by Brianna York
“Your employer sent me a note,” Marcus informed the snooty servant, extending his card and closing his calling card case with a sharp snap.
The butler took Marcus’s card daintily, read it and nodded stiffly. “I shall show you to the sitting room, My Lord,” he informed Marcus in a slightly droning voice. Marcus followed the man inside the house and handed off his coat and hat. He took in the painfully clean state of the house that could not hide the fact that it was poorly furnished and slightly unfashionable. And drafty, Marcus added to himself, wishing that he had kept his coat.
“I shall notify Mr. Dartmoor that you have arrived,” the butler said to Marcus before withdrawing on quiet feet.
Left alone, Marcus stared about him, distaste and discomfort apparent in every line of his body. He was beginning to wish that he had not gotten himself tangled up with the very unconventional and very bitter Gregory Dartmoor. He wanted to punish Matthew for the many years that the man had overshadowed him and made him feel like a commoner in spite of his own social prominence, but he was beginning to think that being tied to Dartmoor was too high a price to pay.
“Ah, Wythinghall!” Dartmoor’s sharp voice snapped Marcus out of his reverie. “I am gratified that you were so very prompt.” Marcus inclined his head in response, his back set up by the other man’s presumptuous manner of address. Dartmoor eyed his companion with ill-concealed amusement. “I summoned you to verify that Baron Tyndale has most unfortunately stuck his spoon in the wall. I presume that all went as planned?” Marcus frowned and looked away. “Is there something wrong?” Dartmoor inquired in a voice that was dangerously soft.
Marcus made himself look at the other man. “There is. The man I hired managed to hurt the Baron, not kill him.”
Dartmoor’s eyes blazed with fury. “How could you foul up something so very simple?” he shouted.
Marcus scowled at the other man. “May I remind you, Dartmoor, that you would not even have had the opportunity to have your revenge if not for my intervention?”
Dartmoor closed his eyes for a moment. “I knew that I should have taken care of it myself,” he ground out.
“I should never have come here,” Marcus growled, stalking past the other man to make his exit.
“Not so fast, Wythinghall!” Dartmoor snapped, catching a hold of Marcus’s arm as the other man passed by.
“Unhand me!” Marcus snapped at the other man, wrenching his arm free of Dartmoor’s grasp.
Tess’s eyes fluttered open when she heard the sound of angry voices. She turned over on her bed and rubbed at eyes swollen from crying. Her head felt stuffy and she sniffled. She was about to let herself drift back into the peaceful oblivion of sleep when she heard the loud voices again. She recognized her brother’s voice, but not the other one.
Feeling fully conscious for the first time in a day, she sat up in bed and pushed her disordered hair off of her forehead. The voices had faded somewhat, but her curiosity was piqued. She slid to the floor, her ankle protesting sharply as bruises from her fall the day before made themselves known again. She waited a moment for the pain to subside, then crept on silent feet to the door of her room. She opened it carefully and leaned into the hall. She could hear the voices more clearly now, and the tone of her brother’s voice warned her that there was something wrong. She hesitated a moment, the lethargy of the past twenty-four hours pulling at her, but she shook it off decisively. She was tired of her room, and she felt compelled all of a sudden to know what her brother was arguing about with his guest. She crept down the stairs on careful feet then padded up to the doors of the sitting room that had been left ajar. Pressing herself to the wall, she strained her sharp ears to catch every word.
“We have to come up with an alternate plan is all,” Dartmoor said.
“Another plan?” The other voice was sardonic. “Have you not already exhausted two plans that were supposed to be fool-proof, Dartmoor? Perhaps you are not cut out for the task of taking down the Duke.”
The snarl in Dartmoor’s voice made Tess cringe. “And perhaps I should never have involved you, Wythinghall.” Tess stifled a gasp at the Earl’s name. “It seems that you are not at all capable of accomplishing even simple objectives.”
“Murder is a simple objective to you, Dartmoor?” Marcus scoffed. “Perhaps you are not aware of the trouble I went through to first sneak out of Matthew’s house undetected and then back into it in time to be present for the wedding. Not to mention that he was riding Matthew’s stallion this morning instead of that skittish creature he is wont to ride. Apollo is not the kind of horse to be startled easily into doing something rash.”
Dartmoor waved his hand dismissively in reply to Marcus’s words. “A simple accident is nothing at all, Wythinghall. Or at least, it would not have been for me.” He sighed. “However, that is all water under the bridge at this point.” A small silence stretched out between the two men, and Tess held her breath anxiously so as not to make her presence known.
“I think we shall still be able to salvage this situation, however,” Dartmoor said next, his voice thick with cunning.
“Indeed?” the Earl replied skeptically.
“Indeed,” Dartmoor agreed amiably. “Since the Baron is confined to a sickbed for the next few days at least, we shall have plenty of time and opportunity to carry this particular plot out properly.”
“Enlighten me,” Marcus said.
“It’s really quite simple,” Dartmoor replied, a buoyant sound of enjoyment in his voice. “All we have to do is wait until the rest of the household is out for the evening and then we kidnap Lady Alexandra and take her to Gretna Green. Once I am married to her, I will be amply compensated for the trouble that the Hargreve family has caused me. Since High Gate actually belongs to her and not Matthew due to their foolish father’s bizarre notion of entail, I will have my family property back and an heiress to boot.”
“Hmmmm. That might indeed work, Dartmoor,” Marcus mused.
Dartmoor sounded smug. “Indeed it might.”
“But what of Matthew?” Marcus said then. “He will find some way of annulling the marriage and at the very least, he will take his sister’s side and prevent you from having what you wish from the bargain.”
There was a silence as Dartmoor mulled that over. “I had not thought of how close the Duke and his sister are,” he said finally. “It is rather disgusting how dear they are to each other, in my opinion.” He sighed. “There must be some way to break his hold over her.”
It was Marcus’s turn to sound cunning. “There is, my friend.”
“Enlighten me.”
Marcus chuckled. “Perhaps we tried to remove the wrong man this morning. His mother has always wanted her youngest son to inherit the title and she has always loathed Alexandra. Emmeline cares not what happens to Lady Alexandra so long as she is married and off her hands. I doubt that she would be the sort to ask too many questions if her older son dies in some accidental way. I will simply hire a bloke with steady hands who needs the blunt more than a clean conscience and His Grace will be removed from the equation for good.”
“Capital,” Dart said with smug satisfaction.
Tess stirred for the first time then. She had to warn Matthew. She turned to slip back upstairs, and crashed into the butler. “Miss Dartmoor?” the servant said, reaching out with one hand to steady her. Tess shook her head at him frantically in an attempt to silence him, but the man paid her no heed. “Whatever are you doing standing in the hall?” he asked, oblivious to her frantic attempts to silence his questions. With a little gasp of terror, Tess made to flee to the safety of her room.
“Tess?” the voice was her brother’s, and she shoved past the startled butler with a fearful cry. “So help me Tess, if you were eavesdropping, I swear that I shall kill you!” Dartmoor shouted, bursting into the hall and shoving the butler out of the way. Tess gripped the newel post and flung herself around it, scrambling up the stairs as fast as she could. Dartmoor was faster however,
and he caught her halfway up the stair case. Grabbing her wrist in a painfully tight grip, he twisted her arm behind her at an uncomfortable angle, halting her dead in her tracks. She cried out as he wrenched her arm. She lost her footing on the steps and slid to her knees in a tangle of skirts.
“How much did you hear?” he demanded. She glared up at him out of eyes that swam with tears and remained silent. Dartmoor grit his teeth for a moment, then wrenched her arm again and leaned into her face to shout at her, “Goddamn you and your meddling!” She screamed in pain, but he did not release her.
“You will never see daylight again, you little bitch!” he yelled, jerking her to her feet and then flinging her away from him. Hopelessly off balance, she flung her arms out to catch herself, but ended up sliding into a heap a few steps up from where her brother stood. Ignoring the lancing pain it caused her, she scrambled backwards up the steps away from him, tears spilling unheeded down her cheeks.
“I will warn them!” she shouted at her brother. “I will not let you get away with murder and worse! Do you hear me?” she screamed at him as she struggled to her feet. “Do you hear me?” she tried to dash past him, but he caught her and shoved her ahead of him up the stairs. “Let me go, you monster!” she yelled at him, struggling to get away with all the strength in her slender frame, but her brother simply laughed and shoved her ahead of him again.
“You will tell nothing,” he informed her, wrenching open the door to her room and tossing her inside.
“I will tell Matthew what you plan to do to him and his friends and his sister! I will tell them everything!” she cried at his implacable face, wishing that her words were daggers.
He laughed merrily at that. “And implicate yourself, sister dear? And what do you think that the great god, Matthew Hargreve will think of your confession?” He stalked closer to her, a disfiguring sneer on his lean face. She backed away, but he followed her across the room, his eyes riveted on hers.
“You do remember Caesar’s wife, do you not, sister dear? Do you remember what she was supposed to be?” She held silent, staring up at him with eyes made wide by fright and backed steadily away from him. Her legs ran into the edge of the window seat suddenly, and she collapsed onto it untidily. “Well sister, since you seem not to remember, I shall remind you.” He chuckled and reached out with one finger to flick her cheek.
“She was supposed to be above reproach, sweetheart. I do not think that you would meet Dunsaney’s stringent standards any longer.”
She closed her eyes against the pain his words had caused her, tears spilling down her cheeks and trickling into the corners of her full mouth. She opened her eyes slowly, to find her brother staring down at her with a mocking and triumphant smile on his face.
“I am afraid that Dunsaney would no longer believe a single word that you uttered, Tess my love,” he said to her, still smiling down at her. “However, I do not doubt your resourcefulness, so I shall inform the servants that you are not to leave and that you are not allowed callers.” He turned around lazily and made his way toward the door, halting suddenly beside her dressing table. Hereached out and picked up her writing box and slipped it under his arm, then went to the door.
“Perhaps by the time I return with my new bride you will be of a more receptive frame of mind, sister. I shall see you in a few weeks’ time,” he told her, slipping the key to her door from the lock. He shut the door behind him and then she heard the key scrape in the lock followed by his footsteps retreating down the hall.
She stared across the room for a long moment, then suddenly came to life, racing across the room to fling herself against the locked door. She wrenched at the handle futilely before falling to battering the door with her fists. Her brother’s demonic laugh wafted up to her from downstairs and then she heard the sound of the sitting room door closing. Realizing that she was still pounding at the door, she wrapped her arms around herself and slid to the floor, tears streaming down her pale face and a cold numbness spreading within her.
She would never be free again. She was to be a prisoner forever. She no longer even had the comfort of having removed Matthew and his friends from harm’s way. She willed her mind to be silent and huddled into a little ball. She wished only to survive now. There was no other purpose left to her.
Twenty-Eight
M
atthew cracked the door of Forrest’s room open and poked his head inside. He smiled at the sight of Rob slumped in a chair beside the bed, a slightly disgruntled look on his sleeping face. He glanced at the bed to verify that Forrest still slept, then pushed the door open farther and stepped quietly into the room. He made his way to the other side of Forrest’s bed and settled onto the window seat, regarding his two friends with a fond smile. He was very lucky to have so many people in his life that he truly loved and respected. He had never really considered what it would be like to lose one of his friends.
In the brief moment when he had first seen Forrest lying on the ground in the park, he had realized all the many things that he had not thanked his friend for. Forrest was Matthew’s one true equal, a man he could look to for advice, or share his achievements with. He was a man that Matthew could admire without regret. As he watched his friend’s even, deep breathing, his mind drifted to the day that he had met Forrest.
His trunks had just been delivered to his dormitory, and Matthew surveyed the slightly less than spacious confines of his room regretfully. Sighing, he walked over to the nearest trunk and began unpacking its contents. A sudden rapping at the door to his room caused him to turn swiftly around, a pair of boots in his hands.
A young man stood in the doorway holding a leather satchel in his hand. Having caught Matthew’s attention, he held out the satchel and said, “You left this downstairs.”
“Ah, thank you,” Matthew replied courteously. “Would you mind setting it over there?” He nodded toward the closed trunk just inside the doorway before returning to his unpacking.
“Not at all,” the other student replied. Matthew assumed that the young man had left the room in the same silent fashion that he had entered it, so, when he spoke again, Matthew was so startled that he nearly dropped the pile of breeches in his hands back into his trunk. “You are Hargreve, are you not?”
Matthew swiveled around slowly to regard the other man with more attention. He liked the way that the other student’s gray eyes held his steadily. “I am,” he replied.
“I have heard much about you,” the other man said then in the manner of stating a fact.
Matthew winged a brow at that. “You have?”
The other man nodded. “Indeed. It is my second year here, but I heard so much gossiped about you in my first year that I feel almost as if I know you already.”
Matthew chuckled lightly at that. “Gossip is a poor substitute for actual acquaintance,” he said wisely, turning again to his task.
“I completely agree,” the other student answered in his direct manner. Matthew turned around again, this time with real interest. “Forrest Tyndale,” the other man said to Matthew, offering a hand.
Matthew’s lip quirked in a half-smile as he closed the space between them and took Forrest’s hand. “Matthew Hargreve.”
Tyndale shook Matthew’s hand firmly, then smiled a disarmingly charming grin that seemed to light his entire countenance from within. Matthew knew that he would never regret his meeting with this fellow student. “Would you like help with your unpacking?” Forrest offered as he released Matthew’s hand.
Matthew grinned. “I shall not say no.”
“I knew that you would not,” Tyndale agreed, opening Matthew’s other trunk.
A few minutes of companionable silence stretched between them. Then, “You were correct.”
“I was?” Matthew replied, not looking up from what he was doing.
“Indeed you were,” Forrest replied. “Actual acquaintance is rather grand.”
Matthew glanced over at Tyndale and met his eyes with a grin. “Indeed it
is,” he agreed.
A sudden sound brought Matthew back to the present with a start, and he realized that Rob had stretched his legs out a bit, scraping the heels of his boots across the floor as he did so. He smiled fondly at his friend. Rob could always be counted upon for a joke and a smile to make him feel better. They had been friends for most of Matthew’s adult life, and they had not had a single disagreement. Matthew wondered with a sharp twinge of guilt if he had ever adequately repaid Rob for his loyalty. His thoughts were drawn to the long ago day that he had met Rob.
Bleary-eyed, Matthew listened to the droning sound of the Reverend’s voice and tried to stay awake. He had been lucky to get back into his dormitory last night without being caught and fined. He had enough infractions of curfew on his record to make him cringe. For once, he had been lucky. However, his punishment for such good luck was apparently to take the form of a vicious headache and a queasy stomach. At least he had won a decent sum at the card game. It was enough to pay off the fines from last month that he owed the school and have something left over. As his stomach did a sudden flip-flop, Matthew wondered if maybe he shouldn’t start believing some of the religious nonsense that the Dean and the Fellows imposed upon them regularly. Maybe he would be spared some of this misery if he put his faith in the right place.
At the opposite end of the pew, the young heir to the Earldom of Coulthurst was wishing that he had studied more for the mathematics exam that he was to take in less than a half an hour. He had never truly had a head for numbers. At least he was not at Cambridge, where all the good mathematicians came from. All Rob wanted to do was please his father in order that he might inherit his title in good favor. He could count the number of times that he had actually cracked a text book or memorized a lesson on one hand. He readjusted his position on the hard bench and glanced around at his fellow students. The front row to his left was filled with raptly-attending young men who had set their sights on a position in the clergy, or some other religious office. Personally, Rob did not really believe most of what they were told in the chapel, but he would not criticize those that did. His gaze swung to the other side of the narrow room. Chapel was an enforced activity, and an absence carried perhaps the heaviest fine of all. In some cases, students were expelled for failing to attend Chapel. As would be expected of an enforced activity that was admittedly rather a dull affair, there were those in attendance who cared not in the least what was going on around them. Students sitting in the rows farthest back were wont to use the hour of chapel as an opportunity for a cat nap, and Rob thought that he detected the light sound of snoring coming from that direction.