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“Lord,” the earl said. “All this time, Bertram has maintained his innocence, and then those two notes surfaced in the last day or two. It’s truly possible we have the wrong man incarcerated.”
“We have to figure out who has her and where she is,” Zach said, his nerves jumping. “We must find her. I cannot live without her. I need her.”
“Yes, yes, of course. I’ve been told Mr. Graves is ill, but I will go his chamber and talk to him. He’s the one who knows all the comings and goings around here, and he will able to point us in the right direction.”
“If you don’t mind, I will go with you.”
“I don’t mind at all, Newland. You’ve proved your devotion to Sophie. Let’s go see what we can find out.”
Zach followed Brighton to the servants’ wing, where they knocked on the door to Graves’s chamber. No answer.
Brighton knocked harder. Still no answer. “Graves, I know you’re not feeling well, but we need to speak with you right away.”
Still no response.
The earl turned the doorknob and opened the door. Graves was not in his room.
“Where has he gone?” Zach asked, his heart stampeding.
Brighton shook his head. “I’m afraid I don’t know, but I do not like the look of this one bit.”
Zach’s stomach dropped, and nausea overtook him. “It was Graves, wasn’t it, who implicated Bertram?”
The earl nodded. “Graves has been in my employ for over thirty years. He has always been a gentleman. I can’t believe he would do something so despicable.”
“I suppose we don’t know for sure,” Zach said, “but we’ve got to find Sophie, Brighton. I cannot allow anything to happen to her.”
“Nor can I. Her mother would die if something happened to one of her daughters. We went through enough last year, when Sophie was kidnapped and Ally was beaten. And now with Ally nearly losing her life in childbirth…” Brighton shook his head. “Plus, I love these girls as if they were my own flesh and blood. We must find her.”
“But where do we start?” Zach’s head ached. He had to figure this out. Had to…
“Graves had a brother who was a tenant on the Brighton land years ago. We’ll start with that information. Let’s go to my office.”
Brighton found the requisite information, and he and Zach saddled some horses to ride out to the parcel of land that Graves’s brother had once let. They each had pistols. Horses could go faster, and they were less apt to be seen. Zach had wanted to ask Evan to join them, but the Earl refused. Evan and Ally had been through so much already.
Zach fought back rising bile the whole way. He could not lose Sophie. She had become so important to him in so little time, and he was not going to give her up without a hell of a fight.
They finally arrived on the parcel of land a half hour later. A small dwelling stood in the distance, and a couple of horses were tethered to a fence post.
“Are there new tenants on this land?” Zach asked.
The earl shook his head. “No. There should not be anyone here. This is an older piece of land and a dwelling that we haven’t renovated.”
Zach’s heart leaped into his throat. Sophie was here. He could feel it in the thick air. And she needed him.
“Be quiet,” Brighton urged him. “We don’t know how many men he has.”
Zach nodded, his hand resting on the pistol in his waistband.
The earl went first, opening the door.
Like a flash of lightning, a man knocked the earl on the head with a candlestick, and he went down.
“I got the other one, Jake,” another man said, grabbing Zach, taking his pistol, and throwing it onto a dirty sofa.
“Where is she?” Zach demanded. “Where is Lady Sophie?”
“So you’re here for the lady. I was wondering when someone would come for her. She’s in the bedroom…tied up at the moment.”
