Vow of Deception (The Ministry of Curiosities #9)(65)

Mr. Yallop nodded at Lincoln. "Arrest him."

I stood in front of Lincoln and stamped my hands on my hips. The constables stopped advancing, unsure what to do with me. "You have no evidence against him," I said. "This is outrageous."

Mr. Yallop smiled. "We will have evidence when we find the records I know you're keeping from us."

"You've searched the entire house and found nothing!"

"We searched the house, but not the garden. Men, take him."

"I'll come willingly," Lincoln said.

I spun around to face him. "No, Lincoln! Don't go with them. They'll lie and make up evidence against you. If you go, you won't come home!"

"Charlie," he purred. "I love you."

My face crumpled. Tears pooled in my eyes. "Don't go with them," I begged. "Please, Lincoln. You can still escape. I know you can."

He kissed my forehead, his warm lips lingering.

"It's not wise to run," Inspector Fullbright said. "If you don't come with us, sir, you look guilty."

"Yes," Mr. Yallop said with a lazy drawl. "And a man guilty of conspiring to murder pays for his crime with ten years’ hard labor."





Chapter 14





They drove Lincoln away, leaving three of the constables to search the outhouses and garden. I followed them. When they reached the walled garden, I held my breath and not simply because the files were buried in the ground, but because of the manure we'd spread over the entire plot to cover the freshly turned earth.

They left empty-handed in the afternoon.

"Sit, Charlie," Cook said when I joined him and the others in the kitchen. "Eat." He put a plate of cheese and ham on the table in front of me.

I pushed it away. "I'm not hungry."

"Did they find anything?" Alice asked. She looked exhausted, her face drawn and pale.

"No."

"Thank God," Lady Vickers said, taking a seat beside me. "So now what do we do?"

"We wait," Gus said. "Like Fitzroy wants us to do."

"I'll visit his lawyer," Seth announced. "If he doesn't feel comfortable handling this then he can put us on to someone who will."

"I suspect Lincoln has already set that in motion," I said. "But go anyway. Thank you, Seth."

"I'm happy to do something. I need to do something." He kicked the table leg. "This situation is untenable."

"It ain't right," Gus said with a shake of his head. "How can they say he conspired to murder? He's bloody saved the people of this city more times than I can count. We should tell 'em about all these times, about Frankenstein and the general."

"They won't believe us," I said. "And they can accuse him of conspiring because he won't hand over the files they suspect—they know—we're harboring."

Seth paced the kitchen floor, circling the table. "God damned Swinburn. I'll bloody kill him."

"Don't do anything rash," his mother said. "Start with the lawyer and leave the killing to when all else fails."

"What if we do hand over the files?" Alice asked. "Will they release him then?"

"Possibly," Seth said, looking at me.

I shook my head. "Lincoln doesn't want them to have the files. He promised many people that he'd keep their records safe and he would hate for his word to be broken."

"Not even to save his life?" Seth threw his hands in the air. "Who cares about his word now?"

I rubbed my forehead. "We'll keep that in our corner if the lawyer fails. For now, we'll keep the files hidden and dig them up only if necessary."

"We know some of the people in those files," Gus said. "I can warn them."

"Good idea. Send a telegram to Frakingham House too."

Cook took up his piping bag and squirted an icing rosette onto the edge of the cake. It was almost finished, and what a magnificent piece of art it turned out to be. He'd sculpted a tiny sugar butterfly at the front, sitting on a rose. Only that morning he'd told me the butterfly symbolized me, free and happy. I'd asked him if that meant the rose represented Lincoln and he dared me to tell Lincoln he was a rose. In the middle of the cake, beneath an arch, stood a couple staring into one another's eyes.

I dashed away my tears. "Don't bother with the cake," I told him. "There can't be a wedding tomorrow with Lincoln in jail."

Seth placed a hand on my shoulder. "We'll free him."

"Perhaps," I whispered through my tight throat. "But not in time."



* * *



I would not stay at Lichfield and wait for a miracle to occur. I could not. After Gus dashed off messages to those recorded in the files whose addresses we remembered, he drove me to Buckingham Palace. I was prepared to beg, bribe or wait all day for an audience with one of the royal family but I was granted access to the queen immediately. I suspected that privilege arose because she wanted to ask me to summon her late husband. I was wrong.

"You lied to me, Miss Holloway." The queen sat at her desk in an office I had not yet been into. It was vast and somewhat empty, with chairs placed along the wall. A footman picked one up and went to place it by the desk but the queen waved him away. "She won't be staying."