‘Mrs Wilmott,’ said Tobias calmly. ‘Would you light the candle on my desk? There is a tinderbox in the top drawer on the right.’
Grace’s mouth was dry. She could not have formed words if anyone had promised her deepest desires in return. On legs that had turned to water, she made her way further into the room, her hands outstretched. When she was inside, she realised that some light was coming through an open window and she could just make out the shape of a large desk. It took far longer than she could have anticipatedto locate the drawer in question and even longer still to get the candle to light because her hands were shaking violently.
‘Are you alone?’ Tobias asked the intruder, as Grace tried and failed to light the candle.
‘Yes. No.’
‘Which is it, man?’
‘I am not alone. If I am not back outside in a few minutes then… then…’
‘Your imagination ran out, did it?’ asked Tobias, sounding supernaturally calm. ‘Could you not think what the others would do should you not return? I do not believe anyone would miss you, would they? Regardless, I think you are by yourself, otherwise you would not be the only one in here.’
The man groaned.
‘Do you know,’ said Tobias conversationally, ‘that I have three brothers, all as focused as me on keeping this house safe from intruders?’
The man whimpered as the flame finally flickered into life. The single candle did not provide much light, but it showed one man, his long legs twisted uncomfortably on the floor, and Tobias squatting down beside him, holding him in place, with both hands holding the captive’s arms and pressing them down on the man’s back.
‘Mrs Wilmott, would you be so kind as to wake the other members of my household?’
‘No,’ said the man, squirming in the duke’s grip. ‘I will tell you everything. I am by myself.’
‘Be that as it may, I am sure my brothers would not wish to miss this excitement.’ Tobias looked up at her, his expression impossible to read in the shadows of the room. ‘I believe I have this situation under control, Mrs Wilmott. If you would be so kind as to do as I asked.’
Grace glanced at the prone man and then to the slightly open window.
‘Ah yes. If you could close and lock that before you leave, I should be grateful.’
Grace did not know how Tobias could sound so serene, but his complete lack of terror made it somehow easier for her to walk to the window and pull it to. ‘It is broken,’ she said. ‘I cannot lock it.’
‘Very well. I shall have someone come along and fix it later.’
Grace found herself nodding, as if it were perfectly reasonable for Tobias to be talking in such a formal way when there was a man lying crumpled on his study floor. ‘I shall go and fetch your brothers then.’
‘Excellent. That would be wonderful.’
Grace stumbled from the room, her knees trembling violently. She’d thought herself prepared for confrontation, but all it had done was rake up memories of a past when she had been vulnerable and there had been no one to protect her. She had been worse than useless, a liability even, and although she had a task to perform now, she wasn’t entirely sure how she was going to complete it. There were so many doors in this house, that she could be knocking for hours before she found someone, and all that time, Tobias would be on his own with a criminal. She picked up her skirts and began to run.
Chapter Fourteen
Someone had lit a fire in the Blue Lounge. Grace pulled up a chair and sat as close to it as she could manage without climbing inside it. No matter how much the flames warmed her skin, she could not stop shaking. Further into the room, the adult members of the Dashworth family were speaking rapidly, talking over one another, or so it seemed to her in the cacophony of noise.
Only Tobias was silent. Standing with his arms crossed, he leaned against a wall, his dark eyes focused unseeingly on one of the long windows. Outside, the sky was still black, but it would not remain so for long.
‘I think,’ said Tobias, and the whole room quieted, even though he had not raised his voice, ‘that there is little more we can achieve tonight. I suggest we all try and get some sleep and discuss this in the morning.’
‘What about the children?’ asked Edward, his eyes wild with fear.
‘Let us make sure that there are adults sleeping in every room that contains a child. Waking them now would only cause panic. Sutton has woken all the footmen. We will have them keep watch on rotation. Our visitor is secure and will not be going anywhere until the watch take him away.’
Only Edward seemed inclined to argue. ‘I think we should hunt them down and…’
Grace didn’t listen to the rest of what was said; she was too focused on the significance of the word ‘them’. She had not heard what the man on the study floor had said directly. By the time she had returned to the scene, he was being led off by Sutton, tears streaking his pale skin but otherwise looking in one piece. Tobias had relayed his confession to her and his family. The intruder had been paid by, in his words, an older couple with strange accents, to get into Glanmore House and report back to them on any difficulties he faced as well as the layout of the building.
It may have been a total coincidence, but Grace did not believe so and neither, it seemed, did any of the Dashworths, because it didn’t take a genius to guess that ‘them with the strange accents’ were Grace’s parents. From that deduction it was not much of a leap to guess that they were after Charlotte. Control Charlotte and you could control her inheritance. Money was all that mattered to the two people who had raised her and her sister, and who had callously arranged their own daughter’s murder in order to get rich. Shame and anger twisted inside Grace. She wanted to sob or scream, and then comb all of London looking for the two people who had caused all this misery, but all she was capable of doing was sitting by a fire and trembling. It was like the aftermath of her sister’s death all over again.
‘Grace will have to stay here,’ said Tobias, the only words that could cut through her anguish.
