“The seamstress saw the man take her, but was unable to stop him,” Munro explained.
“She would have fought back,” I insisted.
“I found something in that storeroom at St. Katherine’s Docks earlier.”
There was something in Brodie’s voice that sound ominous. “The man verra likely used chloroform. There was a stain from a bottle on a shelf.”
I tried to grasp everything he was saying.
“There was a note left along with that rose,” Brodie added, his voice oddly calm.
I had not seen it at first among the papers that usually covered his desk. I stared at it.
“What is in it?”
I caught the look that passed between Brodie and Munro.
“Tell me!” I demanded.
Munro looked away, and the fear inside me was like a fist that closed around my throat. Brodie’s hand tightened around mine, the other gently took me by the arm.
“It says weshould not have interfered.”
A warning? A threat?
“No!” I protested.
Brodie took me into his arms. If there was more to the note, I didn’t hear it, my face buried in the front of his jacket as he held onto me.
I tried to push him away. Far stronger, he held on.
“Not Lily!” I was angry, terrified, then angry all over again. Old feelings from when my sister disappeared returned, painful. I wanted to scream and curse. I did both.
And when I had worn myself down as Brodie held me and stroked my back, “We have to find her.”
“Aye.”
I wanted answers. I wanted to know who had done this. Why?
“We will find her,” he assured me as he brushed the hair back from my cheek.
Munro had taken himself out of the office and onto the landing. He stood with his back against the outside wall of the office, his head bowed.
“He blames himself,” Brodie explained. “If he had not gone off to see to those errands...it might have been different.”
That slowly sank in. Perhaps. But the truth was that he couldn’t have known.
I went out onto the landing. It was cold, and wet, and miserable. I laid a hand on Munro’s arm. He looked up, and I saw everything I felt in the expression on his face.
“I would cut off me arm to protect the girl.”
As dreadful as that sounded, I knew it was true, that unshakable Scot loyalty to their own, very much like Brodie.
I shook my head. “And what good would that be? You will need both arms to help us find her.”
Horrible as the situation was, I caught the faint ghost of a smile on his mouth.
“We will find her,” he said. “And make no mistake, those that done this will pay.”
