“If you please, the door is this way,” the man said, still speaking in a low voice. “The servants’ doors, that is.”
Beatrix turned and pinned him back with an angry glare. “What? Is there no door for women who’ve been kidnapped at gunpoint by a man with more money than intelligence?”
“I beg your pardon?” the guard stammered, his face turning red.
“Oh, I see,” Beatrix said condescendingly. “I suppose it’s only fitting that I have to enter around the back of the property. After all, the grand entryway is reserved for those who steal far more than I ever have.”
They looked at each other for a moment and then Beatrix nodded. “By all means, you’ll have to lead the way. I’ve never been someone’s prisoner before, so I shouldn’t know where to go.”
The footman looked around awkwardly, and for a moment the nobleman seemed to feel a passing expression of guilt under the servant’s intense gaze. The man held out his hand once more and asked Beatrix to accompany him. They disappeared around the corner of the house just as the shadows of the arched portico swallowed them up.
“Barclay, please see to it that she has something sufficient to eat, and water to wash with,” he said before striding away and entering the house. He paused at the entryway, the one that only moments ago a common criminal had ridiculed for being too fancy. He shook his head in anger.
Chapter 6
The sound of bellowing shouts and breaking glass shook the small cottage. Men scattered in all directions as one object after another was hurled at their heads. More than once, a hole in the thin plaster of the wall appeared beneath the sharp corner of something hard that had collided with it.
“Where is she?!” Aaron roared, reaching for the fireplace poker and swinging it madly at anyone who was nearby. “Where is my daughter?”
“We don’t know! A finely dressed man took her away, as I’ve said!” one of the men explained for the tenth time. “We were outdone by his men when the man took hold of Beatrix and used her to shield himself.”
“How many years have you been firing off that gun of yours at rats and creatures of the field?” Aaron shouted accusingly. “Yer certainly a deadly shot when yer belly’s empty, but suddenly ya cannot fire at a man who’s threatened my daughter’s life?”
“I dared not! What if I’d hit Lady Beatrix by mistake? I’d never live with such grief as that!” the man argued, and Aaron paused for only a minute in his anger.
“But how dare ya show yer face back here without her? Why didja not give chase and bring her home?” Aaron threw a pewter mug at one of the men, clonking him solidly above the eye with it.
“Aaron, we had no choice!” one of the men began, but Aaron’s boot from off his foot struck the man squarely in the mouth. He pressed his hands to his mouth and cut off his cry of surprise at the same time.
“No choice? No choice but to leave Beatrix to fend for herself against a passel of prancing nobles while you tucked your tails like the cowardly dogs you are?” Aaron flung the chair from beside the hearth at another of his men’s heads, narrowly avoiding splintering it into kindling against his forehead.
“They bade us lie down and not follow! The man held a gun to her head and threatened her very life, what were we supposed to do?” shouted Pencot, arguably the bravest of Aaron’s followers.
“You were not to allow her to fall into their trap in the first place!” Aaron shouted, but the fight was already going out of him. It was quickly being replaced with an overwhelming sadness coupled with fear.
“Aye, it would have been a good idea hadallof us prevented her, would it not?” Pencot replied, raising an eyebrow and insinuating that Aaron had just as much a hand in her disappearance.
“Watch yerself!” Aaron hissed. “You know I had no hand in letting her go, I all but threatened to lock her in chains to prevent her! Still, she insisted! And it was you who assured me she’d be safe and looked after!”
“And we did, we never took an eye off her,” one of the men piped up, but Pencot silenced him with a look.
“Aaron, we’d all be in the stocks awaiting the hangman if we hadn’t let her go. This way, you know not where she may be, but you have every reason to think she’s alive.” Pencot rubbed the back of his neck as he looked down at the hay strewn over the dirt floor. “This way, there’s a chance she’s alive and that we can find her.”
“You never should have let her out of your sight!” Aaron yelled, pounding the table with his fist. His shoulders slumped and he let his head fall forward before adding, “I never… I never should have let her out of my sight…”
“Aaron, don’t do this,” Abrahms said, coming up behind Aaron and putting an arm around his quaking shoulders. As the oldest of the bunch, he’d earned a portion of respect, even from Aaron. “Your Beatrix is a strong lass, smart as they come, and not afraid of nothin’. Why, this time tomorrow, I rightly ‘spect to see her flitting through the gate there with a handful of fresh medicinals in her fist!”
Aaron only shook his head, hopeful that Abrahms words rang true, but feeling certain that they would not.
“And what shall I do if ya be wrong?” he asked wearily. “Which one of you fellows is strong enough to put a bullet between my eyes if I learn she’s never coming home again?”
“You mustn’t say such a thing! Tis bad luck!” Pencot insisted. “She’ll be all right, Aaron. We’ll find her, I promise you.”
“See that you do,” Aaron said in an ominously stern but quiet voice. “If any harm comes to her, I’ll end me own life… after taking every one of you with me, mark my words.”
* * *
“My Lord, all of your things have been laundered and put away, and the items you’ve brought of your mother’s have been properly stored,” the butler, Lloyd, announced when he entered Callum’s study.
