“Thank you, Mr. Hillary.” Sylvia heard the words, but distantly. She allowed Hillary to lead her down the street and around the first corner to where a gig waited in a side yard, the reins held by an urchin.
Hillary paid off the boy, then gave her his hand and helped her into the gig. She sat. She felt numb inside. Her mind wasn’t functioning with its usual precision. An image of Mrs. Macintyre looking at her roast and waiting swam into her mind, but her landlady would understand. So would Kit—and she’d be able to send a message once she saw her father. Saltford was, after all, only ten miles away.
* * *
Kit strode along the pavement that bordered the small park, his gaze locked on Mrs. Macintyre’s door at the far end of the street.
He’d arranged with Sylvia to call on her on Sunday afternoon, and it was after noon, even if a touch past one o’clock was rather early for a social call.
He just wanted to see her again—to prove to his inner self that she was perfectly all right. To put paid to the fanciful imaginings that had taken over his brain and hijacked all rationality.
After reaching home in the early hours, he’d fallen into bed, only to toss and turn, plagued by thoughts of the unknown person watching Sylvia and, even more worrisomely, their intentions. Now he knew that whoever it was had nothing to do with him or his business, he was running out of possible motives—he felt as if he didn’t know which way to face to protect her.
He supposed it might still be something to do with the school, yet although it had been he who had saved the school, throughout, the watcher had focused on her.
No. It wasn’t anything to do with the school. To his mind—churning with supposition and imaginings—that cast the continuing attentions of the watcher in a much more sinister light.
Yet it was difficult—well-nigh impossible—to imagine that Sylvia, a clergyman’s daughter, had any enemies. As far as he knew, she’d lived a blameless life.
He couldn’t see his way through the maze, and since he’d awoken, his inner self had been pacing relentlessly, pushing him to go and see her and assure himself that she was all right, that she was in no immediate danger.
He reached the end of the pavement, crossed the street, and made for Mrs. Macintyre’s gate.
Jaw clenching, he opened the gate, strode up the path, and leapt up the steps. He grasped the brass knocker and beat briskly on the door.
Then he drew in a deep breath, stepped back, and told himself he would soon see with his own eyes that Sylvia was perfectly fine.
Mrs. Macintyre opened the door as if she’d snatched at it. Her face was creased in an anxious frown that took on overtones of dismay as she looked at Kit. Then she bobbed and nodded. “My lord.”
He managed to find his voice. “Miss Buckleberry?” He felt as if his heart was in his throat.
Mrs. Macintyre’s anxiety deepened. “I’d hoped she was with you.”
A chill clutched Kit’s gut. “Where—when did you last see her?”
Mrs. Macintyre crossed her arms as if she was cold. “She went to church as she usually does every Sunday morning, right on a quarter to eleven o’clock. She’s always back by half past twelve for luncheon, and she said she’d be here, only she hasn’t come back.” Mrs. Macintyre gripped her arms tightly. “She hasn’t come in and gone out again—that I do know. I haven’t seen hide nor hair of her since she left this morning.”
Kit battled his rioting impulses, forcing them down enough to think. “No message or anything like that?”
Mrs. Macintyre shook her head. “And that’s another thing—always very considerate, she is. It’s not like her to just...not come home.”
She’d been taken—seized. Kit knew it. That was what all the watching had been about. “I’ll start at the church. I’ll check that she attended”—she was well-known in the parish; there would be somebody there who could tell him—“and try to track where she went.”
He needed to act—to do something, something to get her back. He seriously doubted she’d be at the church, but he had to start somewhere.
With an emotion perilously close to panic flaying him, he swung around and leapt to the path.
Just as a carriage came racing wildly down the street.
Kit recognized his horses. He ran out of the gate and reached the curb as Smiggs, on the box of Kit’s curricle, drew the bays to a plunging halt. Kit put up a hand to calm the nearer horse as Ollie tumbled from his perch at the carriage’s rear and came rushing up.
“Your lordship!” Ollie grabbed Kit’s sleeve with both hands. “You’ve got to come quick! It’s Miss Buckleberry, my lord—she’s been ’napped!”
Ollie’s face was full of urgent entreaty. Kit glanced at Smiggs, grimly managing the skittish horses. “Who? How?” Those seemed the most pertinent questions.
But Ollie mistook his meaning. “It was Jack the Lad, m’lord. He overheard you telling Mr. Cobworth as how someone was watching Miss Buckleberry nasty-like, and so we—Jack, Ned, and me—thought as perhaps we could help keep her safe by keeping an eye on her and spotting who was following her.”
Kit freed his arm and grasped Ollie’s, trying to keep the boy from jigging up and down. “Did you see who it was?”