Rushed to the Altar (43 page)

He was debating various possibilities when two women came up the street on the opposite side. One of them wore a fur pelisse and an elegant little hat with a spotted veil. The other he guessed was her maid. When they stopped at the earl’s door, he pressed back against the alley wall. It had to be Clarissa and an abigail. She had to have Francis in the house with her. She wouldn’t have let him out of her sight once she’d snatched him from the baby farmer.

The door closed behind them and Luke remained where he was, tapping his teeth with a fingernail as he considered his next move. In a few minutes the door opened again and Clarissa emerged with her brother, who was bouncing a ball and jumping up and down with excitement. Clarissa took his hand firmly and they walked off in the direction of Piccadilly.

Luke smiled. He had them both now. All he needed was a plan to scoop them up. He waited until they had reached Piccadilly at the end of the street, then walked quickly after them, keeping a good distance back, losing himself in clumps of pedestrians. He reached Piccadilly and caught sight of them across the busy thoroughfare
entering Green Park. He didn’t follow them. He would be too conspicuous among the nursemaids and their charges frolicking among the bushes and around the pond.

He walked along Piccadilly and hailed a hackney.

Clarissa found some tranquillity watching her brother kicking his ball across the grass, running along the pathways, his still-thin cheeks red with cold and exertion. He’d stopped at the pond and watched enviously as two boys played with a wooden boat, pushing it into the pond with sticks.

“Next time, can Sammy come too, ’Rissa?”

“Maybe,” she said vaguely. “We’ll have to see. It depends on whether Mistress Newby needs him.”

Francis nodded and jumped gleefully into a pile of crisp brown leaves, carefully assembled by one of the gardeners. Clarissa smiled and strolled along the path, her eyes ever watchful beneath her veil. It was impossible to imagine Luke here, but she wasn’t going to drop her guard for an instant.

She let Francis play for an hour and then called him. “We must go home now, love. It’s nearly noon.” She smiled fondly. “Aren’t you hungry?”

“Starving,” he responded, taking her hand and prancing along beside her. “Mistress Newby promised to make apple fritters.”

“Then we should hurry.” She held his hand tightly
as they crossed Piccadilly, dodging a brewer’s dray piled high with beer kegs.

Francis, who, until his uncle had removed him from his own home, had never ventured into a town bigger than Sevenoaks, gazed in wide-eyed fascination at the scene surging around him. Carts, horses, carriages, vendors pushing carts shouting their wares, stray dogs dodging between carriage wheels.

“Can we come out again, ’Rissa?”

“Yes, we’ll try to take a walk every day.” She turned onto Half Moon Street. A hackney was parked on the opposite side of the street from the house; the two horses between the shafts stood with their heads down, a picture of melancholy.

The carriage began to move as Clarissa and her brother approached. She watched it warily but it was just an ordinary hackney. The horses lifted their heads as the driver cracked his whip and they pulled the carriage into the middle of the narrow street an instant before Clarissa and Francis reached their own front door.

It happened so quickly that Clarissa could never remember the exact sequence of events. The door of the hackney opened with sudden violence just as they were abreast of the vehicle, knocking her sideways against the wall of the house. She hit her head and for a moment saw stars, then she heard Francis scream. Rough hands grabbed her upper arms and dragged her bodily into the carriage. She fell to her knees on the floor as the hackney started moving with a jerk.

She looked up, stunned and bewildered. She could hear Francis whimpering but for a moment she could see only her uncle sitting on the seat opposite, his arms folded, regarding her with a thin smile.

Clarissa struggled up from the floor of the hackney and sat down on the bench next to Francis, who was cowering in a corner. She looked at her uncle. “You’ll pay for this.”

He reached over and with a leisurely movement gave her a backhanded slap across the face. “Oh, I doubt that, Clarissa. You and your brother are my wards. I have the legal authority to do anything I wish with either of you. If I took you before a judge and laid a charge against you that you had abducted my ward, you would find yourself picking hemp in Bridewell. As it is . . .” He smiled. “I have another solution for you . . . a much neater one.”

Clarissa felt cold. Her face burned and she could taste blood from the corner of her mouth where his ring had cut. She touched the lump on her head where she had hit the wall. Francis was still whimpering softly. She reached for him, drawing him against her breast, stroking his face. The child mustn’t know she was afraid. She had to ignore her hurts and somehow defy Luke, if only with her manner. But she couldn’t ignore her terror at Luke’s cold satisfaction, his absolute confidence that nothing would prevent him now.

She glanced at the door, wondering if she could fling it open and tumble out with Francis held tight against
her. But she knew it wasn’t possible. They’d probably fall beneath the carriage wheels and solve Luke’s problems themselves.

She leaned back, still stroking her brother’s hair, closing her eyes as if she had not a care in the world. Until the hackney lurched to a stop.

Luke leaned forward and Francis cried out. His uncle held a knife. He hauled Francis out of his sister’s embrace and held him with an arm around his throat, the knife pricking behind the child’s ear. “Step down, Clarissa, and stand quite still.”

She didn’t need him to amplify his threat. Francis had stopped whimpering and, dry eyed, looked at his sister in shocked inquiry, the tip of the knife pricking his skin. She gave him what she hoped was a reassuring smile and obeyed her uncle’s instructions, stepping down from the hackney to the street. They were outside Luke’s house on Ludgate Hill.

Luke descended, Francis held against his chest, the knife still pressed against the soft vulnerable point behind his ear. “Go up to the door and knock.”

Clarissa obeyed. Every instinct screamed that all would be lost if they went into the house and that door closed behind them, but she could see no way out. Not while Luke held the knife to the child’s neck. The door opened and with a sense of dread inevitability she stepped into a narrow, musty-smelling hall.

Luke and Francis came in behind her and the door closed. The only natural light in the hall came from a
fan-shaped window above the door. She looked around, trying to fix her surroundings in her mind.

“Upstairs.” Luke jerked his head to the narrow flight of stairs and Clarissa went up them, Luke pushing Francis behind her. At the top he directed them to a further flight, which took them into the attics. He told her to open a door, which led into a garret bedchamber of sorts. Poorly furnished, uncarpeted, with only a bed, a broken dresser, and a stained chamber pot sticking out carelessly from beneath the bed, it was bitterly cold, with wind gusting through an ill-fitting window.

Luke released Francis and pushed him down onto the bed, then he turned back to the door. “You’ll remain in here while I arrange your future accommodations.” He smiled at Clarissa. “I have the perfect solution for you, my meddling niece, but it will take me a few hours to put in place. Until then, I trust you’ll be comfortable.” He went out, closing the door, and the key grated in the lock.

Francis looked dry eyed at his sister. A bead of blood stood out against the white skin behind his ear. “What will he do?”

Clarissa forced a smile. “We’ll have to wait and see, love.” She went to the tiny window. It looked down on a narrow alley three floors below. She could see no drainpipe, no hand- or foothold. There was no way out there.

She turned back to her brother. Sitting beside him, she drew him tight against her, rocking him until after
a while he fell into an exhausted sleep, his head in her lap. She stroked his hair and stared sightlessly into the middle distance, for once in her life unable to think of any way out of her situation. Bleakly she wondered what Jasper would think when he discovered she’d gone. He’d never find her, probably wouldn’t even bother to look. Of course, if she’d confided in him . . .

Chapter Twenty-two
 

Lawyer Danforth was at his breakfast when his servant brought in the mail. “This come on the night mail from London, sir. Cost threepence postage.” He laid a letter on the table. “Can I fetch you another kipper, sir; Cook says she’s got two more on the go if you’d like ’em.”

“And exceptional kippers they are,” the lawyer said, rubbing his hands with a beaming smile. “Thank Cook, and tell her I’d be glad of another one.”

He picked up the letter beside his plate and instantly his gaze sharpened. The writing was Clarissa’s distinctive script. He had almost given up hope of hearing from her and had assumed that Luke had tracked them down on the road from London; presumably an accident to the carriage had delayed them. It happened often enough on the rough roads. With a sense of foreboding that he couldn’t quite explain, he took a knife and slit the wafer, unfolding the single, closely written sheet.

A frown darkened his customarily cheery countenance
as he tried to make sense of what Clarissa had written. There was no mention of an aborted journey home with her supposedly homesick brother, no explanation for Luke’s search for them. She wrote that instead of staying with her uncle, she had moved into a lodging house on Half Moon Street with a most respectable landlady. Luke’s house was too small to accommodate both her and her brother comfortably, and since she wished to remain close to Francis, at least until he was properly settled, this seemed like a good arrangement. The tutor’s family hadn’t proved suitable for her brother—he had found it hard to make friends with the other children—so he had returned to his uncle’s house. They were both well, and she was enjoying London. Her quarterly allowance was sufficient for her present expenses. And she had signed off with all the customary respectful greetings.

The lawyer set the letter aside and turned his attention to dissecting his newly arrived kippers. The delicate activity helped to order his thoughts. After a few moments he rang the handbell beside his plate. “Send to the stables for my horse, Paul,” he instructed the servant when he arrived in answer to the summons.

A meticulous man, he finished his breakfast to the last mouthful before draining his ale tankard, tucking the letter into the pocket of his waistcoat, and leaving the table. He collected his hat, whip, and gloves from the hall and went out to his horse, which was waiting for him outside the front door.

It was a brisk, sunny winter morning but he took little pleasure in it, barely acknowledging the greetings of those he passed as he rode through the village. He drew rein outside a substantial redbrick house on the opposite side of the village. His old friend Doctor Alsop was deadheading a bush of late-flowering camellias as Danforth rode up the drive.

“What brings you so early, George?” John Alsop waved his pruning shears. “Nothing wrong, I trust.”

“I don’t know, John.” The lawyer dismounted, tethering his horse to the post at the door. “A letter from Clarissa . . . rather a curious missive. I’d like you to take a look.”

“A letter at last . . . thank God for that.” Doctor Alsop hurried to the door ahead of his friend, stamping his feet on the mat before entering the hall. A fire burned in the grate, and the air smelled of beeswax and potpourri. “Ah, Eleanor, my dear.” He greeted his wife, who emerged from the kitchen regions just as they entered the house. “George has come on business concerning Clarissa. At last the girl has written.”

“Oh, I’ve been so worried,” his wife said, patting her plump bosom in agitation. “What does she say, John?”

“All in good time, my dear. We’ll go into my office. Would you send in some coffee . . . or . . .” John cast a professional eye over his visitor. “Perhaps something stronger would be in order . . . something to keep out the cold?”