“I—” Isabella froze. She had improvised the letter. She wasn’t sure she could say the words again just as she’d said them the first time. “Why don’t I give it to you?” she said. “That way you can read it yourself.”
“Read it,” Charity said, lifting the gun again. “I want to hear it again. And I want to hear it in your voice.”
There was something in the other woman’s voice that made Isabella’s skin crawl. It was true that Charity likely could not read the letter for herself. But she also enjoyed, in some twisted way, having her former lover’s wife read his words of love to her, his mistress.
“Please,” Isabella said, her voice soothing. “May I put the baby down so that I can read it properly?”
The maid’s eyes narrowed. As if assessing Isabella’s request for the trap it was. To Isabella’s relief, however, Charity seemed to find the request innocent enough. More fool her. “All right. Put it in the window seat.”
Carefully, Isabella stepped over to the window seat. Not turning her back on the pistol-wielding woman, Isabella lowered the baby onto the cushion and then stood up straight. The letter was clasped in her left hand, while the right, which had been holding the baby, now held a pillow from the window seat concealed behind Isabella’s back. Not wishing the child to be in the line of fire, Isabella stepped quickly away from the window and toward the other side of the desk.
“‘Darling,’” she began to recite the letter again, “‘As I write this…,’” she went on, saying the words as best as she could remember, watching to see if, as before, Charity dropped her guard as she listened to Ralph’s supposed words. To Isabella’s relief, she did. Once more the pistol lowered to rest in Charity’s lap while she lost herself in the letter.
In her head, Isabella counted down. Three. Two. One.
Still reciting the fictitious letter, she lifted the pillow and rushed at Charity with it.
Twenty-one
Ormonde House was quiet when Trevor and Archer arrived. Timms was waiting for them at the door, however.
“Where is the duchess?” Trevor asked before Timms could welcome them home.
If Timms was startled by his master’s sharp tone, he didn’t show it. “I believe she is in her bedchamber, Your Grace. Is something amiss?”
Trevor ignored the question and bounded for the stairs. He could hear Archer behind him, shouting for the butler to send for the watch.
When Trevor and Archer got to the door of Isabella’s suite, Trevor could hear voices. But before he could turn the knob, Archer stopped him.
“You don’t know what’s happening in there. This woman has spent the past few weeks terrorizing your wife. And she clearly had some grand finale in mind for tonight. You don’t want to rush in too quickly and startle her into doing something that will harm Isabella.”
“Then what?” Trevor asked through clenched teeth. “She’s got my wife in there. What am I supposed to do?”
“Come with me,” Archer said, leading him down the hallway a bit to a seemingly bare bit of paneled wall. To Trevor’s astonishment, when the other man pressed a portion of the trim the door opened out to reveal a hidden passageway. “It’s for the servants,” he said, quickly taking a torch from the wall. “These passages run between the family rooms and behind the fireplaces, so that they can go about their business without danger of being seen by the family.”
Trevor would marvel at the architecture later. Right now he wanted to know what was happening in Isabella’s rooms. He followed Archer down the dark hallway and, sure enough, they could hear voices coming from Isabella’s sitting room. They stopped just beside what was clearly the back of a fireplace.
“May I put the baby down so that I can read it properly?” Trevor heard Isabella ask.
“Baby?” he asked. “Where the devil did a baby come from?”
“Come look,” Archer whispered, showing Trevor a peephole that looked into Isabella’s sitting room. When this was over he was going to go through all of these rooms himself and make sure that no one would ever be able to spy on him and Isabella again. “She’s got a pistol. You don’t want to startle her while she’s got that pointed at your wife.”
Trevor watched silently as Isabella carefully laid the baby down in the window seat. What he could see that her captor could not was that Isabella had picked up a pillow while she was depositing her precious bundle. Isabella, he was proud to see, had a plan.
“‘Darling, as I write this…,’” she said, seemingly reading from a letter in her outstretched hand. As he watched she seemed to tap the pillow out in beats. One. Two. And on three she charged the woman in the chair, pressing the pillow against her face.
“Come on,” Archer shouted, bursting into the bedchamber, followed by Trevor.
The two women were rolling on the floor while Isabella tried to get control of the pistol. The two men rushed at them, and while Trevor helped Isabella up from the floor Archer dragged Charity to her feet and pinned her arms behind her back.
“Let me go!” she shouted. “Damn you! Get your hands off of me!”
“Thank god,” Isabella said, collapsing against Trevor’s chest. “Thank god you came. I was afraid she’d kill us both. She’s been the one threatening me. All this time. My own maid. What a fool I’ve been.”
“Easy,” Trevor said, holding her close. “It’s all right. I’ve got you. You’re safe now.”
“I’ll just take Sanders downstairs and see if the watch has arrived yet,” Archer said, tucking the pistol into the back of his breeches. “I’m glad you’re safe, Your Grace.”
But neither Isabella nor Trevor heard him leave.
* * *
“So all this time it was Sanders who was trying to frighten you?” Perdita said with a shake of her head. “It’s extraordinary. I never for a moment considered that it might be her who was doing it.”
The sisters, Trevor, and Archer were gathered in Isabella’s sitting room, a pastry-laden tea tray before them on the table. Isabella sat in the shelter of Trevor’s arms. Since they’d seen Sanders, or Mrs. Savery, taken away by the watch, he hadn’t been willing to let Isabella out of his sight. And she was all right with that.
“Nor did I,” she said, taking a sip of her own tea. “But the true villain of the piece is as yet uncaught.”
“Can you really think that she was telling the truth when she spoke of being hired by someone else to torment you, Your Grace?” Archer asked, his handsome face creased with worry. “I mean, Mrs. Savery can hardly be considered a reliable source of information in any matter, let alone this one.”
“She seemed perfectly convinced of the matter when she spoke of it to me,” Isabella said with a shiver. “Though I suppose it is possible that she deluded herself into thinking she’d been hired by someone just so that she would not bear the guilt for it herself.”
“I mean to take no chances,” Trevor said, his arms tightening around Isabella. “We will depart London at the end of the week for Yorkshire.”
“But we only just arrived,” Isabella said in a weak protest. If the truth of the matter were known, the glitter of town had lost much of its allure for her. “Though I do miss Eleanor and Belinda.” She turned to her sister. “You must come with us, Perdy. You will adore the girls. And I know they’ll adore you. And you may help me plan Eleanor’s come-out ball next year.”
“I think that’s an excellent notion,” Archer opined. “If you don’t mind my saying so, Your Grace.” Isabella watched as her sister blushed under the secretary’s gaze. Interesting, she thought. Perhaps she needed to have a talk with Perdita. Sooner rather than later.
“I will think about it,” Perdita said, rising. “Now, if you don’t mind, I am exhausted. When I heard those shrieks all I could think was that you were being murdered in your bed.” She bent to hug Isabella.
“I’ll take myself off as well,” Archer said, rising to follow Perdita from the room. “Good night, Your Graces.” He offered a slight bow before he left the room.
Alone now with Trevor, Isabella turned to snuggle up in his arms. “I wonder if Perdita knows he’s in love with her,” she said idly. “I don’t know how I never noticed it before now. But I suppose I never felt the state myself, so I had no way of recognizing it.”
“Does that mean what I think it means?” Trevor asked, holding her back from him so that he could look into her eyes.
“I don’t know,” Isabella said playfully. “What do you think it means?”
“Do not tease me, woman,” Trevor said with a mock growl. “Are you in love with me, or are you not?”
“I cannot be the first one to admit such a thing,” she said primly. “After all, it is hardly seemly for a lady to confess her love to a gentleman before he has done so to her.”
“You and your rules,” he said, kissing her soundly. “Very well, I love you. In fact, if the truth be known, I adore you and have done since you first mistook me for a common laborer weeks ago in Nettledean.”
She kissed him back for a long while before she said, “Did you really adore me way back then? I was rather horrid to you, if memory serves.”
“You are horrid to me now,” he said against her mouth. “Refusing to admit you love me. I don’t know what I’ve done to deserve such a thing.”
Isabella sighed and leaned her cheek against his shoulder. “All right,” she said, stroking his chest. “I love you. Happy now?”
His response was silent but heartfelt.
Epilogue
The next afternoon, Isabella, Perdita, and Georgina, who had been away in Bath when Isabella first returned to London, sat comfortably ensconced in Isabella’s sitting room over the tea tray, catching up with one another and going over the details of Isabella’s ordeal first in Yorkshire and then in London.
“What became of the baby Mrs. Savery used to frighten you?” Georgina asked. “Poor wee mite.”
“She’s being cared for by the sister of one of the kitchen maids who just had a baby of her own,” Isabella said with a smile. “Timms thought of her almost as soon as he heard about the child. He has a soft heart.”
“That’s quite true,” Perdita agreed. “And a hard one when it comes to Mrs. Savery’s sort. I don’t think I’ve ever seen him as angry as he was when he learned what she’d done to you, Isa.”
“What I find hard to believe is how one woman was able to create such a furor,” Georgina said with a shake of her blond curls. “Even if she was being assisted by some unknown mastermind from afar.”
“She did manage to make my life quite difficult for a few weeks there,” Isabella agreed. “But I suppose the degree of assistance she received rather depends upon who it was helping her. And unfortunately, we still don’t know who that was.”
Perdita poured each of them another cup of tea and added another biscuit to her plate. “Whoever it is behind the whole operation, I wish he would decide once and for all to be finished with the business. I have little choice but to look over my shoulder constantly.”
“I agree,” Georgina said firmly. Reaching into her reticule, she retrieved a folded bit of foolscap and handed it to Isabella. “I received this just this morning. And I do not think that your Mrs. Savery could possibly have smuggled the notice out of Coldbath Fields Prison.”
“‘I know what you did last season,’” Isabella read from the note. “I had so hoped that all this would be over now. Especially because I have not received another note.”
“Do not fret, dearest,” Perdita said, squeezing her sister’s hand. “Georgie and I will be quite all right. I’ll be in Yorkshire with you and Trevor after all. And with Mrs. Savery out of the picture, and all the rest of the servants examined with a fine-tooth comb, there is little chance that he’ll get to me. And Georgie plans to remove to Bath, where all will be well.”
“Do you mean to tell your new employer about the threats, Georgie?” Isabella asked their friend as she blew on her too-hot tea.
“Good lord, no!” Georgina said with an unrepentant grin. “I need this position and I do not mean to give Lady Throckmorton reason to dismiss me even before I start.”
“I do wish you would accept Trevor’s offer to have you come live with us,” Isabella said with a frown. “I’m quite sure my sisters-in-law would adore you!”
“You are too good, Isabella,” the widow replied, “but I could not possibly impose upon your charity like that. Besides which, I have already accepted the position with Lady Throckmorton. She and I were quite close when we were following the drum together and I think looking after her as she sets tongues wagging in Bath will be quite amusing for me.”
“You’ve simply got too much pride for your own good, Georgie,” Perdita said with a grin. “Not that we can blame you. Also, I should think it will be a trial after a while to spend too much time in company with the lovebirds.”
“I resent that!” Isabella said with a blush. “We are not a trial. We are simply blissfully happy, and if you cannot manage to endure it for the next few weeks then perhaps you should stay in London.”
“Oh, don’t be so sensitive. I was merely teasing you a little.” Perdita said with a laugh. “Besides, you promised me that I should be able to attend a sheepshearing at the very least!”
A soft knock on the door preceded Trevor, who said from the doorway, “I hope I’m not disturbing you ladies, but I have a bit of news for Isabella.”
“Come in, darling,” Isabella said with a bland expression. “Perdita was just telling me how much she’s looking forward to seeing the splendors of Yorkshire. She has a particular fondness for sheep, I believe.”
“Oh, we’ve plenty of those, Duchess,” Trevor said to his sister-in-law before lowering himself into a wing chair beside Isabella’s.
“So, what is this news?” Isabella asked. She was curious since he’d only been headed for White’s when he’d left the mansion earlier in the day.
“Well, I have it on good authority that a certain Sir Lionel Thistleback has just left for the first packet bound for the Americas.”
“No!” Isabella said with a gasp. “What happened to him? And who made it happen, so that I can thank them properly?”
“He’s as nasty a man as I’ve ever met,” Georgina said with a shudder. “If he’d been in the military he’d have been court-martialed and hanged long ago.”
“Well, I am quite content to have him on the other side of the world,” Trevor said with feeling. “Apparently he was found to be blackmailing a certain cabinet minister’s wife over her gambling debts. Little did he know, however, that the minister knew all about the debts and had agreed to pay them without complaint. When he learned of the scheme, he told Thistleback he was too dishonorable to duel with and threatened Thistleback with imprisonment if he didn’t leave for America immediately.”