Norwood paled. “He’s gone to London.”

Bottomley gasped. “Lord help us all.” Infused with the urgency of his mission, he drew himself up tall. “Norwood, I need a fresh horse,” he said in quite the most imperious tone he had ever used.

“At once.” Norwood himself dashed out to the stables, and five minutes later Bottomley was on his way back to London.

Chapter 24

Emma strode down the hall and barged into Shipton and Ames’s room. “I found her. She’s in room number seven.”

“Does she look all right?” Ames asked quickly.

Emma nodded. “She hasn’t been hurt. Yet.” She took a breath and tried to still the nervous churning of her stomach. “But there are two awful men guarding her. We have to get her out of that room.”

“Maybe we ought to wait for his grace to arrive,” Shipton suggested hopefully.

“We haven’t got time.” Emma wrung her hands together as she paced the room. “I think that she’s been kidnapped by Woodside.”

At Ames and Shipton’s blank looks, she said, “It’s a rather long story, but he’s somewhat obsessed with Belle, and I think he may want revenge against our family. I—I insulted him once.” Emma gulped as she remembered how she had laughed in Woodside’s face when he had said he would marry Belle. And there was no doubt that he was furious over the loss of the gambling voucher. Ned had accused him of trying to collect the debt twice, and he had been publicly humiliated. That surely stung even more than the loss of the money. The more Emma thought about it, the more worried she became. “We’ve got to get her before he arrives.”

“But how?” Shipton asked. “Ames ’n me, we’re not as strong as those thugs.”

“And they have pistols,” Emma put in. “We’re going to have to outwit them.”

The two footmen looked at her expectantly. Emma swallowed nervously. “There was an open window,” she said. She rushed to the window, threw it open, and stuck her head outside. “There’s a ledge,” she said excitedly.

“Dear God, yer grace,” Ames said, horrified. “You can’t mean to—”

“There is no other way to get into the room when the men aren’t there to let me in. I don’t have any choice. And the ledge isn’t too narrow.”

Ames poked his head out the window.

“See, it’s about a foot wide. I’ll be fine. I just won’t look down.”

“Lord have mercy on our souls, Shipton,” Ames said, shaking his head. “Because his grace is going to kill us.”

“What we need is a diversion. Something that will make them leave the room.”

The threesome sat in silence for a few minutes until Shipton finally ventured, “Well, you know, yer grace, men do like their ale.”

A small ray of hope began to form in Emma’s heart. “What are you saying, Shipton?”

Shipton looked a little uneasy, unused to having his ideas listened to with such attention by the nobility. “Well, I’m just saying that men do like their ale, and it’s a fool who passes up a free drink.”

“Shipton, you’re a genius!” Emma cried out, spontaneously throwing her arms around him and giving him a big kiss on the cheek.

Shipton turned beet red and started stammering. “I don’t know, yer grace, I just—”

“Hush. Here’s what we’re going to do. One of you is going to go down to the street and start hollering how you’ve just become rich. Someone died, or something like that, and you’ve inherited some money. Then start yelling about how you’re going to buy drinks for everyone in town. There’s a tavern downstairs. The other one of you will stand guard in the hall and wait to see if the men leave. If they do, I’ll sneak along the ledge and go through the window, get Belle, and come back here. Are we agreed?”

Both men nodded, but their eyes looked dubious.

“Good. Then which one of you wants to buy the drinks?”

Neither said a word.

Emma grimaced. “All right then. Ames, you’re more flamboyant so I want you to do it.” She pressed several coins into his hand. “Now get going.”

Ames frowned, took a deep breath, and then exited the room. A few minutes later, Emma and Shipton heard his shouts.

“I’m rich! I’m rich! After twenty years o’ service, the old geezer finally croaked an’ left me a thousand pounds!”

“Quick, Shipton, go out to the hallway,” Emma whispered urgently as she ran to the window and peeked out. She didn’t have a direct view to the street, but if she looked down the alleyway, she could see Ames as he passed by on his way to the entrance of the inn.

“It’s a miracle!” he shouted, starting to laugh hysterically. “A miracle! A sign from God himself! I’ll never have to wait on another hoity-toity lord or lady for the rest of my days!”

Emma smiled, deciding that she’d forget about the hoity-toity comment. If he succeeded in getting the villains away from Belle, he’d be able to retire for life on the bonus his hoity-toity employers gave him.

Ames fell to his knees and started to kiss the ground. “Good Lord,” Emma murmured. “The man missed his calling. He should have been an actor. Or at the very least a swindler.”

Just then, one of the two villains stuck out his head, two windows down. Emma quickly pulled hers back in and began to pray. Out in the street, Ames got down to business. “I wanna buy drinks for every man who’s had to work for a living. Every man who has had to toil, to use his hands. To The Hare and Hounds! We’ve earned our reward!”