The Jezebel Read Online Free PDF

she was rocked to and fro. “We have saved you, child. You will come and live with us, and no harm will befall you.”
    The coach had set off, and Maisie remembered hearing the coachman ordering people out of his path, shouting and bellowing and urging his team to a faster pace. Was it true? Was she really safe? She turned to look at the woman who held her.
    Beth Lafayette smiled. With pale blond hair and a gentle smile, she seemed kindly.
    Eventually, Maisie reacted, speaking for the first time in several hours. “My brother and sister, Lennox and Jessie, are they coming with us?”
    “They will find guardians, too, never fear,” said the austere man, who sat opposite. “But your life is with us now.”
    “I have always wanted a beautiful girl child like you to call my own,” the woman told her, and tears shone in her eyes. “Even though you are not of my blood, I would be greatly pleased if you would call me Mama Beth.”
    Feeling the woman’s emotion and gratitude, Maisie closed her eyes, attempting to blot out the images she had seen, and gradually taking the comfort Beth Lafayette offered.
    And at first it was good and it was safe.
    But Cyrus had not collected her simply to fulfill his wife’s wish for a daughter.
    Cyrus Lafayette had plans of his own for Maisie Taskill.

CHAPTER FOUR
    Cyrus Lafayette meshed his fingers together as he paced up and down the polished wood floor of the drawing room. He had to keep his hands that way in order not to throttle the young coachman who cowered before him. The urge to snap the servant’s neck was far too tempting.
    The coachman shifted uneasily. “Please, sire. With your permission I will go back and ask again, see what I might find out.”
    “No.” Cyrus paused and examined the man again, looking deep into his eyes. Was there something he was hiding, something else that he knew about Margaret that he was not sharing? Cyrus saw only fear, dim wit and incompetence.
    The fear that shone in the coachman’s eyes branded him a fool, in Cyrus’s opinion. If the man had any sense of self-preservation he would speak more confidently, offer to lead Cyrus to the scene of Margaret’s disappearance, instead of looking as if he was about to turn on his heel and run.
    Pain needled Cyrus’s eyes, the result of his barely withheld rage. He had to keep a rigid hold on it. He couldn’t afford to let it overcome him, not now. “Tell me again what you witnessed, from the beginning. Salient details only. Do not embellish.”
    The coachman swallowed and then cleared his throat. “I was waiting to escort Miss Margaret to the theater, as instructed. At the appointed time I went inside, announced that the carriage was ready and inquired her whereabouts from the housekeeper. Miss Margaret was said to have dressed for the theater, but was nowhere to be found. When I stepped outside I believe I caught sight of her climbing into a carriage at the corner of the street. I wondered if she had forgotten I was there to take her to the opera. I thought that perhaps she’d hired a passing carriage instead, when she didn’t see me. I quickly followed. My concern grew when I realized the direction the carriage had taken was away from the theater.”
    Cyrus interrupted the coachman. “You intended to stop the carriage?”
    That’s what he’d said on the first telling of the story. Cyrus’s levels of suspicion and mistrust were so acute that he was ready to string the lad up and beat the truth out of him if even one detail differed from before.
    The coachman nodded. “Unfortunately, I lost it in the maze of streets in Billingsgate. I secured the coach and then went by foot, but could find no trace of the carriage I’d seen. However, there was a mighty commotion down there by the dockside. Navy men and soldiers were everywhere, so I followed them to see what it was about.”
    “You say they were after the captain of a merchant ship?”
    The coachman nodded. He clung tightly to the hat he held