James River - Lost Lady Part 27

that led to the kitchen and Regan's office.

"No one. Nothing unusual."

"Go find everyone on the staff and bring them here instantly," he commanded Brandy.

"Travis, please, we need to start getting the money."

Travis sat down on the bed and drew Regan between his knees. "Listen to me. There's something wrong

here. There are only two ways to enter your apartment, past Brandy in the kitchen or through the back door. Brandy and her cooks are always in that hall going from the kitchen to the pantry, and no one could have walked out with Jennifer without being seen. So that leaves the back door, which I know you always keep locked. It hasn't been broken, so Jennifer must have opened it from the inside."

"But she wouldn't! She knows not to do that."

"That's my point. She'd only open it to someone she knew and trusted, someone she knew was a friend.

And now my second point, who knows you can get fifty thousand dollars? No one in town knows me,

and until yesterday I didn't know you had any money. Fifty thousand means someone knows a great deal more than the average Scarlet Springs resident."

"Farrell!" Regan gasped. "He knows better than I do how much money I have."

At that moment Brandy returned with the staff members, all of them quiet, wide-eyed—and behind

them was Farrell Batsford.

"Regan," he said. "I just heard the awful news. Is there anything I can do?"

Travis brushed past him as he began to question the staff, asking if they'd seen anything at all unusual this

morning, if they had seen Jennifer with anyone.

While they were thinking, remembering nothing, Travis grabbed a maid's hand.

"What is this on your fingers? Where did it come from?"

Stepping back, the girl looked frightened. "It's ink. It came off the sheets in number twelve."

Expectantly, he turned to Regan.

"Margo's room," she said heavily.

Without another word, he left the apartment through the back door and headed for the stables, Regan

running after him. He was tossing a saddle onto a horse when she caught him.

"Where are you going?" she demanded. "Travis! We have to get the money!"

He paused long enough to touch her cheek. "Margo has Jennifer," he said as he continued saddling the

horse. "She knew we'd find the ink, and she knows I'll come after her. That's what she really wants. I don't believe she'll harm Jennifer."

"Don't believe! Your wh.o.r.e has taken my daughter and—."

He put his finger to her lips. "She is my daughter too, and if I have to give every acre I own to Margo, I'll get Jennifer back safely. Now I want you to stay here because I can handle this better alone." He swung onto the horse.

"I'm just supposed to stay here and wait? And how do you know for sure where Margo is?"

"She always goes home," he said grimly. "She always goes to where she can be near the memory of that d.a.m.ned father of hers."

With that he reined away, applied a kick to the horse's side, and disappeared in a cloud of dust.

Chapter 21.

It was night, almost dawn three days later, when Travis jerked his horse to a halt before Margo's door. It had taken several horses to carry him all the way at the pace he'd demanded of them.

Jumping down, he slammed into her house, knowing exactly where she'd be—in the library, sitting under the portrait of her father.

"It took you a little longer than I expected," she said cheerfully as she greeted Travis. Her red hair was a ma.s.s of tangles about her shoulders, and there was a dark stain on her dressing gown.

"Where is she?"

"Oh, she's safe," Margo laughed, holding up an empty whiskey gla.s.s. "Go and see for yourself. I rarely harm children. Then come back and join me for a drink."

Travis took the stairs two at a time. At one point in his life he'd been a frequent visitor to the Jenkins house, and he knew his way around well. Now, searching for his daughter, he took no notice of the bare places on the walls where once a portrait had hung or an empty table where an ornament no longer stood.

He found Jennifer asleep in the bed he'd used when he was a boy. When he picked her up she opened her eyes, smiled, said "Daddy," and went back to sleep. She and Margo must have traveled all night, as the dust on her face and clothes showed.

Carefully, he put her back down in the bed, kissed her, and went downstairs. It was time he and Margo talked.

Margo didn't even look up as he crossed the room and poured himself a gla.s.s of port. "Why?" she whispered. "Why didn't you marry me? After all those years we spent together. We rode together, swam naked together, made love. I always thought, and Daddy always thought—."

Travis's explosion cut her off. "That's why!" he shouted. "That G.o.dd.a.m.ned father of yours. There are only two people you ever loved: yourself and Ezra Jenkins."

He paused to raise his gla.s.s in salute to the portrait over the fireplace. "You never saw it, but your father was the meanest, cheapest liar ever created. He'd steal pennies from a slave child. I never cared much what he did, but every day I could see you becoming more like him. Remember when you started charging the weavers for their broken shuttles?"

Margo looked up, a desperate expression on her face. "He wasn't like that. He was good and kind*"

Travis's snort stopped her. "He was good to you and no one else."

"And I would have been good to you," Margo said, pleading.

"No!" Travis snapped. "You would have hated me because I didn't cheat and steal from everybody around me. You would have seen that as weakness on my part."

Margo kept her eyes on her drink. "But why her? Why a skinny little, washed-out English gutter rat? She couldn't even make a cup of tea."

"You know she's no gutter rat, not when you demand fifty thousand dollars ransom of her." Travis's eyes began to glaze over as he thought back to that time in England. "You should have seen her when I first saw her—dirty, scared, wearing a torn and ragged nightgown. But talking like the highest-born English lady. Every word, every syllable was so precise. Even crying, she talks like that."

"You married her because of her d.a.m.ned uppity accent?" Margo spat angrily.

Travis smiled in a distant way. "I married her because of the way she looks at me. She makes me feel ten, no, twenty feet tall. I can do anything when she's around. And watching her grow has been a joy.

She's changed herself from a frightened little girl into a woman." His smile broadened. "And she's all mine."

Margo's empty gla.s.s flew across the room, shattering on the wall behind Travis's head. "Do you think I'm going to sit here and listen to your ravings about another woman?"

Travis's face turned hard. "You don't have to listen to me at all. I'm going upstairs to get my daughter and take her home." At the foot of the stairs he turned back toward her. "I know you well. I know it's because of what your father taught you that you tried this treacherous way of getting what you wanted. Because Jennifer is unharmed, I'm not pressing charges this time. But if you ever again*"

He stopped, his words trailing, and rubbed his eyes. Suddenly he was very sleepy, and as he mounted the stairs he looked like a drunken man.

Shortly after Travis left the inn, a bewildered Regan returned to her apartment. Farrell was waiting for her.

"Regan, please, you've got to tell me what's going on. Has someone harmed your daughter?"

"No," she whispered. "I don't know. I can't tell."

"Sit down," he said, his arm around her, "and tell me everything."

It didn't take but minutes before the story was out.

"And Travis left you here to suffer alone?" Farrell asked in astonishment. "You have no idea what is happening about your own daughter but trust him to get her from his ex-mistress?"

"Yes," she said helplessly. "Travis said—."

"And since when have you ever let another person run your life? Wouldn't you rather be with your daughter than here, knowing nothing?"

"Yes!" she said firmly, rising. "Of course I would."

"Then let's go. We'll leave immediately."

"We?"

"Yes," Farrell said, taking her hand. "We're friends, and friends help each other in time of need."

Only later, as they were in the buggy and headed south toward Travis's plantation, did Regan realize that

she'd told no one where she was going. The thought left her quickly as she was too concerned for her

daughter's safety.

They traveled for hours, the carriage much too slow for Regan's taste, and once she dozed, her head hitting the side of the buggy. She came awake abruptly when Farrell touched her arm. He was standing on the ground beside her; the carriage had stopped.

"Why are you stopping?" she demanded.

He pulled her from the seat to stand before him. "You need rest, and we need to talk."

"Talk!" she gasped. "We can talk later, and I don't need any rest." She tried to pull away from him, but