Nausea roiled in his stomach as he followed Aaron into the gloomy hallway. They crept upstairs to the first floor, their footsteps as silent as whispers in the night.
Every room had been ransacked. Bolts of silk ripped from their cotton covers, exposing them to dust and damp. Every chest prised open, an assortment of material spilling over the floor like it had been spewed from the belly of a beast.
“Perhaps they were looking for her box,” Theo said, his heart heavy with regret. “It’s fair to say Miss Darrow is hiding something more precious than threads.”
“Then why the devil didn’t she say so?”
“Because she believes the people who did this are capable of murder.” It explained why she closed the shop and stayed at Mile End to nurse him. “She feared the villains who shot me had come to abduct her, not Delphine.” And every day he’d kept the box, she must have been out of her mind with worry. “This is my fault. If only I’d not been so bloody angry.”
Aaron raised a silencing hand. “We’re all to blame. Aramis and Daventry encouraged you. None of us could have known what was inside the box.”
“There’s nothing inside but spools of thread. I’ve searched through them ten times or more.” He removed his hat and dragged his hand through his hair. The most important thing was finding Miss Darrow. Then they could worry about what she kept in the damnable box. “We should check the upper floors.”
Aaron nodded and led the way.
With each step, Theo dreaded what the blackness might reveal.
There were three bedchambers on the second floor, all conveying scenes of utter disarray. It was like a storm had swept through the house, scattering personal objects over the floor, upending furniture and untucking the bed linen.
“This is Miss Darrow’s room.” Theo recognised the enticing scent of her perfume. “I pray she didn’t come home to this.” He wasn’t sure anything could be salvaged. “I pray she was somehow delayed.”
“With the absence of a body, we should be grateful for small mercies,” Aaron said in his usual blunt manner. “Though she may have been abducted. Does she have any friends that you know of? Might someone offer her sanctuary?”
They were typical questions an enquiry agent would ask but Theo was clueless. “She never mentioned friends or family.”
Miss Darrow had spent days at his bedside, talking about history, food and books while he slipped in and out of a drug-induced slumber. He knew she disliked macaroons and preferred the poems of Keats to Coleridge, yet he knew nothing of her personal life other than she designed dresses for a living.
While Aaron left to summon a constable, Theo roused the cobbler across the street, who confirmed he had seen nothing untoward. He woke the cabinet maker, who agreed to secure the premises by boarding the back door.
It was almost three in the morning when they returned to Fortune’s Den. A constable had taken their statements and scoured the premises looking for clues. With no sign of Miss Darrow’s body, the peeler refused to rouse the magistrate from his bed, at least not until noon.
Aaron gave Theo a reassuring pat on the back as they lingered at the bottom of the stairs. “We’ll visit Mile End tomorrow and make sure she’s not hiding there while Delphine is visiting her grandfather in Chichester.”
The theory she could be at Mile End brought mild relief. Had Miss Darrow arrived home to find looters in the house? Had she fled for her life and hailed another hackney to take her across the Thames to Walworth?
“Get some rest,” Aaron added. “Miss Darrow is a resourceful woman. Instinct tells me she’s alive. It’s fortunate you still have her box. Had the blackguards found the valuable item, she may have paid the ultimate price.”
Aaron’s confidence was reassuring.
“I know you’re right, though I doubt I’ll sleep tonight.” He should return to the Olympic and question the jarvey. Perhaps he had delivered her to a different destination.
“We’ll find her. If need be, we’ll hire Daventry’s enquiry agents.”
Theo forced a smile and bid Aaron good night. As he trudged upstairs to his chamber, his conscience urged him to load a pistol, return to Miss Darrow’s shop, and begin the search again, though he could not risk taking the sewing box. Indeed, he removed it from the leather satchel, held the dratted thing in his hands and cursed his stupidity.
That’s when he heard a gasp from a dark corner of the room.
He swung around and peered into the blackness, his imagination running riot. Had the villain come for him, too? “Who’s there?”
A flash of pink silk drew him to the washstand, where he saw a woman huddled in the corner, hugging her knees to her chest.
“Forgive me. I had nowhere else to go.” A sob caught in Miss Darrow’s throat. “I’ve lost everything, Mr Chance, my dreams and aspirations crushed like ants beneath a blackguard’s feet.”
Despite the thread of fear in her voice, a sense of calm washed over him. She was alive. Nothing else mattered.
“You speak of the damage at your shop? I have just returned from New Bridge Street. I assume you know someone broke into your premises.”
“Why else would I be here?” The hint of contempt in her tone said she had not come to listen to his flirtatious banter or endure another breathtaking kiss.
“Take my hand.” Tucking the wooden box under his arm, he reached for her. “Let me help you.”
“No one can help me now,” she uttered, slipping her ice-cold hand into his and letting him haul her to her feet.
With a sigh of regret, Theo offered her the box. “You should have told me what this meant to you. I would have respected your need for privacy. By nature, I’m distrusting, though that is no excuse.” A boy left to survive in the rookeries became suspicious of people’s motives.
She stared at the box, though she did not snatch it from his grasp or sag in relief. “I need you to do something for me, Mr Chance.”
“Anything,” he said, a vision of her ransacked home bursting into his mind. “The game went too far, and for that, I am truly sorry. I’ll do whatever it takes to put this right.”
She met his gaze in the gloom, her tear-filled eyes shimmering like stars in the night sky. She seemed so distant now. Any connection they’d shared had evaporated into the ether.
“Will you see me safely to Dover? I believe you owe me that.” Tears traced a silent path down her cheeks, and he fought the urge to dash them away and insist on a different course. “I need money. You may raid my shop and sell anything of value. An established modiste will purchase the lace and gold brocade.”
The knot in his chest tightened. “Where will you go?”
She seemed a shadow of her former self as she hung her head. “Wherever the first ship out of port will take me. Anywhere far, far from the home I love.”
Chapter Four
