The Disappearing Duchess Read Online Free

jewels or even to ask Justin for a loan. Lucinda faced the facts. She could not raise such a huge sum and so she had only one choice. She must steal the child.
    Susan had been stolen from her. She would steal her back.
    First she had to make a plan. She had hired a cottage in the next village so that the innkeeper’s wife would not become suspicious. She bought other clothes and a wig to cover the flame red of her hair and she wore a torn and dirty shawl, rubbing dirt into her cheeks. In this way she had managed to visit the inn yard without being noticed by the landlady on two occasions. She had discovered that the child was given the chore of carrying out the slops first thing in the mornings, after the guests had gone down to break their fast.
    * * *
    And so today was the day. She locked up the cottage and left for the inn to claim her daughter as her own. At a quarter to the hour of nine she was in the yard watching,sheltering behind a wagon that had come to deliver hay for the stables. When she saw the child carrying her heavy pail down to the midden, she ran towards her.
    ‘Drop that and come with me,’ she instructed her. ‘I am going to take you away and look after you, my darling. That wicked woman will not punish you again.’
    ‘Will yer give me a cake?’ The child looked at her anxiously. ‘Yes, my dearest child. I will give you a cake every day. Come with me now and I shall take care of you.’
    The child stood the pail down, offered her hand and together they ran. They hadn’t stopped running until they reached the crossroads and saw the mail coach heading towards them. Lucinda knew that it stopped briefly at the crossing and she ran to it as a gentleman got down, looking up at the coachman.
    ‘Please take me to the next big town.’
    ‘We do not stop again until we reach Watford, ma’am.’
    ‘That will be perfect,’ Lucinda said and placed the last of her money into his hands. ‘The child will sit on my lap.’
    ‘You’ve given me threepence too much,’ he said and returned the coppers to her. ‘Hop in and make sure the child behaves.’
    ‘She will,’ Lucinda said and put an arm about her daughter’s thin shoulders. ‘We shall both be as quiet as mice.’
    Climbing into the coach, she pulled the child onto her lap, holding her close.
    ‘It will be all right now,’ she whispered. ‘The nasty woman will not find us and I’ll look after you. I’m your mother, you see? You were stolen from me when you were just a babe. I’d named you Angela and you are my daughter. No one will hurt you again. I promise.’
    She had brought some food for the journey and took a small sugared bun from her bundle, giving it to the child. Angela’s thin body felt warm against her as she ate contentedly and then fell asleep, her head resting against Lucinda’s breast.
    It was then that Lucinda realised she had only accomplished a part of her plan. The next phase would be more difficult. She had to find somewhere for them to live—there was no going back to that hovel of a cottage—and some way of earning her living.
    Then she would go to Justin and tell him why she’d run away.
    Tears trickled down her cheeks. She loved her husband so much and she feared he would hate her for what she’d done. Until this moment, all her thoughts had been centred on rescuing her child and it was only now that she had begun to realise the enormity of her cruelty towards the man she’d married. Afraid to tell him her secret, she had run away, leaving a simple note to say she had something she must do and would return when she could. He must have wondered why she hadnot confided her problem to him and he might not wish to see her.
    For the first time Lucinda realised that in abandoning her husband so abruptly she might have lost her only chance of real happiness. She had been living in a nightmare, but now she had woken to the cold dawn of reality.
    What was she going to do now?
    * * *
    ‘Where was this found?’ Justin