Page 32 of The Heiress Masquerade (Dollar Princess #2)
“What do you mean Aimee could be in terrible danger?” Harrison demanded, his sense of urgency building. “Where is she?”
“I don’t know.” Mrs. Holbrook twisted her hands together. “And I could be wrong, which I hope I am, but I do think Molly means her harm.”
“Molly? As in my undersecretary, Miss Mitchell?”
“Yes.” Mrs. Holbrook nodded. “She’s my niece, which I know I should have told you earlier, but I didn’t think it would be an issue…at least I hoped it wouldn’t. However, given I saw her about twenty minutes ago from my window striding through the grounds of the estate heading east to the forest, when she’s meant to be in London, I fear I was wrong. Especially now that Aimee appears to be missing, too.”
“Why the hell would Molly mean Aimee harm?”
The woman straightened her shoulders like she was steeling herself for whatever she was about to say. “Because she thinks her father is Thomas Thornton-Jones.”
“Is he?” he asked bluntly, thinking such a thing was doubtful. The Thomas he knew would most certainly have looked after a child of his, even if conceived out of wedlock.
“No, of course not,” Mrs. Holbrook was quick to answer. “But she believes so, contrary to my vigorous assertions otherwise.”
“Why would she think she is then?”
Mrs. Holbrook sighed. “Her mother, my younger sister, Flora, became infatuated with Thomas when he first visited London, and she and I were assisting him and his brother as their temporary secretaries. Thomas never returned Flora’s interest of course, never even looked twice at her, but she thought they were destined to be together. Convinced herself of it even. So, to get closer to him, she seduced his valet, but got pregnant as a result.”
“And Molly was that child?”
“Yes,” Mrs. Holbrook replied. “Though Flora insisted Molly was Thomas’s child, even though they’d never been together. It was mad, of course, but well, my sister lived in a deluded state after she had Molly, and nothing I said would get through to her. Instead, she preferred to live in a world of fantasy. When Thomas next returned to England three years later, Flora confronted him, presenting Molly as his child, which he denied, of course. Then later that day Flora jumped in front of a train, leaving a journal with her outlandish accusations written about him inside it, on the platform beside her purse.
“I should have thrown her journal out that day, but instead I kept it with her belongings in my attic, and unfortunately Molly discovered it about five years ago. She confronted me and I explained the truth to her, but she wanted to believe her mother’s lies, preferring to think her father was a wealthy millionaire instead of a valet.”
“She wishes to take revenge on Thomas through Aimee?” Harrison surmised.
“Yes, I believe she wishes to punish him for never recognizing her, by hurting his actual daughter.”
A montage of images cascaded through his head of what could be happening to Aimee right then, but he refused to let them overwhelm him. “We need to find them. You said Molly was heading east on foot. Was she alone?”
“She was. By the time I got downstairs to try to follow her, she’d already disappeared. Where exactly, I don’t know. I asked several servants if they’d seen her, but no one had, which is when I came to seek you out,” Mrs. Holbrook said. “I didn’t see Aimee with Molly, though, so I could be completely wrong about all this, and perhaps Aimee is in my room waiting for me? Though I rather think she would have come back here.”
“She would have, and seeing she hasn’t, I’ll assume the worst.” And if she had been kidnapped, then it was doubtful Miss Mitchell was working alone. She would have needed help, and a secluded place to take Aimee, but somewhere close as they wouldn’t have been able to get horses or a carriage inside Wilheimer’s estate without being questioned.
Harrison glanced around the room until he spotted Wilheimer and his wife beside him, talking to another couple. Without a word, he strode over to them. “I need your help,” he said, interrupting their conversation before quickly explaining the situation.
Mrs. Wilheimer translated in German and Wilheimer nodded emphatically. “Of course, we help,” he said in broken English, before calling over his butler and quickly speaking in German to him.
“My husband is getting our butler to gather our servants to begin searching for her,” Mrs. Wilheimer said.
“Thank you. Are there any abandoned buildings or cottages or barns around the estate? Particularly to the east,” Harrison asked, clamping down on the debilitating thought that he might be too late to save her. He couldn’t let that overwhelm him or he wouldn’t focus. “Somewhere she could be taken and kept without being discovered?”
Wilheimer and Mrs. Wilheimer spoke back and forth in German for a moment, before Mrs. Wilheimer answered, “There is an old hunting lodge to the west that is vacant, but the only thing to the east is our gamekeeper’s cottage and I doubt they’d go there with Mr. Sanders in residence. Though the village of Marston is only a short walk beyond the hill at the back of the cottage, where there’d be any number of possibilities they could hide.”
“Direct your servants to start searching the house and the grounds of the estate in all directions, and have some head to your hunting lodge and others head toward the cottage.”
Mrs. Wilheimer translated, and Wilheimer himself nodded and then said, “Da, da.”
“And tell them to arm themselves, just in case.” Harrison didn’t know if Mrs. Holbrook’s assessment of her niece was accurate, but the woman was never prone to exaggeration, so he wanted them all to be prepared. “I’ll go ahead toward the cottage first.” Molly had been heading that way, so that was his best bet, even if someone was occupying it.
“Wait,” Wilheimer said, before hurriedly speaking in German to his wife, who then translated.
“Franz says he will go and get his gun and come with you,” she rushed out. “He wishes to help.”
“Thank you, and he’s welcome to follow as I’m certain to need all the help I can get.” Harrison pushed back his jacket to reveal his gun. “But I’m already armed, and night is fast approaching. I need to go now and not waste another moment.”
“Of course,” Mrs. Wilheimer said. “When you leave the greenhouse, turn right and follow the path through the grassed lawns to the edge of the grounds, where there’s a smaller gravel path that leads through the woods to Mr. Sanders’ cottage. It’s about a twenty-minute walk to get there.”
“Thank you.” He nodded to them both and hurried through the terrace and out of the greenhouse, Mrs. Holbrook following beside him. “You should wait here,” he said over his shoulder to her before he grabbed a lantern from the wall and turned to the right as Mrs. Wilheimer had instructed. “It’s getting dark out and I’ll be hurrying as much as I can through the woods.”
“I’m not waiting anywhere,” Mrs. Holbrook replied, taking another lantern for herself, before following him down the footpath through the grassed area. “As misguided as Molly has become, she’s my niece and I feel responsible for what’s happening, so I need to do what I can to help. And I’ll try to keep up with you, but go ahead if I don’t.”
“Don’t worry, I will,” Harrison replied, his boots crunching along the stone footpath until they continued along the grassed area toward the woods just as Mrs. Wilheimer had told them to. “Are you involved in any of this?”
“Excuse me?”
“Molly couldn’t kidnap Aimee alone,” Harrison said, glancing to his side. “Are you helping her?”
“Of course not!” Mrs. Holbrook exclaimed, shock and outrage flashing on her face, before an expression of dismay followed. “Though I can’t really blame you for questioning me given I haven’t been fully truthful with you about Molly.”
He didn’t know why, but he believed her. “Why didn’t you tell me Molly was your niece?” he asked, starting along the dirt path, holding his lantern aloft trying to stave off the ever-approaching darkness as he hurried to the cottage, his pace hindered by the branches scattered on the path, which were getting harder and harder to see in the twilight as the sun began its descent.
“Molly asked me not to,” she replied, her breathing getting slightly labored as she struggled to keep up with his quick pace. “She said she didn’t want anyone treating her differently at the office, so I agreed not to say anything, which in hindsight was a mistake, but I didn’t think she’d do anything. At least not until Aimee arrived. Though given Molly didn’t know it was actually Aimee, I didn’t think there’d be a problem.”
“I will hold you responsible if anything has happened to her.”
She nodded. “I would expect you to, given I’d blame myself if anything did.”
“How did you know who Aimee really was?” Harrison asked, leaping across a large log that had fallen across the path.
“When you sent me to New York about four years ago, I saw her visiting her father at the office,” Mrs. Holbrook began, taking the hand he was offering as she, too, jumped over the log. “She was the spitting image of her mother, with her father’s eyes. She never saw me, but while I was waiting in his outer office to deliver some papers, I overheard her begging him to let her learn his business.”
“That much hasn’t changed.” He stopped when he noticed fresh footsteps in the dirt. There were several. “Why didn’t you say anything about who she was?”
“Women don’t get a lot of opportunities to fulfill our ambitions, and given she’d gone to such trouble switching places, even putting on a very convincing English accent to do so, I decided not to interfere,” Mrs. Holbrook replied, pausing beside him and taking in a deep breath. “I should have said something to you then, but a part of me understood why she was swapping places, so I didn’t.”
He grunted, half listening to the story, half focused on the path ahead and how best he could quickly get to the cottage, where hopefully Aimee was. But with the approaching darkness and the branches strewn across the path, it was too dangerous to do anything apart from walk as quickly as he could with the lantern lighting the way.
His boots crunched on the gravel underfoot while his eyes scanned through the trees, but apart from their branches swaying in the wind, he saw nothing out of the ordinary. Perhaps Mrs. Holbrook was right and Aimee was safely back at the house. Though, that seemed doubtful, and the longer it took him to check the cottage to see if she was there, he feared it was going to be too late.
“We’ll get to her in time, Harrison,” Mrs. Holbrook said, almost like she, too, could feel Harrison’s sense of impending doom.
“We must, Ann,” he replied, using her name for the first time.
It felt like life was about to take away another person he’d started to care for. Another person he’d even started to love. The thought was enough to turn the small fissure of ice surrounding his heart into a giant crevice that he was terrified would destroy him.