The Capture of the Earl of Glencrae by Stephanie Laurens Page B

was Angelica’s handwriting, the boy had vanished.”
    Devil grimaced. “No doubt paid to make himself scarce.”
    â€œYes, no doubt—but get to the point,” Helena said. “Read the note. Aloud, if you please.”
    Thus adjured, Devil unfolded the note, briefly scanned it, then did as he’d been bid and read the contents aloud. He concluded with, “And this certainly looks like her signature.”
    Gabriel nodded. “It is. And the letter entire is in her hand, too.”
    Devil lowered the letter to the desk. He stared at it for several moments, then raised his gaze to Heather and Eliza, seated on the chaise beside Celia. “Do either of you have any idea who her ‘friend in desperate need’ might be?”
    Both shook their heads. “But you know what she’s like,” Heather said. “She’s gregarious. She’s friends with a lot of young ladies, and quite a large number of the younger gentlemen, too. It could be any of them, yet . . .” Breaking off, Heather exchanged a glance with Eliza, who grimaced and shrugged. Turning back to Devil, Heather said, “To be perfectly honest, it sounds as if she’s set off on some adventure.”
    â€œDisappearing from a ton event without trace isn’t setting off on an adventure,” Vane growled. “At least not one she’d planned.”
    Devil, grim-faced, nodded. He studied the letter again. “She could have been forced to write this.”
    â€œDo you think so?” Head tilted, Helena considered, then shook her head and turned to Celia. “Me, I cannot see it. Can you?”
    â€œWell . . .” Celia was clearly torn by a mother’s concern.
    But Heather shook her head. “I can imagine her being forced to write the words, but if that were so, she’d be furious, and she’d have made sure to smudge something, or misspell a word, or scratch the paper, or something to show she was upset and acting under duress. Instead”—she waved at the note—“that’s written in her usual neat hand, perfectly spelled, and with not so much as an ink splatter.”
    Eliza nodded. “I think she wrote it as it appears—of her own accord, and she meant every word, most likely literally.”
    â€œWhich,” Horatia said, “means she is indeed up to something.”
    Helena nodded and folded her hands in her lap. “That is how it seems to me. At least at the moment.”
    None of the ladies dissented. As one, they turned back to the big desk around which their men had congregated.
    Only to discover said men had come to quite a different conclusion.
    â€œSo we’ll continue our search,” Devil stated. “Or, more accurately, our lying in wait. As there’ve been no sightings of any female who could possibly have been her at any of the posting inns for at least three stages out from the capital, she’s almost certainly still within our cordon—still in London.”
    The other men responded with grim nods.
    â€œBut who could have taken her? And why?” Jeremy Carling glanced at the other men. “Are we correct in assuming her disappearance is connected to the attempts to kidnap Heather and Eliza? Or is this something else entirely?”
    â€œThat,” Honoria said, rising from her chair, “is something we can all try to discover. Discreetly, of course.”
    â€œI suggest,” Alathea said, also rising and resettling her shawl, “that we take her assertion that she’s gone to help some friend and use it to explain her absence. It won’t be hard to imply that her ‘friend’ is somewhere in the country, and as Heather just mentioned, Angelica does, indeed, have a lot of friends.”
    Using the cane she’d recently taken to wielding, Helena got to her feet. “Indeed. So now we will each, in our own way, try to identify this so-desperate friend.”
    Leaving