“Why would he take her?” Nathaniel asked.
“I do not know. Perhaps he believes she can help him find Arabella. Perhaps he simply wants leverage.” Julian pressed a hand against his face. “What have I done? If I had not said what I said, if she had not overheard it, she would be at home right now, safe and not in a carriage with that man going God knows where.”
“We must find her. We must follow the carriage.”
“We do not even know in which direction it went,” Nathaniel said. “Not in this rain. No, we return to the house. The moment the rain lets up, we summon everyone, take every carriage we have, and spread out from this point in every direction. This is a lead, Julian. It is more than we had this morning.”
“Yes,” Julian said though he was barely listening. The sound of laughter and revelry drifted from inside the inn at his back and outside, thunder and lightning and driving rain. He stood between the two of them and felt, with a kind of dull certainty, that he had finally managed to ruin every chance at happiness he had ever had.
“Julian.” Nathaniel took him by the shoulders. “I will not let you dissolve into self-pity now. Your wife needs you. Once we find her, you can explain everything you need to explain. Now, let us get home. We’ll make a plan. We’ll get some maps. We’ll work out where this carriage could have gone from here.”
Julian nodded, and the two of them climbed back into the carriage and returned to the house. It stood dark against the night sky as they approached with only a few lights flickering in the windows. They climbed out and hurried inside, rain pooling at their feet in the entryway when Mrs. Parker came rushing up from the servants’ staircase below.
“Your Grace, you must come at once.”
She did not wait for a reply. She turned and disappeared back down the way she had come. Julian and Nathaniel exchanged one glance and followed at a run, the warm scent of beeswax candles in the main hall giving way to the sharper smell of tallow as they descended into the servants’ quarters.
“Quickly, Your Grace. She knocked at the door not half an hour ago, soaked through entirely. I scarcely recognized her at first, but it is her. I have made sure she is warm and given her something dry to wear.”
“Who…” Nathaniel started to ask, as they came through the door into the servants’ hall.
The words died on his lips.
Sitting by the hearth, her hands wrapped around a steaming cup, was Arabella.
CHAPTER 35
The man’s grip was ironclad as he dragged her up the stairs. The storm continued to rage outside, and she shivered, her gown soaked through from the run to the house. The building itself looked like something pulled from a gothic novel. They had driven up a hill—she knew it from the tilt of the carriage rather than from seeing it since the rain and the dark had obscured everything. What she had glimpsed of it from outside had looked almost like a tower, a castle rather than a house.
Inside, the age of the place was plain. It smelled of must and stone, and a winding staircase climbed ahead of her, up which she was currently being hauled. She stumbled twice. The man did not slow.
“Let go of me,” she demanded.
“In a moment,” he said and dragged her down a dark corridor lit by a single guttering sconce. He knocked at a door, waited for a man’s voice to call “Come,” and pushed her inside.
She stumbled forward into a room lit only by the fire. A crib stood beside the hearth.
“David.” She rushed to it. The child was, to her enormous relief, sleeping. She picked him up at once which woke him.
“Now, you’ve woken him,” said a voice from behind her. The same voice that had admitted them.
She turned and recognized him immediately. Sebastian Devereau.
“Why am I here? Why have you kidnapped me?”
“Oh, come now.” He waved a hand. “We need not be quite so dramatic. You are not kidnapped. You are reunited with your child. Or rather, my child, whom you stole from me.”
She wanted to fire back that they had taken no such thing—but the truth was, David was his child. She held the baby closer instead.
“What do you want? Why did you take him? Why did you take me?”
“I took him because he is mine to take. He was always mine. If his so-called mother had not stolen him from me in the first place, none of this would have been necessary.” He tilted his head. “As for you, you may thank your friend for your part in this little ordeal. And your husband.” He paused. “Where is she?”
Clara looked at him, momentarily confused.
He rose and took a few threatening steps towards her. “Do not pretend you do not know who. Arabella. Where is she?”
The truth was, she didn’t know. “I do not know,” she said. “And if I did, I would not tell you.”
