Once a Duchess(78)
When he heard the reports, Grant shot a hard look at Isabelle and left without a word.
Fear gnawed at her middle. Isabelle ran her hands up her arms, and turned to the investigator. “How much longer can this go on?”
His shoulders slumped at her question. “It could be hours. Days. Soon, though, every watchman in London and every magistrate throughout the country will be on the lookout. Lady Naomi will be recovered, miss.”
The next several hours were maddeningly repetitive. No news. Never any news. The men saw nothing. They found nothing. No one they spoke to had seen or heard anything that could lead them to Naomi.
As evening approached, Isabelle thought the waiting would drive her mad. The last group of men looked peaked. The search parties were surely tired, hungry, and flagging in strength. Isabelle decided to fix baskets for the next round of searchers to take back to their groups. The men needed to eat, and Isabelle needed something to occupy her time.
The kitchen level was not as abandoned as it had been last time Isabelle was there, but still quiet. A couple of maids worked in the scullery. In the kitchen proper, a lad on hands and knees scrubbed the flagstone floor with a stiff-bristled brush. An elderly liveried footman emerged from the pantry, holding a tin of spice. He gave Isabelle a baleful look.
“Where’s the cook?” Isabelle asked the man.
He tipped his chin to the interior of the pantry. Isabelle peeked into the small, gloomy room. The cook sat on the floor, hugging her knees to her chest with her face pressed against them.
“Excuse me,” Isabelle ventured. “I’d like to make baskets of food for the search parties. Would that be all right?”
The woman’s head reared up, her round face blotchy and streaked with tears. “Who could think of food at a time like this?” she wailed. “Not when our young lady’s been taken!” She bit her fist and choked out a sob.
Isabelle tried reasoning with the grief-stricken woman. “But the men must eat. How will they have the strength to keep up the search with empty stomachs? Wouldn’t you like to help me?”
The cook only shook her head and cried harder.
Isabelle sighed. Fine. She would do it herself.
In the larder, she found a large ham. She brought it to the table and carved the meat into a pile of slices. She made short work of a wheel of hard cheese, and several loaves of bread. Then she set about assembling sandwiches, which she wrapped in napkins.
She packed them into the baskets, and carried them upstairs. When she reached the entry hall, the butler was closing the door.
“Did I miss them?” At the butler’s affirmative reply, she stomped her foot in vexation. “No news, either, I suppose?” she grumbled.
“No, ma’am.”
Frustrated tears pricked the backs of her eyes. She set her load of baskets on the floor. “All right,” she said, wiping her nose with the back of her hand. “Here’s food for the men. Make sure they get these, if I’m not here next hour.”
• • •
Fatigue slumped Marshall’s shoulders. Beneath him, his mount plodded wearily. Marshall thought ruefully that Amadeus would have better endurance than the gelding he rode, but his favorite stallion had stayed behind in London. His search party had ridden hard and fast down the road to London, hoping to catch up to Thomas Gerald if he was taking his sister back into the city. They’d gone as far as Lambeth, but careful questioning of the villagers revealed that Gerald and Naomi had not passed that way. When the party had reconvened, the eyes of Marshall’s grooms and footmen had turned to him for guidance. What now? those expressions all asked.
With despair and fear gnawing at his gut, Marshall adopted the same tone he’d used when addressing his company in Spain. “We’ve gathered,” he said matter-of-factly, “that Lady Naomi is not being taken into the city — at least not by this road. Good, that’s valuable intelligence.” In truth, it was worthless. It was akin to lifting a single straw from the proverbial haystack, and upon discerning the absence of the needle announcing, “Not here!” That still left the entire blasted haystack to sift through — or in Marshall’s case — every village, byway, and port in England. The more time passed, the larger the haystack became.
Still, his forthright attitude reassured his men, who nodded sagely at his words. “We shall fan out,” he’d announced, “and explore every track and drive in the area. Having foregone the speed of the main road, we can assume Gerald prefers the solitude of the less-traveled paths. Break into two groups. You two,” he swept his finger at the group, gathering a pair of men with his gesture, “backtrack toward Bensbury. Check the farms we saw earlier, off to the west. You two,” he nodded to the others, “explore the woods to the east. If he’s going to send a ransom demand, he might be headed for a house, a shack, something of that sort. Look for anything suspicious. I’ll take the turn going back to Bensbury this time.”