Once a day, Charlotte was allowed outdoors for a constitutional, always accompanied by her captor or one of his minions. The manor’s oppressive atmosphere increased her distress and the paintings she created suffered for it. By week two, the gowns he had purchased for her began to hang loose and Charlotte felt her soul fading away with her flesh.
She discovered a peephole beside one of the framed paintings hung in her bedroom, a chilling find. Given the angle, the observer could see her in bed, even changing her clothes. She stuffed it with a handkerchief. And while the kerchief was removed daily, each night she stuffed the hole again. She suspected the game amused the monster.
Charlotte worked on a second fox hunt, this piece more vile than the previous one. The first was nearly complete, yet he had demanded she begin another portraying a group of riders surrounding a pack of hunting dogs ripping apart the fox.
“No, no, my dear.” The monster loomed above her, his hand on her shoulder gripping vise tight.
“My lord?” she said.
“You have obviously not attended a fox hunt.”
“I have not.”
“We need more blood! Our fox may be small, but there is always copious blood.” He squeezed her shoulder hard, making her cry out.
“Of course,” she said, forcing down an angry retort.
As she worked, her loathing for the subject only increased, and she found his implicit threats of pain infuriating.
This creature wished to marry her? Ludicrous.
When she had begun the work, she decided to fill this new painting with clues. The work depicted men on horseback hovering over the poor bloody fox, with hills and trees in the background.
Three men appeared in the painting, all with differing expressions. The monster’s cut on his chin had been stitched when she’d met him, the stitching now gone to form a bright pink, raised scar. So she painted a rider with that very same scar, along with his blond hair.
Were the family to catch a glimpse of the painting, they might recognize the man or realize Charlotte had painted the work while in captivity.
She added a second identifier—the Darley Oak—a gnarled, ancient tree said to be the oldest in Cornwall, one Charlotte had seen. Though Charlotte had no idea whether the manor was situated near Bodmin Moor or not, someone might recognize the tree and note it stood in Cornwall.
Perhaps a hopeless folly, yet she must do something to effect a change in her situation. Since devising her clues, Charlotte worked with greater purpose and energy, all the while planning her escape.
Tomorrow was the day. If she failed…
Best to think positive.
The monster insisted she leave the studio door open, for he enjoyed sneaking up on her whilst she worked and did so with frequency. At least she had come to sense his approach. Now, nary a muscle twitched.
Her thoughts scattered as the air changed. Charlotte girded her loins.
“This is coming along nicely.” His voice held a smile as he strolled near, a pleasant voice, deceptively so.
“Thank you.” She did not cease working and prayed he failed to notice his scarred chin in the painting.
He strolled over to the first fox hunt, still incomplete.
“This will set a pretty price,” he said.
He did not exist. Nothing existed except Woodbine while Patrick looked on as she worked.
“I think you shall paint another hunting scene next,” he said. “One where they blood a young hunter.”
Charlotte nodded.
“Add my Irish hunter, Clementine, and perhaps Harold, my favorite foxhound.”
She could not resist. “I am sure Harold and Clementine will make the work exceptional.”
When he let her quip pass, she asked, “What size?”
“Large. Yes, I think sizable.” He leaned down to sniff her, the mask’s beak poking her neck.
Her stomach wobbled, though she remained outwardly serene. Please do not look closely at the painting.
The monster had provided canvases in varying sizes, paints, brushes, turpentine, cloths—all for her ease of work. Though peace of mind was sadly lacking, that treasure out of reach.
“Come,” he said. “Put down your brushes and we shall share tea and biscuits.”
Since they had breakfasted earlier, an odd time for tea. Charlotte cleaned her brushes and hands, and he pulled out a chair at the table set before the windows. She sat as Jane placed a tray loaded with sweets, savories, and a pot of steaming tea on the table.
Charlotte was quiet as they ate. He was not.
“Dear Lottie, you must be careful roaming the manor, for there are many hidden nooks and crannies that are unsafe.”
How dare he use her nickname. Few but Patrick called her that, and it sounded foul on his tongue. “My name is Lady Hawthorne, my lord. Thank you for your advice.”
“I have considered sharing my rooms with you to keep you safe.”
“As you know, I am a married woman,” she said with heat. “I would decline.”
He reared back. “Decline?”
She backtracked, softening her tone and offering a smile. “That would be a betrayal of my vows, which I take seriously.”
“Do you?” He grinned. “Yet you are here, without any comfort at night to allay your fears.”
“My fears are perfectly manageable, my lord.”
He withdrew a large knife from his boot and poised it above her left hand. Charlotte froze, schooling her features to curiosity, rather than the horror she felt. Were he to stab her hand with that knife, she doubted it would heal well enough to paint. He knew that as well as she.
The monster lowered the knife until the point made a dimple on her skin, then a bit more pressure, a sharp sting, and blood oozed from the shallow wound.
Charlotte contained her tremble, staring into the mask’s glass eyes. “What is the purpose of this, my lord?”
“Ha! Do not move your hand!” He flung the knife into the air where it twirled and whirled.
Would he truly allow her hand to be damaged?
No. This was yet another game to break her will and sense of self. Her hand remained firm on the table.
When his hand darted out and he swiped the handle just before the point reached her flesh, she near fainted in relief.
“Danger is everywhere, my lady. Would you not agree?”
Charlotte wanted to grip that distended nose and rip the mask from his face. But tomorrow was the day for her escape. “As you say, everywhere.”
He slid his knife back into his boot, then resumed eating as if he had not just played cat-and-mouse with her.
“I must change for church.” He took a sip of tea, then rose.
“I could accompany you, my lord.”
He snorted and sauntered toward the door. “I think not. Have you any thoughts on our marriage?”
“I fear I have been too busy to do so.”
“Do think on it. What a powerful team we shall make!”
Once gone, her contained trembles burst. Long minutes passed, Charlotte walking through tomorrow’s escape plan time and again until she composed herself enough to return to work.
Her escape, via vegetable cart, cheered her. Penrhyn Creigiog was but one of the many houses the delivery man attended, his wares covered with a canvas tarpaulin beneath which she could hide.
Hours passed until her back itched when her captor stormed in once more, bending over her and licking her neck.
“Pray do not distract me,” she said. “I am at a difficult point in the work.”
He laughed, so soft. “It is rather hard to resist, for you taste delicious, my dear.”
Yes, escape was risky. But better than staying in this fetid place. If he caught her? She would suffer, but she doubted he would end her life, his greed for her art gluttonous.
Charlotte’s brush dabbed at the sky.
“No farewell?” He boomed a laugh as he left, the sound fingernails across slate.
A week gone, easily the longest week of Patrick’s life. The misery had trumped his battles at sea, the sinking of his ship, and even his accident. He finally understood why Rhys went on his “retreats.” War had changed them both, yet they still lived a life, unlike to many others. Sometimes, that life became too much.
Upon Lottie’s disappearance, they had hired twenty of Bow Street Runners sixty-eight constables, most the Red Robins, Bow Street’s horse patrol. All were highly trained and disciplined and would scour England for his wife. They had also disseminated gossip that he and Lottie were on their honeymoon.
Patrick rode daily to Dartmouth to question the innkeeper and others at the hostelry where Charlotte had been taken. Most claimed to know nothing, while two men described Charlotte entering the Floating Duck with Banby. Neither had seen her leave.
Yet someone at that infernal inn knew something about Lottie’s kidnapping. They might be clams but he would pry them open.
Patrick became a man obsessed, though he tried to hide his compulsion from the family. He would venture to their rooms, pressing Lottie’s pillow to his face to draw in her scent. Lottie’s glorious scent.
They’d never had a courtship, and he gathered small tokens of his affection. A box of chocolates, a miniature dingy, “Lottie” on its stern, Rosalind and Helen, a recently released poetry collection by Shelley he’d ordered for her…but never given, and other emblems of his attachment. The gifts he’d purchased during his last voyage—the shell painting from Barbados, a colorful ceramic perfume bottle from Marrakesh, a sandalwood carving from India—all rested at the bottom of the sea.
He had not a single image of Charlotte, could not even look upon her face. When she returned, he would request a self-portrait. Entering her studio, he would peruse her paintings again and again, trying to feel her presence, trying to suss out who had taken her and where she was, for he did not believe her dead.
Her kidnapper would not have orchestrated her abduction in such precise detail only to end her. Yet no ransom note had arrived.
Charlotte was a beautiful woman, and perhaps her looks had obsessed her kidnapper. Yet Patrick trusted his instincts which had held him in good stead during the war years. He sensed her captor wanted Lottie for her art.
He questioned Banby and Henry, even Lottie’s maid before her resignation, hunting for any obscure detail that might give him a clue to her whereabouts.
He wrote daily to Lottie’s mama and Claire, for they must be as frantic as he, informing them of any progress and, most especially, reassuring them he was doing all possible to bring Charlotte home.
Letters also flew from his pen to auction houses and art dealers, requesting information on any Reginald Pheland painting coming up for sale, as well as directing three runners to attend auctions with Pheland paintings for sale.
Even so, this disaster made no sense.
On the eighth day of Lottie’s kidnapping, Patrick wheeled from his coach onto the grounds of the Floating Duck, Banby assisting.
“Stay here, Lieutenant.”
“But sir…”
“I will call if need be.”
Banby reeked of annoyance as he saluted.
Entering the inn, hazy with smoke and smelling of spirits, silence reigned. He spotted a suitable table and wheeled over, the Duck’s denizens resuming their chatter.
Patrick noted the innkeeper’s absence as he glanced toward the bar. On his previous excursions, the barkeep nowhere in sight, the innkeeper claimed he was visiting his sister. Having the man’s description from Banby, Patrick was pleased to find him drying glasses behind the bar.
He would get answers today.
Patrick moved a chair aside, wheeled close to the table, waving the barmaid over, a comely girl with expansive breasts beneath her white blouse.
She approached with a swish of her hips. “How can I help ye, handsome?”
He smiled, putting all of his charm into the effort. “Your best ale, miss.”
With a smile and a hip swish, she departed, returning in minutes with his frothing tankard.
“Many thanks,” he said. “By the by, might you tell me the barkeep’s name?”
“Brimley,” she said, her brow furrowed.
“Would you ask Mr. Brimley to join me? I have an offer for him.”
“Do ya, now?” She eyed his chair. “What’s a toff like you want with old Brimley?”
Another smile. “I am afraid that must remain between the man and myself.” He slipped two shillings onto the table.
She swiped them up and nodded. “A moment, sir.”
Minutes later, a stocky older man wreathed in graying curls approached his table.
“Mr. Brimley, I presume?” Patrick said.
“I be Brimley. Whatcha want?”
Patrick waved him to a seat, and Brimley looked at it askance.
“If you do not sit, I fear our conversation will give me a stiff neck.”
Brimley pulled out the chair and thumped into it.
Patrick removed a sovereign from his pocket, setting it on the table, then took a sip of ale. He waited.
“Well?” the man said eyeing the sovereign, his eyes darting from the money back to Patrick.
“I have a few questions, my good man, about some events last week.”
Brimley’s eyes narrowed. “Last week, eh?”
Patrick gave him his captain’s stare, cold as ice and commanding. “The day my wife was kidnapped.”
Brimley jerked and started to rise. Patrick’s hand shot out to clutch the man’s arm just above the elbow. “I would not be so hasty as I have several more sovereigns in my pocket, which you will receive if you cooperate.”
The wheels obviously turned in Brimley’s head. “Alright. Aye, I’ll stay. But yer playing a dangerous game.” He stared at Patrick’s chair. “One you might not be man enough for.”
Patrick’s smile was pleasant, but his eyes remained cold. “Shall we see?” He shoved the sovereign in Brimley’s direction. “Can you identify any of the men from that day?”
Brimley shook his head, his shaggy hair wagging.
“What about their leader? What can you tell me of him?”
The man shrugged. “He wore this funny black mask with a long curving nose.” He gestured to show Patrick.
A medieval doctor’s mask. Charlotte’s kidnapper had disguised himself. Interesting. Perhaps Lottie would recognize the man. Perhaps he would, as well.
“Did you hear him speak?” Patrick said.
“Aye. He sounded like a toff. Like you.”
Curiouser and curiouser.
“Was there any part of his face you could see?”
“Aye.”
A short, round man entered the inn and Brimley’s eyes darted toward him, his spark of fear dissipating.
Extracting the man’s information resembled hauling up a thousand-pound anchor. By hand. “Anything unusual about what you saw of his face? Perhaps a beard? His lips? A chin divot?”
Brimley rubbed his hands across his pants. “A stitched cut on his chin. Looked to be deep, too.”
Patrick eyed the man, knowing he concealed more. Much more. He extracted another sovereign, flipping it with his fingers. “How did they originally contact you?”
“What makes ye think they spoke ta me?” he said, eyes following the coin.
“Because someone at this inn aided them. I suspect it was you, Mr. Brimley.”
“Me! Why I—”
Patrick leaned close. “I do not intend to harm you, sir, but rather glean information.”
The barkeep laughed. “How could you do me harm, you with…”
The knife Patrick thrust beneath the man’s chin froze him.
“Let us not play games, Mr. Brimley.”
The barkeep went to nod and stopped. “No games.”
“Good.” The knife vanished. “Continue.”
The man eyed the sovereign, then Patrick. “One a his thugs got in touch and told me what to do when the lady arrived.”
“Did you know him?”
Brimley shook his head. “He were blond with long hair. Don’t know where he be from, either.”
“His accent?” Patrick said.
Brimley shook his head, curls bobbing. “I dunno. He weren’t from around these parts.”
“Clothes?”
“All except the toff wore regular ones. He was all decked out in fine clothes, like you.”
“How much did they pay you to aid them?”
He flushed, the man’s nose turning beet red. “A pound.”
“Anything else?”
He scraped his nails across his unshaven chin and peered at the sovereign on the table. “You gonna give me that?”
“Possibly.”
The man glanced around the room, then dipped his head. “I were out of the room, so I didn’t see what was going on, but two of the thugs raced from the room out the door, then ran back inside minutes later. I mighta followed them back down the hall and heard something through the door.”
“Good Christ, man, what?”
“That sovereign?”
Patrick slid it across the table, showed it to Brimley, then fisted it.
“There was shouting somethin’ awful. Screeching.”
Patrick unfurled his fist. “And?”
“‘I must have the painting!’ the leader screamed in that plummy voice a his. Then another said ‘the coach left.’ And another, ‘Why in hell’s name did you not follow it?’ That were the toff. More words I couldn’t hear cause a the shouting. Then, and this were the toff again, ‘I have killed for less! My prize will paint me another! Get out!’ Then smashing came and I backed away ‘cause it sounded bad. I weren’t going in that room again for nothing!”
Banby sat across from Patrick on the return trip to Woodbine, keeping silent while Patrick mulled over his conversation with Brimley.
“The barkeep enabled the kidnapping at the inn,” Patrick said.
“What will you do about him?”
Patrick shook his head. “Nothing. He is simply a greedy man uninvolved with the heart of the situation.”
“Was he acquainted with any of Lady Charlotte’s abductors or where they were from?”
“Sadly, no, but not a waste of time. Her kidnapper knows my lady paints.”
Only a flicker in Banby’s eyes showed his concern. “Interesting.”
“The barkeep heard him say, ‘My prize will paint me another!’ His prize! Christ! Proof enough.”
“The use of that word.” Banby shook his head. “Most disturbing.”
“That it is,” Patrick said. “Charlotte’s abductor appears to be of the beau monde. ‘A toff’ in the barkeep’s words. Though how elevated I cannot be certain. He wore a gentleman’s clothes, as well.”
“Someone of the ton,” Banby said with surprise.
“Certainly possible. He bore a slash on his chin, one that would likely scar.”
Banby rested an elbow on his knee. “That will help.”
The carriage hit a vicious hole and Banby jounced, his head thumping the roof, while Patrick’s secured chair never moved.
“Paralysis has certain advantages,” Patrick said, humor in his voice.
“So it appears,” Banby said, eyes alight.
“It is worth noting the kidnapper’s men chased after the painting, the one you and Henry spirited away in the carriage. How did you end up in the carriage?”
In a dry voice, Banby replied, “I was unconscious at the time. Henry said they found me in a back room and had to get help carrying me to the carriage.”
“The leader was in a great fury at its escape.” Patrick raked a hand through his hair. “He said he had ‘killed for less,’ to quote the barkeep.”
“Killed,” Banby said. “Lady Eloise’s death…?”
“Perhaps. Wise to pursue that, but let us take care hypotheses do not lead us astray.”
“A man obsessed is never safe.”
Patrick peered out the window, his thoughts scrambling. They had learned much, yet he felt no closer to finding his lady.