Although Jafeer was saddled, and his reins were draped around the pommel, there was no one in sight. “Where is Vander?” she asked him, almost expecting the horse to answer.
Jafeer dropped the bonnet and came over. She stroked his nose as she looked around. The inn yard was deserted but for a carriage that stood on the far side of the yard, attended only by a slumbering coachman. Where were all the post-boys and grooms who generally lounged about, waiting for something to do? She narrowed her eyes. That snoring coachman had a distinct resemblance to Mulberry.
“Vander!” she called.
Instead of her husband, she heard a peal of boyish laughter, and Charlie hopped from the open door of the carriage. Jafeer gave an approving whinny.
“Darling!” She held out her arms. “What are you doing here?”
Charlie swung himself across the cobblestones, his entire face alight. “We’ve come to fetch you home!” he shouted.
“‘We?’ Is the duke with you?” Mia asked, pushing back the thick curl that had fallen over Charlie’s face and dropping a kiss on his forehead.
“I have to recite a poem,” he said, giving her a tight hug. “His Grace and I wrote it together. I am going to declaim it, the way Roman orators used to do.”
Mia’s breath caught when she saw Vander step from the carriage; then she looked quickly back at Charlie. He hopped up on the granite slab before the open door of the inn, and turned back to the open yard. With all the majesty of a young lord about to say something to Romans and countrymen, Charlie announced, “Roses are red, violets are blue—”
An arm suddenly emerged from the shadowed darkness behind Charlie and wound around his throat. Mia screamed as a bloodied, disheveled Sir Richard shoved Charlie forward.
He was holding her child tightly against him, a knife against Charlie’s throat. The cultivated Elizabethan air that Sir Richard was so proud of had stripped clean away, leaving a predator with savage eyes.
From the corner of her eye she saw Vander take a careful step toward them. Mulberry suddenly showed himself to be wide awake and leapt from his seat.
“Sir Richard, what are you doing?” she cried, hoping to draw his attention away from the men.
“Oh, merely thinking about killing a little gutter rat,” he answered. Horribly, his voice still had the same cultivated tenor, as if he were speaking of tea and toast rather than murder.
Charlie’s eyes were wide and fixed on her. “Aunt Mia,” he said faintly. Another scream bubbled up in her chest, but she managed to choke it down.
“Surely murder is an extreme solution?” Vander asked. He now stood at Mia’s side. Mulberry was silently circling the yard so he could approach from the rear.
“He’s responsible for all of it,” Sir Richard snarled. “I have to leave the bloody country and it’s all the fault of this crippled little dunce, who should have been drowned at birth.” He gave Charlie a vicious shake and the knife came dangerously close to the child’s throat.
“No!” Mia stumbled forward. “I am responsible. It’s my fault. Please, let Charlie go.”
In answer to her movement, Sir Richard wrenched the child’s head farther back, placing the shining edge of the knife blade just under his chin. She heard Charlie’s crutch strike the cobblestones, though she didn’t dare take her eyes from Sir Richard’s face.
There had been more behind Sir Richard’s perpetual, ferocious lawsuits than she had realized. He was cracked, utterly mad.
“Why Charlie?” she croaked. “Please! He’s your nephew! He doesn’t deserve this.”