“And don’t forget,” Hamish put in, “after he got back here, he’d had time to unharness his horses.”
Gregory pointed at Hamish. “That’s an excellent point.”
“And he had his pistol and paper ready when we walked in.” Patrick nodded at the desk, where the agreement lay unsigned.
“Indeed.” Swiftly canvassing the implications, Gregory stated, “This was no spur-of-the-moment kidnapping. Ecton had this entire sequence of events planned. He had the pistol ready and primed, the agreement laid out on the table, with pen and ink no less, and then…he must have been following Caitlin, waiting for a moment when she was alone and out of sight—or at least out of reach—of anyone else.”
Rory leaned forward, forearms on his knees. “He’ll have had his hiding place prepared, too. He must have, to have managed to hide her away in such a short time.”
Inspired, Gregory said, “We need to—” He broke off as the front door creaked open, and the tap of a cane and the stump of heavy footsteps reached them.
“Good Lord!” came from the front hall. “That wretched boy has let this place go completely to rack and ruin!”
A murmur followed, and the tapping and stumping resumed, drawing nearer.
Gregory and the Fergussons got to their feet as Gerald, Lord Loxton, entered the room.
His lordship halted, momentarily oblivious to their presence as he gazed around him in disbelief. “I remember this place when his parents were alive. Quite lovely, it was. Now…” He gestured. “It’s a wreck.” He sniffed disparagingly. “Typical of that blighter. He was a bad ’un from the cradle.”
Lord Loxton sighed, lowered his gaze, and looked inquiringly at the company. His gaze came to rest on Gregory. “Cynster!” His lordship exchanged nods, then stumped forward. “What’s this I hear about Miss Fergusson being kidnapped, heh?”
“Indeed, sir. She has been.” Gregory waved at the others. “These are Miss Fergusson’s relatives.” In the interests of brevity, he added, “Visiting from Scotland.”
Loxton exchanged another round of nods, then Gregory waved him to the armchair he’d vacated.
After settling himself, his lordship clasped his hands over the head of his cane and, his gaze shrewd, looked at Gregory. “So what’s the blighter been up to now?”
Gregory told him. Mercifully, the Fergussons kept their mouths shut while, in concise fashion, Gregory outlined Ecton’s perfidy.
At the end of his recitation, Lord Loxton smiled chillingly. “I’m sorry Miss Fergusson’s been embroiled in this, but given our dastardly villain, sadly, I’m not surprised. I’ll be happy to take Ecton off your hands and deal with him through the courts. However”—his gaze swept the group—“finding Miss Fergusson and making sure she’s unharmed must be our highest priority.”
“Indeed, sir.” Gregory had managed to rein in his impatience until then, but with what they’d recently discussed circling in his brain, he wanted to get out and find her.Now.“As you’re willing to assume responsibility for Ecton, we’ll—”
He broke off as a clatter of boots heralded Henry Kirk, closely followed by everyone else from Bellamy Hall. The group clustered behind Henry as he dipped his head to Lord Loxton, but it was to Gregory whom Henry reported, “It’s not that big an estate, and we’ve searched every inch. Caitlin’s definitely not hidden anywhere here. We found no sign of her at all.”
Grimly, Gregory nodded. “All right. We’ve eliminated all the obvious places. We need to think, and Daniel and the rest of us have been estimating how much time Ecton had to hide Caitlin away. Even if he’d planned it, he had only minutes—five or ten. Something of that order. So”—he peered at the faces he could see behind Henry, and obligingly, Henry stepped to the side, revealing the company crowding behind him—“we need to put ourselves in Ecton’s shoes. We know he drove off with Caitlin from just north of the Osiery. He had to have taken the arm of the lane that runs along the riverbank. If he hadn’t, he would have driven to the Hall, which he didn’t. So he drove along the riverbank, along a short section of lane, and into the Ecton Hall drive. As far as we can tell, Caitlin wasn’t with him when he reached Ecton Hall lands, which means he hid her somewhere along the riverbank.”
He regarded the assembled people of Bellamy Hall. “You know that area better than I or”—he gestured to Lord Loxton and the Fergussons—“the others here. So think—where along that stretch did Ecton hide her?”
Joshua frowned. “That stretch is mostly Bellamy Hall land—just like the smarmy bastard to hide her on our lands rather than his.”
“Oh.”
The simple exclamation had everyone looking at Blackie—at the expression of enlightenment that bloomed across his old, worn features.
Blackie looked at Gregory and, in a tone of revelation, said, “The ruins.”
When Gregory looked puzzled, Blackie explained, “There’s a track—just a rough trail, really, but if he didn’t care about his horses, he could have taken them most of the way along. It’s on the other side of the abbey from the Hall and leads from the riverbank up to the ruins. If you go up it, you can reach the ruins without risking anyone from the Hall seeing you.” Blackie hauled in a breath and added, “And I’m thinking, were it me and I had to hide a person, I’d use the old crypt, down under the altar. Far as I know, it’s still open, and sure as heck, the smarmy bastard will have stashed Miss C down there.”
Everyone stared at Blackie. No one disagreed with his assessment.
Before Gregory could order everyone on their way to the ruins, Lord Loxton harrumphed and, when everyone looked his way, imperiously waved them off. “Go, go! I’ve brought two men with me. Send them in, tell them where that blackguard Ecton is, and you may leave it to us to take care of him.” He locked his gaze with Gregory’s. “Just send word when you find her.”
Gregory nodded and started for the door, and the people of Bellamy Hall streamed forth ahead of him.
Chapter 16
With the people of Bellamy Hall behind him, Gregory strode up the last section of the sloping track leading from the riverbank to the ruins of Coldchurch Abbey. He hadn’t been into the abbey church for years, but the otherworldly atmosphere that perennially hovered like a ghostly shroud over the remnants of walls, arches, and shattered stones at the top of the rise hadn’t changed.
