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“That’s a lie!” The heated outburst surprised them both. The child bit her lower lip, her chin quivering as she stared intently at Leona. “I’m not. Really, I’m not. I’m telling the truth. Please believe me. Please help me!”

Leona compressed her lips and sat silently a moment, searching the child’s anxious face for the truth. Finally, she reached out to lay her hand on the child’s arm. “How can I help?”

“Get me out of here! Please! They . . . they kidnapped me while I was on my way to visit Nanny Hazlett,” she explained, her words coming out in a rush.

“They hit Walter on the head. There was so much blood! And then they threw a blanket over my head and carried me away, leaving Walter there to die!”

“Doucement, child. Doucement, ” Leona soothed, patting her arm.

Chrissy sniffed and rubbed her nose with the back of her hand. When she looked up at Leona again, there was a renewed expression of mulishness on her face.

“It’s not that I don’t believe you. I’m merely trying to understand. Now, where and when did they capture you?”

“I was driving my little pony cart on my way to visit Nanny Hazlitt. She used to be my nurse. She lives in a little cottage by herself, and she shouldn’t.

She’s blind now, you see. She was my daddy’s nurse, too.

And my Uncle Nigel’s and Aunt Lucy’s.” Her forehead furrowed, and she bit the tip of a finger as she thought.

“I don’t know how long ago. It seems like years!

Sometimes they give me this awful-tasting stuff that makes me sleep and sleep!

” Laudanum, most likely, Leona thought. And lamentably, that is standard practice for treating the insane.

Instinctively, though, she believed the child.

Rationally she was forced to gather further evidence. “Where is your home?”

“Castle Marin.”

Leona shook her head. “I’m afraid I’ve not heard of it.”

“It’s in Devon, not far from Axminster.”

“Is that where your parents are?”

Her face fell. “No,” she answered on a thread of sound.

“They’re in Switzerland. Papa’s sick. The doctors said Switzerland would make him better.

But Grandmamma, Uncle Nigel, and Aunt Lucy are at Castle Marin.

They’ve been taking care of me until Mama and Papa can come home.

If they ever can,” she finished softly. She looked away, swallowing thickly.

Something was terribly wrong here—as if kidnapping weren’t enough! “Do you know what it is the kidnappers want?”

“Money, I guess, but they won’t take it from Uncle Nigel. They want it directly from Papa! They don’t care that it would kill Papa to come back to England. I don’t understand,” the child wailed softly, then crumbled forward, weeping, her face in her hands.

Leona sighed and stroked her head. “I don’t either, my dear. But it seems to me that if we’re to save your father, we’ve got to get you out of here.”

Chrissy gulped and sniffed as she straightened. “I know, and I’ve tried to escape several times.”

“You have?”

“Uh-huh. First, I took a fireplace iron and tried to use it to bash the old lady’s head in, but it was too heavy and I missed.

So they gave me that stuff to make me sleep and took all the fireplace stuff out of here.

Then I dragged the chess table over by the door and stood on it with the wash basin in my hands.

I thought I could drop it on her head. But the table fell over while I was standing on it. ”

“So they took the table away, along with any other items you might use as weapons,” Leona said.

The child nodded.

That explained the room’s bareness. “I gather you also tried to use the highboy and the bed linens? How were you going to use those?” she asked with a hint of admiration and humor in her voice.

“I wiggled behind the highboy and tried to push it over onto Joanna when she brought me food. That didn’t work either. It was so heavy, and I couldn’t do it quickly. She heard me.”

Leona repressed a smile. “Ah, yes, that would be a hard piece to maneuver. And let me guess, you tried to tie the sheets together to form a rope to lower yourself to the ground.” Chrissy nodded. “You are quite a resourceful young lady. Your parents would be proud of you.”

“No, I’m not. I’m not resourceful at all. I’ve botched up everything.” Her little chin quivered again, and her eyes leaked tears out the corners. Defiantly she swiped them away.

Sensing pity could destroy the last vestiges of the child’s strength, Leona kept her voice calm and matter of fact. “Well, sometimes we all have to know when we need help. As much as we like to do everything ourselves, sometimes it isn’t possible. I think this is one of those times.”

“Then you’ll help me?”

Leona nodded, then watched—astounded—as the glow of hope turned the drab waif into a dimpled charmer. “But how will we escape? Do you have a ladder?”

“No. I climbed the vines that grow up the side of the house.”

“Vines! Oh, how I wish I’d known of them! I could have climbed down them!” She scrambled to the edge of the bed. “Come on! What are we waiting for?”

Leona grabbed her hand. “Chrissy, wait! It’s freezing outside. You are hardly dressed to go out, let alone climb down those vines. Besides, we can’t. They were ripping loose as I was climbing up. We would most likely fall and break our necks.”

“But. . . but, how am I to escape?”

“By going out the door.”

“What? But I can’t! I’m locked in. We're locked in.”

Leona smiled and dug her hand into her pocket to pull out a ring of keys. “The Norths rent this house from my family.”

“You have the keys!”

“Every one of them,” Leona said as she walked toward the door.

“But if you have the keys, why did you climb up vines?”

She sorted through the keys. “Two reasons. First, the Norths said they had a mad child here. For all I knew, that could have been true. I didn’t know what to expect.

Better to look through a window first than to open a door when I didn’t know what was on the other side.

Second, the manor house doors are dead-bolted from the inside.

Bring the candle here.” She took the candlestick and handed the keys to Chrissy to hold.

“I was shocked at first to see them using such cheap tallow candles over wax ones. Now I think we should be grateful.” She dripped tallow over the door hinges, then took the keys back and dripped tallow over one of the keys.

She thrust the candle into the child’s hands.

“Let’s hope this works; I didn’t like the loud sound this door made when your warder entered.

We don’t need anything that could call them down upon us. ”

She thrust the key in the lock and carefully turned it.

The door lock clicked open. She and Chrissy exchanged happy smiles.

Carefully she pulled the door open, grimacing at the squeal that sounded fainter than before but still evident.

She took the candle back from Chrissy and grabbed her hand, leading her out into the dark hall.

Stealthily they made their way to the back servant’s staircase and on down two flights of stairs.

At the bottom, a hallway branched off toward the kitchen and another toward the butler’s pantry.

Leona led her toward the kitchen wing and through to the scullery.

In the scullery, there was a door leading outside.

On the wall beside the door were two cloaks hanging on wooden pegs along with an apron.

Leona set the candlestick down on a worktable.

Grabbing one of the cloaks, she wrapped it around the child.

It was woefully long. Plus, there was still the problem of her bare feet.

Leona grabbed a kitchen knife and attacked the cloak's long hem, biting her lower lip whenever it ripped loudly. She cut strips to wrap around the child’s feet from the piece she removed, binding the heavy wool in place with apron strings.

“Ready?” she whispered.

Chrissy’s eyes gleamed with excitement. “Ready.”

Leona carefully pulled back the bolt and lifted the latch.

She pulled the door open. It groaned loudly.

Leona and Chrissy exchanged panicked glances.

Leona had not thought to grease this door.

Of course, when she lived in the house, the doors never needed greasing.

It was something the servants regularly did.

“Quickly!” she urged the child as they stepped through the door.

Together they ran toward the woods. Leona glanced back once to see a figure standing in the open doorway, a branch of candles held high.

She grabbed the child’s hand and pulled her deep into the forest, now thankful for the moonless night.

She didn’t know if they would be pursued, or if they were followed, how quickly, but she would not take any risks with this child’s life.

They would go by a slightly circuitous route to Rose Cottage.

There she would entrust the child to Maria’s care while she sent messages to one Nigel Deveraux at Castle Marin in Devon and Sir Nathan Cruikston, the local magistrate.

She would have the Norths apprehended and out of Lion’s Gate—and out of her life—before morning.