Newcastle, United Kingdom
January 1852

It was a particularly cold morning in January when Henry Pelham arose, ready to travel south for his granddaughter's wedding. The bags were packed, the train had been booked, and everyone in the household was ready to go. Everything was right on track, and Henry felt that with the arrival of that morning, he had at long last succeeded in marrying off a lady of his family. He had made it to the finish line without having lost Jane to another man along the way, though admittedly, Henry could see why Regina thought Harry might have piqued Jane's interest at some point. But whether she was interested in him didn't matter, for the date of their departure had arrived, and with luck, Jane would be happily married within seventy-two hours.

Thinking that the girl deserved a little extra time to sleep on that eventful morning, Henry sent word to Jane's chambermaid, telling her to wait in waking Jane up for the day. Their train wasn't until that afternoon, so they could afford the extra hours of rest. But little did Henry know that that hour would be the last hour of peace he would have for quite some time. For when the time came to wake Jane, the maid, Alice, found her mistress's chambers to be empty.

Alice searched Jane's apartments, finding nothing but a missing pair of boots. Alice knew that Jane was accustomed to go horseback riding when she was distressed, but still, she couldn't help but feel that this time was different. The bed looked as if it had been hardly touched at all, and to Alice's horror, she came to find that one of Jane's traveling cloaks was missing from her chest of clothes.

Alice quietly shut the door to Jane's room, her heart racing as she made her way through the mansion to look for Jane. She would have to be absolutely sure of Jane's absence before reporting it to her master. But as Alice searched all the places where Jane could possibly be, she found that there wasn't any sign that the young girl had been there any time that morning.

Thus, with a racing heart and uncertain steps, Alice went to the Duke's study, willing herself to knock on the heavy oaken door. Henry beckoned her inside, his expression twisting into one of confusion upon seeing Jane's chambermaid looking so terribly distraught. She curtsied hurriedly to him, and anxiously awaited her invitation to speak.

"What's the matter?" Henry asked her, setting his book down and folding his hands in his lap. "Is Jane ill?"

Alice shook her head and cautiously proceeded to tell Henry of how Jane had seemingly disappeared without a trace. She watched as his countenance fell and morphed into to one of incomparable anger, just hoping that he would not take it out on her. But he didn't.

With the same steadiness as always, Henry stood from his chair by the window and walked to his desk. He wrote something on a piece of parchment before sealing it with his ring and handing it to Alice.

"Since you have said her boots are missing, go to the barn and see if Jane's horse is gone with them, then return here to tell me what you've found," Henry said lowly, a fierceness burning in his eyes that Alice had never seen. "And have this delivered to my son Andrew. Aaron is the fastest rider, so wake him up and have him take it to their estate. Make sure he knows that this is time-sensitive and that he must not dally."

Frustratedly, Henry paced back and forth in front of the window, his jaw clenched and his brows furrowed in concentration. Suddenly, he came to a halt and gave Alice two more pieces of instruction.

"Wake Harry as well. He was close to her, I think, so he may know where she is." Alice curtsied to her master, turning to leave do all that the Duke had instructed, but she was stopped by the sound of his firm voice calling her name. "Alice, wait." She turned to face him. He glared at her, and with a terrifying expression of determination, gave his final decree. "Tell no one of this. If she has really gone, then I don't want people to talk. If anyone asks, Jane is ill in her room, and is not to be disturbed by anyone but me or yourself. Is that clear?"

"Yes, Your Grace." Alice curtsied and bowed her head, somberly preparing herself for the horrible day that this was turning out to be. Jane had run away; Alice was certain of it, and she wasn't so sure that Harry would be there when she went to wake him up. Given Jane's less than discrete infatuation with him, Alice wouldn't be surprised if Harry had run away with her. But even so, Alice prayed that her suppositions would be proven false. She feared having to tell Henry that his granddaughter had run away with another man just days before her marriage, for she didn't know how the old Duke would take such scandalous news.

But Henry was not blind to the possibility that Jane had run away, nor was he so ignorant to think that she had done so on her own. No, if she had indeed left that place, then she would have had help. Jane was strong, but she wasn't foolish enough to think she could travel alone. Such an endeavor for a woman would be dangerous and reckless, and Henry knew Jane to possess at least enough common sense so as not to put herself in mortal danger. She would, however, put her reputation at risk, and Henry was terrified that she had done just that.

He worried that Harry had gone too, as Regina had suggested might happen just weeks before. He had thought his wife to be overreacting then, and he dreaded hearing the words, "I told you so," so angrily passing through her lips when she learned of Jane's foolish actions. If Henry did not succeed in finding his granddaughter, then he was certain that such a distasteful encounter with his wife was sure to follow.

But even so, Henry did not yet wish to focus on the possibility of such a tragedy coming to pass. Surely, Jane had more respect for him than that.

Sure enough, Henry came to discover the horrifying truth of what had transpired beneath his roof. As Alice went to Harry's bedchamber, she found no trace of him; and like Jane's, it was apparent that his bed had not been occupied that night. Harry was missing, and Henry was furious as he pondered what that would mean for his reputation.

There was not much Henry could do during the time he stood waiting for his son to arrive, and the idleness drove him mad. He was restless as well as enraged, but he was determined not to allow his anger to reign over him. If he kept a level head, then there was still hope that his disgraceful situation could be amended.

At long last, Andrew Pelham arrived at Clumber Park with his son William in tow. Neither of them knew what was happening, so as they reached Henry's study, both men were admittedly anxious over what was to come. It was rare that Henry would summon them, and given that they both knew that he was to be leaving for London that day with Jane, both of them feared that something was dreadfully amiss.

"Shut the door," Henry barked at his son and grandson, finishing the list of things he had been writing and looking up at the two men who had joined him. William glanced apprehensively at his father, but nonetheless obeyed, closing the door and coming to stand by his father's side. He was nervous, and he feared that his grandfather would tell him he had sinned against him. Such a prospect was altogether terrifying to him, for though William was family, he knew his grandfather to be a cruel man.

Once the door was shut, and the three of them were alone, Henry shared with them the terrible events that had come to pass that morning. Harry and Jane had presumably run away together; however, given that not a single one of the Pelham horses were missing, it remained a mystery as to how they accomplished it.

"I don't think they could have gone on foot," Henry said to them, once again pacing the length of his study and wracking his brain for any explanation as to how his granddaughter could have pulled this off. "It would take too long to get to the city, and I think they're probably going to want a quick getaway, so they had to have rode there."

"Could they have rented horses from town?" Andrew asked his father, anxiously hoping to be of any help he could.

Andrew cared for Jane deeply, but he knew these actions of hers to be folly, and he felt he owed his father the service of doing whatever he could to help bring Jane back to them. 

Henry looked up at his son and nodded, "Yes, I suppose they could have. We need to go into town find out where they could have gotten them. If there is such a place, then maybe the proprietors know where Jane was headed."

"We should check the railway first," Andrew replied, walking over to his father's desk and taking a piece of parchment to write a note. Once he was finished, he sealed it with his own ring and handed it to a very anxious William. He wasn't expecting to have been put to use in any way.

"Here," Andrew said to him. "You will go to the station and find the platform manager. Give them this and he will show you the records for ticket sales. I want you to talk to the clerks as well; they may have seen something. Take you horse there as well. A carriage would take much too long. Do you understand?"

William nodded to his father, taking the note and tucking it into his breast pocket. He was hesitant to follow through with this task, merely because he was unsure of whether he could do this to Jane. Being her closest relative, William had come to know of Jane's deepest struggles and fears regarding her life with her grandparents as well as her involvement with James Hale. She was evidently terrified of ending up with him, and William was uneasy about aiding in the mission to ensure that their marriage still came to pass.

As hesitant as he was, William knew what Jane's actions would mean for their family. If people were to find out what she had done, not only would her reputation as a woman of virtue be destroyed, but the whole family would be eligible for ridicule. As much as William wished for Jane to have every happiness, his duty to his family stood with greater importance than such trivial feelings of sympathy. He would have to do what was right, and what was right included finding his cousin. Thus, William assured his father and grandfather that he would do everything that had been instructed of him without question.

But Henry stopped the boy from leaving just yet.

"Wait. You know Jane better than either of us." Henry ceased his pacing and approached his grandson like a hunter stalking its prey. His movements were low and intentional, entirely meant to intimidate the subject of his interrogation. Henry knew Jane was close with William, and his purpose in requesting the boy's presence there that morning was to get information from him. If anyone would know the inner workings of Jane's mind, it was William.

"Do you have any inclination of where she might have gone with him? London is likely, but I feel like she knows we would look for her there. Did she ever say anything to you about traveling or places she wished to go?"

William tried to sift through all the conversations he had had with Jane in the past three months, hoping for his own sake that he could remember just one detail that could give them a lead as to Jane's whereabouts. But to his disappointment, no memory came. With shame pulling his head down low, William shook his head and answered his grandfather with less than encouraging words.

"No, she never spoke of any place in particular, nor did she ever say anything that would have led me to believe she was preparing this." William glanced between the two men who were watching him speak, anxiously hoping that what he was going to say wouldn't get him in trouble. "I know she hates James, though. She never mentioned anything about her feelings for Harry, if there even are any, but I know she would have chosen a life alone rather than going through with marrying James. She told me so many times, but I never would have thought she would go so far as this. James is an ass, but I didn't think he was bad enough for her to run."

"She's more like her mother than I gave her credit for." Henry sighed warily and shook his head, looking towards his son. "I think I have you to thank for that. I know you told her of what Victoria did with Thomas, and given how this morning has panned out, I have a feeling that her mother's story gave her these foolish ideas of freedom."

Andrew's face paled as his father spoke to him, laying accusatory words against him that he could not reject. He remembered the day Jane had come to him asking questions very vividly, and on many mornings following it, he had often wondered to himself whether he had done the right thing by telling her truth. Now in the face of his family's disgrace, Andrew could see that he had made a most regrettable error. Had he really inspired Jane to run away as his father suggested?

"I wasn't- I didn't think that she would do anything. I just thought that she deserved to hear the truth." Andrew frowned as his regret came crashing down upon him. It was so frustrating that his one decision that morning had come to influence them all so heavily; and though he didn't know if it would make any difference at all, Andrew wished more than anything that he would have turned Jane away when she had come to him with that letter from her father. 

The letter.

Henry saw the change in Andrew's panicked expression as it shifted to one of focused wonder. He had realized something, and Henry had a feeling that it just might have been a piece of information that could be useful to them.

"What is it?"

"Thomas." Andrew looked up to his father with wide eyes. "That was why Jane came to me. She had a letter from him written in his hand."

Frowning and not wanting to believe his son's words, Henry shook his head. "That's not possible. No mail gets to her without me seeing it first, and Thomas's letters here stopped well over ten years ago."

"I don't know how she got it, but she had it. It was from him, and I think it's possible that he could have had something to do with this." 

Andrew sighed deeply, thinking back to Jane and how she had responded to him that day. She had been heartbroken over her family's great deceit, but still, Andrew specifically recalled that Jane hadn't planned on reaching out to her father. He had warned her of the dangers, and she had seemed understanding and wise in her decision to stay out of it.

"She told me she wasn't going to write back to him, but what if she did? What if he's here, and he's the reason Jane ran away. I don't know how Harry would fit into it if that were the case, but it's a possibility that we need to consider." 

"You're right." Henry walked over to his desk and grabbed his coat from the chair, a newly ignited sense of determination settling upon his face. As much as Thomas bothered him, Henry hoped that his son's suppositions were true. If they were, then Henry had a pretty good idea of where Thomas might go. "We need to consider everything when we go into town. If our minds are too clouded by what we think has happened, we'll never find her."

Andrew furrowed his brows in confusion as his father shoved on his coat. "You're going into town?"

"Aye." Henry nodded as he bent down to write yet another letter, only this one was to his wife telling her that Jane was ill and that they would be remaining in Newcastle for a few more days. Regina needn't know of their predicament; or least, she needn't know when there was still hope of finding Jane. 

"I have a train to catch," Henry announced to the two younger men standing there with him, his eyes alight with hope. As furious as he was with Jane, Henry could not help but feel strangely excited by the prospect of catching Thomas again- if indeed he was involved. It would be yet another instance in which Henry could exercise his power over his almost-son-in-law; and despite the gravity of the next few days, Henry felt almost thrilled to defeat Thomas once and for all. 

"You're not going to London, are you?"

Henry scoffed and amusedly shook his head as he approached Andrew again, extending the letter he had written and sealed over to his son. "No, but this is. Have this sent to your mother. She is not to know of what has happened here today, so don't say anything to the mail carrier about urgency or anything of that nature. She's just going to think Jane is sick and that the wedding will be postponed for a few days."

Andrew accepted the envelope from his father and tucked it into his breast pocket just as his own son had done just moments before. But Andrew was hesitant, and he didn't understand the plans his father had laid out in his mind. What were they all to do?

"I'm going north," Henry told them. "I'll send for you if I find anything, but until then, William, you find out what you can from the train station; and Andrew, you visit the lowliest of the stables in the city. If Thomas was a part of this, the proprietors would have remembered a Frenchman, so you might be able to find information that way. But if it was Harry doing the talking, then you might do well to describe him. He's a strapping young lad, and that makes him memorable, so use that against him."

"I'll do my best; but wait, why would you go north? You don't think they would try to live amongst the highlanders in Scotland, do you?"

"No, they wouldn't last a month with the savages in the north. The Merciers have a residence in Edinburgh, so I'm supposing that to be their most advantageous destination. It's far from here, and it's a port city, so they could go anywhere they wanted. I didn't know about the apartment there last time, but Victoria told us of the place when she returned after running away with that French bastard. If Thomas is behind this, then I imagine he's sticking to what he knows has worked before."

"But that's enough on that," Henry said impatiently, directing Andrew and William towards the door to embark on their mission. "We don't have any time to waste."

***

...had to do it to 'em lol

Thanks for reading, my dudes! ILY

-Kate