Dunsaney's Desire (Historical Romance)

by Brianna York

  A soft rapping at the door woke her from her reverie. She rose with a soft swish of skirts and went to the door. Milton was standing in the hallway. She slipped quietly into the hall and closed the door to Forrest’s room behind her. “Yes, Milton?” she inquired.

  “I should not have disturbed you, Lady Alexandra, but Earl Wythinghall has just arrived and asked to see you,” Milton told her.

  She frowned slightly. “He did not say why?” she asked the butler.

  The butler shook his head slightly as he answered her. “He said only that he wished to speak with you in the library. He mentioned something about letting Baron Tyndale sleep.”

  Alex nodded, somewhat pacified by this explanation. “Thank you, Milton,” she answered. “No need to escort me. You may be off to bed if you wish.”

  Milton bowed. “Thank you, Lady Alexandra. Good night.”

  “Good night, Milton,” she replied before making her way downstairs. She paused before the mirror in the hall to make certain that she looked tidy before making her way to the library. The doors to the room were closed, so she pushed them open and stepped into the room. “Marcus?” she called, not seeing Matthew’s friend anywhere. “Mar…” she began to call again, when suddenly a large hand covered her mouth. She struggled and tried to scream as the hand dragged her back against an obviously masculine form.

  “Silence,” a voice said softly in her ear before she felt the pressure of a gun on her side. With a little gulp she ceased to struggle and fell silent. “Much better,” the voice said, and she suddenly recognized it. “Be wise enough to keep silent and I shall take my hand off of your mouth.”

  “Marcus?” she said once her mouth was free of his hand. “Marcus, what....”

  “Shut up, Alex,” he growled, shoving her ahead of him toward the hallway. He jabbed the barrel of the gun against her ribs again. “Remember, it matters not to me what happens to you, but it will be in your best interest if you remain silent as we leave the house.”

  Alex weighed her options. She could risk screaming, but she found herself very certain that Marcus meant what he said. She momentarily contemplated trying to struggle free of him, but he held her left arm in a viscously tight grip and the barrel of the gun was pressed tightly to her back. She was fairly certain that she would not get away from him in time to avoid his shot and she doubted if she was strong enough to break his hold on her arm even if she surprised him.

  As they stepped into the hall, she hoped wildly that Milton had not finished with his duties and might yet be in the foyer. However, the foyer was empty and dark when they entered it, and Alex felt her heart plummet.

  Marcus pulled open the front door and pushed her ahead of him onto the stoop. He released her arm to pull the door shut behind him, and Alex started forward to escape him. His hand clamped around her arm before she could take the first step. “I am warning you, Alex,” he growled at her, his fingers biting into her arm. “I no longer care what happens to you, so do not make this situation any more difficult for yourself than it must be.”

  “Where are you taking me?” she demanded as he shoved her ahead of him towards his waiting carriage. “Tell me where you are ta....” she began to repeat louder, but, with a snarled curse, Marcus clamped his hand over her mouth again to silence her. His fingers bit into her face and she could hardly breathe. She struggled with him as he forced her into the street.

  “Open the damn door, Dartmoor!” he snapped as Alex thrashed in his arms. Hearing Dartmoor’s name, Alex gave a muffled shriek and kicked Marcus in the shin with all her might. “Dammit!” Marcus exclaimed, resisting Alex’s sudden lurch to the side.

  “She is a feisty wench, isn’t she?” Dartmoor commented as he swung the door of the carriage open.

  “Oh, do shut up, Dartmoor!” Marcus snapped in reply, forcing Alex into the carriage ahead of him. With her mouth freed from Marcus’s suffocating grip, Alex attempted to scream again and made a bolt for the other carriage door, but Dartmoor was faster than she was, and she only managed a brief shriek before he covered her mouth with one hand and pinned her to him with the other.

  “Drive on!” Marcus called to the coachman, rapping on the roof of the carriage before subsiding into his seat and glaring moodily out the window.

  “I like my women with a bit of spunk, Lady Alex,” Dartmoor said in her ear, and Alex felt revulsion curl in her stomach. She instantly went limp in his arms, and he laughed lifelessly. “You have not fooled me, you vixen,” he informed her as he tied her hands together behind her back. “Do open your mouth, dear,” he ordered her. She glared mutinously at him and did not obey.

  His eyes narrowed to slits of green. “This is your last chance, my love. Open your mouth.”

  She stared at him for a long moment in silence, then spat in his face. He wiped at his face with the hand that was not pinning her to the seat and his side, then looked into her face for a contemplative moment. He suddenly whipped his free hand across her face, causing stars to cloud her vision.

  “Do not do that again, my dear,” he warned her. “Open your mouth now, or I shall really become annoyed.” Her face throbbing and her vision still doubled, she opened her mouth. “That is much better,” he said in falsely sweet tones as he shoved a gag into her mouth and tied it tightly behind her head. He settled her against the seat alongside him, then turned to look at Marcus.

  “Is there something that you require?” Marcus snapped at his accomplice, disliking the smug smile on Dartmoor’s face.

  “Why no,” Dartmoor replied. “I was just thinking that I should thank you for devising such a brilliant plan.” His eyes found Alex’s in the semi-darkness of the coach and he chuckled. “I do believe that Lady Alex and I shall suit each other very well.”

  Alex’s mind recoiled in horror from the immediate conclusion his comment brought her to. She shrank away from him on the seat, feeling horror turning her insides to ice. He smiled at her reaction. “You will be such a beautiful bride, my dear Alexandra,” he said to her. Her eyes widened in terror, and she scrambled away from him into the corner of the coach. He began to laugh, and she shut her eyes so as not to see his laughing face. She only wished that she could block the sound of his insane laughter from her ears. She conjured Forrest’s face in her mind and attempted not to be afraid.

  Thirty-Three

  T

  wo hours later, Matthew and Rob stepped out onto the sidewalk in front of their club. As Rob summoned his carriage over to the curb, Matthew turned his eyes up to the cloudy sky, enjoying the cool kiss of the fog on his upturned face. Rob flipped a coin to the boy that was still struggling with his naughty horses. Matthew, out of sympathy, tossed him more money. The child grinned at Matthew gratefully and bestowed twice the normal amount of bowing and thanking on him.

  “Coming, Matthew?” Rob asked from the seat of his carriage.

  Matthew nodded and smiled at his friend. “I am. Shove over Rob.”

  “Why?” Rob asked in obvious confusion. “Whoa,” he added to the horses as they attempted to wander into the street.

  Matthew’s mouth twitched upward wryly. “Because I’m going to drive.” Rob cocked his head to one side, but he nodded slow assent. “Thank you,” Matthew said, making his way over to Rob’s curricle and climbing up. He clucked to the horses, and forced them to go out into the street in a controlled manner.

  “Rob, I cannot believe that you drive these idiots every day!” He grunted as he forced the left horse to trot. “They can’t even stay in a trot, for God’s sake!”

  Rob bristled at that. “They don’t act like that for me.”

  Matthew rolled his eyes. “That’s a perverse lie, and you know it.”

  “I can’t believe that I let you have the honor of driving my beauties, and then you have the temerity to insult them and my integrity nearly in the same breath. I insist that you stop this carriage and let me drive my horses home.”

  Matthew shook his head. “No.”

  “Matthew!” Ro
b growled in frustration, trying the wrest the reins from his much larger friend. “Stop these horses now!”

  Matthew shook his head. “No, Rob. I am not in the mood to argue with you about this.”

  “And I call you friend!” Rob cried, prying at Matthew’s fingers.

  “Rob, this is ridiculous!” Matthew exclaimed, leaning forward and shouldering his friend away.

  They both heard the gun shot, but, due to the dark and their absorption in their little tiff, they did not have adequate time to react. Matthew felt the sharp stabbing pain at the same moment as Rob’s neurotic horses launched forward so suddenly that they nearly yanked him off the seat. The two events would be forever locked together in his memory, along with the sudden rush of blood that obscured his vision.

  “Damnation!” Matthew exclaimed, swiping at blood and sawing at the horses’ mouths. “Did someone really just shoot at us?”

  Rob was staring in transfixed horror at the blood running down his friend’s face and dripping steadily onto his ridiculously expensive jacket, effectively ruining it. He reached shaking fingers up to his own face and wiped bright splatters of Matthew’s blood off it. He stared at the scarlet stains on the fingertips of his white gloves and thought he might be sick. A second glance at Matthew’s face confirmed it.

  Matthew finally managed to stop the horses and set about checking the rest of himself for injuries. “Rob, can I have your handkerchief?” He asked his friend through the blindfold of streaming blood. When his friend did not reply, he fumbled for Rob’s shoulder and gave it a good shake. Rob groaned, turned around, saw his friend, and gagged again. “Oh come on, Rob!” Matthew exclaimed. “It’s just a little scratch. Are you going to give me your handkerchief, or would you prefer for me to continue bleeding like a stuck pig?”

  Rob shook his head feebly, and handed over the folded square of linen. Matthew took it gratefully and pressed it against his eyebrow. He winced and cursed as the shock wore off and his nerves came back to screaming life. “Rob, you need to drive now. Rob?” He socked his friend on the shoulder with more force than necessary. “Come on, dammit!”

  Rob jumped obediently down and hurried on wobbly legs around the horses to the other side of the curricle, rubbing his abused arm. He set the horses off at a trot, his fingers so numb and stiff that he marveled at his ability to control the terrified animals. “I didn’t know that a person could bleed that much,” he said pensively. “Are you sure that it’s just a scratch?”

  Matthew gave a rusty chuckle, then cursed vehemently as the pain increased a good notch. “I wasn’t aware that I could bleed that much either, but there it is. I don’t think that it’s too bad, however I think that my face is going to be a very unpleasant sight for a few days.”

  “Or a few months,” Rob said drearily. “Who would want to do a thing like this?”

  Matthew didn’t want to think about that right now. He had the worst headache of his life, and thought seemed only to make it worse. “All that I know right now is that I’m glad I was bending over. If I hadn’t been, you’d never have had to worry about me commandeering your horses ever again.”

  Rob cringed at that, and felt immediately guilty. On the heels of the guilt that seemed to be clearing his head of shock, came a thought that made him cold all over again. “Matthew?”

  “Unh?” Matthew grunted, dabbing gingerly at his face.

  Rob gulped and said in a wavering voice. “What if you weren’t supposed to get shot?”

  Matthew laughed at that. “What do you mean, ‘what if’? Of course I was not supposed to get shot! I wish you had told the Fates that, however.”

  Rob shook his head. “No, no. I mean that possibly the person who shot you was trying to kill me. They are my horses after all.”

  Matthew froze as understanding swept over him. What an oversight! That was certainly an odd twist to things. He would have been glad that no one wanted to kill him after all if Rob hadn’t been the intended victim. He felt chilled, and his eye was starting to swell shut. He pressed harder on what remained of his eyebrow even though he fairly yelled at the intensity of the pain.

  “I am not capable of coherent thought at this particular moment, Rob,” he informed his friend. “Let’s discuss this once we are back at my house.” Rob nodded and turned his full attention to his horses.

  Once in Grosvenor Square, Rob drove his carriage around to the stable yard and shouted for William. The coachman came dashing sleepily out and took the horses heads. “Your Grace?” he asked, obviously stunned at the sight of his employer.

  “I’ll explain later, William,” Matthew said, jumping down from the carriage and immediately regretting it.

  “Blast!” he muttered through the fog of blinding pain.

  Rob hurried over to his friend and slung an arm around him to help guide him through the cobbled darkness that was the stable yard.

  The two men entered the house via the servant’s entrance to the kitchen. It was terribly dark in the room due to its tiny windows that let in minimal moonlight, and Rob and Matthew were forced to grope blindly from door to kitchen table, around chairs, to the other door.

  “Ouch!” Matthew growled as Rob knocked him into a chair that was not pushed in to the small, scarred wooden table that the kitchen servants ate at. There was a loud clatter as the chair toppled beneath Rob’s carefully shuffling feet. His feet tangled up in the chair, and he fell with a resounding thump.

  “Rob?” Matthew asked, finally getting his night eyes, or, as it was, his night eye. “Are you all right?”

  “I think so,” Rob said tentatively, struggling in vain to get up. “I...”

  The door that opened onto the back hall suddenly banged open, and Matthew and Rob ducked. “All right, you blighters. I have a gun, and I won’t hesitate to use it. Now get gone!”

  There was no mistaking the voice, despite its noticeable tremor, and Matthew heaved a huge sigh of relief. This was probably the strangest night of his relatively brief life. “It’s all right Dobbs, it’s just Rob and I.”

  “How do I know that you’re not lying?” came Dobbs quavering reply.

  Matthew was at the end of his rope. “Dobbs! Put the gun down now!” he roared.

  Dobbs scurried into the kitchen in a flurry of nearly silent servant’s feet. “Sorry, Your Grace, but you can never be too careful.”

  Matthew silenced him with a wave of his hand. “I appreciate your loyalty, Dobbs but as you can see, I’m hurt and Rob’s hopelessly tangled up.”

  “Oh!” Dobbs exclaimed, hurrying up to his employer, and peering at him from all angles. “What happened, Your Grace?”

  Matthew smiled thinly. “Something very unexpected. Untangle my friend, if you will, then summon Connelley.”

  Five minutes later, Matthew stretched out full length on the horsehair couch in his study with a quiet groan. He had been given to occasional migraines ever since he had been a youth, but they did not hold a candle to the headache he had now. He peeled the blood-soaked handkerchief away from his face and stared grimly at it. He didn’t think that the bleeding had slowed much at all.

  “Here is a new cloth, Your Grace,” Dobbs said, bustling into the room with a handful of towels. He folded one up with two neat flicks of his wrist, and handed it to Matthew. Matthew surrendered the handkerchief to Dobbs, who then passed it to Rob.

  Rob took it distastefully thanking heaven that he didn’t feel like tossing up his accounts anymore. “You know,” he said with a wry twist of his lips. “That this handkerchief was rather expensive in its former state.”

  Matthew smiled at his friend from underneath the cloth pressed to his head. “Sorry.”

  “No you’re not,” Rob said. “And neither should you be.”

  “I shall go and awake Lady Alexandra,” Dobbs announced, sweeping from the room briskly.

  “I need a drink,” Rob announced, crossing the room to the drink cabinet. “Would you like something, Matthew?”

  “Not as yet,” Matthe
w replied.

  “Hello all!” Dr. Connelley sang as he entered the room. “I hope you don’t mind, Matthew,” he said as he came to kneel beside the couch that held his patient. “But I let myself in. No one to answer the door, you know.”

  Matthew cleared his throat and swallowed. “I know. The staff’s asleep. Thank you for being so good-natured about being drug here at such a ludicrous hour.”

  Dr. Conelley laughed and reached for the cloth over Matthew’s eye. “Let’s see what we have here.” Matthew flinched unwittingly, and Rob cringed with him. His friend was usually so stoic it made one sick. He did not want to contemplate the kind of pain that would make his friend cringe and groan.

  The fiendishly accurate bullet had fortunately avoided Matthew’s brain, but it had most definitely found his eyebrow. The gash was perhaps an inch in length, but the bone that was close to the surface was revealed when the continuously flowing blood was sopped up. It was ugly, and Connelley was sure that it hurt like hell, but Matthew would live.

  “It’s not as bad as it could have been,” the Doctor said pragmatically.

  Matthew started to nod, then changed his mind. “I presumed that it was just a scratch, but it hurts like the very devil.” He winced unconsciously as if to prove his point.

  “Did I ever tell you,” Connelley said, probing gently at Matthew’s face. “That you get ridiculously polite when you are hurt? You needn’t apologize to me because you went and got yourself bloodied and bruised again. That’s my job, you know.”

  “I’m sorry,” Matthew said, not able to stop the small groan that escaped his lips as Conelley poked and prodded.