And Then She Fell (Cynster 19 Cynster Sisters Duo #1) (32 page)

He glanced around. He couldn’t afford to sit and wait in the chair. “When he brings Henrietta in here, I have to be free and able to save her.”

She would come to save him, that he didn’t doubt, so he would have to be in a position to return the favor.

“So . . .” He looked around again, this time with greater concentration, searching for anything that might help his cause. He didn’t see it at first, but a glimmer of light, of sunlight slanting off glass, drew his gaze to the area beneath the second window, the one further from his present position.

He squinted and, eventually, made out the shards of a broken bottle. “Perfect. Now . . .” He assessed his strength, debated, but he needed to get free as soon as possible; he had no idea when the murderer would bring Henrietta to the house, to the basement.

Summoning his will and his still-wavering strength, he planted his feet and slowly tipped forward, until he was standing, still lashed to the chair and bent over at a peculiar and rather painful angle. But, glory be, he had just enough freedom to shift his legs and feet and shuffle, foot by foot, across the floor.

Once he was standing over the shattered remains of the bottle, he had to work out how to get his hands on a suitable piece of glass—there were at least three he thought would suffice—without risking slashing himself in the process.

Eventually, he used the tip of one shoe to nudge one shard along the floor until it lay well clear of the rest. Then he went down, first on one knee, then on the other—a complicated maneuver that had him swearing—then, kneeling with his knees pressed together, he gauged the distance to the single shard, wriggled into position, and then tipped onto his shoulder.

The move jarred his head so badly he saw stars. He lay on the floor, panting, until the spinning stopped, then, carefully, he stretched his fingers, feeling, searching.

He had to shift a trifle further, but finally his fingers brushed the shard. He teased it nearer, into his hand, careful not to cut himself. Blood would only make the glass harder to hold, harder to work with.

Exhaling, he filled his lungs and waited until his heart slowed and his mind sharpened again, then he turned the shard and set what felt to be the sharpest edge to the rope—

Wait, wait, wait
!

What if the murderer didn’t bring Henrietta down to the basement?

James lay awkwardly twisted on the floor and tried to think. Forced himself to put himself in the murderer’s shoes, at least as far as he was able.

The murderer wanted to stage a double murder and make it appear to be a
believable
murder-suicide, with echoes of Lady Winston’s murder thrown in, and chances were he intended to carry out the foul deeds in the order he’d described, namely killing Henrietta first . . . and given the murderer’s cold-bloodedness, James had no difficulty believing that the blackguard intended to kill Henrietta in front of his own eyes.

From all Barnaby and Stokes had said, the murderer was more than sadistic enough for that.

But killing Henrietta and James in the basement wouldn’t support the fiction of a murder-suicide; such a setting would strike a discordant note, especially if Henrietta’s murder was supposed to be a replay of Lady Winston’s. The basement was hardly the place for a lovers’ rendezvous, and this murderer was very intelligent, and very aware of how the ton thought. So he would shift James to some more believable location.

“For instance, a room upstairs.” Twisting his still aching head, James glanced at the basement stairs, closer to him now; in the strengthening morning light he could see them clearly. There was no landing at the top, and the door opened inward. If he were free and ready to engage, and standing on the stairs when the murderer opened the door . . . James grimaced. “He’ll have plenty of time to shoot me, and if we grappled, I would be the one most likely to end falling down the stairs and breaking my neck.”

While that might put a crimp in the murderer’s plans, it wasn’t how James wanted this to end.

And such an end wouldn’t save Henrietta, and that, after all, was his principal and dominant aim.

From his strained position on the floor, he glanced at the windows, then sighed. Even once he was free, there was no way he could break out of the basement; the door was bolted on the outside, the windows were small, too small to fit through even if he could break their thick glass, and the murderer had told him the houses were deserted, so there was no reason to suppose that there would be anyone passing outside the windows for him to hail.

It took him a little while to convince his brain of what would have to be, and even longer to get his body to cooperate. Getting up onto his legs again was an excruciating feat, but eventually he managed it, and managed to laboriously work his way back across the room and set the chair down, with him still lashed to it, in exactly the same place where the murderer had left him. There was, thankfully, enough dust layered on the floor, smudged not just by the murderer’s boots but by countless others previously, for his shuffling progress across it to have left no obvious trail, and the murderer must have dragged him in, because his evening clothes were already too filthy for his recent brush with the floor to have made any additional impression.

Shifting on the chair, James settled again; closing his eyes, he concentrated, and managed to ease and inch the glass shard up beneath his shirt cuff, along the inside of his right wrist. He wriggled his fingers, shifted his hands, but the shard remained safely tucked away, ironically held in position by the rope that bound his hands.

Slumping in the chair, he ran through the possible scenarios again, but there was nothing more he could think of to do.

Closing his eyes, he worked at relaxing his muscles and getting what rest he could—until the murderer returned to fetch him to wherever the blackguard intended to bring Henrietta.

H
enrietta kept her distressing news entirely private all through the morning. Not because she wished to but because she had to; given that James’s life was at risk, she had to take the murderer at his word and assume he would know if her family was alerted to his plan. So she couldn’t allow anyone who might react precipitously to know of the murderer’s demand. And she had to go about her life as if nothing at all was wrong.

It was early afternoon before, by dint of a whispered word at this at-home, at that morning tea, she managed to arrange a meeting restricted to those she felt sure she could trust—her three sisters and her sister-in-law. They, she knew, would understand her predicament; at the very least she could rely on their advice.

After reassuring her mother that she would remain safely indoors and would be sufficiently well entertained by the other four, all of whom, having answered her summons, seconded that assurance, Henrietta watched Louise leave on her usual afternoon social rounds, then she shooed the others, all curious as to why she was suddenly so intent, into the back parlor and firmly shut the door.

Turning, she watched as Amelia and Amanda sank onto the old chaise, and Portia sat in one armchair, while Mary curled up in her usual position on the love seat. Walking to the armchair facing the chaise, as the others settled and focused their attention on her, Henrietta surveyed their expressions, intrigued, expectant, and eager to hear what she had to tell them.

Looking up at her, Amanda blinked her eyes wide. “Well? You perceive us agog, as Lady Osbaldestone would say.”

Henrietta felt her composure falter. “I need your help.” She twitched the folded letter from her pocket and held it out to Amanda. “Read that, and tell me what you think.”

Taking the letter, Amanda smoothed it out, briefly scanned, then, her expression abruptly somber and serious, returned her gaze to the top of the letter and read the villain’s message aloud.

Hearing the words, flatly rendered in Amanda’s clear voice, underscored the dread Henrietta felt, crystalized the threat to her life, to her and James’s future. She abruptly sat, hands clasping tightly in her lap.

Amanda reached the end of the letter and its chilling closing sentence.

A brief moment of silence ensued, then Mary looked sharply at Henrietta. “You haven’t told anyone.” Statement, not a question.

Henrietta gestured at the letter. “How can I? If I tell Papa he’ll send word to Devil, and then . . . well, you all know what will happen.”

“Heaven help us, but we can’t have that,” Amelia said. “They’ll be roaring around rattling sabers in the streets.”

“Exactly.” Grim-faced, Amanda decisively stated, “They—Devil and the rest—cannot be allowed to know.”

Portia leaned forward and laid a hand over Henrietta’s tightly twined fingers. “You’ve done the right thing—come to the right people. We’ll help—of course we will.”

Henrietta managed a genuine, albeit weak, smile. Looking from Portia’s earnest expression to her elder sisters’ faces, she watched them grimly, determinedly nod, the same sisterly support lighting their eyes. She glanced at Mary.

Just as Mary stated, “The first thing we need to do is to work out a plan to defeat this villain, and then”—eyes narrowing, she went on—“decide what help we require to make our plan work, and
then
decide who we can trust to assist us. And then make it happen.”

They all studied Mary for a moment, then Amelia said, “That’s true enough, but I think we can agree from the outset that whatever our plan is, we cannot—simply
cannot
—let Devil and Vane and the rest of that lot know anything about this at all.”

“Indeed,” Portia said. “And if you think of who this villain must be—a gentleman of the ton, of the right age for Lady Winston to have had as a lover, and the right sort to have been present at the gala—then his way of monitoring whether you tell others and alert the family will almost certainly be via watching them—Devil, Vane, and your older male cousins.”

“Indeed,” Amanda said. “They—our male cousins—are the ones he’ll be watching to see if you keep his secret. If they know of it, they’ll give it away instantly—he’ll only need to look at their faces, at the set of their jaws, the way they stalk about.”

“And most likely he belongs to the same clubs as they do,” Mary put in.

“That,” Henrietta said, “is why I haven’t told anyone else.” She glanced around at their faces. “Only you four. Mama or Papa would insist on telling Devil—to their minds, that’s the way difficulties are always dealt with.”

“Precisely.” Amanda nodded. “So let’s all agree that, while we appreciate that they’re going to be very unhappy about not being told of this, we cannot tell anyone who will involve Devil and the others, and that in meeting this challenge we can’t call on their aid. We have to go forward and deal with this ourselves. So”—she glanced at Mary—“as Mary said, let’s work out our plan.”

“Obviously,” Amelia said, resettling her shawl, “you’re going to wait for the villain’s next note, and then go and meet him wherever he stipulates. Until you learn where he’s keeping James, you’ll need to do exactly as the blackguard says.”

“Once we know where James is,” Mary said, “we can act against the villain, but not before.”

They fell silent, all thinking. Eventually Portia said, “That’s our first hurdle—working out how Henrietta can go and meet with this murderer in safety, without us doing anything that will alert him to others knowing. He has to believe that you”—she glanced at Henrietta—“are quite alone. Only then will he lead you to wherever he’s keeping James.”

No one argued, just vaguely nodded in agreement. Henrietta waited, glancing around the faces, all faintly frowning as they tried to see how . . .

Portia drew in a deeper breath and said, “I’d like to suggest that we seek advice from someone who knows more about dealing with villains than we do. Someone we can trust with this, who’ll understand our situation.”

Amanda opened her eyes wide. “Who?”

“Penelope,” Portia said. “If anyone can help us devise a workable plan to capture a murderer, it’ll be she.”

“Of course.” Amelia looked at Henrietta. “Penelope will know how to manage this.”

Amanda raised her hand. “I third the motion.” She glanced at Mary, then looked at Henrietta. “What say you two?”

“I’m in favor,” Mary said. “I don’t know enough about villains, and Penelope assuredly does.”

Henrietta pressed her lips together, but she really had only one question. She looked at Portia. “How can we arrange to see Penelope without alerting our villain?”

“That’s easy enough,” Amelia said. “It’s early afternoon—the perfect time for us as a group to pay a family call on Penelope to see her baby son, little Oliver.”

“We can make it appear that you’re reluctant,” Mary said, standing and shaking out her skirts, “but that the four of us are dragging you out, insisting that you can’t sit at home alone.”

“Projecting the right image will be easy,” Amanda said, “and we can make our diversion to Albemarle Street appear spontaneous, an unplanned visit—one with no ulterior motives—just in case the blackguard has people watching this house.” She glanced at Portia. “Do you think Penelope will be in?”

Portia nodded and rose. “Knowing my little sister, at this hour, with Oliver so small, Penelope’s sure to be at home, most likely consorting with some ancient Greek.”

“A
ncient Mesopotamian, actually.” Penelope ushered the five of them into her drawing room half an hour later. Following, she shut the door. “Jeremy’s given me some of his translations to read. Quite fascinating.”

The others, engaged in taking seats on the twin sofas, exchanged glances but didn’t respond.

Waiting until they all sat, then resuming her position in the armchair angled to one side of the fireplace, a massive old tome lying open on a small table alongside, Penelope surveyed them. “But what brings you here?” Her gaze sharpened as she looked from one to the other. “Has something happened?”

“Yes.” Henrietta, seated between Amanda and Amelia on one sofa, decided to take charge before anyone else did. “The blackguard has seized James and is dangling him as bait to force me to give myself up to him—to the villain.”