Leaving her children in capable hands, Kate evaded Damien and Rafe. Verifying with Hunt’s guards that Lavender hadn’t been found at the manor, Kate had stormed almost half a mile down the lane before Fletch caught up in the carriage.
He halted beside her to shout, “You didn’t wait for me to hitch the team!”
Those weren’t Damien’s placid nags but a young, fresh team straining at the bit. In her fury, she climbed up without waiting for assistance. “You didn’t tell me you were hitching a team!”
Why had he gone for a carriage and not his horse? It certainly hadn’t been because he was expecting to pick her up, was it? The fool soldier was much more likely to believe he was rescuing Lavender single-handed.
“You were supposed to stay with the children, where you were safe.” Grumpily, he urged the horses into a trot.
That didn’t answer her question. “I am not safe while Hugh is promising the Jamesons they may have my farm!”
“He wrecked a window frame! Just exactly what do you think you can do against a lunatic carrying an ax if Jasper couldn’t stop him?” He urged the team back to a gallop.
“Where did you steal the horses?” she countered, since the only weapons she possessed were shears and a pistol with one shot.
“Jack’s. That’s where I’ve been. His stable is over by the Jameson’s cottage. The women aren’t there. They may be half way to Birmingham for all we know, but I don’t think they’d leave their children. Jack has taken the highway, just in case.” He looked grim.
That meant Fletch had probably sent the recently-married Honorable Jack on a goose chase, while he deliberately stormed into a dangerous situation on his own. Mad.
Not entirely mad.
They had good reason to believe Hugh was a killer and possibly a lunatic. “You are thinking Hugh broke into the inn to possibly harm me?” She tried to curb her fury and think rationally, but who knew what went on in a madman’s thoughts? The only conclusion she reached from a broken window, a stolen cart, and missing women was that someone was in danger. Imagining their terror, she shivered.
“That is one of many possibilities and not even the worst of them,” he answered grimly, not elaborating. He was back to surliness.
She was a mother, not a warrior. But if harm had come to anyone because of her late husband’s demented relation. . . She could not sit and do nothing. “My house is as sound as a fortress,” she warned.
“Which is why you shouldn’t be involved!” he shouted again. “I have armed soldiers surrounding it. What the devil do you think you can do?”
She didn’t know. “If he sees the soldiers, what will he do?” And the answer formed without thought—use Lavender as hostage to get what he wants.
Did that mean the others were safe—or had assisted Hugh?
Fletch gritted his teeth and drove faster. His clenched square jaw bristled with late afternoon beard, and any resemblance to a gentleman had fled. But she understood. He preferred action to struggling with words.
Kate thought aloud for him. “Jasper was unconscious. He may have been poisoned or hit over the head. Lavender and Maryann were likely with Jasper when whoever it was broke in. For all we know, Hugh could be threatening the Jamesons as well. If he’s the culprit—and I cannot imagine who else would be so mad—I have to be the one to deal with him.”
No, she didn’t, her craven side argued with her conclusion. But she’d spent her life cowering behind the walls of her father’s home. Confident, creative Lavender had offered hope instead of fear, and Kate had gradually emerged from her shell. She liked Kate, The Squire’s Daughter, she was growing into—the person she should have been, had she not wasted her life hiding. That person would not let down her friends.
Fletch didn’t reply. He wouldn’t. Unlike her sister’s legal-minded spouse, Fletch didn’t waste time arguing. Reaching the farm, he stopped the carriage in the lane between the hedgerows, and waited for his sentry to ride out of the field. At least the soldier appeared unharmed. Maybe they were panicking over nothing.
“No visitors?” Fletch asked the soldier.
“Only people been by was in that cart the actors across the way use,” the man replied. “They drove up to the Hall a bit ago.”
The Hall, not her home? The actors, not Hugh? No, that couldn’t be right.
Kate had seen Damien questioning the troupe before she left. They couldn’t possibly have arrived without passing her. The cart had to have left before the actors on the stage left the inn—unless there were more than the ones on stage.
Did that mean the actors were behind the disappearances? That made no sense.
But if the lunatic had seen the soldiers at her house. . . In horror, she turned to stare at the foreboding, sprawling, two-story Sutter Hall across the lane. Untrimmed trees loomed over the stone structure, casting it in heavier shadow than the cloudy day. Black shutters cast gray walls into deeper gloom. The place practically shrieked haunted.
“Slip behind the Hall’s shrubbery,” Fletch ordered the sentry, apparently reaching the same appalling conclusion. “Stay out of sight and work your way around to the barn. I’ll cover the front. You watch to see if they leave out the back.”
Then Fletch boldly turned the carriage into the Hall’s drive as if they belonged there. She wanted to leap out and run far, far away.
Kate hadn’t been near the Hall since her innocence had been destroyed and childhood ended. She froze in indecision, clinging to disbelief. “Why would kidnappers come here?”
