Lisette had not returned.
He knew he was right when a grave-faced Evans opened the door to him and Worthing.
The elderly butler did not even offer to take their hats and cloaks but instead held out a silver tray towards Christian as he entered the hallway. ‘This letter was delivered shortly after you left the house, Your Grace.’
‘By whom?’ Christian prompted sharply.
‘A street urchin, it seemed to me.’ The butler gave a shake of his head. ‘I sent someone to follow him, but they were soon lost in the warren of backstreets. I also sent someone after you, but you could not be found,’ he added apologetically as Christian took the letter without comment before ripping it open and quickly reading the contents. ‘Is it bad news, Your Grace?’ he prompted anxiously.
Christian’s hand curled into a fist, crumpling the letter in his palm as he answered reassuringly. ‘Nothing for you to worry about, Evans.’ He gave a brief if humourless smile. ‘Miss Duprée has merely run into an old acquaintance but will be back with us shortly.’
Evans breathed a sigh of relief. ‘I am glad to hear it, Your Grace.’
‘An old acquaintance...?’ Marcus prompted as soon as the two men had retired to the library with a decanter of brandy. ‘I did not think Lisette knew anyone in England but us?’
‘She does not.’ Christian grimly handed the crumpled letter to the other man for him to read. ‘It would seem that Lisette has been kidnapped.’
Marcus looked up after quickly reading the letter. ‘It is not a very well written letter and the paper is of a quality—’
‘Damn the quality of the writing or the paper, Marcus!’ Christian exploded angrily. ‘They have Lisette, and that is all that is important.’
‘Yes, but who are “they”?’ Marcus turned the letter over, studying Christian’s name and the address written on the front of it. ‘Do you think this can be connected with the kidnapping of Maystone’s grandson and the abduction of Bea?’
Griffin Stone had almost run Bea down with his carriage after she had escaped her abductors. The two of them were very recently married.
‘It is too much of a coincidence for it not to be,’ Christian bit out grimly as he recalled that young lady’s harsh treatment during her incarceration. The thought of Lisette being treated harshly was enough to turn the blood cold in Christian’s veins.
‘But we already have those responsible in custody—’
‘Not all of them.’ Christian’s hand shook as he raised the glass of brandy to his lips and took a much-needed swallow of the fiery liquid before speaking again. ‘We—I did not apprehend Helene Rousseau.’
‘You were not sent to Paris to apprehend her—’ Marcus broke off, eyes widening. ‘Do you believe that she is capable of arranging something so abhorrent as the abduction of her own daughter...?’
Christian recalled the pistol that had been pressed against his spine that very first evening at the Fleur de Lis, when Helene Rousseau had thought he was paying far too much attention to Lisette. She had seemed like a hen protecting her chick that night—albeit a steely-cold one!—and yet it really was too much of a coincidence to believe there coul
d be two sets of kidnappers in so short a time. Helene Rousseau had to be involved in Lisette’s disappearance.
The alternative was too disturbing to contemplate.
Christian’s jaw tightened. ‘It clearly says in the letter that Maystone is to be at Westminster Bridge at midnight tonight if we want to see Lisette again. Why else would they involve Maystone if this was not connected to the kidnapping of his grandson and the abduction of Griffin’s Bea?’
Why else indeed...?
* * *
How could she have been so stupid, so naive, Lisette admonished herself as she looked about the windowless room in which she was being held a prisoner, a dirty handkerchief secured about her mouth, her wrists and ankles bound with thin but strong cord; she knew it was strong because all of her efforts to free herself had proved to be in vain.
As if Davy would really have just been strolling in a London park, when the last time she had seen him had been at the Portsmouth dock as she and Christian departed The Blue Dolphin. She should have guessed—known—the moment she saw Davy again that it was too much of a coincidence for him to now be in London.
Instead, she had been so pleased to see a familiar face, after realising she was lost, that she had not questioned why she was seeing that face.
Lisette had assumed, even as Davy directed her through an unsavoury area of London that she did not remember walking through earlier, that he knew the capital so well that he was taking a shortcut back to Sutherland House. Instead, another man had suddenly emerged from a dark alley, throwing a sack over her head while Davy bound her wrists, and she was then bundled into a smelly cart and taken to the house in which this windowless room was situated.
The sack had not been removed from her head until she had stumbled into the room, Davy remaining in the background as the other man, hat pulled low over his eyes, a kerchief about the lower half of his face, had secured the gag and then bound her hands and feet, before they both departed, Lisette assumed, to another part of this hovel.
She had no idea if Davy was acting alone with his accomplice, in an effort to extract money for her release, or if her abduction had a much deeper significance.
Whichever of those it was, Lisette knew that Christian would be very displeased with her when he learned what had happened; he had tried to warn her of the dangers of leaving the house alone. She, with her usual stubbornness, had thought she knew better and had refused to believe there could possibly be anyone in England who might want to harm her.