Mrs. Grimes was pale as death. “Your Grace, Emily is gone.”
Frowning, Ariadne asked. “Gone how?”
The governess swallowed, “She is nowhere in the house, her window is open, and her drawers look rifled through. I fear she’s been kidnapped.”
“What?” Cedric roared, and a chair clattered to the floor as he dragged his dressing gown off it and flung it on.
He blew past the governess and ran to Emily’s room with Ariadne a few steps behind him. He slammed the door in and looked around the room wildly, at the wide open windows and the fluttering curtains.
Spinning, he shouted for a footman, whom he ordered, “Get every spare hand and search every inch of this house and the grounds.” He ordered. To Mrs. Grimes, he asked. “Why did you think she had been taken?”
“We found both of her nursemaids drugged, Your Grace,” Mrs. Grimes said. “They are still unconscious .”
“Did you find a note?” Cedric demanded.
“No, sir,” the governess said.
Ariadne, however, found herself drifting around the room, numb on her feet. Who would have taken the poor girl? Why would they have taken Emily at all?
Her eyes landed on the book she had read from last night, a fairytale about a child princess taken from her home by fairies. A piece of paper was sticking out from the middle of it.
Opening the book and keeping the place, she looked down at the note, written in slashing black hand.
Send your wife for your daughter. The Southwark Cemetery, midnight. Two days’ time. She must come alone; if I see one policeman, the bastard child dies.
“Cedric,” her voice was faint and weak as she handed the note over. “She really is taken.”
He started at the note long enough that Ariadne got worried for another reason. She rested a hand on his arm. “Cedric? What is it?
He swallowed. “Southwark Cemetery.” His tone was hoarse.
“What of it?”
His eyes were pained. “That is where Helena is buried.”
She clapped a hand over her mouth. “Why—why would he ask me to meet him?”
Cedric clenched the note in a tight fist. “To make sure I lose everything I love.”
Chapter Thirty-Five
“You’re not going to rescue Emily?—”
Ariadne spun to him, ready to tell him that if he tried, she would go anyway, when he added, “—unarmed.”
The hackles in her back vanished as she looked at him. “What are you proposing?”
He strode over to his wardrobe and pulled out a strong box, opened the lid, and pulled out a pistol, the small, pearl-handled pistol clearly designed for a woman. “You will be carrying this.”
She stilled. “I’ve never handled a pistol.”
“I know,” he handed her the weapon. “But you do not need to be accurate. You simply need to scare this bounder until I get to him.”
The pistol was not that heavy, but she still felt dread holding it and felt pure terror at the idea of shooting it. She swallowed. “Do you not want to get the authorities involved?”
“They will be,” he said. “But after I get my hands on this bounder. No one threatens my child or my family, and will not get the brunt of my fury to come with it.”
“You want to kill him.”
