by Brianna York
Forrest took a pensive sip of wine and nodded. “I only wish the fellow had been able to see the crest on the carriage.”
Matthew nodded, then winced as his injured eyebrow made itself known once again. He had been able largely to ignore it while he was searching for clues to Alex’s whereabouts, but apparently it was tired of being ignored. “At least he noted that the horses and the vehicle were of the best quality. That rules out a vast many unfortunate possibilities.” The butler of the house across the way had been awaiting the return of his employers and had glanced outside around ten-thirty. He had seen what he described as a very fine carriage with high quality black horses before it standing outside of Matthew’s house. He had not seen anyone go into, or out of the house, however.
Rob was staring at the steam rising from their wet coats, a frown on his face. “I am quite sure, however, that there are a vast number of fine carriages with black horses drawing them in a city the size of this one. I am not certain that the butler’s information really puts us ahead.”
It was Matthew’s turn to frown. His friend had a point. “Perhaps we need to ascertain where someone might be taking her,” he suggested.
Forrest nodded. “A fine idea, Matthew, if only we knew who and why.”
Matthew growled and raked a hand through his hair in frustration. “I am sure that it will occur to us if we just think about it hard enough.” He fell to pacing back and forth before the fire, his jaw set firmly and his eyes narrowed in concentration. A sudden rapping at the front door broke into his restless thoughts, and he glanced with surprise at his friends before hurrying into the hall. Perhaps Alex had returned home! He raced into the foyer, skidding to a halt before the door. He wrenched the door open, an expectant half-smile on his face. His face fell, however, when he saw the bedraggled, rain-drenched, cloaked figure huddled on the front step. “Yes?” he inquired coldly.
A moment passed in which the person on the stoop did nothing, then two slender, white hands emerged from the wet and filthy folds of the cloak. The elegant hands moved slowly, trembling with cold, to push the sodden hood back. Matthew lost a beat of time as he stared in disbelief into Tess’s face. Her eyes were ablaze, making her pale face appear chalk-white. She was trembling with cold, but she held herself stiffly upright and looked back at him. Something in her pose said that she knew that she had hurt him and that she aware that she had no right to now confront him, but that she intended to finish what she had set into motion, for better or for worse.
“Tess?” Matthew said finally, feeling numbed of any emotion. He suddenly noticed the purple bruise at her temple and the hollow look to her cheeks, and he reached out a hand to her, his brows drawn low over her eyes in unconscious worry. She stared at his hand for a long moment, as if unsure of his intention.
He beckoned to her with his outstretched hand. “Come now. Come inside out of the cold.”
She managed a tiny smile that flicked the corners of her beautiful mouth up for the briefest of instants before it vanished as if it had never been. She reached out and slipped her icy hand into his. He pulled her into the foyer and efficiently slipped her soaked cloak from her shoulders, then draped an arm bracingly around her and guided her toward the library.
“Drink?” he asked her, leading her over to the fire. She nodded, her teeth chattering loudly. “Go stand before the fire and dry off a bit,” he told her before crossing the room to get her a drink. Forrest and Rob had followed Matthew into the foyer, and they straggled back into the library now, unsure of what to make of the present situation. Matthew passed them with Tess’s drink in his hand, barely noting their presence.
“Here,” he said to her, pressing the glass into her hand. “Surely you did not walk all the way here from your house?” he demanded, reaching up with both hands to rub her arms vigorously. She yelped as his firm hands made her aware of bruises obtained in her fall from the trellis. His hands stilled and he reached up to turn her face to the light from the fire. Anger glittered in his eyes as he stared at the blackening bruise on her temple. “Who did this to you?” he wanted to know.
She sucked in a quavering breath. “My brother,” she said quietly, bitterness making her voice sound very brittle.
Matthew’s eyes widened. “Your brother? But why...”
She shook her head briskly. “I shall tell you later if you still want to know,” she replied. “But I have come to warn you of something.”
Matthew bent down a bit so that his eyes were on a level with hers. “Go on,” he said to her. She suddenly noticed his blackened eye and the row of stitches marching across his eyebrow. With a startled gasp she started to reach out to touch his face, but he pulled quickly away. “It hurts quite enough without being touched,” he assured her.
“What in the world happened?” she asked, her eyes concerned.
Matthew sighed and glanced down for a moment. “Someone took a shot at Robert and myself as we were returning home tonight.”
She closed her eyes as her head reeled. She must have swayed a bit because Matthew caught a hold of her arm quickly to steady her. If he had been killed she would have been lost. Suddenly her eyes flew open. “Surely my brother did not...” her voice trailed off into a whisper and then died. She bit her lip and willed herself not to cry.
“That is neither here nor there at this point since I am still amongst the living,” Matthew said dismissively. “Now, what did you want to warn us about?”
She wished that the constriction in her throat would ease, but the sight of him so close to her and looking so concerned for her welfare was such a relief that she felt again like crying. She gathered herself by shutting her eyes momentarily. “I must warn you about my brother,” she said, opening her eyes again. “He is going to try to kidnap Lady Alexandra.”
“He already has,” Forrest said to her from the doorway, his voice dry and emphatic.
Tess’s eyes fluttered shut. “Dear God,” she whispered. “I am too late after all.”
“Perhaps you are not too late,” Matthew assured her, squeezing her shoulder gently. “You must tell us everything that you know.”
She nodded, and made another attempt at a smile, this one coming more easily than the first one had. Matthew guided her over to a chair, then called to his friends, “Would one of you get her a blanket?” He did not glance back to see if anyone had obeyed him, his eyes remaining fixed on her face. “Tell me.”
She swallowed hard and began. “My brother is actually a Baron. Our family once owned the property that is now your stud farm. My father was a wastrel and a fool, and he owed a great sum of money to your father after a card game. Your father agreed to waive the rest of the debt if my father gave him the family estate.”
“Of course!” Matthew whispered. “Go on,” he urged Tess.
“My father, was of course, very bitter about losing the family property,” she said, her voice thin. “He spent what remained of his useless life raving and ranting about the great disservice that your father had done him and successfully convincing my brother that, without your father, there would never have been any disgrace upon our family. That, of course, was a patent lie, as my father was good for absolutely nothing but gambling and drinking, but my brother somehow loved him and so he chose to see it father’s way.”
She paused to take a sip of her drink, then continued, her voice growing stronger as the alcohol began to warm her. “Ever since I can remember, my brother has been obsessed with reclaiming the family land and station. To that end, he convinced me that I should have a Season this year. At first, he simply said that I should use my time in London to marry well, but once we had arrived in the city, he informed me that I was to make myself charming to you, and attempt to net you in marriage so that we might reclaim what he has always considered to rightfully be his.”
She halted again, looking into his face, afraid that she would see revulsion and disgust there. However, all she saw was a luminous quality of scholarly interest.
�
�Here is the blanket that you wanted,” Rob announced, coming back into the room and handing it to Matthew.
“Do go one,” Matthew said once the blanket was wrapped around her.
She nodded. “At first, I presumed that I would never be able to land a man so powerful as yourself, but then I met you...and I fell in love with you...and knew that I could not allow my brother to carry out his plans. When I told him that I would not marry you to hurt you, he flew into a rage. He left for his club and returned with a gloating smile on his face. I did not know what to make of that until the next day. I awoke to voices downstairs, and so I crept down to hear what my brother was saying to his guest. You will probably never credit this, but your friend, the Earl of Wythinghall was there with him.”
Matthew shot a quick look over his shoulder at his two friends, noting that Rob looked horrified and that Forrest looked very grim. Suddenly the fact that there was no evidence of a struggle in the house made sense. “I believe you, Tess,” he reassured her.
She nodded, drew a deep breath and went on. “They were planning to kidnap Lady Alexandra and take her to Gretna Green so that my brother could force her to marry him. Somehow my brother had discovered that Lady Alexandra owns most of High Gate.”
“That son of a bitch,” Forrest ground out, his level voice disturbing in its steely self-control.
“Go and have horses readied,” Matthew ordered his friends.
“We are going after them?” Rob asked incredulously, his eyes darting to the window which was streaked with rain. “In this weather?”
“We are,” Matthew replied. “The weather is to our advantage. It will slow them down. They are not far ahead of us as it is, so we may be able to beat them to the border.” He turned back to Tess, oblivious of his friends once again. “Tell me the rest, Tess.”
The note of tender concern in his voice nearly was her undoing. She forced her stretched nerves to settle themselves again and continued. “Wythinghall told my brother that you would annul the marriage and prevent him from getting what he wanted, and I briefly hoped that they would not be able to carry out their plan. But then the Earl said that all they had to do was to have you killed because your mother would be glad to have her other son inherit your title and because she did not care about Alex at all.”
Matthew nodded, his eyes closed as he tried to imagine what the situation would be like if Marcus and Dartmoor had succeeded in killing him. He had never been close to Marcus, but he would never have thought the other man capable of such acts as Tess was relating to him. He opened his eyes again and regarded Tess’s pale face with its huge and luminous eyes. She could be lying to him again, but he knew that she was not. It was the only explanation for the fine carriage before his door, for Alex’s lack of struggle, for Dartmoor’s knowledge about Alex’s personal inheritance. He reached out with one hand and cupped the side of Tess’s face. “Thank you for warning us,” he said softly.
Her eyes filled with tears. “You are not angry at me for being involved in my brother’s terrible plotting?” she asked, her voice a whisper.
He shook his head gently and leaned forward to brush his lips over the bruise at her temple. “I see now that you had no choice in the matter, love.”
She was trembling now, fighting to hold back the torrent of emotion that had been building in her for the past hour. “I did not want to break our engagement, but I had to. It was the only way to save you from my brother, but oh! It was so very hard, Matthew! I thought that I would die if I were never to see you again, but it was the right thing to do because I thought I could save you from him.” There was a note of pained pride in her voice, and Matthew felt his throat constrict. “I am so very sorry!” she cried, the first tears spilling down her cheeks.
Matthew smiled tenderly at her. “There is nothing to be sorry for, my love,” he assured her, framing her face with both his hands and wiping the tears from her cheeks with his thumbs. “You are quite the bravest woman that I have ever known.”
“Nonsense,” she sniffled.
“Nonsense, nothing. You are brave and you are terribly honorable, two things that I might never find in another woman in such great quantities. I owe so much to you already and now this. I shall never be able to repay you, love.”
She sniffed again, her face radiant in spite of the tears slipping down it. “I just want never to have to leave you,” she replied. “I want you to love me again.”
He smiled at her fondly, his eyes warm. “But, you see, Tess, it’s the damndest thing; I never stopped loving you.” He held his arms out to her and, with a last sniffle, she flung herself into them. Matthew smiled and stroked her hair gently, knowing that, for the moment at least, he could allow himself to be at peace.
“Matthew?” Matthew swiveled toward the voice and saw Forrest in the doorway. “Hate to interrupt, old man, but it’s more than time that we be off. The horses are ready.”
“Right,” Matthew said with a brisk nod. “I shall be with you in a trice.” He made to rise, but Tess caught a hold of his arm in a surprisingly tight grip.
“He means that we shall be with you in a trice, Baron,” she said commandingly, her eyes very bright and very steady as she looked up at Matthew.
“We?” Matthew repeated, then shook his head. “Surely you are not considering accompanying us! It will be dreadfully difficult going and the weather is not going to improve. I hate to thwart you, love, but you are likely to take sick as it is. I simply will not have you going with us on such a dangerous mission.” He started to pull away, but Tess’s fingers tightened on his arm.
“I am not going to argue with you, Matthew,” she informed him icily. “I am going. Where are Alex’s riding habits? I shall need to borrow one.”
“Tess...” Matthew began again, frustrated now, but his words were cut off by Forrest’s intervention.
“For God’s sake, man! Let her go with us. We’ve wasted more than enough time on this nonsense as it is.”
Matthew glared at his friend, thinking that it was easy to disregard the welfare of a woman that one did not love, then remembered that the woman that Forrest loved was in much graver danger than Tess. “All right then. Come Tess, I’ll help you find clothes to borrow.” He turned to Forrest. “Give us five minutes, Forrest.”
Forrest nodded crisply and pulled his pocket watch from his pocket to glance at it in one single sweep of fluid motion. “I shall have Hermes saddled for Miss Dartmoor.”
“Thank you, Baron,” Tess said to Forrest’s shoulders as he spun on his heel and vacated the room.
“Come,” Matthew ordered her, sweeping from the room. Tess scrambled to her feet and ran after him into the foyer. Matthew did not bother to slow his pace to accommodate her as he mounted the stairs and Tess was forced to leap two steps at a time in order to keep up with him. She thought suddenly that she must look like a mountain goat as she leapt on her tiny feet from step to step and she giggled abruptly at the image the thought caused her imagination to conjure up.
Matthew glanced back at her with one brow cocked. “What are you laughing about?” he inquired, the slight curl of a smile in the corner of his mouth marring the seriousness of his tone.
She giggled again. “I was thinking that I must look like a mountain goat leaping after you like this.”
He glanced back again in time to see her leap up two more steps with a lithe spring and chuckled in reply. “I fear I must agree with you,” he admitted as they reached the upstairs hall. Matthew swerved to his left and pushed open the door to Alex’s room with Tess close on his heels. He made his way to the armoire and swung the doors open impatiently before rummaging about inside of it quickly. “Damn,” he muttered, rifling through the clothes with growing impatience.
“What?” Tess inquired, coming to peer over Matthew’s shoulder.
Matthew pushed aside more clothes in growing agitation before he replied. “I cannot seem to find a single one of her habits.”
“You don’t suppose that they
are kept somewhere else?” Tess mused aloud, turning around and surveying the room with a critical eye.
“I do not know,” Matthew replied, irritation evident in his voice. “I have never been required to keep track of such things before now.”
“Matthew?”
“Hmmmm...what, Tess?” He replied, straightening away from the armoire and glared at the disarrayed contents with annoyance.
Tess’s tone was contemplative as she replied. “You don’t suppose that these would do the trick?”
“What are you referring to?” Matthew inquired, turning around to regard Tess.
“I presume that these are Alex’s?” Tess inquired, holding up the worn riding boots that she had obviously extracted from the wooden chest at the end of Alex’s bed.
Matthew laughed aloud. “Indeed they are.” He regarded her for another moment as if he were memorizing the sight for future enjoyment, then whirled around abruptly. “Let me see...” he muttered, searching through the armoire again for what he had seen a few moments before. “Aha!” he exclaimed, turning around again with a pair of breeches in his hand. He tossed them to Tess who caught them handily. “These should do the trick,” he said with satisfaction.
Tess looked at the breeches and boots with a mischievous smile. “How terribly uncivilized,” she announced. She flashed Matthew a pirate’s smile before vanishing behind the dressing screen in the corner of Alex’s room.
Matthew chuckled. “I shall be back in a moment, Madam Hoyden. I might have something you could use for a cloak.”
Tess did not reply, focusing instead on her struggle with the unfamiliar garments. She succeeded in pulling on both the breeches and the boots before she realized that she would require a shirt to wear as well. With a girlish trill of laughter, she scampered across the deep carpets on the floor of Alex’s room and raided the contents of Alex’s armoire for the required article of clothing. She was just tucking the shirt into her borrowed breeches when Matthew returned to the room. He surveyed her from head to foot with an undisguised smile of pleasure.