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There were no certainties. No plans. No confidence that came from the knowledge that they had help on the outside. Once again, they were alone and trapped within Blackwell house and their prospects, with their every move now being watched with increased suspicion, were diminishing by the day.
Peggy stopped pressing and soon fell into her own rhythm of monotony. Marilee felt horrible that her friend seemed to be falling too into her pit of gloom, but she could no more pull Peggy out than she could herself. Their days were numbered. She knew it without a flicker of doubt. The solitude was a plague that sapped their strength and their life. Each day blended into the next. There was no change. There was no hope.
* * *
And then theday came when there came a blood-curdling scream from above stairs and then the slam of the front door with such force that the shattering of the nearby window could be heard throughout the townhouse. The sound roused Marilee from her lethargy. Raucous cries rang throughout and the sound of dozens of boots could be heard as servants scrambled for safety.
Peggy rushed into the room with wide doe-eyes, the look of sheer panic upon her features drove Marilee to her feet.
“We must go,” she hissed and began to yank at the window. “With haste!”
“What has happened?” Marilee asked. She tossed aside the stockings she was mending, but did not move. She felt frozen, apart from herself.
“I haven’t the faintest but the house is in chaos.” She turned and began to wrench open the lone window that had been such a task to reveal all those weeks before. “They are rounding up all those within, likely to take us to the brothel or God knows where else. I will not be separated from you! We must run! Now is our chance.”
Marilee sat looking at her in stunned silence. “Get up!” Peggy growled. “We must go.”
Marilee responded to her friend’s urging and began pulling at the window and forcing the hinges to splinter until the frame fell full away from the wall making a larger opening than the window alone. Together, they poked their heads out into the alley and breathed a sigh in unison that it was blessedly empty.
She gave Peggy a hand up so that she might scramble out the opening before her friend, lying on her belly in the alley, turned to pull her through to safety. They could hear a commotion at the back of the house and so there was only one route that may lead to their safety. Straight out to the fancy Mayfair streets. Her heart thrummed in her chest to the point of aching. Now, in the mayhem, was their one chance for escape. If they were gathered with the others, they might never see the light of day again.
“Stand tall,” Marilee whispered to her friend. “If we appear just two maids walking with purpose, then no one will look twice at us.” She followed her own advice, throwing her shoulders back and her chin straight so that she might seem as nothing more than a servant going from one place to the other. Miss Caroline had gotten them through the highway attack by feigning confidence, and Marilee would do so now with the hope of the same result.
Still, Peggy clasped her hand as they rounded the corner and could finally see beyond the oversized hedge that had blocked their view of the front step.
Three carriages blocked the way and what seemed an army of black-cloaked men bustled in and out of the townhouse.
“There’s two there!” one man shouted and blew a whistle to direct the attention of his companions to the two escaped maids. “Grab them!”
“Run!” Marilee shouted as she and Peggy turned tail and ran in the opposite direction.
Weakened, weary, and in full skirts they were no match for the men. In a moment, they were snatched up by their arms and dragged back to the townhouse despite putting up a blustering fight. Marilee thrashed and pulled, but to no avail. To her left she could hear Peggy resisting as well. The moment that she was forced back through the threshold all the fight drained from her and she sank against the hands that restrained her with the realization that her one chance of escape was now forever forfeit.
“We caught this lot trying to escape,” one of their captors declared with a victorious timbre.
“Kate? Peggy? Oh, thank heavens,” came the once voice that she would recognize anywhere. Marilee’s head shot up, and she struggled against her captor’s arms until, with a wave of his hand, Nikolas directed them to release his friends. “These two need not be questioned,” he explained. “They are of the innocent lot, as will be many of the others.” To her shock, they followed his command.
Marilee raced to where he stood at the base of the staircase and flung herself into his arms. She ought to have asked if he was cross with her. Ought to have waited for his permission or explained herself in some way. But the smile upon his face and his open arms said enough. She heard him chuckle and pull Peggy in at her back.
“We couldn’t find you,” he murmured. “I’ve never been so terrified. I feared maybe I was too late, and they had already moved you.” Marilee wondered if part of him had considered that she might have escaped due to her allegiance with their enemies, but she was too afraid to ask in the newness of their reunion.
“What are you doing here?” Peggy gaped as she and Marilee looked around at the hoard of men that bustled through the hall. Now that they had calmed and were able to look around, Marilee realized that the men were not the harbingers of evil that she had thought, but rather, it was the magistrate and the scarred Duke of Manchester, along with his men come to free them all.
“How did you manage this?” Marilee stammered at the same time.
Nikolas chuckled and enfolded Marilee in his arms.
She pulled away. “I must stink,” she said.
He did not deny the fact. “I do not care,” he said. Marilee could not help but curl further into him. Oh, how she had dreamed of this moment. She realized with a slight blush that the men around them were watching. Or, more to the point, looking everywhere else so that they werenotwatching.
Marilee disentangled herself from the hold she had on Nikolas and she and Peggy did their best to right themselves while flinging an onslaught of questions upon the poor man who merely shook his head and declared with a pointed look at Marilee that they would both have a lot of explaining to do, “all in good time.”
Marilee resigned herself to be satisfied with the promise that they might speak on it once they were removed from the chaos that surrounded them. Below she could still hear Mrs. Cavendish shouting and flinging obscenities as she was taken into custody. The sound of a scuffle foretold that her brutes were not willing to go down without a fight. Two of the magistrate’s men carried another up the stair and into the hall, the man hung loose, having had his daylights darkened, but was coming round. Despite the battle, the magistrate’s men had both the advantage of numbers and the element of surprise.
A door slammed above, and she heard a deep curse and a shout to those below that, “she’s not here!”
A moment later two male faces appeared over the rail to the landing and looked down upon the main hall. The young Duke of Manchester, stood at the forefront, but it was instead the elderly man behind his towering frame that drew Marilee’s gaze. She gasped.
