“Then assist us or the doors to this establishment will be closed faster than you may descend the stairs to the private drawing room below,” Graham ordered, his irritation apparent.
“Yes, my lord.” The man bowed and darted away.
Theodora wrapped her arm through Graham’s. “Perhaps we should all have a sideways scar on our cheek. When it twitches in anger, it is quite a frightening effect,” she teased. “Moreover, God only presents the strongest of his creatures with such scars,” she declared.
“Then God erred greatly,” Graham said. “I would gladly trade my so-called ‘strength’ for Beau Brummell’s fine looks, minus the man’s high shirt points, which would drive me slowly insane. To be looked upon and found handsome would indeed be lovely.”
“You are among the most handsome men I know,” Theodora argued.
Graham shrugged off her arm, ignoring the compliment. Instead, he asked, “Mrs. Ottoway, did you discover anything in Lady Emma’s messages?”
The woman looked up from where she had been working.
“I apologize, Mrs. Ottoway,” Duncan said with a small bow. “I did not realize you were part of Lady Emma’s party.”
“No offense taken, my lord. I was busy with this madness.” The woman gestured to the various stacks of notes upon the bed.
“What do we have here, ma’am?” Duncan asked as he reached for one of the stacks and thumbed through them as the woman made her explanations.
“Someone has been sending our Lady Emma threatening messages,” Mrs. Ottoway told him. “From what I can tell, it has been occurring for more than a few years.”
“How did Lady Emma come to be in possession of these particular notes? Were they delivered to her here?” Duncan asked, his frown deepening.
Richard told him, “Evidently, Theodora and I delivered them to Lady Emma in the bags we retrieved for her ladyship from her home.”
“We should have searched what was presented to us,” Theodora said. “I did not approve of the attitude of Lady Emma’s butler.”
Duncan said to Mrs. Ottoway, “Would you mind explaining, ma’am, how you have separated these messages? There must be at least one per month for several years.”
“They began close to two and a half years prior, my lord,” the woman shared. “Those in the beginning carried the theme of how ‘unlovable’ the world found Lady Emma to be. There are nearly a dozen of those types of messages. Those are the ones you hold, my lord.” Mrs. Ottoway handed Duncan another stack, while Duncan passed off the ones he had been reading to Richard. Both Graham and Theodora looked over Richard’sshoulders as he flipped through them. These were the ones he had seen previously.
Mrs. Ottoway continued, “The ones you have in your hand now, my Lord Duncan, began about eighteen months ago. As you are likely to agree, these are more threatening than the ones Lord Orson holds. They also have a more caustic tone and they use quite a few derogatory terms. Lady Emma told us earlier this evening that she had asked her lady’s maid to destroy these, but the butler, Mr. Palmer, had forbidden it. What authority, my lord, does a servant have over the mistress of the house?”
“None of which I have ever heard,” Duncan mumbled as he continued to read the messages. “I imagine Lady Emma became quite frightened when she received these. The poor child; she had no one to trust. I wish I had known.” At length, he handed those he held to Graham.
“The last half dozen or so move from degradation to pure threats. They are more detailed and the consequences described for not complying are frightening, to say the obvious.”
Duncan asked, “These three mentioned gold sapphires. Do we know if they have been found? The date on this message correlates with when Lady Emma was attacked. We must assume our Emma either knew nothing of the sapphires or refused to part with them.”
“The message says the sapphires belonged to Lady Donoghue,” Theodora observed as she looked over her father’s arm. “The jewels could be in the Netherlands with Emma’s mother.”
“Earlier,” Richard told them, “Lady Emma told us an unusual tale. I am confident, Theodora, that you will recall all the women we met at the newsprint office?”
“Of course, I do. We have heard nothing from any of them since our call,” Dora said in obvious dissatisfaction.
“Not completely true,” Richard confided. “On Sunday, after church, I pretended I was going to walk home after services. I had positioned Mr. Bould several streets away, so those following me would be required to race back to their horses if they meant to give pursuit. Therefore, I first walked north, quickly reaching the corner of the street upon which Donoghue House sits. Naturally, I looked in the direction of Lady Emma’s house.”
“Naturally,” Theodora teased.
Richard shrugged off the insinuation. “Anyway, who do I see leaving Lady Emma’s house, but the taller woman of the three to whom we had spoken only the day before. I followed her on parallel streets for several city crossings before I confronted her. She claimed to have called at Donoghue House to assure herself of Lady Emma’s safety and was told by Mr. Palmer that Lady Emma had returned to her parents on the Continent.”
“The Continent?” Graham said sarcastically. “Did she think we would be foolish enough to believe that Lady Emma returned to parents who have essentially ignored her for a decade? Not a very skilled liar, in my opinion.”
“Foolish indeed,” Duncan observed. “I believe, once we recover Lady Emma, this Mr. Palmer requires a bit of time in my office. He has been ‘master’ of Donoghue House for too long.”
“I will be glad to assist,” Richard assured. “The thing I wanted to share was that the woman from the protesters said her name was ‘Miss Babbington.’ When I mentioned the encounter to Lady Emma, she said Miss Babbington was her half-sister.”
“How is that possible?” Theodora demanded. “Why did one of the others not mention the connection?”
