youon the street in Bletchley,” she had foolishly declared when she should have turned immediately to stage an escape. Surely, she could have outrun her tormentor, and Lords Orson and Graham were not so far removed. They would have come if she called out. However, she had paused long enough to make her accusation, and then the intruder had cocked a gun and pointed it at Emma’s face. There had been a time when Emma had held no idea of the real damage a gunshot could exact upon a person, but now, she was not so innocent. Lord Duncan had been shot in the shoulder and had nearly died from his wound. Moreover, she had shot the intruder last evening, barely wounding him, and that man had to be heavily bandaged. Being shot in the face would surely kill her.
“We shall discuss my appearance in Buckinghamshire later. For now, I wish to know where the jewels are located?” her intruder said, again raising the gun a bit higher and pointedly aiming it at Emma.
“Jewels? I do not understand,” Emma stated, truly confused.
“The sapphires! Where have you hidden the sapphires? Your mother’s sapphires!”
Before Emma could say she knew nothing of sapphires, or any jewels for that matter, her captor heard Mrs. Ottoway, who was calling Emma’s name. “We are exiting through the servants’ passage. If you call out to anyone, I shall place a bullet in your companion’s skull the moment she enters the room. Now move!”
Emma wished to refuse, but she would have no one else to know danger in saving her. She dutifully crossed to the servants’ passage, pausing briefly to pick up a vase and several papers strewn about the floor to set them upon the table, carefully palming a small card, displaying an image of the hotel on it.
“What do you think you are doing, you stupid cow?” her captor said as the woman shoved Emma in the buttocks with her foot while Emma was bent over, nearly toppling Emma onto herhead Even so, Emma had known success: She was determined to save herself this time. Lord Graham had said she was strong and could be her own savior, and she meant to prove the man correct.
They had entered the narrow hallway and stairs, and her captor retrieved a burning candle left behind, likely one her tormentor had used to search Emma’s quarters.
Though it was not the time or place to make odd assumptions, Emma immediately wondered if she had ever been in a servants’ passage at any of her homes. She thought perhaps she had done so as a small child when her parents had been stationed in Austria in the early 1790s. She assumed she often stole sweets from the plates of delicious desserts common in diplomatic households. Yet, she could not say with any assurance whether such memories were real or wishful thinking, and that idea saddened her more than the knowledge that this could be her last day on the earth. She would lose both the idea of making precious memories with her own children and her life on the same day.
Therefore, she tore off a small corner of the card and let it slide down the front of her gown to land on the stairs. Then another and another. Some pieces were larger than others, but the card was large enough to carry her to the outside.
“The carriage along the street,” her captor instructed as she blew out the candle, and they stepped out in the semi-darkness of a London street. Within a minute, her captor gave the hackney driver the directions and nudged Emma into the coach. She dropped the last of the card on the ground. Seated in the coach’s darkness, Emma glanced towards Grosvenor Square. Less than a half hour earlier, she had been safe and at Lord Orson’s side once more. Now, she might never see the man again.
Richard made hisway about Emma’s quarters, while Graham and Mrs. Ottoway spoke to the hotel porter, who momentarily complained about letting rooms to ladies until Graham backed the man against the wall. “Lady Emma is not to blame, but rather someone on your staff who likely took a bribe and allowed a stranger into Lady Emma’s suite either through the main door or the servants’ entrance. Now, her ladyship is in danger, and I will bring down the power of the British government upon your head if one hair on her ladyship’s has been displaced. Now, be from my sight and discover what I mean to know!”
“Did you send someone to carry a message to Duncan?” Richard called out as he picked up many of Lady Emma’s belongings and either tossed them into a pile of ruined clothing or folded them to place upon the trunk at the end of the bed.
“The note is on its way. It should only be a matter of a half hour or so before Duncan appears.”
With the hotel porter’s absence, he said, “What does Lady Emma hold that is of such interest to her tormentor? Obviously, Theodora and I saw the few clothes and footwear Emma’s household shared with their mistress. I know of no jewelry she has worn of late.”
Graham suggested, “What of the messages of which Lady Emma was so frightened?”
Richard had nearly forgotten the notes that Lady Emma had hidden away from herself. “Mrs. Ottoway, where did you say Lady Emma’s bag was stored?”
“We placed the cloth bag on the top of her ladyship’s wardrobe. She did not want to see it. At the time, I did not understand her purpose. I thought perhaps it held what she hadworn when she was attacked. I did not ask, and Lady Emma did not say.”
Richard looked to the wardrobe, but saw nothing until he dragged a chair closer and stepped upon it for a look. Just as Mrs. Ottoway had described, a cloth bag rested on the top, blocked from view by the decorative wooden trim on the top of the furniture. Securing the bag, he stepped down and carried it to the bed to open. Pulling out one stack and then another, he said, “Both stacks are tied together with black ribbon. Is that a reference to the nature of the tales?”
While Graham and Mrs. Ottoway spoke to the members of the hotel staff responsible for the suites on this floor, Richard carried a candle closer to the bed and loosened the ribbon on the messages that appeared to be the first one Lady Emma had received based on a date in the corner of each. There was nothing to identify the letter as postpaid or unpaid or “1dDue” or free, nor of the mileage it covered to be delivered. He had not taken notice of whether a letter box had been in use at Donoghue House, but he did not think so. “Likely hand delivered to Lady Emma’s door, and that dastard of a butler accepted them each time. Delivered by the culprit or someone paid to carry them to the house?” All were questions for which he must still learn the answers.
Each appeared to be a single sheet, which was common, for even long letters were often crisscrossed, writing down the page and turning the paper at an angle to write more between the lines. Each had been folded in the middle and then folded in thirds and the ends folded together, with one end tucked inside another, though many had been hastily refolded, and so they were a mishmash of sizes, but they appeared to have been pressed flat. Only Lady Emma’s name and the house’s name had been written on any of them. Some, in fact, had no name or placeat all. A bit of hot wax had sealed some of them, but, again, not all.
At length, Richard chose one and unfolded it to read:
Your parents do not want you. What secrets do they keep regarding your birth?
The next message carried a date of some three weeks later.
Did you ever wonder why you are so unlovable? Your mother would choose any other available as her daughter, rather than choosing you, for no one could love you.
“What do they say?” Graham asked as he came to stand beside Richard. He handed his friend the two he had read and reached for another one.
“Dear God!” Graham groaned. “Do you remember all the nasty and snide remarks each of us tolerated regarding our parentage when we were in school? But nothing like this! Though the words were harsher, we knew what to expect, for Duncan and Lady Elsbeth had warned us of such people. Those taunts did not eat away at our souls, as would these. What do the others say?”
Richard reached for the second stack and tugged the top two from the others. He handed one to Graham, while Richard unfolded the one he held. He read it aloud.
If you wish me gone, you must pay. I want your mother’s gold sapphires. All three of them. I deserve them, for you are not worthy of them. You are a deplorable example of the haut ton. The world would be a better place without you in it. Perhaps I will do away with you myself. You have one week before I shall pronounce the day you die.
