Jonathan drew in a breath and sat straighter. “We go back to the house,” he said. “We can assume people have been looking for us. I feigned stomach upset when I left supper, so we tell people I was bent over some cistern somewhere while you helped me.”
Charlie nodded, ready to play his part however he could.
“Then, in the morning, we do whatever it takes to convince Frome to have one of his carriages take us directly to the train station. We cannot wait.”
“We cannot,” Charlie agreed.
Jonathan smiled weakly at him. “We will survive this,” he said quietly, eyes filled with regret. “We will survive this, and I will make amends for all of it.”
Charlie smiled back at him. He believed it.
Chapter Seventeen
Much to his surprise, Jonathan found a place on the other side of fear that allowed him to push forward, even though he knew his and Charlie’s lives could be in horrible danger. He was numb as he rose from the fallen tree and took Charlie’s hand to make their way back up to the house. He had no idea what waited for them, out in the darkness of Fairford’s grounds, in the house, or for the rest of his life once they escaped this place.
And they would escape it. That was the one thing Jonathan was certain of. He and Charlie would leave Fairford house, no matter what it took, and he would make everything up to Charlie for the trouble he’d put the young man through.
But first, they needed to make it back to their room.
“I don’t see anyone,” Jonathan said, peering out from the edge of the trees and surveying the moon-kissed meadow around them. “They might have given up searching for us.”
“They don’t know where we are.”
Jonathan glanced over his shoulder at Charlie, uncertain whether his words meant whomever Dalhurst had searching for them would be looking elsewhere or whether they were a supposition that no one was truly looking for them at all.
He could not risk everything on the hope that Dalhurst was not as suspicious of him and Charlie as he had sounded earlier. He couldn’t stay where he was either, though. He squeezed Charlie’s hand tighter, waited until another bank of clouds covered the moon, then started out across the meadow toward the house at as fast a pace as he dared.
The grounds continued to be dark and silent as they crossed the meadow, then found their way to one of the paths that circled around to the back of the manor house. Jonathan was just beginning to let his guard down when he spotted a shadowy figure loitering near the side of the laundry.
“We cannot go this way,” Jonathan whispered, pulling Charlie back in the other direction, keeping to the shadows as much as they could.
Neither of them spoke as they walked around the house the other way, looking for a door that was unlocked and unguarded. The first door they tried was locked tight, and the front door was watched over by two men Jonathan hadn’t seen at all during the length of their stay.
It was a stroke of pure, blind luck that they found themselves on the side of the house where one of the disused morning parlors was located just as one of its windows was thrust open. At first, Jonathan reeled back, throwing out an arm to protect Charlie and push him back against the house’s wall.
A moment later, Jonathan let out a breath of surprise when the pale-faced maid lifted a leg over the windowsill and climbed through it.
The maid dropped to the ground in the grass and instantly spotted Jonathan and Charlie. She gasped as if she would scream, but stopped herself at the last second. As Jonathan pulled Charlie to approach her, she slowly rose on shaky legs and looked at them with terror in her eyes.
Jonathan was certain the young woman would scream and sound the alarm, but when Charlie stepped forward, she leaned toward him.
“They’re searching for you,” the young woman whispered.
Charlie nodded, letting go of Jonathan’s hands and closing the distance between them. “We know,” he said. His voice turned tearful as he continued with, “They took him.”
The young woman’s face crumpled. “I was too late.”
Charlie shook his head. “It was my fault.”
“No, it wasn’t.” The young woman grabbed his hands. “They’ve been planning to move him for weeks. I thought there was time.”
“Do you know where they’re taking him?” Charlie asked her.
She shook her head, tears glinting in her eyes. “I’m going for the constable,” she squeaked out, letting go of Charlie’s hands. “If he’ll believe me. He is my cousin, so he might.”
The lightness Jonathan felt for half a second at the maid’s mention of the police crashed down a moment later. There was very little chance any country constable who owed their position to Lord Frome would believe any accusation a housemaid brought against him, even if he was her cousin. But it was the only hope they had.
“Do what must be done,” he told the woman, stepping forward and resting a hand on Charlie’s waist, more to anchor himself than anything else. “We will do what we can from here.”
