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“W e will wait here for you.” Lord Graham directed when they reached the Mirvat’s lobby.

“Do you wish me to go with you, my child?” Mrs. Ottoway asked.

“No, I shall be well,” Emma assured them, though the idea of touching the stack of messages had sweat beading between her breasts.

“It shan’t take long. They are tied together.

” Squeezing the back of Mrs. Ottoway’s hand in support, Emma turned to climb the stairs, but Lord Orson stood between her and the task. “I am well, my lord,” she repeated.

He tugged her several steps away from the others and turned her to face him.

“No matter what the messages say or what others think, I will not walk away from you, Emma. In me, you have found a steady companion. I have often endeavored to reason against the reasons I adore you, but I have failed miserably, for the pain would be too great. Doing so would mean I am unable to exist, for I cannot breathe without you.”

She wanted to throw herself into his embrace and never come out, but they had an audience watching them. “I mean to prove myself worthy, my lord. You have my solemn promise.”

“Lady Emma?” Lord Graham reminded her of her task. She nodded her understanding.

“I shan’t be long. I want this madness to be over so I might begin again,” she told Orson.

“As do I,” his lordship said softly.

Emma lifted her skirt and dashed up the stairs, turning briefly to present Lord Orson a small wave.

He remained at the bottom of the stairs, looking up to her.

He nodded his encouragement, and, with a smile, Emma turned towards her suite of rooms. She happily slid her key into the lock, but the latch turned before she reached for it.

The door swung open, and she was facing a familiar face—someone she would not expect to have followed her to the Mirvat.

“It was you on the street in Bletchley!”

“Stop pacing,” Graham warned. “You remind me of... Well, we all know how I despise people who pace.”

“What is taking so long?” Richard demanded. “Lady Emma said she knew exactly where to look.”

“It has been less than five minutes,” Mrs. Ottoway said. “I have been watching the clock yonder.” She pointed to a large grandfather clock near the outer room.

“Still,” Richard insisted. “Should not one of us know assurances that all is well? Perhaps looking at the messages caused Lady Emma to have another frightening memory.”

“I shall go,” Mrs. Ottoway said as she started up the stairs. “I am confident it is nothing more than wrestling her ladyship’s bag down from where we placed it on top of the wardrobe.” When she reached the top of the stairs, Mrs. Ottoway called, “Lady Emma, what has delayed you, child?”

The woman also disappeared into the passage along the upper storey.

“This is quite a unique idea for a hotel,” Graham remarked while they waited. “If the owner could take control of several of the other houses on this street and expand, he could make a fortune.”

Richard was still watching the stairs. “Perhaps you could assist in financing such a venture. Be the absent partner. You have a knack for such ventures. Moreover, you are one of the wealthiest men in both England and Scotland, and you are known for your most excellent business aplomb. Your children will want for nothing.”

“I must first discover a woman who ignores both this scar on my cheek and my limp,” Graham said with a shrug of embarrassment.

“Permit the woman you affect to know the man you are first before you allow her to know anything of your wealth beyond the fact you are an earl.” Richard looked again to the stairs. “Should not one of them have returned by now?”

Graham, too, looked to the empty stairs, though he still spoke of his potential bride, “You are correct, I wish to be judged for more than my wealth, and...”

Richard was not to know the rest of his friend’s observation.

“My lords!” Mrs. Ottoway could be heard screeching. “My lords!”

Richard did not wait for the hotel staff to present him permission to be above stairs. He bounded up the staircase and turned to the right to run into Mrs. Ottoway. “What has happened?” he asked, as he instinctively caught the woman to steady her stance.

Mrs. Ottoway was in tears, but she managed to say, “She’s gone! The room is turned upside down!”

“Where?” Richard demanded.

Mrs. Ottoway pointed off to the right, and Richard rushed off towards an open door further along the hall.

Within seconds, he was standing in a sitting room, which had been turned upon its head.

Drawers had been pulled from their tables and dumped upon the floor.

He retrieved his gun from an inside pocket and cross-stepped to an open door to an interior room.

His heart sank when he saw what had been executed upon Lady Emma’s quarters.

Pillows had been slashed down the middle and the feathers were all over the floor and bed.

Blankets and sheets were strewn about the floor, and, again, drawers in cabinets and tables and the desk had been pulled out and the items dumped upon the floor, as had been the items in the wardrobe. It was all ripped to shreds.

“Dear God!” Richard said in pure disbelief. “I saved her only to turn her over again to her tormentor.”

Graham followed Richard into the bedchamber. “I sent Mrs. Ottoway below to fetch the night porter. We must learn who had access to these quarters in our short absence.”

“Obviously someone...” Richard said as he made another slow turn in place to take in the state of the room. “What is happening, Graham? I do not like being one step behind when it means Lady Emma is in danger.”

“I will send someone to fetch Duncan and any of the others who are available. You search the room for the least thread of evidence or any clue left behind. I will learn who on the hotel staff might have been in this area in the last two hours. For now, set your regrets behind you: You are a trained agent of the Crown. Find us a clue to where we might locate Lady Emma. She is frightened and she is depending upon us to rescue her once again.”

“It was you on the street in Bletchley,” she had foolishly declared when she should have turned immediately to stage an escape.

Surely, she could have outrun her tormentor, and Lords Orson and Graham were not so far removed.

They would have come if she called out. However, she had paused long enough to make her accusation, and then the intruder had cocked a gun and pointed it at Emma’s face.

There had been a time when Emma had held no idea of the real damage a gunshot could exact upon a person, but now, she was not so innocent.

Lord Duncan had been shot in the shoulder and had nearly died from his wound.

Moreover, she had shot the intruder last evening, barely wounding him, and that man had to be heavily bandaged.

Being shot in the face would surely kill her.

“We shall discuss my appearance in Buckinghamshire later. For now, I wish to know where the jewels are located?” her intruder said, again raising the gun a bit higher and pointedly aiming it at Emma.

“Jewels? I do not understand,” Emma stated, truly confused.

“The sapphires! Where have you hidden the sapphires? Your mother’s sapphires!”

Before Emma could say she knew nothing of sapphires, or any jewels for that matter, her captor heard Mrs. Ottoway, who was calling Emma’s name.

“We are exiting through the servants’ passage.

If you call out to anyone, I shall place a bullet in your companion’s skull the moment she enters the room. Now move!”

Emma wished to refuse, but she would have no one else to know danger in saving her.

She dutifully crossed to the servants’ passage, pausing briefly to pick up a vase and several papers strewn about the floor to set them upon the table, carefully palming a small card, displaying an image of the hotel on it.

“What do you think you are doing, you stupid cow?” her captor said as the woman shoved Emma in the buttocks with her foot while Emma was bent over, nearly toppling Emma onto her head Even so, Emma had known success: She was determined to save herself this time.

Lord Graham had said she was strong and could be her own savior, and she meant to prove the man correct.

They had entered the narrow hallway and stairs, and her captor retrieved a burning candle left behind, likely one her tormentor had used to search Emma’s quarters.

Though it was not the time or place to make odd assumptions, Emma immediately wondered if she had ever been in a servants’ passage at any of her homes.

She thought perhaps she had done so as a small child when her parents had been stationed in Austria in the early 1790s.

She assumed she often stole sweets from the plates of delicious desserts common in diplomatic households.

Yet, she could not say with any assurance whether such memories were real or wishful thinking, and that idea saddened her more than the knowledge that this could be her last day on the earth.

She would lose both the idea of making precious memories with her own children and her life on the same day.

Therefore, she tore off a small corner of the card and let it slide down the front of her gown to land on the stairs. Then another and another. Some pieces were larger than others, but the card was large enough to carry her to the outside.

“The carriage along the street,” her captor instructed as she blew out the candle, and they stepped out in the semi-darkness of a London street.

Within a minute, her captor gave the hackney driver the directions and nudged Emma into the coach.

She dropped the last of the card on the ground.

Seated in the coach’s darkness, Emma glanced towards Grosvenor Square.

Less than a half hour earlier, she had been safe and at Lord Orson’s side once more. Now, she might never see the man again.