* * * *

Rod was agreeably impressed by Jason Kilmore’s serious intention of improving his estate. He had always considered the baron a fribble, his determination to buy back the farms his father had sold nothing more than a matter of pride. Though they had spent ten days in the same house, he had had little to do with the fellow, being occupied in courting Thea.

Like his own, Will’s courtship had ended in disaster, but before that, apparently, he had shown Kilmore around the Goff’s Acre farms. Kilmore had been impressed enough to ask advice about hiring a bailiff, and Will—damn his eyes!—had referred him to his cousin. Hence this reluctant meeting in the reading-room at his club.

“I only hope poor old Bodger doesn’t take his enforced retirement to heart,” Kilmore said now, surprising Rod yet again. Who would have thought the man sensitive enough to be concerned over his present bailiff’s feelings?

“From what you have said, I suspect he will be relieved,” said Rod. “For whatever reasons, he has had little experience...” Pausing, he nodded to the waiter who had come up to them bearing a silver salver.

With a frown, Kilmore took the proffered letter. “You’ll excuse me if I read it at once, Hazlewood? My wife...” His frown deepened as he read the superscription. He broke the seal with an abrupt gesture and perused the note. Suddenly pale, he jumped to his feet. “Hell and damnation!”

“I trust Lady Kilmore is not taken ill?”

“Taken hostage!” He groaned. “If he has hurt her, I’ll kill the ruffian! Five thousand pounds! Where am I to find five thousand pounds at this time of night?” He dropped back into his chair and sank his head in his hands. “Oh Penny, Penny, if he has hurt you!”

“Her uncle?”

“Yes.” Kilmore started up again. Pacing and gesturing wildly, he raised his voice to a near shout. “I shall kill him, I swear it. I should have done it long ago.” He swung to face Rod. “Lend me five thousand.”

Everyone in the room was staring. Rod deplored his companion’s loss of self-control and his resulting inability to think straight. “Sit down,” he said sharply. “Don’t be a numskull. What would you do with five thousand pounds? Give it to Vaughn and he’ll come back later for more. If you intend to kill him, there’s no earthly reason to pay him first, though it’s not a course of action I can advise. You would certainly be convicted of manslaughter, if not murder.”

“What am I to do?”

“Let me see the letter.” The scrawled message was easy enough to decipher:

I have your wife. Bring £5,000 to 3, Chapel Court, Swallow Street, by midnight. Come alone if you want to see her again alive.

Too short a time to lay plans. Having met Vaughn, Rod had no confidence in the fellow’s ability to keep his temper if Kilmore were not there by midnight. To kill his niece would avail him nothing, but one could not rely upon him to let that restrain his violence. “Let’s go. It can’t be more than half a mile. It will be quicker to walk than to send for a carriage.”

The distraught husband was not to be held to a walk, nor even a rapid stride. They ran along Piccadilly to Swallow Street. As it was in process of being transformed into Regent Street, a grand approach to Regent’s Park, that narrow thoroughfare was lined with rubble. Reflected from a low overcast, the gas lights of the respectable streets to the west provided just enough illumination to prevent Rod and Jason from breaking their necks. Stumbling, steadying each other, they sped northward.

At the corner of Swallow Street and Chapel Court was a heap of broken bricks, sprouting here and there a splintered beam. Looming over it, a blank wall towered: the end of the Chapel Court tenement. The terrace of three tall, narrow dwellings, fronting directly onto the short street, stood dark, dilapidated, derelict, ready for demolition.

Only the nearest showed any sign of life, a faint glow of light in one ground-floor window. A need for caution at last dawned on Jason Kilmore and he crept towards the lighted window while Rod gently tried the front door. It was on the latch.

One corner of the sackcloth draping the inside of the window was torn. For what seemed an age, Kilmore peered through the gap, then he pressed his ear to the pane for two or three minutes. He shook his head and stepped back to let Rod look.

Vaughn sat on a broken chair at a rickety table. Before him stood writing materials and a bottle. He was raising to his lips a tumbler of a clear liquid, doubtless gin. Light from an ill-trimmed oil lamp flickered on his unshaven chin, his broken-veined nose. His brown coat was threadbare and a limp blue muffler enveloped his neck. In the few weeks since Rod had last seen him, his appearance had deteriorated from that of a respectable-looking tradesman to a back-slum bully.

Two empty chairs stood at the table. What little Rod could see of the rest of the room was bare, with mildew stains on the walls, broken glass and yellowed newspapers roughly swept into a corner.

Kilmore tugged on his sleeve and they retreated.

“I can scarce believe it is the same man,” the baron whispered. “The one time I saw him before, he looked like a prosperous man of business, though he behaved like a brute.”

“When I saw him, he was somewhere between the two.”

“You saw him?” Kilmore asked, incredulous. “When?”

“So the ladies never did tell you? I am surprised that they managed to keep the secret. Vaughn came to your house, and I arrived just in time to prevent him from attacking your elder sister.”

“You are very busy about my affairs, my lord! It seems you know more of my household than I.”

“Come, this is no time for quarrels, nor for explanations. As far as I could see, Lady Kilmore is not in that room. I suggest we reconnoitre to find where they are holding her. We’d best look round the back.”

Stealthy as alley cats, if less silent, they climbed the piles of debris, an exercise that would doubtless cause their respective valets a good deal of grief. Rod bit back an expletive as his knee met a protruding plank. He heard cloth rip.

“Hell and damnation,” muttered Kilmore, encountering his own obstacles.

Like the front, the rear of the house was illumined by a single glowing rectangle. The window was better covered, however. Try as they might, they could see nothing in the room beyond it. Kilmore tried the door next to it.

“Not locked. I’m going in,” he said grimly. “Penny must be in there. I can’t let her suffer alone any longer.”

“If Vaughn is in his senses, he won’t have her here.”

“Then I shall beat her whereabouts out of him. I’ve floored him before, and I’ll floor him again.”

“He probably has accomplices,” Rod warned. “We need more information before rushing in.”

“He has my wife,” the baron snarled. “That’s all the information I need. Are you with me or not?”

“Very well, but if there are others, at least let us divide their attention. Both doors are unlocked. You take the rear, I’ll go around to the front, and we’ll break in at the same moment. Give me ten minutes—no, better make it fifteen, considering what’s in the way. It’s only twenty past eleven.” By the dim light from the window, they synchronized their watches.

Rod scrambled back round to Chapel Court. Checking his watch, he found he had overestimated the time he needed. Ten minutes to wait.

Watch in hand, he leaned against the wall. Too late to worry about damage to his coat. The seconds ticked past. Somewhere not far off a horse plodded by, the slow rhythm of its hooves sounding weary. One minute. Two minutes.

He heard a distant cry. Amazing how quiet these streets were at this time of night.

And then came a thud within the room behind him. He applied his eye to the gap in the sackcloth just in time to see two bruisers drag in Kilmore’s limp body.

“Jus’ like you said, guv, he crep’ in the back way and looked in the room and there we was waiting.”

Rod gritted his teeth. Damn the man! The baron had lost his composure, lost his prudence, lost his patience, and ruined their chance of success. Alone, Rod could not possibly take on those three brutes at once, for all his size and expertise.

The sensible course would be to go for help. But now that Vaughn had both Kilmores in his power, who could guess what he was planning? He’d be furious when he discovered Kilmore had brought no ransom. Given his temper, he was likely to put the present satisfaction of revenge higher than the hope of money in the future.

The only chance was to rescue Lady Kilmore before Vaughn stopped gloating over her husband’s capture. Rod had to get into the house and search for her. Slipping and sliding in his haste, he clambered back towards the rear.

He would never forgive himself, and Thea would never forgive him, if Lady Kilmore came to harm. Where the devil was she?