Trial by Desire (Carhart #2)(10)
Over the years, the familial relationship had quietly strained. A different woman might have made some attempt to mend what had frayed; instead, Kate had excused herself. She had her own set of friends. She didn’t need to add her cousins by marriage to that number.
And so it had come to this: everyone in the room, if they knew what she had done, would see her as the enemy.
Her greatest enemy stood next in line to greet her husband. The Earl of Harcroft was slim and tall. He was Ned’s age, but he looked as if he were still eighteen, his face unlined by worries or age. The earl, Kate thought bitterly, appeared to be quite the golden child. He was a master at cricket, a veritable genius at chess and an expert when it came to appraising Flemish paintings of goat-girls. He gave to charity, never swore and attended church, where he sang hymns in a delightful baritone.
He also beat his wife, taking care to hit her only where the bruises wouldn’t show. It was his legal right, as Louisa’s husband, and if he discovered that Kate had hidden her away, he could compel her at solicitor-point to give her up.
Kate wasn’t about to give him the chance.
Ned relinquished Harcroft’s hand and looked expectantly around the room. “Where’s Louisa?” he asked brightly. “Is she lying in, finally? I certainly hope she hasn’t taken ill again.”
Silence fell. The three guests exchanged glances. Kate’s spine straightened; Lady Blakely subsided into her chair and spread her hands carefully down the light purple of her gown. She did not meet Ned’s eyes. Instead, she glanced at her husband, who by a shake of his head clearly delegated the task of divulging the truth back to her.
“We don’t know where she is,” Lady Blakely said simply. “But you’ve just returned. Don’t concern yourself with it.”
Of course. They’d come to talk with Kate. Not a good sign, then, that nobody in the room was looking at her.
“Jenny,” Ned said carefully. “Are you trying to protect me?”
The smile on Lady Blakely’s face wavered.
“I should think that if I’ve earned anything over the last years, I’ve earned the right to the truth. I’ve proven to you by now that I can help.”
“Ned, that’s not what I meant. I simply thought—”
Ned held up a hand. “Well, stop thinking simply.” He spoke lightly, but again something passed between them, and Lady Blakely nodded.
Oh, it was irrational to feel that stab of jealousy. And it was not because she suspected that anything untoward could happen between them. Lady Blakely was devoted to her husband. Still, that exchange of glances bespoke a trust, a friendship between them that Kate had never had a chance to develop with her husband. All she’d had was a handful of breakfasts, and a smaller handful of nights that had more to do with marital expectation than ardor. She’d had three months to raise her hopes, and years to watch them dwindle into nothing.
“If anyone has the right to the truth,” Kate said with some asperity, “it is I. Louisa is one of my dearest friends. I thought, after she gave birth three weeks ago, the danger had passed. Has something happened to her?” Kate didn’t have to pretend her concern for her friend. “Is she well? And did you come to fetch me to her side?”
Harcroft’s cold gaze fell on her as she delivered this speech. But as much as she quaked inside, she did not let herself show more than natural worry.
Lady Blakely must not have seen anything amiss in her expression, either. She let out a sigh. “There’s no easy way to say this. Louisa’s gone.”
“Gone?” Ned asked, his shoulders drawing together, his head snapping up.
“Do you mean she’s passed on?” Kate echoed in perfidious concern.
“I mean,” Lady Blakely clarified, “she is missing. She was last seen yesterday shortly before noon, and we are absolutely frantic trying to locate her.”
“Was she taken by ruffians?” Kate asked. “Have you received some sort of a demand letter from abductors?”
Ned turned to Harcroft. “Harcroft. You used to find misplaced books in the Bodleian Library for amusement. How could you be so careless as to misplace your own wife?”
Harcroft scrubbed his hands through his hair. He made a fine picture of a distraught husband, Kate thought bitterly. “You know,” Harcroft said softly, “about the illness she’s suffered. The problems she had conceiving. Well, after she got with child… The physician said some women don’t take to childbirth. Something about too much excitement laid upon the feminine sensibility. She wasn’t herself afterward. The female mind is delicate as it is, you know. She changed during her confinement. She was less biddable, more excitable. More given to hysterics.”
Harcroft shrugged. The gesture conveyed helplessness, and Kate’s lip curled. Helpless, Harcroft was not. Kate suppressed the urge to lift the nearby oil lamp with her delicate, female hands. She felt excited and unbiddable right now; why, she might slip and use her own delicate, female sensibility to bash all that heavy brass into his head.
However satisfying that exercise might prove, it wouldn’t help Louisa.
“And no,” Harcroft continued, turning to Kate, “we’ve had no notes of ransom. Whoever it was that took her—” his voice took on a sour note, and he tilted his head to look Kate directly in the eyes “—whoever it was, packed a valise for Louisa and clothes for the child. They took my son, without his uttering a cry to alert the nursemaid.”