Twice they crossed stiles. One man passed her to the other like a sack of potatoes. Both times, she managed to inflict damage by way of a well-placed knee. Once in the stomach, and once in the chest. Neither hit their mark of the nether regions. Still, she garnered immense satisfaction at their grunts and curses of pain.
“My sister is going to teach you a lesson, my lady.” The words “my lady” dripped with derision, but Victoria focused on the nugget of information offered freely.
His sister was the mastermind? That lent an air of loyalty and not greed to her abductors’ motivations. The danger rose a notch. Men could be turned through avarice, but familial bonds made the proposition more difficult.
The scent of woodsmoke tickled her nose as they entered a clearing. Less than a minute later, she passed from sunshine to shadows before being dumped on a dirt floor. The sudden change in attitude dizzied her. Not to mention the wave of pain coming from her bottom and hands from landing on them. She shifted to her side, desperate to evaluate her surroundings.
She was in a hut. No, a hovel. Leaf litter piled in the corners, and the smell was musty and animal-like. A fire burned, and as much smoke filled the room as went up the crude chimney. Her eyes watered, and a cough threatened behind the gag.
A woman emerged from the corner. Victoria awkwardly maneuvered herself to sitting and blinked to bring her into focus. She wore a veiled hat very similar to the one Victoria had commissioned two years ago to hide behind during her unchaperoned jaunts. The woman pointed at Victoria and turned to her brother. “Why the devil did you bring her?”
“It’s Lady Eleanor. Like you asked.”
“You dolt. That’s Miss Hawkins.”
The man squinted at Victoria. “Nay. She’s the one who met with the toff at the Bear and the Crown.”
The woman paced in the small space, punching one balled fist into her other hand. Her voice. It was familiar. And just like that, everything clicked into place.
“Mrs. Leighton?” Except it sounded like she said “blah, blah, blah?”
Mrs. Leighton spun to regard her. Something in Victoria’s eyes must have signaled her recognition, because the woman let out a curse that would be common on the docks and waved her hand toward her brother. “Remove her gag, John.”
The woman raised the black netting of her veil. The deferential expression the milliner wore in her shop had been replaced by a zealot’s madness.
Victoria’s mouth was dry and sore from the gag. She daubed her tongue along her lips before saying, “You meant to take Eleanor from the start.”
“Of course I did. What would I want with the likes of you?”
If her situation weren’t so dire, Victoria might have laughed. No wonder the abduction had never made sense. Once again, her father’s adage about making assumptions had proved true.
“But why Eleanor?” Certainly, Lord Stanfield had money, but not outrageous sums, or else they would have taken a town house closer to the ton’s stars in Mayfair.
Mrs. Leighton’s lips drew into a thin line, and she didn’t answer. Grooves alongside her mouth deepened, and a wrinkle appeared between her eyes. Mrs. Leighton was older than Victoria had first guessed.
What made a woman who supported herself through a successful business resort to abduction… and perhaps worse?
Love made everyone a little mad, didn’t it?
Lord Berkwith had been the one to suggest using Mrs. Leighton as a go-between, and she had seen him duck into the tailor’s shop next door as they arrived at the milliner shop. “You and Berkwith are lovers.”
“Randall loves me.” The statement hit like the bang of a fist on a table.
“That’s odd, because he told me that he loves Eleanor.” Victoria kept her voice cool and even.
Mrs. Leighton swallowed hard and then pointed her finger at Victoria. “Why were you at the meeting with Randall at the Bear and the Crown? Were you trying to take him for yourself?”
“Hardly. Eleanor grew leery about meeting Lord Berkwith at such a place, so I went in her stead to pass along a message.” Victoria went on the offensive. “Do you expect Lord Berkwith to marry you?”
“He loves me.” Desperation drowned out the earlier surety in the statement.
“He may love you, but he will marry for money. He must in order to save his lands and legacy.”
“No. He will marry me.”
Arguing would not convince her of Berkwith’s faithlessness. Victoria tried a new tack. “Now you know who I am, I beg you to return me to the manor house before I’m missed.”
“I cannot. You will summon the authorities, and we will be hanged.” Mrs. Leighton’s unnatural calmness made the hairs prickle on the back of Victoria’s neck.
“No, I won’t. This will be our secret. I promise.” Of course, it was a promise she would not keep, and based on Mrs. Leighton’s narrowed eyes she knew this as well.
“I can’t take the risk, Miss Hawkins. I apologize.” She might have been apologizing for a lack of blue ribbon needed for adornment around the brim of a bonnet.
“Eleanor saw your brother and his comrade take me.” Victoria pulled at her bonds, but she couldn’t tell if she was making any progress because the numbness had spread up her forearms and was invading her shoulders.
Mrs. Leighton looked to her brother and raised a brow.
“The chit collapsed in a heap before I could even say boo. She knows nothing that would incriminate us.”
Mrs. Leighton pointed to Victoria but spoke to her brother. “This is your mistake. Dispose of it.”
That sounded ominous.
John wrenched Victoria up by her arms. Pain streaked across her shoulders, and she was unable to stifle a cry. “Can you loosen my bonds? My hands and arms hurt.”
“Soon enough it won’t matter. Nothing will.” While the threat was clear, a crack in John’s voice had Victoria forgetting about her discomfort and focusing on the man.
John wasn’t a killer. He might be a thief and a brawler, and she could picture him committing any number of immoral acts, but murder? No, she didn’t think so. Especially a woman.
The question was how to sway him. Logic or tears?
Victoria appealed one more time to Mrs. Leighton’s sense of self-preservation, if not decency. “You are making a mistake. If you hurt me, my father will not rest until he discovers the truth. He will make you all pay dearly.”
Mrs. Leighton stepped closer. The bloom of youth might have faded from her face, but a different kind of beauty emerged. Less refined, yet equally as arresting.
“Berkwith is my last chance. Someone like you wouldn’t understand the position of a woman like me.”
“You mean a widow?”
Mrs. Leighton barked a mirthless laugh. “I’m no widow. My mother was also a milliner. She worked until her fingers grew crooked and knobby. An overdose of laudanum took her. She was naught but forty. When she died, John and I were cast into the streets. I provided the only way I could.”
John moved to stand in the doorway and look outside.
Mrs. Leighton gripped Victoria’s chin and tilted her face toward the meager light of the fire, forcing Victoria to meet her glittering eyes. “I sold my body to so many men I lost count. Finally, I caught a man of means, and he got me off the streets. He was a good man.”
“What happened to him?”
“Died. I took his name and the money he left me and started the shop.”
“You’re doing well for yourself. Why would you want Lord Berkwith?”
Mrs. Leighton let go of her chin, tugged a glove off, and held up her right hand. It was work roughened and red, the joints swollen. “I inherited the same curse. Some nights, the pain is so bad I can’t sleep without the very medicine that killed my mother. Soon, I won’t be able to work. And then what? My looks won’t last. Randall is a decent sort. A bit dim, perhaps, but he doesn’t hit me. He loves me. He does.”
Despite her current predicament, sympathy welled up in Victoria.
Mrs. Leighton turned to her brother. “Throw her down the ravine. With any luck, they’ll think it was an accident.”
Any pity Victoria was feeling was quashed by the woman’s cold pronouncement. John grabbed her elbow and yanked her out of the hut. She stumbled into him. He lost his balance and released her. For a blink, she didn’t move. Then, like a bird sensing an open cage door, she ran.
She didn’t get far. It wasn’t even John who caught her, but a root hidden under an inch of snow. She pitched forward, unable to catch herself. Cold muck seeped through her dress. She couldn’t get up, nor could she roll over. Her shoulders hurt. Her arms hurt. But mostly, her heart hurt. Was there no escape? Would she never see Thomas again to tell him how she felt?
John hauled her up.
She couldn’t run. She couldn’t fight. She had only one option left. She gathered a lungful of air. Her scream echoed around them and shredded until there was nothing left but silence. Even the birds had quieted. She drew in a gust of air to scream again and John bashed his fist against her temple.
The hit left her dazed and tottering toward a black abyss of unconsciousness.
Chapter 11
The scream scythed through him. An answering visceral pain rose from his own throat. Instead of answering her call, he closed his eyes and concentrated on estimating direction and distance to Victoria. Not far now, but was he already too late?
He ran, leaping over fallen trees and ripping through brambles with no thought to the damage incurred to his clothes or body. His overriding thought was Victoria. If she was dead… His heart lurched, and he shut his fears down. He would be unable to function if he allowed panic to dictate his actions.
Woodsmoke had him raising his nose like a hound, and he slowed. Crouching, he picked his way closer to the clearing. A once-abandoned crofter’s hut was now occupied. Footprints trampled through snow and mud. This was where Victoria was being held.
Garrick had always wondered at the way anger manifested in men. Some let their anger grow hot and burn out of control. Those men entered the fray like a berserker, killing all in their path. That had never been Garrick’s way. For him, fury invaded like a winter storm. It numbed him and encased him in ice.
He stepped into the clearing. A man yelled a warning toward the hut and ran forward. Garrick recognized him from the alley. This time he would offer no mercy. Garrick met the man with a fist. The man’s nose bent in the wrong direction and blood spurted. Garrick pulled a knife from the holster under his jacket and shoved it into the man’s belly. He fell to his knees and over onto his side, curled on the ground.
Garrick strode to the hut and slammed the flimsy door open with such force it swung on one hinge. He narrowed his eyes against the smoke and dimness. Only one woman occupied the hut, and it wasn’t Victoria. She sat in a stiff-backed wooden chair, her face in profile. It took several blinks for Garrick to recognize her. How was a bloody milliner involved?
“What the devil are you about woman? Where is Miss Hawkins?”
“You’re too late.” The woman twisted to look him square in the eye. Desperation was more dangerous than loyalty to a cause. “She will be dead soon enough.”
“Where is she?” When the woman only mashed her lips together, Garrick pulled a second knife from under his jacket, squat on his haunches, and pressed the tip under her chin. “Do not try me, woman. Tell me, and you may yet live to see another day.”
Fear flickered like the firelight over her face, gone before Garrick was sure. Finally, she said, “My brother has taken her to the ravine, but you are too late.”
Garrick didn’t hesitate a moment longer. He ran for the woods in direction of the ravine, picking up the trail of a single man. His habit of reconnoitering new surroundings might prove the difference between Victoria’s life and death.
No smaller set of prints was visible, which meant the man was likely carrying Victoria. He didn’t allow himself to dwell on why. The extra burden would slow their progress, giving Garrick a chance. And a chance was all he needed.
Movement through the trees had him slowing. It was a man carrying a body over his shoulder. Victoria’s glossy black curls bounced with his every step. Her hands were tied behind her back, and she squirmed a little in the man’s hold, a breathy moan carrying through the trees.
Garrick let out a steadying breath. She was alive. That’s all that mattered. He stalked the man as swiftly and silently as a cat. The coarse rope binding her hands was tight, and her movements became more pronounced. The man grunted and did something to her leg that caused her to rear up in pain. She drew in a breath, looking prepared to release it in another scream when their gazes clashed and held.
She held her scream at bay, instead speaking in a hoarse voice, but not to him. “Let me go and tell your sister I’m dead.”
“You’d bring hell down upon us. No. This was my mistake, and I must fix it.”
Garrick bared his teeth and closed the distance by another six feet. Hell was coming for the man whether he chose to do the right thing or not.
“Have you ever killed anyone?” she asked.
“I’ve done plenty, girl. Tossing you over a cliff won’t keep me up at night.” His voice didn’t contain nearly the same confidence of his words. The man might be a bruiser used to navigating Seven Dials, but he wasn’t a killer. Not yet, at any rate.
“My death will not be the end of this, you know.”
The conversation, as bleak as it was, was masking Garrick’s approach. Victoria knew this, and Garrick almost smiled. Her quick wits and bravery had never been in question.
“You don’t understand,” the man said mulishly.
“Then help me understand, John.”
“My sister could have left me to fend for myself. She could have sold me to a sweeper. If she hadn’t had me to care for, she could have found a respectable position in a house. Instead, she— Well, I’ll do anything for her. Anything.”
Winter sunlight filtered through the thinning trees. The edge of the ravine was ahead. Garrick clutched the knife and made his move. It took only five long strides to reach Victoria. He slammed his shoulder into the man’s arm and sent him reeling to the side.
Victoria tumbled to the ground with a grunt. Garrick forced himself not to glance in her direction. If the man happened to kill Garrick, she would be next. John swung a meaty fist around. Garrick dipped to the right, but the punch caught the edge of his jaw. Pain exploded.
The man was on Garrick before he fully recovered, grappling for the knife. Garrick broke the hold John had on his wrist and stabbed upward. The point met flesh, and Garrick drove the knife deeper. John’s eyes widened, and his grip loosened. He staggered backward into a tree and slid to the ground, still propped against the trunk, his legs splayed wide.
Breathing hard, Garrick watched the life leak from the man, then he shook himself free of the icy fury that held him in its grip. Victoria lay on her stomach, her hair out of its pins and in her face.
Garrick fell to his knees and helped her to sit, brushing her hair back with a shaking hand. A bruise was forming on her temple, and she was scratched and dirty, but she appeared otherwise unharmed.
“My arms. Can you cut me loose?” Her pain reverberated to him.
Garrick returned to the dead man, pulled the knife free and wiped the blood off as best he could on the dead leaves at his feet. He sawed through the rope binding her wrists. As it began to give and her arms moved, she groaned.
“Easy now. Let me help,” he said softly, chafing her arms. “How are your hands?”
“I’m not sure. I can’t feel them.”
He peeled off her gloves and found her hands swollen and unnaturally white. “I’m afraid this is going to be deuced uncomfortable.”
He rubbed her hands between his, stimulating blood flow and offering her his warmth. She bit her bottom lip and grimaced, but didn’t cry out. After several minutes of his ministrations, her hands had turned pink, and she could open and clo
se her fingers.
“John is dead?” It was a surprise to hear a hint of grief in her voice.
Garrick glanced over his shoulder. “He is. Are you sorry I killed him?”
“I suppose a quick death is better than the spectacle of being hanged.” She looked to where their hands were clasped together. “I do feel sorry for him though. Does that make me weak?”
“It makes you human. Do you reserve the same sympathy for Mrs. Leighton?”
“Did you… kill her also?”
“No. I spoke to her briefly to ascertain your whereabouts, but my guess is your father has her in custody.”
“I was scared,” she said so softly he almost didn’t hear her.
“I was too,” he admitted.
Her gaze darted up. “I didn’t think anything could rattle you.”
“Losing you could.” He took a deep breath, wanting to say more but knowing he shouldn’t. “Let’s get you back to the house and into a bath.”
He rose and helped Victoria to her feet. She swayed, and her face paled. Before she could slide back to the ground, Garrick wrapped an arm around her and brought her to his body.
“I’m so dizzy.” Her voice was muffled against his shoulder.
“No wonder, considering you were hauled upside down over a man’s shoulder like a sack of grain.” He scooped her into his arms and picked his way through the trees. “That knock on your head isn’t helping matters. I’ll make certain you are examined by a physician.”
She rested her head on his shoulder and trembled in his arms. “I was a mistake.”
“Pardon?”
“A mistake. They meant to abduct Eleanor from the Bear and the Crown, not me. It was never a plot involving Father.”
“Why Lady Eleanor?”
“Mrs. Leighton is in love with Lord Berkwith and thought to eliminate her competition.”
“That was an extremely risky, not to mention foolish, plan.”
“She was desperate. Her hands are arthritic. She won’t be able to carry on as a milliner for much longer.”
A Scandalous Secret: Spies and Lovers Page 12