Andy's Story

Chapter 11

           

George walked into his study, running a hand through his chestnut hair. He was bone weary and frustrated from driving about London trying to find his sister.

It had been a week! A week since that disastrous wager.

A week since she had stood on the staircase starring defiantly at him telling him again that she would not marry this man and that she was going to a ball. Before she had walked out the door and not come home.

He had been right. Later that same day when he had finally remembered what he had done, he had gone to speak to his sister, the way he saw it she had been just as stubborn. She hadn't listened to his reasoning. He didn't think his reasoning was flawed, no! It was sound – Andy had to marry for her to be safe. It was the only way he could see that it would work.

She had been going to a ball, George had thought she had looked rather pretty, she hadn't been dressed in her usual black, she had been in red instead. The Foyley's had arrived and picked her up and that had been the end of the conversation. He had waited up for her – but unless he had fallen asleep she hadn't come home. And now it had been a week.

A week of non-stop searching and asking questions, and yet no body had seen her. It was frustrating, to say the least.

Growling and cursing her for leaving him like this, George glanced around his study and realised that no candles were lit and the room held an eerie feeling. It was cold too. He had been too preoccupied with his thoughts to notice when he had first walked in, but now George raised his hands and rubbed the sides of his arms feeling the cold through his coat.

Why hadn't the maids stoked the fire, or lit the candles for that matter? George wondered as he took another step towards his desk to find the flint to light them himself.

"You told her!"

George jumped, startled by the gruff voice and the accusation coming from the darkened room. He looked around the room seeking the source, although he had his suspicions when he saw the dark figure in one of the wing back chairs that had been turned away from the dim light of the embers glowing from a dying fire.

"N...no!" George stuttered. "I..."

"You told her something, otherwise she would still be here in London." The voice told him quietly, menacingly. "Now what did you tell her? Hmm?"

"Noth...nothing, I swear to you. I didn't tell her anything. Not about you or anything I've been doing for you. It must be something else, she might have got a letter that I don't know about, and none of the servants are talking! I haven't been able to find anything out just yet, but I'm working on it." George ran a hand through his hair again and walked to the sideboard to pore himself a stiff drink. "Brandy? Whiskey?" He asked his uninvited guest.

"No." That simple word, to George, seemed like it held a wealth of amusement. Was he being laughed at? George took a swallow of his drink, and wondered how he could keep a hold of the situations that had been created through his stupidity.

"You could jeopardise this whole operation, and we wouldn't want that, now would we? You know what is as stake here!" The voice hardened causing a shiver to run down George's back. How he got into this situation in the first place and then involved his sister, was not quite clear still, but in it he was and until the matter was resolved in it he had to stay. But he could get his sister out. She didn't deserve to be stuck in the middle of something that had nothing to do with her, except for the man sitting in the chair by the fire, of course. But she didn't even know that he was alive.

"I swear I would never do that. I do know what's at stake. I have done all you have asked. I'll find her, I'll bring her back to London, if in fact she has left. When I find her she won't go anywhere, I swear it." George told him.

"You know what I am capable of. You know why she can't know anything and you were supposed to keep her here, away from the country. If she finds out, you'll be the one that pays. And you'll pay dearly, my friend."  The man's voice slid over George like a snake, sending cold shivers down his spine.

The right kind of pressure being applied in all the right places to make him do as he was told. George would do anything to keep his sister safe and out of this mess. He did love her after all, even if he wasn't any good at showing it.

           

"You have another week to find her. Then I send out my men and well, you know how that ends. And I'm sure you don't want that." With that said the man pushed himself out of the wing backed chair in one fluid motion, his form seeming to tower over George as he stood near the sideboard. He walked toward the opened window and the next minute he was gone.

George walked shakily to his chair behind his desk and fell into it, and placing his elbows on the desk he rested his head in his hands, "I'm so sorry Andy" he whispered, as he closed his eyes and began to think through the problems that were now facing him.