“All right,” Rhys said gently. “There is no need to blame yourself. So everyone knew where Kenna would be. This couldn’t be anticipated. I urged her myself to visit Yvonne.”
“So did I,” Nick said bleakly. “Victorine was the one who didn’t want her to go. Damn! I should have forced Kenna’s hand when I had the chance.”
“No more recriminations. I think we should start with the men on the stage. They slept three to a room and their alibis will be the easiest to verify. With some help from Powell and a few friends we should be able to locate them and discern something of the truth for ourselves.”
“What about Thompson and Sweet?”
“They won’t be so easy to find. We must start where we can, by eliminating all the others. Including Deverell. And I haven’t forgotten the widower,” he said as Nick began to speak. “It’s entirely possible that his purpose was a mother for his children and his destination is Gretna Green.”
Nick paled at the reference to the Scottish border town where eloping couples could be married. “Kenna would not stand for that.”
“I doubt she will be given any choice.”
Though they began their search with a fair amount of optimism, by week’s end it had disappeared. A likeness of Kenna was printed in theGazetteand leaflets were distributed throughout London. Some of the stage riders stepped forward before they were located by Rhys and Nick, saying they remembered Kenna, but were of no further use than that. Worse, they were as certain as they could be that no one had left their respective rooms. Sleeping three to a bed did not make for a particularly restful night, but neither had they heard anything out of the ordinary. The widower had no one with him save his two sons when he was stopped short of entering Scotland and he had no information about Thompson and Sweet that Mrs. Robinson had not already offered.
Of Deverell there was no news. Since he did not come forward as a gentleman would, Nick tried him in his own mind and found him guilty. Rhys thought it more likely that he was simply no longer in the country. When Janet Gourley recovered enough to talk she sided with Rhys. Deverell was too fine a man to have anything to do with Kenna’s disappearance, but she would lay her life’s wages that Thompson and Sweet were involved.
On the eighth day of their search, very close to the same time a package was being delivered to Dunnelly Manor, investigators from Bow Street brought some news to Nick at Rhys’s residence. Jeb Thompson and Jake Sweet had been found…belly up in the Thames with their throats slit. They were going to drag the river for Kenna’s body.
Three days later, with no results forthcoming, Rhys accompanied Nicholas back to Dunnelly.
Henderson met the weary riders at the door. “Very good you’re home, m’lord. And you, Mr. Canning. Lady Dunne expressed her wish to see you immediately upon your arrival.”
“My stepmother will have to wait, Henderson. I wish to soak the grime from my body and wash the cobwebs from my head.”
“She was really most insistent, your lordship,” Henderson added somewhat diffidently seeing the shadows beneath Nick’s eyes and the drawn face of his companion.
“She can—” He halted abruptly as he saw for the first time the black armband his head of staff was wearing.
Rhys saw the direction of Nick’s gaze and stepped in front of his friend just in time to keep him from lifting Henderson off the floor and shaking him.
“Why are you wearing that thing?” Nick said. His face had gone pale. “She’s not dead. Do you hear? I won’t have it.”
“It was Lady Dunne’s orders three days ago, m’lord,” the butler replied, visibly shaken by his employer’s icy anger. “A package arrived and she opened it. Went straight to her chamber then and hasn’t come out since. The only word we had from her was to observe mourning and that you come to see her immediately upon your return.”
“I shall get to the bottom of this matter, by God,” said Nick, taking the stairs two and three at a time, Rhys on his heels.
Nick shrugged off Rhys’s restraining hand and flung open the door to Victorine’s room. “I demand to know why you have given orders to the staff to observe mourning!”
Rhys stepped around Nick and went to Victorine’s bedside. “Nick. You must see Victorine is in no state to be badgered.”
Nick flushed a trifle guiltily as he looked at his stepmother. She had lost a full stone’s weight since he had last seen her. Her cheeks were sunken and her eyelids were swollen and puffy from crying. Victorine’s skin, always pale, was now nearly translucent, and her hair was dull and matted.
She patted Rhys’s hand. “It’s all right. Nicky is grieving as I am.” She pointed to the box lying atop her cherry wood secretary. “Over there. It came a few days ago, addressed simply to the manor. I opened it. Dear God, I wish I had not!”
Nick went to the desk and lifted the lid of the nondescript box. He swore harshly and his hand trembled as he reached inside.
“Nick?” asked Rhys. “What is it?”
Nick lifted his hand and thrust what he held in Rhys’s direction. “Kenna’s hair. Those bastards cut my sister’s hair!”
Rhys blanched at the sight of Kenna’s red-gold braid swinging like a rope from Nick’s fist.
Nick dropped the length of hair back in the box and sat down in the delicate chair beside the desk, his head in his hands. “It’s over, Rhys. She’s dead.”
Rhys slammed his fist into wall above Victorine’s bed, not feeling the pain or seeing the blood on his knuckles. “It’s her hair, Nick! Her hair! Not her body! She’s not dead!” He hesitated, his voice softening. “I would feel it. I know I would.”
“Well, Idofeel it! Just as Victorine does. Why would this be sent to us if she were not dead?”
