“What do you think?” Suzette asked dryly, snatching up the rolling pin the cook had been using and moving toward the door.

“Wait for me,” Lisa gasped.

Suzette glanced over her shoulder to see Lisa picking up and discarding several kitchen items before settling on a long, wicked-looking two-pronged cooking fork. Apparently satisfied that it would do, she hurried after her as Suzette pushed through the door.

Suzette crept along the back of the house, staying as close to the wall as she could. She didn’t have to glance around to be sure Lisa was still behind her. Her younger sister had one hand on her back as they crept along several feet behind their father and Haversham.

The butler was in the lead, with her father on his heels, and beyond them Suzette could see their quarry. The man was standing outside the French doors to the office, peering in through the window panels. He had Christiana slung over his shoulder like a sack, holding her in place with an arm around her legs, and at first Suzette thought her sister was unconscious, but as her captor eased one of the office doors open and began to slip inside, she noticed that Christiana’s eyes were open, and she was peering about to take in what she could see.

“She’s alive,” Lisa whispered with relief behind her.

Suzette nodded, but didn’t say anything and continued forward, raising her rolling pin in case the fellow burst back out of the office and made it past Haversham and her father. She would feel no compunction at all about bashing him over the head with the item rather than let him escape with Christiana.

Haversham had reached the French doors now and Suzette saw him hesitate. Christiana’s kidnapper had left the door open just a crack and the butler peered through the window briefly before easing the door open and slipping inside the room. A couple feet behind the butler, Lord Madison paused at the door as well to take in the situation, and then he too slipped inside.

Suzette began to move more swiftly then, rushing along on her tiptoes as she worried about what might be happening in the room. As she drew near she heard Richard say, “I won’t let you leave here unless it’s in chains,” and knew they were confronting the kidnapper, but still moved as quietly as she could until she reached the door. She paused then on the threshold and took in the tableau, as much as she could around her father, who stood just inside the door. The butler stood in front of him, a bare step behind the apparently oblivious kidnapper, who still had Christiana over his shoulder. Suzette could see Richard approaching the desk from the opposite side of the room and Daniel was coming from around a settee, but she had no idea where Robert was.