And after she in graceful forgiveness had stood with him during his grandfather’s last awful hours—after she’d gifted them all with that angelic voice, the divinest lullabies to their aching and fearful hearts—he’d lost his head and kissed her in the hallway of his home, making a display of her when any number of people in that over-populated house could come upon them. And one did.
He had much to atone for.
And he had not had her reply to his offer of marriage.
Lucasta was no coward. She would not run away, then pen him a letter telling him coyly not to pursue her. No, she had sent a letter asking for assistance. If she didn’t want to consider marriage to him, she would tell him to his face.
His heart seized. She couldn’t say no.
Besides, she wouldn’t leave her foundlings so close to the date of the concert. Whatever she felt about him—and it tore Jem’s insides to know he had not done much to win her esteem—she would not abandon Eliza and the others.
“She’s been abducted,” he insisted. “Someone scooped her away from Clara Bellwether’ssoiree,and I’m certain it was your mad cousin, that booby Frotheringale. I don’t doubt she wrote asking for help in freeing herself from him.”
“Then why wouldn’t she write me or Cici?” Trevor said in a surly tone. “Her family? Why should she trouble you? No, old man, she’s telling you to cut sticks. ‘A new mistress now I chase / The first foe in the field.’ I rather think she’s referring to you as a foe.”
“Whoever has her wouldn’t let her write to you or your sister,” Jem muttered, pacing the small parlor. “But what does she mean by foe? You’re the one she doesn’t want to marry.”
After Lucasta disappeared, Jem learned from Bertie that Baron Pevensey was pressuring Lucasta to marry his son. But Trevor was just as baffled by Lucasta’s disappearance as Jem, and when the Gorgons came to his aid and described how Lucasta had left on the last evening they’d seen her, they had all gone together to confront Clara Bellwether. That good lady protested that she had merely delivered a message passed along to her and had no idea who was behind it, but, she suggested coyly, perhaps Lucasta was not running from marriage but toward it, and they ought to consider whether she had eloped.
As Clara said this while attempting to wrap a hand around Jem’s arm, Jem had seen fit to dispense with the courtesies of an exit and merely stalked out of her house. The others followed.
“She doesn’t wish to marry you either, if she’d rather have ‘a sword, a horse, a shield,’” Trevor grumbled, turning the letter about as if searching for a hidden text.
“Foe—Frotheringale,” Jem said. “She’s naming him as her abductor.”
“How could he have done it, if he’s been flat on his back for the past week with an ague, as his butler claims?” Trevor argued. “And if he is behind this, why wouldn’t she simply write ‘Gale’s got me, send help?’”
“Because he’s reading her letters, you great sapskull,” Jem snapped. “A shield, a shield—what’s on the Frotheringale arms?”
“Two crossed swords,” Trevor said slowly.
“The sword and shield. And he abducted her by horse.” Jem resumed pacing. The exertion helped ward off the chill of the room. “But where would he have taken her? We already have the townhouse being watched. We’d have noted any unusual activity.”
“’Yet this inconstancy is such / As you too shall adore,’” Trevor read. He shook his head. “Acongé,old boy. You gave her a slip on the shoulder, and she’s given you your walking papers.”
“It can’t be acongéif she swears she loves me,” Jem retorted. He plucked the letter out of Trevor’s hands. “’I could not love thee,dear, so much / Lov’d I not Honourmore.’ See? She underlineddear.”
“She also underlinedmore.” Trevor’s frown cleared suddenly. “Wait. Dear and more—Deer Moor. That’s the old villa out in Fulham. Gale used to have such parties there, you wouldn’t—” He cleared his throat as Jem leveled a steely glare at him. “Never mind.”
“Then that’s where she is.” Jem strode into the small, circular foyer, already headed for the door. “She said she found the poem among her cousin’s books. I told you this was a message.”
“I’ll have my horses brought round,” Trevor said on his heels. “God’s teeth, man, at least let me have a footman fetch my overcoat. It’s cold as the devil’s tit out there.”
“We can take my calash, and your footman better run,” Jem said. “He’s had her for days, and the concert is Thursday. She must be mad with fear that she’ll miss it.”
“A benefit concert with a bunch of yodeling orphans?” Trevor slid an elegant walking stick from its holder in the foyer, then pulled both ends, revealing a slender hidden sword. “I fail to see the urgency.”
“Then you don’t know Lucasta,” Jem said. “How far is this Deer Moor, and do you have another of those for me?”
“You are not calling my cousin out.” Trevor shrugged into the greatcoat the footman brought him at dead run. Jem retrieved his own overcoat. “He’s his mother’s only son, the sole heir of that branch of the family, and only a gentleman can challenge?—”
Jem waited for the realization to set in and had the satisfaction of seeing his companion scowl as they stepped into a whipping wind. “Damme, youarea gentleman,” Trevor swore. “I keep thinking of you as the draper.”
Jem leapt into his seat, checking that the contents of his interior pocket were shielded from the elements. “I won’t bother with calling him out. If he’s harmed her in any way, caused her even a moment of fear,” he said in a chilling tone, “I’ll run the man through on the spot.”
“She’s not here!”Frotheringale yelped.
No sword drawing proved necessary. Jem threw the ribbons to the boy who ran to them as the calash bowled up the gravel drive to a neat neoclassical manor, and as he stormed through the door, Trevor beside him, Jem found servants running into and out of the foyer in varying states of distress. Frotheringale appeared on the landing of an upper stair, pulling his hands through his curly hair and making it stand on end.
