‘It is, indeed. You have held her up to the world as a loose woman and one for whom you had no respect at all.’
‘I loved her,’ he blurted out. ‘I still love her, but Simon St Claire had all the facts about our short relationship and he wanted to ruin her. It’s why I left his legal employ…he has no morals at all.’
‘You are the third person today who has told us he is a cheat and a liar. I suggest you draft another letter while we wait, stating Wilhelmina St Claire is nothing like the loose woman Simon St Claire insists she is. The fact is he wanted possession of Belton Park and he did everything in his power to have it.’
An hour later, armed with the two letters, Oliver, Phillip and Esther rode south in the Elmsworth carriage to London, leaving the children at Nettleford Park whilst they dealt with the matter at hand.
Esther could not believe that this had happened to Wilhelmina. ‘She is such a generous and good person. But where exactly did you say she is now?’
‘We don’t know,’ Oliver replied. ‘In the south, is Phillip’s first guess, but certainly nowhere near London, which is probably a relief.’
‘I wish she had come to us at Nettleford Park. We would have certainly helped her.’ Esther looked worried.
‘She did not seek help from anyone. She tried to deal with it all by herself.’ Phillip could hear the frustration in his voice as he told Esther this.
‘Well, everyone has their own way of dealing with difficulties, I think, and Willa has never had anyone she could trust before at her side. Yet her strength is a great part of her attraction.’
Esther was right, Phillip thought. He’d loved her certainty and the way she strode through her life. She was neither a woman who dragged others down nor was she one who expected others to prop her up, which was part of the reason she had ended up in this mess.
Phillip wanted to wrap his hands around the throat of Mr Simon St Claire but the trouble was that he too seemed to have disappeared and was nowhere to be found. The miles to London town seemed longer than usual and he just wished they could get there so he could begin the process of clearing Willa’s name. If his was to be muddied in the process, then so be it. He had had so much worse before.
He glanced at his brother and his wife, their hands clasped together on the seat between them, their coupledom so very easily seen. A true marriage was not defined by a ring or a piece of paper. It was in the intent of attachment and inseparability. It lived in friendship and devotion too and in the thousands of small hours that built all the memories of life.
Gretel and he had not enriched their time together with other places and people and adventures. They had not stood up for each other either when things got difficult. Silence had ruled their lives and disappointment had followed.
In the short time he had known Willa she had dragged him through Society and made him fight for his place in it, and she had been selfless enough to leave when she saw all the things he might miss out on should she stay.
He ground his teeth together and hated that he did not know where she had gone or if she was safe. Had the disappeared Simon St Claire gone after her to exact his own form of retribution?
Nothing made sense any more. Nothing felt certain.
‘We will find her.’
His brother’s words were quietly said and Phillip nodded as finally the lights of London town appeared in the distance.
Phillip could smell gardenias as he walked into his bedchamber, and on his nightstand two of Willa’s hairpins sat in a small ceramic bowl. He had found those after she had left the last night they had slept together, and placed them there. As a keepsake and also as a tangible reminder that she had existed.
The warm woollen rug he had wrapped her in was folded now, stiffly, at the bottom of the bed, all the other remnants of their lovemaking tidied away. But he was glad of her scent, still lingering.
‘Where are you, Willa? Are you safe?’ He whispered this to himself but even the quiet words unsettled him. He then crossed to his writing desk on the far side of the room to extract two sheets of paper as well as his pen and ink.
He would begin with arranging a meeting of his own lawyers and then he would send a letter to the McAllistair sisters in Royal Tunbridge Wells asking if the old ladies had seen her. Their address would be easy to access from the new occupant of their London town house.
After that he would track down Simon St Claire using all the means he had at hand, and he knew that money loosened tongues as nothing else did.
‘I’ll find you, you bastard, and I will ruin you.’
He tucked a knife he had brought back from America into the top of his boot and hid it under the fold of his sock. He’d got rid of his gun after the debacle with his brother but today was the first time he wished it back. If St Claire had hurt Willa in any way physically he would kill him, he swore he would. Making a supreme effort, he swallowed down the anger that was building within him, took the pen up and began his first letter.
Chapter Thirteen
Willa sat on the seat before a mirror in a bedchamber of the small inn she had rented on the coast beside the English Channel.
She felt sick, that was the trouble, and shaky, and any smell of food in the morning made her want to throw up. She missed Phillip. She missed their night-times. She missed talking to him and laughing and being happy. She did not feel herself. She felt scared and brittle and uncertain, and there were dark rings under both her eyes.
She wondered if perhaps she was dying of an ailment that had suddenly crept up on her. She was crying a lot, which was also unusual, and any knock at the door made her freeze.
She had been in this inn in the little village of Winchelsea for almost a month now and in all that time she had barely moved from her room.
