Chapter Seventeen
William came back to consciousness with a pounding pain on one side of his head. Cold pressed against his cheek—the terrace! Quickly, he remembered where he was and why. He scrambled to his feet, despite the fact that his balance wasn’t steady and the urge to retch shot heavily into his throat.
“Francesca?” Swallowing down the sour bile he staggered about the terrace. As his pulse pounded hard in his ears, he sent a frantic glance through the immediate area, but didn’t see her. “Francesca!” He shoved a gloved hand through his hair as he peered into the darkened gardens. “Fanny, where are you?”
But he knew. Foreboding slipped down his spine while cold alarm knotted his gut. She’d been taken by the killer, and he’d been so lost in her after that dance he hadn’t heard warning signs that someone had approached. He put a hand to his temple. The glove came away spotted with dark blood. When the toe of his shoe nudged something, he kneeled. A damned rock. He’d been rendered unconscious by a large garden rock, which meant the assailant had accessed the terrace from the grounds.
Then his gaze fell on a lady’s reticule in the hue of blue of Francesca’s gown. Resting nearby was an embroidered and beaded slipper. And the most heartbreaking thing was one of the mother of pearl hair combs had fallen to the ground with a few strands of her hair still clinging to it. Had it been wrenched from her upswept locks, or had it fallen out in a struggle? His heart dropped into his stomach as he retrieved each item and stood.
Where the bloody hell is she? And who took her?
Not knowing what else to do, he rifled through the reticule—hoped Francesca would forgive him the trespass—and pulled out her notebook. After tucking the slipper into the bag but keeping hold of the comb, he riffled through the pages, squinting for he’d not brought his reading spectacles. He glanced over the notes she’d taken from the murder investigations. A few snatches of scribblings stood out to him, and in retrospect he should have put those clues together for himself.
…father came into the title from a distant cousin…
…he used to be a butcher…
…finally flush…
Those notes brought his own observations to the forefront of his mind. An image of that redhead—Miss Newton—swam into view. The odd way she’d behaved when he’d saved her from traffic in front of Whitehall. How possessive she’d been with Lord Wainwright and why he’d warned his friend Lord Coxhill away, which had resulted in that lord being found dead. The weird connection between them she’d alluded to this evening, and her insistence they dance together.
The initial M being carved on all the victims except one—the male. It hadn’t been for her name—Miriam—it was definitely a sign, like a cat marking its territory—mine. The clues clicked into place. Somehow, she’d gotten it into her head that Lord Wainwright had been the man for her, and she didn’t like any other woman dancing or even talking to him.
So she’d killed them and marked them—mine.
But why kill Lord Coxhill as well as the shop keeper? And why try to kill either him or Francesca at the scene of Lord Coxhill’s dumping?
He sucked in a breath as his heart squeezed. Good God, for whatever reason, she’s shifted her warped affections from Lord Wainwright to me.
And now Francesca was gone.
Urgency compelled him to return to the ballroom. As he edged around the perimeter, he stuffed the notebook into the reticule. When he didn’t immediately see his cousin, he decided on the most direct way of summoning him. “Hadleigh!”
Dozens of heads swiveled around at his hail, some even from couples moving through steps of a current set, but he didn’t care. None of that mattered; at this moment society could go hang. The longer he tarried, the deeper Francesca was in trouble, for if Miss Newton’s father had been a butcher before gaining a position within the ton, there was a good chance she’d learned enough of his trade, for she hadn’t been a society miss at that time.
His stomach heaved with the knowledge. Was she even now torturing Francesca with a knife? “Damn it all, where are you, Hadleigh?” Then he spied his cousin across the ballroom, chatting with someone in the corridor beyond. With annoyance bubbling through his chest, William charged through the couples on the dance floor, scattering some of them in his wake, for it was the direct route to his destination, and patience had never been his virtue. As he drew close to his cousin, the look on his face must have been enough deterrent, for the couple Andrew had been conversing with fled.
“What the devil ails you now, William?” Andrew drawled with poorly concealed anger in his eyes. “I was just about to find my wife and go home, for the evening is dragging on and Sarah shouldn’t be on her feet so long.”
“Miss Bancroft has been kidnapped,” he stated without preamble and held up the comb.
Andrew snorted. “I rather doubt that. Perhaps she’s in a retiring room.” Then he frowned as his gaze landed on the wound at William’s temple that was even now forming a goose egg-sized knot with a trickle of blood.
“No, damn it all, she’s been taken!”
“What the devil happened to you?” He pulled William into the corridor and away from anyone who’d try to eavesdrop.
“Calm yourself, Cousin.” Andrew dropped a hand on William’s shoulder. “This isn’t an appropriate venue to cause yet another scene.” His tone of voice was designed to soothe, to talk William down from the boughs.
I don’t wish to remain calm.He shook off Andrew’s hand. “You don’t understand, Hadleigh. What she means to me—” His throat constricted.
“I understand more than you know.” Compassion pooled in Andrew’s eyes. “Trust me on that. Now, calmly explain why you’ve come to this conclusion. That she’s missing, not that you’re in love with her.”
William didn’t quite know the details on how his cousin had won his wife, but perhaps it wasn’t as simple as he’d assumed. Peering at the hair comb, he quickly explained. “By the time I came to, Francesca was gone.” He held up the reticule and pointed out the slipper. “And by force, too.”
“Do you know by who?”
“I have a fair idea. Do you know who Miss Newton’s people are? Her father is Lord Pursely.”