She ran down the hill at the back of the castle, toward the river and the small bunch of trees where they’d buried Lady Grey, and it wasn’t until she neared the river that she realized her mistake. Jamie was already there, squatting on the bank and tossing sticks into the swirling water. She stopped, panting and sweaty, and thought about turning around and sneaking back to the castle, but Jamie’d already seen her.
“Oy!” he called. “It’s my turn with Puddles now.”
“No, it’s not,” Abigail said, though she’d had the puppy all that morning.
“Is, too!” Jamie got up and came toward her, but then halted as he looked at her face. “Are you crying?”
“No!”
“’Cause it looks like you’re crying,” Jamie pointed out. “Did you fall down? Or—”
“I’m not crying!” Abigail said, and ran into the woods.
It was dark here, and she was momentarily blinded. She felt a branch hit her in the shoulder, and she tripped over a root, stumbling, but she kept going. She didn’t want to talk to Jamie with his stupid questions. Didn’t want to talk to anyone. If only everyone would just leave her—
She ran into something solid, and the breath was jolted from her body. She would’ve fallen if hard hands hadn’t grabbed her. She looked up into a nightmare.
Mr. Wiggins leaned down so close that all she could smell was the stink of his smelly breath. “Boo!”
She jerked, humiliated that she’d let him frighten her, but she was frightened. Then she looked beyond him, and her eyes widened in shock. The Duke of Lister stood not three paces away, watching them without any expression on his face at all.
* * *
ALISTAIR CAREFULLY FOLDED the letter to Vale. The way the mail carriages ran around here, he was likely to arrive in London before the letter, but it’d seemed a good idea to try and alert Vale, anyway. He’d decided. He would leave Castle Greaves, make the journey to London, and speak to Etienne when the other man’s ship docked. Alistair might be gone for a fortnight or more, but Helen could take care of the castle in his absence. He hated travel, hated encountering staring idiots, but he needed to know the truth about Spinner’s Falls enough to endure the discomfort.
Alistair was dripping sealing wax on the letter when he heard footsteps on the tower stairs. At first he thought it was the call for luncheon, but the footsteps were louder and quicker. Whoever was on the stairs was running.
As a result, he was already rising with a feeling of vague alarm when Helen burst through the doorway. Her hair was coming down from her pins, her blue eyes were wide and round, and her cheeks had gone quite white. She tried to say something but only bent, gasping, her hand at her waist.
“What is it?” he asked sharply.
“The children.”
“Are they hurt?” He started past her, visions of drowned, scalded, or broken little bodies filling his maddened brain, but she caught his arm with a surprisingly strong grip.
“They’re gone.”
He stopped and looked at her blankly. “Gone?”
“I can’t find them,” she said. “I’ve looked everywhere—the stables, the kitchen, the library, the dining room, and the sitting room. I’ve had the servants searching the entire castle this last hour, and I just can’t find them.”
He remembered the words he’d yelled at Abigail, and guilt swept through them. “Abigail and I had an argument this morning. She’s probably hiding with her brother and the puppy. If we—”
“No!” She shook his arm. “No. The puppy wandered into the kitchen alone two hours ago. I thought at first that the children had neglected him, and I was annoyed with them. I went looking to scold them, but I couldn’t find them. Oh, Alistair.” Her voice broke. “I was going to scold Abigail—she’s the eldest. I was thinking of the words, angry words, I was going to say to her, and now I can’t find her!”
Her anguish made him want to pound down walls. If Abigail was merely hiding, he’d have to punish her for the grief she’d caused her mother, whether or not it destroyed any relationship he might have had with the child. Right now, though, he had to do something, anything, to end Helen’s pain. “Where did you last see Abigail and Jamie? How long ago?”
He’d turned to the door, intending to go down and handle the search himself, when one of the maids rounded into sight on the stairs, panting heavily.
“Oh, sir!” she panted. “Oh, Mrs. Halifax. The children…”
“Have you found them?” Helen demanded. “Where are they, Meg? Have you found my babies?”
“No, ma’am. Oh, I’m that sorry, ma’am, but we haven’t found them.”
“Then what is it?” Alistair asked quietly.
“Tom the footman said he remembered seeing Mr. Wiggins in the village last night.”
Alistair scowled. “I thought he’d left the area.”
“That’s what everyone thought, sir,” Meg said. “That’s why Tom was so surprised to see Mr. Wiggins, although he was daft enough not to say so until now.”
“We’ll go to Glenlargo,” Alistair said. “Wiggins is probably somewhere about.”
He didn’t say that if Wiggins had taken off in another direction, their chances of finding him soon were slim. The knowledge that the manservant might have the children sent ice sliding down his spine. What if Wiggins was bent on some kind of revenge?
Alistair strode to a chest of drawers and opened the bottom one. “Tell Tom and the other footman that they’ll be going with me.” He found what he was looking for—a pair of pistols—and turned to the door.
Meg eyed the pistols. “He wasn’t alone, Tom said.”
Alistair stopped. “What?”
“Tom said that he saw Mr. Wiggins talking to another man. The man was very tall and finely dressed, and he carried an ivory cane with a gold—”
Helen gasped and Alistair saw that her face had gone slightly greenish.
“—knob. He wasn’t wearing a wig, Tom said. The man was balding,” Meg finished in a rush, staring at Helen. “Ma’am?”
Helen swayed, and Alistair put his arm about her shoulders to keep her from falling. “Go on ahead, Meg, and tell the footmen to ready themselves.”
“Aye, sir.” Meg curtsied and left.
Alistair closed the door firmly behind the maid and turned to Helen. “Who is he?”
“I… I…”
“Helen.” He took her gently by the shoulders. “I saw your face. You know the man Tom saw last night. Right now we have no way of knowing in which direction Wiggins and his accomplice might’ve taken the children. If you have any idea where they could’ve gone, you need to tell me.”
“London.”
He blinked. He hadn’t expected an answer quite that definite. “Are you sure?”
“Yes.” She nodded. Her face had regained some of its color, but now it held an expression of resigned fatality.
A wisp of unease uncurled in his belly. “How do you know? Helen, who was the other man?”
“Their father.” She looked up at him, her eyes grief-stricken. “The Duke of Lister.”
Chapter Thirteen
Truth Teller hid the horse he’d bought outside the castle walls. He guarded the monster all that day. In the evening, the sorcerer came as usual, and as usual, Truth Teller answered his question and left. But instead of retreating inside the castle, the soldier hid himself behind the cage of swallows. He watched and waited patiently until the moon had risen, and then he ran swiftly to the sorcerer. The sorcerer turned, startled, and Truth Teller blew the powder into his face. Instantly the sorcerer transformed into a little brown bat and flew away, leaving his robes and ring on the ground behind him. Truth Teller picked up the ring and offered it to the princess through the bars of her cage.
She looked at the ring and then at Truth Teller in astonishment. “Will you not demand a boon from me in exchange for the ring? My father’s wealth or my hand in marriage? Many men would do so in your place.”
Truth Teller shook his head
. “I only wish you safe, my lady.…”
—from TRUTH TELLER
Alistair stared at Helen and felt as if the earth shifted and moved beneath him. “The children’s father is a duke?”
“Yes.”
“Explain.”
She looked at him with tragic harebell-blue eyes and said, “I was the Duke of Lister’s mistress.”
He cocked his head to see her better from his good eye. “Was there ever a Mr. Halifax?”
“No.”
“You were never married.”
It was a statement, but she answered it, anyway. “No.”
“Jesus.” A goddamned duke. His chest was tight, as if held within the grip of a giant, terrible vise. He glanced down at his hands and was almost surprised to see he still held the pistols. He walked to the desk and put them back in the drawer he’d taken them from.
“What are you doing?” she asked from behind him.
He closed the drawer and sat back down behind the desk. He aligned the papers before him with care. Soon he’d have to get back to work. “I should think that was obvious. I’m putting away the pistols, calling off the chase.”
“No!” She flew across the room and slammed her hands to the desk. “You can’t stop now. He’ll have gone to London. If we follow, we can—”
“We can what, ma’am?” Anger was replacing the band about his chest, thank God. “Perhaps you’d like me to call out the Duke of Lister on your account?”
Her head reared back at his sarcasm. “No, I—”
He talked over her, the steam building. “Or simply knock on his door and demand the children back? I’m sure he’ll bow, apologize, and meekly hand them over. He can’t have wanted them much if he traveled all the way to Scotland to take them back.”
“You don’t understand. I—”
He stood to place his own balled fists on the desk and lean toward her. “What don’t I understand? That you whored yourself out? That, judging by the ages of your children, you sold your services for years? That you gave birth to those two sweet babes and made them bastards the same moment they drew their first breath? That Lister is their sire and therefore has every right under the laws of God and man to take them and hold them for as long as he bloody well pleases? Tell me, madam, what exactly do I not understand?”
“You’re being hypocritical!”
He stared at her. “What?”
“You’ve lain with me—”
“Don’t!” He leaned close to her, enraged almost beyond bearing. “Don’t compare what was between us to your life with Lister. I never paid you for your body. I didn’t sire bastards on you.”
She looked away.
He straightened, trying to control himself. “Dammit, Helen. What were you thinking to have not one, but two children with him? You’ve tainted their lives. It’s not so bad for Jamie, but Abigail… any man interested in her will know she is a bastard. It affects who and how she can marry. Was Lister’s money worth blighting your children’s future?”
“Don’t you think I know what I’ve done?” she whispered. “Why do you think I left him?”
“I don’t know.” He shook his head and stared at the ceiling. “Does it matter?”
“Yes.” She took a deep breath. “He doesn’t love them. He’s never loved them.”
He stared at her a moment, his mouth twisted, and then thrust himself away from the table with a barked laugh. “And you think that matters how? Will you go to a magistrate and plead that your love is truer than his? May I remind you, madam, that you whored yourself to him. Who do you think any right-minded person would side with—a duke of the realm or a common whore?”
“I’m not a whore,” she whispered in a trembling voice. “I never was a common whore. Lister kept me, yes, but it wasn’t what you think.”
A part of him ached at the pain he was inflicting on her, but he couldn’t seem to stop. And besides, another part of him wanted to inflict the pain. How could she have done this to her children?
He leaned a hip against a table and crossed his arms, cocking his head again. “Then explain to me how you were his mistress but not a whore.”
She clasped her hands like a little girl giving a recitation. “I was young—very young—when I met Lister.”
“What age?” he snapped.
“Seventeen.”
That gave him pause. Seventeen was still a child. His mouth tightened a bit before he jerked his chin at her. “Go on.”
“My father is a physician, a rather respected one, actually. We lived in Greenwich, in a house with a garden. When I was young, I would sometimes go with him on his visits.”
He eyed her. What she described was a lower class than he had imagined her to be. Her father worked as a physician, true, but he still earned his living. She wasn’t even gentry. She was leagues beneath a duke in social standing. “You lived with just your father?”
“No.” Her eyes dropped. “I have three sisters and a brother. And my… my mother. I was the second eldest girl.”
He jerked a nod for her to continue.
She was squeezing her hands together so tightly, he could see her nails digging into her skin. “One of my father’s patients was the dowager Duchess of Lister. She lived with the duke at that time. She was an elderly lady with many ailments, and Papa saw her every week, sometimes several times a week. I often accompanied him to the residence, and one day I met Lister.”
She closed her eyes and bit her lip. The room was quiet; this time Alistair made no move to interrupt.
Finally, she opened her eyes and smiled crookedly, sweetly. “The Duke of Lister is a tall man—Tom was right. Tall and imposing. He looks like a duke. I was waiting in a small sitting room for Papa to finish the visit, and he entered the room. I think he was looking for something—a paper, perhaps, though I can’t remember now. He didn’t notice me at first, and I was frozen in awe. The dowager duchess was an intimidating old lady, but this was her son, the duke. He looked over at me finally, and I rose and curtsied. I was so nervous I thought I’d trip over my own feet. But I didn’t.”
She frowned down at her hands. “Perhaps it would’ve been better if I had tripped.”
He asked quietly, “What happened?”
“He was kind,” she said simply. “He came and talked to me a little, even smiled. I thought at the time that he was being gracious to a nervous young girl, but of course it was more than that even then. He admitted quite freely later that he wanted me as his mistress from the first.”
“And you went skipping into his arms?” he asked cynically.
She cocked her head. “It was a bit more complicated than that. Our first conversation was very brief. Papa came down from the dowager duchess’s rooms, and we left for home. I chattered all the way about His Grace, but I think I would’ve forgotten him eventually had I not seen him again on our next visit. I thought it an odd coincidence that I would meet him again so soon when I’d been accompanying Papa to the duke’s mansion for almost a year without meeting him. Lister had engineered it, of course. He made sure to enter the sitting room where I waited only after my father had gone to see Her Grace. Lister sat and talked to me, ordered tea and cakes. He flirted, although I was too unsophisticated to realize it.”
She walked to one of his display cases and peered inside, her back to him. He wondered if she was hiding her face from him. “There were several such tête-à-têtes, and in between he sent me secret letters and small gifts—a jeweled locket, some embroidered gloves. I knew better. I knew I was not supposed to accept such gifts, wasn’t supposed to let myself be closeted alone with a man, but I… I couldn’t seem to help myself. I fell in love with him.”
She hesitated, but he simply watched that curving back. Even at this moment, he could feel desire for her— perhaps more than desire.
“Then one afternoon we did more than talk,” she said to the glass case. He could see her reflection, ghostly in the glass, and she looked remote and cool, though he was beginning to re
alize that the appearance she projected might not be real. “We made love, and afterward I knew that I couldn’t go back home with Papa. My world—my life—had changed completely. I knew vaguely that Lister was married, that he had children not much younger than I, but in a way that only fed my romantic fantasy. He didn’t mention her often, but when he did, Lister described his wife as cold. He said she had not let him into her bed for years. We could never be together as husband and wife, yet I could be with him as his mistress. I loved him. I wanted to be with him always.”
“He seduced you.” Alistair knew his voice was cold with suppressed rage. How could she? How could Lister? To seduce a young, sheltered girl was caddish behavior beyond the pale of even the most dissolute of rakes.
“Yes.” She turned and faced him, her shoulders back and her head high. “I suppose he did, although I was more than willing. I loved him with all the fervor of a young, romantic girl. I never truly knew him. I fell in love with what I thought he was.”
That he didn’t want to hear. He pushed away from the desk. “Whatever your motives when you were seventeen, it doesn’t change anything now. Lister is the father of your children. He has them. I don’t see anything you or I can do.”
“I can try and get them back,” she said. “He doesn’t love them; he’s never spent more than fifteen minutes at a time with them.”
He narrowed his eye. “Then why take them?”
“Because he considers them his,” she said, not bothering to hide the bitter tone in her voice. “He doesn’t care for them as persons, only as things he thinks he owns. And because he wants to hurt me.”
Alistair frowned. “Will he hurt them?”
She looked at him frankly. “I don’t know. They are no more than a dog or a horse to him. Do you know of men who whip their horses?”
“Dammit.” He closed his eye a second, but he really had no choice. He opened the bureau drawer again and took out the pistols. “Pack one bag. Be ready in ten minutes. We’re going to London.”