Page 114 of A Baby to Seal the Duke’s Fate

A chair scraped downstairs. Honora held her breath.

Then the first man spoke again. “The lady promised payment.”

“I know what she promised. And I know it has not come.”

“And? What do you intend to do about it?”

There was a brief silence. Honora took a quick, shallow breath, not wanting to miss a single word if it could be helped.

Then the second man spoke again. “Then we get it another way.”

Honora’s stomach tightened.

The taller man’s voice came next. “From whom?”

“The family.”

Honora could hear the shift in their movements even through the ceiling. One man began pacing.

“What family?” the first man asked.

“The woman has a family. That is what that lady said.”

“So? That lady also said she would pay us, but she clearly lied. What if she lied about this woman having a family, too?”

There was a pause as Honora tried to piece together what they were talking about.

“There will be someone who cares about her,” the second man said. “A woman with a baby is bound to have someone interested in her well-being.”

There was a muffled sound that Honora could not decipher.

“Say you are right,” the first man said. “What then?”

“We find out who they are and make our own arrangement for the woman and the child.”

“And if they do not pay?”

A pause.

“Then we take what we can.”

Honora pressed one hand over Cecily’s back. Her heart was pounding.

The footsteps moved out of her hearing range, and the house fell quiet again. In the renewed silence, Honora tried to understand what she had heard.

That lady…Did they mean Isolde? Was Isolde behind their captivity after all? What kind of arrangement had she made with those men?

Whatever and whoever it was, someone had clearly not upheld their end of the bargain. What would happen if they could not get the payment they had promised? If her rescue fell to her father, she knew they would be in worse trouble than they already were.

And if they managed to track Honora’s connection to Leopold, she could not be certain he would do anything to help her.

He had banished her and Cecily from his life and his home. She did not think that man she knew, the man she had grown to love, would leave Cecily to the mercy of kidnappers. But then, she had not believed that the man could send Cecily away into uncertainty, either. Could he set aside his anger and pain to help them? Or had he decided they were no longer his problem, no matter the situation?

Honora sat awake until the first gray of morning. She understood something, though it offered little in the way of an explanation. The men had not killed her and Cecily because they expected money.

Honora was convinced that the woman they spoke of must have been Isolde. And since Isolde was not paying them, they needed information. Honora thought their need for information might prove useful to her.

The door opened earlier than usual that morning, and the taller man entered alone. Honora immediately stood.