Redemption by Rebecca King Page B

taken her you won’t want her back by
the time they have done with her. There is nothing you can do
now.”
    Ben
wanted to punch the cart driver to get him to stop, and grabbed
hold of the bars to block out the sounds of the magistrate’s men
shouting orders at each other.
    “Where?
Who is it, Julian? Tell me where to find her and I will go and
search for her personally. If she is there then she can come
forward and stop you going to the gallows for her
murder.”
    “She is
Trent’s now, I suspect. If she is, she can be found at the
Riverside Club somewhere. Speak to Trent if you dare.”
    When the
pavement ran out beneath his feet, Ben let go of the bars and
stared in abject horror as the cart disappeared down the road. His
stomach roiled alarmingly at the thought of what might have
happened to her in the few days since she had first gone missing.
If Julian had only told him this the morning after the ball, Ben
might have been spared having to scour every tavern and hotel in
London in an attempt to find out if she had even left
London.
    At least
now he had some place he could start to look for her; where he
might get the much needed answers. With one last dark glare at the
cart before it disappeared out of the end of the road, Ben went in
search of his horse. The sooner he could find Trent, the quicker he
could get Lizzie back.
    One
thing he knew for certain was that whatever she had endured over
the past few days, nothing could ever change the way he felt about
Elizabeth Pinner. If she was still alive she was going to be his
wife, it was as simple as that.

CHAPTER
THREE
     
    In
Derbyshire, Lizzie put her bag on the ground at her feet and dug a
small piece of parchment out of her pocket. She re-read the
address, looked at the aged plaque on the gate, and studied the
small cottage that stood at the end of the narrow, meandering path
that was bracketed by a somewhat wild and unkempt
garden.
    “Morningside Cottage,” she whispered.
    Her
stomach was in knots. Not only because she was hungry but because
she wasn’t entirely sure what – or who - she was going to find
inside. She had spent the last two days travelling to this small
house in the Derbyshire Dales on a whim with no idea whether her
plans were going to backfire on her. It was too late to go back now
though. London; and the man in it who owned her heart, was now far
behind her.
    Taking a
deep breath, she picked up her bag and cautiously opened the gate.
It squeaked loudly in protest and shuddered as she swung it closed
behind her, but thankfully didn’t fall off its hinges as it
threatened to do. She side stepped and shimmied her way through the
dense foliage until she reached the front door where she knocked
upon the solid wooden surface tentatively and stood back to
wait.
    When
nothing happened, she knocked again. While she waited she turned
around to study the nondescript little village of Little Puddleton.
It was the back of beyond really with nothing surrounding it but
the Dales; miles and miles of them. She knew there were miles
because she had walked most of them just getting there from the
large town of Upper Puddleton several miles away.
    She
turned her attention back to the peeling paint on the front door
beside her. Her worry began to build the longer she stood waiting
for someone to answer the door. The heavily curtained windows
prevented anyone from looking inside so she took several steps
backward so she could peer up at the empty voids of the windows
upstairs. It appeared that nobody was home. With her worry growing,
she ventured around the side of the cottage and hoped desperately
that the house wasn’t abandoned.
    “Hello?”
she called as she pushed her way through two particularly spiky
rose bushes and emerged in what appeared to be a somewhat better
maintained rear garden. “Is anyone home?”
    “Oh,
hello, my dear. How are you today? I have been expecting you,” a
small voice suddenly gasped from beside her.
    Lizzie
squealed and spun