Henry returned with a sigh. “Figured it out yet?”
Monica rubbed her fingers together as she continued to scope the office, remembering how Abigail loved sneaking in here to play. Specifically, she loved jumping on that couch because it was “extra bouncy”.
Tears returned.
“Monica…” Henry crossed his office to hold her, letting Monica weep into his chest as he smoothed her hair and squeezed her back. It wasn’t enough to make the pain stop. Monica knew it never would be. “We’ll find her. I promise.”
“Yes,” she gulped into his shirt. “Promise me we’ll find her, Henry. She’s out there somewhere.” Monica’s fingers uncurled as she clung to him. If she had been holding anything, she would have dropped the last of her possessions on the floor.
Instead, all she had was her breaking heart.
Eva pounded on their door shortly after they went to bed, tired but unable to sleep.
“Notnieceas in somebody’sniece!” she bellowed when Henry opened the door. Eva rushed in, slightly smelling of alcohol. “Niece as inNice!The city! In France!”
Monica bolted upright in her bed. Henry was as confused as before.
“The Beaumonts?”
Eva latched onto her when she realized that Monica was the one who understood. “Yes! The Beaumonts! I’ll bet all my teeth that our mother took her to the Beaumonts in Nice!”
Henry rubbed his eyes. Monica was out of bed without another word.
“I would not put it past her,” Eva continued to build her case toward her brother. “Our mother is a fucking psychopath. She’s been kicking around all these ideas about introducing Abigail to the Beaumonts. She wants some kind of family alliance. Like we can just offer a girl’s hand in marriage again! Ask our visitor from today how I know.”
Monica inserted herself between the siblings, one hand on Henry while she faced Eva.
“How certain are you about this?” Monica asked. “About your mother’s intentions.”
Eva may have looked like she would have rather been believed out the gate, but to her credit, she explained the best that she could.
“I told you a while ago that my mother is conniving like that. She still believes in that old-fashioned dowry shit and is foreverkicking herself that she wasn’t stricter with Henry and me. She’s gone straight to crazy town since you and Nadia came into the picture. Because she was foolish enough to believe that your husband would still be drawn to a ‘well-to-do’ woman of good breeding or whatever other Eugenics crap.”
“I’m well aware of your mother’s attitudes toward her bloodline being tainted. That still doesn’t explain why she would kidnap my daughter and take her to Nice!”
Henry put a reassuring hand on his wife’s shoulder. “The Beaumonts are very old friends of the family, going back generations. Rumor has it that our ancestor who came from Scandinavia passed through Nice and helped the original Beaumont patriarch. They kept in touch for years, building their fortunes and helping each other from across the pond. I have… erratic memories of traveling to France and being forced to play with Jean-Pierre, whose idea of a good time was harassing the staff and performing experiments on his mother’s cat. Even as a child, I was not interested.”
“And our mom is still besties with Lily. Do you know how many times I had to hear that I should date Jean-Pierre? The only reason Mom dropped it when I was in college was because that oaf knocked up his girlfriend and was forced to marry her.”
“I’m very aware of Mr. Beaumont’s predilections,” Monica reminded them. “He comes to the Château a couple of times a year and always requests the same woman.” Monica had been careful who she suggested take on the heir of the Beaumont clan. It had to be someone who could hold her own and not worry about calling him out for going too far. He liked her enough to keep coming back, and that was all that mattered.
“Anyway, that kid he had was Louis. Mom has been going on lately about howniceit would be for Abigail to become a trans-Atlantic playmate for a boy way too old for playmates. You ask me? She’s taken Abigail to Nice to meet them.”
“If that was all it was,” Monica said, “then she wouldn’t have literallykidnappedher. She would have asked to take Abigail to France or at least announced it! Ulterior motives be damned… no…” She rounded on Henry, who already looked at her as if he suddenly had the same idea. “This is darker than that. Henry, if this is behind your mother’s actions, then…”
His look of disgust broke her heart again. “She’s selling our daughter off to them.”
“Topreservethe Warren line!” Eva said in an exaggerated impersonation of Isabella.
Both Henry and Monica were quite awake now. Henry bolted for the closet while Monica hit the button requesting someone from the live-in staff to answer.
Within minutes, both Matilda and Elson arrived, and Henry was dressed to travel.
“We think we know where Isabella took Abby,” Monica told her employees while Henry threw together a suitcase full of clothes. “To Nice, France. To barter her off to the Beaumonts.”
Matilda gasped; Elson opened his phone.
“Elson, please call ahead to the airstrip and inform them I need the plane ready to go to Nice in an hour,” Henry said, the butler already one step ahead. “Donotinform the Beaumonts that I am coming. Any of you!”
