Chapter Eleven

‘Don’t move, sweetheart,’ Seth said, his lips to Emma’s ear, knowing how ridiculous his words were, but he hoped Emma would hear his voice, feel his breath against her skin. ‘I’ll be right back.’

Fleur. He had to find her. And soon. And he was going to need help.

Seth raced around the side of the church, tripping over a watering can that clattered noisily against a headstone as he went, but just managed to save himself from falling completely. He burst into the church where people were settling themselves in pews and the vicar was walking towards the lectern.

‘Help!’ Seth cried. ‘I need help! My wife’s lying injured and my daughter’s missing.’

Stunned faces stared back at Seth.

‘You’ll not get it from me,’ someone said, but Seth couldn’t be sure who.

‘Nor me,’ someone else said.

Both were men’s voices.

‘You’re holding up the service.’

A woman’s voice this time.

Seth drew breath ready to ask the speakers what they thought they were doing in a holy place if they didn’t have a Christian bone in their bodies, when the vicar spoke.

‘There are hurricane lamps on the back pew,’ he said, pointing. ‘Mr Wallis, will you be so kind as to light them.’

The churchwarden, still in the process of handing out Order of Service books, said, ‘Yes, Reverend. Right away.’

‘And as for the rest of you,’ the vicar went on, ‘I’m shocked and saddened by your response. I take back what I said to you earlier, sir, and will lead by example. I thought it was a domestic dispute of some kind. I’ll come and help you look for your daughter.’ And with that he strode down the aisle, black robes swishing as he went. A handful of men and one woman followed him.

Mr Wallis lit five hurricane lamps and it seemed to take forever while he did it. But Seth knew that without light he’d have no chance of finding Fleur if she was asleep in the undergrowth somewhere.

A lamp in his hand, Seth rushed back to Emma. She’d moved slightly since last he’d been with her. Again he checked her pulse. Still there, but flickering. He hoped it was merely the shock of what had happened to her and nothing more serious.

Seth was torn between looking for Fleur and staying with Emma. He took off his jacket it and laid it gently over Emma’s shoulders, tucking her icy hands in underneath.

The vicar and those who had found it in their consciences to help, were covering the churchyard in what Seth thought looked almost like a military procedure. The moon was up now and he prayed that its light would catch on the white baby bonnet with the swansdown trim Emma loved to dress Fleur in – if she was still wearing it – and that they’d find her soon, sleeping cosily in a bed of fallen leaves. He didn’t dare think that something more sinister might have happened to her – that perhaps Caroline Prentiss had survived the sinking of the Titanic and that she’d paid someone to beat up Emma and kidnap Fleur. He knew Emma would fight to the end to protect his daughter, and it looked now as though she almost had.

‘No luck yet, sir,’ the vicar said, returning to Seth.

He bent low over the barely conscious Emma.

‘Your wife’s in a bad way.’

‘I know that!’ Seth said over-loudly, he knew, but adrenalin was coursing through him now. He’d never known such fear in his life. ‘But she is at least alive. I can’t be so sure about my daughter.’

‘Does she walk yet?’ the vicar said. ‘Mr Wallis says he’s found an empty perambulator by the back gate.’

‘Yes. She can pull herself up to a standing position and take a step or two.’

‘So she can’t have gone far by her own efforts,’ the vicar said, laying a hand on Seth’s shoulder. ‘My congregation is doing everything they can.’

‘Some of them,’ Seth said, as a gaggle of parishioners reached the lychgate, obviously deciding that Evensong was over before it had ever got started tonight, and – having no intention of helping a murderer’s brother, a smuggler’s son – were going home. ‘I appreciate your help,’ he told the vicar. He held out his hand, ‘Seth Jago. If you want to shake it.’

The vicar took Seth’s hand and shook it briefly, but firmly.

‘I would have preferred to make your acquaintance in happier circumstances, Mr Jago. And I can’t pretend I don’t know your family name. The reactions of my temporary flock make sense to me now.’

‘Yes, and none of this is finding my daughter. Can someone be sent to tell my friend Olly Underwood? He lives on New Road. I’ll need help getting Emma home.’

‘Consider it done,’ the vicar said.

‘Emma! Emma! Open your eyes.’

Where was she? It felt as though her head was bound tightly in a thick blanket of some sort. And her eyes when she tried to open them felt heavy, swollen. She remembered crying and crying when she’d been told her mama’s and Johnnie’s bodies had been found below the cliffs at Berry Head, and her eyes had swollen with her tears then. But she hadn’t been crying, had she?

Emma tried to turn on her side because the back of her neck ached so.

‘Argh.’

Even saying that little word was painful. What had happened to her? And that wasn’t Seth’s voice calling her, telling her to open her eyes.

Her mouth drier than ash, Emma attempted to lick her lips. But her tongue seemed swollen too.

‘Wat …’ she began, but couldn’t finish the word.

But whoever it was who was with her, had understood. She felt a hand gently hold the back of her head, then lift it from the pillow as a glass of water was raised to her lips.

‘Just a little sip, Emma, to start with.’

Emma sipped, but swallowing was difficult. She coughed. There was something in her mouth. Earth? Grass? She tried to raise a hand so she could finger it out, but it seemed she had no strength in her arms at all. Instead, she opened her mouth as wide as she could so whoever it was who was with her might see she had some obstruction. Her heart began to race – was she going to choke?

‘Good girl. I’m with you now, Emma, and I’ll examine you just as soon as you are a little stronger.’

She felt a finger in her mouth, gently removing whatever obstruction was there. Ah. Emma knew who it was now. Dr Shaw. She felt herself physically relax now she knew she was in his safe hands.

‘Thank …’ she said. Again, she was unable to complete what it was she wanted to say.

And what she wanted to ask. But it would have to wait. Her eyes were being bathed with something warm now – it felt oily. And then her nose got the same treatment which tickled a bit and she coughed slightly.

A warm flannel was pressed to her lips, softening them. She wriggled her jaw and the movement felt good, as though she was coming back to life.

‘That’s better,’ Dr Shaw said. ‘Good girl.’

Girl? Girl? She wasn’t a girl. She was a woman, with a daughter. A little girl.

‘Fleur?’ Emma was suddenly hit by a flashback. Fleur asleep on her lap. Three girls menacing her. Her arms around Fleur protecting her. Then blows from a stick. Falling. Falling. Falling.

Emma opened her eyes now. It felt like tearing a dressing off a crusted wound to do so and she winced. Her eyes scanned the room. It was in semi-darkness, just one oil lamp burning on the dresser. But her oil lamp. Her dresser. Her own drawing room. She struggled to sit up, and the doctor helped her.

‘Your husband’s still out looking,’ Dr Shaw said. He smoothed Emma’s hair back off her forehead, touched her gently with a finger, but the touch still made her jump with pain. ‘I’ll clean this and dress it in a minute.’

‘Looking?’

‘For your daughter.’

‘For Fleur?’

That couldn’t be right. Fleur had been in her arms and she’d been holding her so tightly – so tightly that for a second or two she’d thought she might suffocate the child. She hadn’t had she?

‘Yes. Mr Underwood is helping and so is Edward Drew. And a few parishioners, I understand. Seth brought you home in the car and telephoned me, and then went straight back to continue the search once I arrived here.’

‘But she was in my arms. I remember that.’ Emma’s heart began to race and blood pounded past her ears. And then it was as if the racing and the pounding stopped and she’d forgotten how to breathe. She felt faint.

‘Lie back,’ Dr Shaw said, helping her. He put fingers to a wrist, checking her pulse.

‘No!’ Emma said, struggling to sit again. ‘I have to help.’

‘Not in the state you’re in,’ Dr Shaw told her. ‘You should have gone to the cottage hospital but your husband was adamant that you didn’t. But you can talk to me. A little at a time, Emma. If you can. It might help.’

Help Fleur. Emma would do anything to help Fleur. Seth would be devastated if something had happened to her.

‘Three girls,’ Emma said. ‘The same school. I know one of them, but I can’t remember her name.’

Emma had to stop speaking because her mouth was dry, her throat sore. She reached for the glass of water and the doctor helped her raise it to her lips. She shook her head a little trying to collect her thoughts into some sort of sensible order. She was confused that she could remember Fleur and being hit with a heavy stick, but not the name of the person who had done it.

‘Girls?’ the doctor said. ‘I hardly think girls could inflict such damage.’

Emma swallowed. Why didn’t he believe her?

She took another sip of water.

‘They were!’

‘Ssh, ssh, keep calm. Perhaps this would be best left until morning. You can tell the constable then. And by then we must hope little Fleur has been found safe and well.’

Hope? What was the doctor saying? Fleur would be found.

She had to be.

‘We’re done here, Seth,’ Olly said. ‘I don’t think there’s a blade of grass we haven’t turned over, or a pile of leaves.’

Seth pressed his hands to his mouth. He didn’t want to say what he was thinking – that someone had taken Fleur. Had it all been in Caroline Prentiss’s plan anyway, to have Fleur abducted then taken out to join her in America? To have Seth’s money and, eventually, his child too?

‘So, what do you suggest?’ Seth said, finding his voice at last. ‘That we all go home and sleep soundly in our beds without a care until morning?’

‘I’ll forget you said that,’ Olly said. ‘It’s only fear talking. Edward’s going down Spratt Lane, inch by inch, with a lamp, and the vicar’s doing Beggar’s Hill. We’re doing all we can.’

‘You know I’m going to kill whoever’s taken Fleur and done this to Emma, don’t you?’

Olly clapped a hand to Seth’s mouth.

‘Shut up, you fool,’ Olly hissed. ‘With your family background, do you really want anyone to hear you say that?’

Seth pushed Olly’s hand away. ‘It’s only the same as any man who loves his wife and child would say.’

‘Yes, but you’re not any man around here, are you? I risk my skin sometimes standing up for you. I don’t want to risk it further should a body be found in a back alley behind a pub in the morning. Do you understand what I’m saying?’

Oh yes, Seth understood. Sophie Ellison had been found dead in a back alley behind a pub and his brother, Carter, found guilty and hanged for killing her.

‘It wouldn’t look good in the circumstances, would it?’ Olly put an arm around Seth and squeezed his shoulder.

‘I suppose you’re right.’

‘You know I am, you stubborn bugger. So, I’m sticking with you all night. But that’s got to be back at Mulberry House now. We’re serving no further purpose here, and the constable is mustering up help. They’ll be out all night. Emma needs you.’

‘You’re probably right again,’ Seth said.

At that moment he didn’t know if Emma was even still alive, if she’d succumbed to her injuries. She’d taken quite a bashing. And Fleur could be dead too, he knew that. But he’d go back to Emma as Olly was saying he should.

They passed Edward on the way to Seth’s car.

‘I’ll drive you home, Edward,’ Seth said.

‘No, sir. I’ll keep lookin’. Ma will kill me if I don’. You go ’ome to Mrs Jago, sir.’

‘Thank you, Edward,’ Seth said.

‘An’ tell ’er I’ll be there in the mornin’, same as usual, for the pastry and that. There’s orders.’ Edward turned and moved away, continuing his painstaking search of every inch of ditch in Spratt Lane.

Seth had a feeling that neither Edward nor Emma would be fulfilling orders in the morning.

‘Ah, you’re awake at last, Emma,’ Dr Shaw said. ‘Are you feeling a little better now?’

‘Stronger,’ Emma said. She balled her hands into fists and then flexed her fingers out again. She raised one arm over her head before letting it drop again.

‘Good, good. Drink this.’

He handed Emma a glass with whisky in it and she guessed that it was a test of her feeling stronger if she could take it and raise it to her lips.

She did. Emma had never drunk whisky in her life before, but she’d drink a whole bottle of it if it would make her feel a whole lot better than she felt at that moment.

‘Now then, is there any chance that you are with child?’

‘No, doctor,’ Emma said. ‘I’ve been thinking of coming to see you about that. It doesn’t seem to be happening.’

How could she remember that and not the name of the girls who’d attacked her? And probably snatched Fleur as well.

Would Seth even want another child if Fleur was lost for all time? she wondered.

‘Time enough,’ the doctor said. ‘Lie back a little for me, can you?’

Emma did as she was told and the doctor pressed his fingers gently enough into her abdomen and her ribs. The stiff whisky the doctor had poured her had coursed through her body, warming her, relaxing her. Emma wanted to get any examination over before Seth got back, whenever that might be.

The clock on the mantelpiece was showing twenty-five minutes past three in the morning.

She and Seth had taken the doctor into their confidence over Fleur when they’d registered her as one of his patients. He’d been told that Fleur was Seth’s child, but not who her birth mother was.

‘It must be me, though,’ Emma said. ‘Mustn’t it? Seth’s fathered a child.’

‘Hush yourself. Now’s not the time to be talking of such things. You’ll need to get back to full strength, to heal from this physically and emotionally before you can think about having a child.’

Again the doctor took her pulse.

‘There’s money to pay you in the desk in the dining room,’ Emma said.

Dr Shaw shook his head as if to say he didn’t want paying at that moment, as he reached for the cloth to bathe Emma’s forehead once more.

But if the doctor had been called out and was administering medicines and using dressings on her, then he would need paying some time. And she had the money to pay him. Not once had she asked Seth for money to pay doctors’ bills or for her clothes and other things she needed. And she never would.

But Seth did buy her things – wonderful lingerie from Perrett’s in Torbay Road; and perfume that smelled of jasmine and a summer’s day from the pharmacy. And shoes – once he’d come home with some shoes with a strap and button in the softest kid leather the colour of bay leaves. Emma had asked him why he’d bought them because it wasn’t her birthday, and he said he’d bought them because he loved her, and did he need another reason?

It seemed frivolous thinking about those things now.

‘I wish Seth would come back soon,’ Emma said.

‘He probably won’t until Fleur is found one …’

Emma knew what it was the doctor had been going to say: ‘… one way or the other’, which meant alive or dead.

But just at that moment they both heard Seth’s car pull up.

Emma tried to stand to go and greet Seth, but her legs buckled under her.

‘Patience,’ Dr Shaw said. He began taking things from his bag, placing them on the seat of the couch. ‘I’ll show your husband what to do with these and then I must be going. Some other patient might be in need of my attendance.’

‘I’m sorry …’ Emma began, but then Seth came bursting into the room with Olly Underwood. Their faces grim.

Emma’s heart sank. Please, please don’t tell me Fleur’s been found dead.

But it seemed neither Seth nor Olly could speak. It was the doctor who broke the silence.

‘Is the search continuing?’ he asked.

Seth nodded.

But it was Olly who spoke. ‘The whole town seems to be out now. Bad news travels faster than a rat up a drainpipe and when word got to the Blue Anchor, where some of Seth’s old crew were drinking after hours, they put down their pints and went home for lanterns to join the search.’

‘And thank God for that,’ Dr Shaw said. He explained, briefly, to Seth the details of his examination of Emma. But he spoke so softly Emma couldn’t hear all he said – which was, she realised, probably his intention.

Dr Shaw left then, promising to return before morning surgery started.

‘Olly’s stopping here tonight,’ Seth said. ‘I’ll show him to the spare room. Then I’ll be back.’

Seth couldn’t stop himself. He pushed open the door to Fleur’s room, something he’d done every night since she’d come into his life. And always he’d sketched her as she slept – a permanent memory – just a few lines at a time so as not to waken her. He had a half-completed portrait of her in a small room at the back of Olly’s boatyard, which Olly let him use for painting. He’d intended that portrait to be for Fleur’s Christmas present this year. Would she be alive for him to give it to her? The door squeaked as usual as he pushed it open further. But there was no fear of that squeak waking Fleur tonight.

Seth walked over to her cot. The sheet and blanket were draped over the rail waiting to be used to tuck her in for the night. He picked up the blanket and held it to his face as a sob rose up from deep inside and came out in a noisy splutter. The blanket did little to stifle the sound. His chest hurt as he struggled to swallow another sob.

‘Men don’t cry’ he could hear his father, Reuben, saying. When Seth’s ma had died after falling down the cellar steps, his pa had taken a strap to him for being weak and shedding tears at the funeral.

But his father was no longer here to take a strap to him, or ridicule him for letting his emotions show. Seth let the tears fall, then wiped his eyes. Dr Shaw had suggested he give Emma a warm bath with some Epsom salts in it. It would draw out the bruising, ease her aches, and help her sleep.

He ran down the stairs, but he knew it was going to be a very long night.

‘Oh, that was lovely, Seth,’ Emma said. ‘I felt so dirty.’

Dr Shaw had examined her intimately to check whether or not she had been sexually interfered with, despite her protestations that it was a woman who had attacked her, and with a stick. The doctor had countered that the sergeant down at the police station would want confirmation that Emma had been examined. She hadn’t liked the examination one bit. No other man but Seth had ever touched her in her private places – unless she counted the day Carter Jago had grabbed her breasts, intent on raping her. But she’d beaten him off and escaped.

‘You were rather,’ Seth said. ‘The water’s like soup.’

Emma smiled at him. She hadn’t meant that at all. But burdening him with her thoughts at the moment was something he didn’t need.

Seth had gently bathed her as Dr Shaw had suggested he should. And now she was wrapped in a towel, sitting on his lap as he dried her. Her nightdress was warming on the fireguard in front of the fire. They would have to go to bed soon. The clock was saying nineteen minutes past five in the morning.

Any other time but now they would have made love at this stage. This wasn’t the first time Seth had soaped her all over, roused her. But she wasn’t roused now. She was relaxed physically from the warm bath and the whisky and the medication Dr Shaw had given her, but her mind was still on Fleur.

Seth reached for her nightdress and carefully helped Emma into it. Already her bruises were coming out, dark as night.

‘You know we can’t go on like this, Emma, don’t you?’ Seth said.

Emma’s heart skipped a beat. What was he meaning?

‘You and me?’ she said, hardly breathing as she waited for his answer.

Was that what he meant? He wanted to end their marriage? – sham as it was.

‘Don’t be daft.’ Seth kissed the tip of her nose. ‘I’ll never love anyone but you, sweetheart. What I meant was, I’m done with living here. With England. I’m done with my pa’s and brothers’ past misdeeds hanging over me like a sea mist that refuses to lift. I’m done with the looks of hate towards me in the eyes of some. And I’m done with living in fear that Miles or Caroline will harm us some day.’

‘Do you think they were responsible for those girls beating me?’

‘God, I hope not,’ Seth said. ‘But the time has come to seriously think about leaving the country. My Uncle Silas asks every time he writes to me that I go in with him and take over the office side of running his fishing fleet. His hand-writing is more of a scrawl these days which is, I think, an indication of how he’s weakening. There was a note from my aunt in with his last letter voicing her worries over him. We’d be safer over in Vancouver, sweetheart. In Canada.’

‘I know where Vancouver is,’ Emma said. ‘And so, probably, does your brother. If he found us here, he’d find us there.’

‘He might. But Uncle Silas was my mother’s brother and neither pa nor my brothers were remotely interested in her side of the family. And Canada’s a big country.’

Too big, Emma thought. It might swallow me up. I’d disappear. I’ve never known anywhere but here and I don’t know that I want to.

‘But you’ve just sold your own fishing fleet because you hate fishing!’

‘I hated my fishing fleet because of my pa’s part in it. Office work, figures and accounting, I like well enough.’

‘But you said you’re enjoying working for Olly. And that you want to paint.’

‘Hmm,’ Seth said. ‘I’ll be leaving Olly in the lurch with his ma being as sick as she is at the moment.’

‘Then don’t,’ Emma said.

‘I don’t want to,’ Seth said, ‘but we can’t always live our lives to please others. We have to think of our own well-being, too. Uncle Silas—’

‘Is in Canada!’ Emma interrupted. ‘The other side of a huge ocean. And in case you’ve forgotten, you get seasick.’

‘I’d be seasick every day for a month if it meant I was taking you and Fleur to a safer place,’ Seth said. ‘I think we must go. I can’t put you at risk from another beating.’

‘But I don’t want to go to Canada! Ever. It’s the backwoods, even worse than the worst places here for poverty. I read about it in The Times when I was working at Nase Head House.’

‘You can’t believe everything you read in the papers, sweetheart,’ Seth said.

‘I still don’t want to go.’

‘I think we should,’ Seth said firmly. ‘I have a responsibility to you.’

‘I have responsibility, too, Seth. To my clients. I have a business, too.’ And then Emma stopped. How cold-hearted she must sound with Fleur still missing to be putting her business above everything. ‘I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have said that in the circumstances. I don’t know what got into me. Do you think evil is transferable? You know, that something from those evil girls might have leeched into me?’

‘Hush,’ Seth said. ‘Don’t think such things. I ought not to have brought the subject up.’

‘Let’s try and sleep, Seth,’ Emma said, feeling weary beyond belief now. She touched his cheek gently with a finger. ‘Dr Shaw said we should. I’m being truly horrible and I’m sorry. I can remember so much, but not who it was attacked me. And we ought not to be talking about anything but getting Fleur back. And alive.’

‘No,’ Seth said. ‘You’re right. Come on. I’ll help you up the stairs.’

Emma let Seth lead her up the stairs to bed.

But there was no way on this earth she was going to Canada with him if she could avoid it. She wasn’t going to let anyone or anything force her from the place she loved.

And there was no way on this earth, either, that she would be able to sleep with Fleur still missing.