The Kidnapped Bride (Redcakes) Read online

  Manfred pressed his lips together and looked surly. Lord Judah’s expression was a mixture of horror and bewilderment.

  “How could you do that to a gently bred girl?” Hatbrook demanded. “She must have loved you, to follow you like that. What did you do to make her run away from us?”

  Manfred shrugged. “Beth’s headstrong, you know that. Just like my own sister. No one was more surprised than I to find Beth sneaking into my room in the border inn where I staying. I had just gone on a job, you see.”

  “Something to do with Lord Mews?” Lord Judah asked.

  Manfred shook his head.

  “He seems tae have a way with the ladies,” Dougal said. “Perhaps Lady Mews?”

  “Not going to touch my bargaining chip,” Manfred muttered.

  “Why didn’t you bring Beth back, as a gentleman would?” Hatbrook shouted.

  “I wasn’t about to marry her,” Manfred snarled. “She ain’t my sort.”

  Hatbrook slapped the boy openhanded across the cheek. “That’s my sister! You’ve ruined her life! Whatever you want to say about your sister, my brother has given her an honorable marriage and an excellent home.”

  “Beth bloody ruined it herself,” Manfred said, standing as his cheek bloomed red. “She followed me. I made her no promises. She refused to go home. So I set up house in Edinburgh, found a way to make money. But I didn’t marry her.”

  “No, you just made her your whore,” Hatbrook said.

  “I never touched her,” Manfred said, more quietly.

  “I don’t believe you. A pretty girl like that?” Hatbrook lifted his hand again.

  One corner of Lord Judah’s mouth twisted up. “I’d never have thought it until now, but this is Mark Cross’s little brother. Maybe they have the same tastes.”

  Manfred’s skin whitened around the mark Hatbrook’s hand had left, but he said nothing. And well he might stay silent, as what Lord Judah suggested was a crime. Still, Manfred had undeniably had congress with women. Dougal knew of two brothels he frequented.

  “Spent a great deal of time perusing the Greeks at school, did you?” taunted Hatbrook. “I’ve always thought they focused far too much on Greek statues, all that glorification of the young man.”

  “That’s not why I was unwilling,” Manfred said.

  “No?” Hatbrook made a dismissive gesture. “I don’t believe it.”

  “My heart is pledged to another.” Manfred’s stained teeth damaged the impact of his smile.

  “You have no money or prospects. A runaway marriage with my sister would set you up for life. What is that against your feelings?” Judah demanded. “Not only that, my wife has racked her brain and can think of no attachment for you.”

  “Magdalene didn’t think very hard,” Manfred retorted. “If Beth had been willing to return to you, all would have been well. That was her choice, and I think you have to ask yourselves why she made it.”

  Hatbrook stared at him. “Because she loved you, for some reason. She made mistakes for love.”

  “That’s your interpretation because that’s what you did yourself,” Manfred sneered. “Marrying a baker’s daughter.”

  “A knighted, wealthy manufacturer’s daughter,” Lord Judah corrected. “Do not insult Lady Hatbrook.”

  “Why did Lady Elizabeth stay?” Dougal asked bluntly, trying to return the conversation to its important elements.

  “Because she wanted to,” Manfred snapped.

  “By all accounts, she had a successful first season,” Dougal said. “Two marriage offers, only the best parties.”

  “One offer from a drunkard, the other from an inveterate gambler.” Manfred shook his head. “She did not consider it a success.”

  “I refused both men,” Hatbrook said. “We’d have found her better. I saw no signs of despair in her.”

  “You saw nothing,” Manfred shot back. “You would have locked her in her room if you’d thought she might run away.”

  “Are you calling me controlling?” Hatbrook demanded.

  “More the opposite.”

  “Neglectful?” Hatbrook’s voice lowered dangerously.

  “You and your wife focus far more on your businesses than the family around you,” Manfred said. “Just like the earl.”

  “Your uncle has a large family,” Hatbrook snapped. “And estates to manage. So Beth felt, despite the expense of her first season and all the time my aunt and wife and the Redcakes spent chaperoning her, neglected?”

  “Her mother died,” Manfred said simply. “Nothing went as she expected.”

  “My mother was a termagant,” Hatbrook said.

  “Beth was her only daughter. They had a special relationship.”

  Hatbrook frowned.

  “You are a decade her senior,” Manfred said. “Think of how much time she spent with your mother. Her sudden death was an utter shock to Beth. Your marriage was shocking. Judah’s reported death, then reappearance, then marriage: shocking. Everything kept changing, and I think she’d simply had enough.” The boy seemed surprised by his little speech, and his expression changed to a sneer again.

  “Then she should have married and had an establishment of her own.”

  “Exactly,” Manfred said. “But she didn’t attract any good offers. And for some crazy reason she decided I was the one for her.”

  “You have nothing,” Lord Judah said.

  “I didn’t say it was a good choice,” Manfred replied. “But we’d been thrown into each other’s company a good deal. We liked each other, and I suppose she sensed a connection that wasn’t there. Since she wouldn’t return to London, what could I do but try to take care of her?”

  “The maid I saw had sore hands, worn clothing, black hair, and a feigned accent,” Dougal said. “Not the picture of a lady in comfort.”

  “I tried to work as a clerk, but I haven’t the education to do the thing properly,” Manfred said. “We had to share one room, a tiny garret. It wasn’t supportable or decent.”

  “So you turned to theft,” Judah said.

  Manfred’s lips closed. “I can’t talk about that. But you saw we lived in two rooms with proper ventilation and a fireplace. I did my best for her. I was saving up for better.”

  “Perhaps you’d been stealing all along,” Hatbrook mused. “Lady Mews is well known for her gems. Had you been her procurer from the start?”

  Manfred stayed quiet.

  Dougal cleared his throat, attempting to interrupt the almost paintinglike poses in which the three other men were captured. Lady Mews’s was a name that kept coming up. He suspected the Cross boy had pledged his heart to the woman, but it didn’t matter to him. “We have what we came for. He’s all but admitted the maid I saw was your sister. Now I simply need tae return to Edinburgh and collect her.”

  Lord Judah turned to him and started to speak, but Manfred interrupted. “She won’t want to come.”

  “She’ll have tae,” Dougal said. “She’s lost her protector. Does she have rent money? Ye were captured two weeks ago.”

  “She has some.”

  “What happened to her jewelry?” Hatbrook said. “She ran off with a fair amount.”

  “That money was gone months ago,” Manfred said. “We lived on it until it was spent, then only had my salary to rely on.”

  “Did she have two or three weeks’ rent money?” Dougal said, refocusing the conversation.

  Manfred nodded. “But she’s got to buy food as well, and she’s always dribbling off our funds to the local unfortunates, as if she was still fine Lady Elizabeth. I suppose it’s less expensive with me gone, but eventually the landlord will wonder where I am. And it’s not safe in Edinburgh these days. Men watch for women alone. Things happen.”

  Dougal turned to his employer. “Gentlemen, I do not think I can offer anything more tae this conversation. With your leave, I shall depart for the train station.”

  Lord Judah nodded. “With our thanks, Alexander. Bring our girl home.”

 
CHAPTER 2

  The banging at the door started about three days after Freddie disappeared. Beth couldn’t think of any reason to open it because she paid the rent directly to the landlord and her only friend in the land had died the week after Freddie disappeared. Whoever was knocking so loudly never identified themselves. Until she’d taken charge of her dead friend’s baby, she’d avoided most relationships entirely, so it wouldn’t be a friendly face knocking. That wasn’t hard to avoid, since she was a maid, not a wife, and expected to work, not visit. Not that she was really a maid; she slept in the bedroom while Freddie slept on a battered old fainting couch in the sitting room, but she was less than a coconspirator. She had to keep up appearances.

  Because the truth was, she had no idea what Freddie did at night. Early on, he came home after his work in a law office. Eventually, he came home reeking of cigars and old ale. She assumed he was spending time in public houses. But lately? He still came home late, though he didn’t smell of anything except wind and damp. They sent their laundry out, so she had no reason to sniff collars and such, but even so, she’d have noticed the fragrance of perfume or other female scents, and she never did.

  He might have refused to marry her, but he didn’t have a mistress either. Nor did he seem to habituate other, more casual interludes.

  She had contented herself with the way things were. Her money might be gone, but he kept a roof over their heads, high enough in the land that they had a stunning view of Edinburgh Castle and were above the smells of the streets.

  But now Freddie was missing, and someone, or multiple someones, kept coming to the door. She pushed a chair under the handle of the door leading into the corridor at night and slept on the fainting couch with her stout broom right next to her, and the baby in her basket just below. The rain didn’t help; the constant lashing against the windows made it hard to hear external noise. Months ago she’d found it cozy, the way it kept out the sounds of the neighbors.

  On Monday, she left the flat with a basket over her arm, ready to do some marketing. Her supply of cash was dwindling and she wished she hadn’t given Freddie all of her jewelry so willingly the year before. What would she do when it ran out? When she’d checked the tin that morning, she only had enough rent money for a week. And now she had Hester to care for. At least, at a year old, she was weaned. Mrs. Shaw, an ancient grandmother downstairs, having raised seven children, had been stout support as well.

  “Morning, Bethie,” said the MacLeods’ maid, passing her on the stairs. “Dreadful weather, eh?”

  Beth smiled. “Keeps the soot down.”

  “True enough,” the middle-aged woman agreed, pausing to chuck Hester under the chin. “We have fresh milk this morning. I’ll see if I can bring you a cup for the lass.”

  “Thank you,” Beth said, knowing she couldn’t afford it on her own.

  The maid hefted her laundry basket with beefy arms and went up the next flight of stairs. The MacLeods lived on the top floor. Beth didn’t know how they could stand the rain both at the windows and on the roof. It would be enough to drive her mad.

  Mrs. Shaw lived on the second floor. She opened the door when Beth knocked and gave her a pat on the arm before taking Hester. “Could I trouble ye to pick up two potatoes for me, dear, and a bit of oats?”

  “Of course,” Beth said, taking the coin the old lady offered. She wondered how long that food would have to last the old woman, especially now that she fed Hester sometimes. “I’ll knock on your door in an hour or so.”

  “Not a day to be outside,” Mrs. Shaw agreed. “Beastly weather.”

  “We should be used to it, but it seems so cruel in the spring.”

  “At least it is a bit warmer,” the lady said, clutching her shawl with bony, arthritic hands. Hester bit her finger and rested her head on Mrs. Shaw’s shoulder. “Take your time, dear. We’ll be seeing ye.”

  Beth kissed Hester and continued on her way, wishing she could afford to pay for Mrs. Shaw’s food. Before they had bonded over orphaned Hester, she had caught Beth in the halls twice a month or so and asked her to do her marketing. Until the twin blows of Gertie’s death and Freddie’s disappearance, Beth had always been able to afford to buy her double what she asked for and then say the merchant gave her a good deal. Not anymore, though.

  A cacophony of sounds and smells followed her as she walked through the market near South Bridge, buying sparingly to save her ravaged funds. She ignored the loitering men who called out to her, keeping her nose in the air. While she’d lost much of her lady’s airs over the past year, they came in handy in the market. It made her nervous, the way some of the men watched her, the lust she saw in their eyes, but she had to shop. Sometimes, lately, she’d felt as if someone was following her home, but when she darted into shops, she never recognized anyone on the street. She laid in her supply of porridge for the week, mindful that, to save funds, she needed to start eating it twice a day, like a poor person. One coster offered a good deal on potatoes, so she bought five pounds, which saved her and Mrs. Shaw a little money. She walked by a butcher with longing, but resolutely turned to a vegetable hawker and bought kale.

  To think she had often dined on seven-course meals when her mother had been alive. Soup, salad, fish, meat, sorbet, meat, pudding. Saliva pooled in her mouth at the mere thought, despite the lip-chapping weather. The coming of her sister-in-law, Alys, changed all that. Alys, despite being a cake decorator by trade, had cut the pudding course entirely. Her mother had been in a state of battle after that, but an infection had taken her not long after the wedding. Beth had thought Alys’s table abstemious, but she’d had no idea how most people really lived. At least in a city like Edinburgh. In Heathfield, where she’d grown up, farm families ate better, even if they were poor.

  Her real problem, though, wasn’t feeding herself, it was feeding Hester. Gertie hadn’t left much of an inheritance for her daughter, only a couple of pounds and some scattered belongings. Beth suspected she’d been a prostitute. Hester had no father she knew of. No one had visited Gertie in her final days or had come to collect the child. Hester ought to be eating bread soaked in milk, not porridge, but fresh milk was hard to come by.

  With a sigh, Beth twisted her skirts to get some of the rain out of them and set a course for home, hauling her heavy basket. It took longer than expected, walking through the clogged streets, trying to manage the basket and umbrella while many did the same on a busy Monday morning. She knocked top hats aside with her unwieldy umbrella and carefully protected her possessions from street urchins as she trotted, while trying to avoid as many puddles as possible. With no view of the sun, hidden as it was behind the leaden clouds, she had no real idea of how long she’d been out, but she suspected the old widow would be waiting anxiously at her door, wondering if Beth had taken her coin and run from her responsibilities.

  Eventually, she struggled through the land’s front door and began her long ascent. Mrs. Shaw indeed had her door cracked and invited Beth in for a cup of flavorless tea with much-used leaves. She had been used to the best Darjeeling, but now she gratefully accepted the steaming warmth at the woman’s table, while Mrs. Shaw carefully poured out her ration of oats and took her potatoes. Hester seemed happy enough, chewing on a spoon on the tattered rug.

  “Has anyone come to your door recently?” Beth asked.

  “Only the landlord, dear. Why?” the woman asked, tucking her potatoes into an old basket on the counter.

  “Someone has knocked daily for weeks. I just wondered if Evangelists or the like were tormenting anyone else. If someone was coming for Hester, I’m sure Gertie would have told me.”

  The old woman put a finger to her chin. “I did have a preacher here a few weeks ago, but I heard the poor man out and sent him on his way.”

  “Have you seen him since?”

  “I rarely venture out in this bad weather,” she said.

  Beth nodded. She doubted a preacher was coming by her door every day unless he lived in the building.
This news did not settle her nerves, as she would have liked. She finished her tea and thanked the woman profusely, then hefted her only slightly less heavy basket again.

  “Why don’t ye leave Hester with me for a bit longer, dear? Fetch your basket upstairs and dry your skirts.”

  “I shouldn’t,” Beth said with a guilty look at Hester. “But that sounds lovely.”

  “We’ll see ye soon. No rush.”

  Beth smiled. Maybe she could run upstairs and fetch that cup of milk for Hester. That would be a nice treat. “Thank you.” She crouched down and kissed Hester on the forehead. “Be good for Mrs. Shaw, baby.”

  Her skirts, dark with water, weighed her down as she climbed the first flight of stairs. She noticed her hem needed repairing again, and a dark blot of something marred the fabric at knee level.

  Where had Freddie gone? Had he fled back to his family in London? Had he been arrested? Simply abandoned her? Out of breath, she sank down on the filthy boards of the next landing, clutching her basket. She couldn’t go on like this, yet she couldn’t go home. Not for her the life of Aunt Mary, shut up in two rooms far from London, only taken out for chaperone duties as needed. Yet was that worse than service? Because she could see she needed to find employment. As hard as it had been keeping house for Freddie, it had seemed a lark. She set her own hours, slept in her own bedchamber.

  Hester complicated everything. If she went back to her family now, they would think the one-year-old was her own illegitimate child. She was too proud to accept a lifetime of disgrace unfairly, especially since she’d never even known a man’s touch, no thanks to Freddie. Why had she been so set on him? She’d read too many novels, been so certain he’d marry her if she ran away. Now it was time to be practical, time to clean up as best she could and try to find a position in New Town. She knew she needed a position in a large household. Even a scullery maid was better off than a maid-of-all-work. At least there was room for advancement, and with her deportment and proper speech, surely a housekeeper position would be in her future. She could pay Mrs. Shaw to take care of Hester, or at least pay for their food.