‘You what, Mother?’ Ezra asked, his voice hardening.
‘There was so much confusion, I couldn’t find her so I just assumed that she had returned with someone else.’
Ezra was so angry that red spots threatened to blur his vision. Something bad had happened to Clio, his every instinct told him so. He looked away from his mother as he struggled to control his rage. Angry people did not think coherently. His gaze roamed around the room, alighting upon his mother’s bed and the yellow embroidered reticule laying on it. The breath left his body in an extravagant whoosh.
‘That belongs to Miss Benton.’
His mother nodded. ‘Indeed it does. She left it in my carriage. I will have my maid return it to her.’
‘No.’ Ezra slowly shook his head. ‘She had it with her when I spoke to her at the luncheon. If she did not return with you then how did it come to be in your carriage?’
‘How should I know?’ The duchess lifted a slim shoulder in evident disinterest. ‘Why not ask her if such a trifling matter is so important to you. There has obviously been a silly mistake and I fail to understand why you are getting into such a taking about it.’
‘I cannot ask her, Mother, for the simple reason that she isn’t here. She hasn’t come back.’
‘Hasn’t come back?’ His mother looked momentarily alarmed but then flapped a hand in casual dismissal of Ezra’s concerns. ‘Don’t be ridiculous. She must have. Even if she was somehow left behind in all the confusion, Lady Fletcher’s servants will be there clearing away. They will ensure her safe return.’
‘I was the last to leave. There were no ladies left behind at that point.’
His mother’s expression turned evasive, causing Ezra to belatedly realise that he hadn’t seen her at all since very early after her arrival when they had briefly spoken to one another. He recalled as well that Brennan lived close by.
‘You weren’t there, were you?’ he said slowly, his seething anger on the point of erupting. ‘That’s why she couldn’t come back with you. You were with Brennan.’
‘So what if I was?’ she asked defensively. ‘No one will have missed me.’
‘Except Miss Benton, who thanks to your neglect might well now be in peril.’
‘I like Miss Benton and I am sorry this has happened, but really, who would want to harm her?’
Ezra was momentarily tempted to explain, but there was no time. Instead, his mind reeled with increasingly unpalatable possibilities. A tap at the door preceded Godfrey putting his head round it.
‘This was just hand delivered,’ he said, passing Ezra a sealed note. ‘Thought it might be important.’
Ezra crossed to his mother’s writing desk, picked up a paper knife and broke the seal. He read the contents once and swore viciously.
‘What is it?’ the duchess asked.
He passed the note to Godfrey. ‘Someone has taken Miss Benton, and they want me in place of her,’ he said through gritted teeth.
‘Out of the question!’ the duchess cried with surprising emotion. ‘You are all I have left.’
‘You expect me to let a young woman die and do nothing to prevent it?’ He waved a hand to prevent his mother from speaking again. ‘Hush, I need to think.’
Ezra paced the length of the room, rubbing his chin as he attempted to decide who had taken her. His dancing with her, followed by his mother’s public display of approval had clearly made her a target. Ergo, this was all his fault and a situation that he must somehow rectify. But where to start looking?
‘Barnes drove you to Brennan?’ he asked.
‘Yes, and waited for me.’
‘How long were you there?’
‘Oh, I’m not sure, perhaps two hours. I left just as the storm broke.’
Ezra nodded, recalling that the weather deteriorated a good two hours after their arrival at Midhurst.
‘Very well. Say nothing about this, Mother. I will deal with it.’
The duchess stood and looked resolute. ‘No! I cannot lose another son.’ Ezra was astonished when tears began to stream down her cheeks. Please, Ezra.’ She grasped his arm. ‘See reason. You are too important to the future of the duchy. Let others take the risks.’
‘If you wish to make amends for your neglect, oblige me by remaining silent about Miss Benton’s disappearance. If questions are asked, say she came back with you.’ He softened his tone, wondering if Clio had been right and that his mother did have feelings. It was the first time she had shown any sign of emotion in front of him, but still… ‘This will be resolved within a few hours, one way or the other.’
Having extracted a reluctant promise from the duchess, Ezra and Godfrey left the room and returned to their own.
‘What are your thoughts?’ Godfrey asked.
‘This has to do with Barnes. I wish I knew how, but the fact remains that Clio had this with her when we spoke,’ Ezra replied, glancing at the reticule he still held in his hands. ‘I remember her fiddling with the handle, which is how it caught my notice. She cannot have left it in my mother’s carriage and so…’
‘And so it must have been deposited there after she was abducted.’
‘Precisely.’ Ezra flexed a jaw so rigid with tension that he was surprised the gesture didn’t cause it to snap. ‘And the fact that her abductor wants me to meet him alone behind the stables in two hours confirms Barnes’s involvement. What do we know about him, other than that he’s a favourite of my mother’s?’
‘Your father employed him when we were away fighting Boney. Not sure how he came to be in your mother’s exclusive service. He’s a good looking dog who makes himself agreeable to the ladies, as well as being a decent driver with an instinct for horses. I reckon he used his charm on your lady mother, because she won’t hear a word against him.’
‘Is he our assassin?’
‘Could be. No one would suspect a humble groom.’ Godfrey frowned. ‘But why?’
‘That is what I have been asking myself. Mother said he waited for her when she visited Brennan, but I don’t suppose she looked out of the window every five minutes to make sure he was still there.’
‘But Miss Benton was at the luncheon, right up until the storm broke. I saw her myself. Barnes would have been pushed to abduct her and get back to Midhurst in time to collect her grace, who maintains she left when the storm broke.’
‘She would not have left until it cleared. No one with any sense would deliberately set out in such weather, and I suspect she would have welcomed the excuse to linger with Brennan. By the time the weather had improved, Barnes would have been back and Mother none the wiser.’
‘Where would Miss Benton have been kept?’
‘In the carriage’s trunk,’ Ezra said scowling. ‘Tied and gagged to keep her quiet, one assumes. However, she would not have been heard above the noise of the horses’ hooves even if she did manage to kick at the carriage’s bodywork and cause a ruckus. It was risky but possible for a man with enough determination.’
Godfrey nodded. ‘What a scoundrel, picking on a harmless female in order to get to you. The worst sort of despicable coward.’
‘Quite, but we are now one step ahead of him. I’m confident that he won’t have killed her—at least not yet. He might be waiting to do so in front of me, but one thing’s for sure, she will not be permitted to live once Barnes has confronted me, so we shall just have to find her before I have the pleasure of kicking him like the dog that he is. Except I would never kick a dog,’ he added, reaching down to scratch Merlin’s ears. ‘They at least understand the meaning of loyalty. Anyway, whereabouts on this estate would the blaggard take her in order to be assured of privacy?’
‘There are too many grooms for them all to fit into the accommodation above the stables, so the senior retainers have been given rooms in the vacant cottages a half mile from the stables.’
A grim smile spread across Ezra’s face. ‘Well then, this mutt had best earn his keep.’ Ezra whistled to Merlin, who roused himself, wagged hi
s tail and sniffed at the reticule that Ezra had kept hold of. ‘Go find her, boy!’
‘We will all find her, your grace,’ Godfrey said in a firm tone as he pulled a pair of duelling pistols from a case and ensured that they were both primed. ‘You can’t do this alone. Quite apart from anything else, I’m too old to find another position.’
Clio opened her eyes, feeling groggy and disorientated. Her hands and feet were tied, her mouth tightly gagged, and she felt cold, desperately cold. She struggled to recall how she had finished up in this farrago. It came back to her in fragments. Being accosted, fighting, trying to escape, the storm, getting soaked to the skin, being hit with considerable force. Her head thumped at the recollection. She laid back on a bed of some sort and waited for the dizziness to pass.
There had been a carriage ride, she remembered, but she must have been bundled into the trunk while still unconscious. She had been terrified when she regained consciousness in the total darkness of such a confined space and had passed out once again.
Now, here she found herself in this damp hovel; little more than a shed, as far as she could make out in the dim interior. She knew who her captor must be, much good that knowledge was likely to do her in her current predicament. She had recognised his voice as that of the duchess’s driver, Barnes.
The duchess!
Was she responsible for Clio’s abduction? Had she pretended to befriend her in order to win her trust, only to have her wiped out in the cruellest of fashions in order to prevent Ezra from making what she would undoubtedly look upon as a mésalliance? Clio shook her head, her squeal of pain that the gesture occasioned covered by her gag which allowed for almost no sound to escape from her mouth. If the duchess wanted her out of the way, there were surely much easier ways to go about it. She only had to make her disapproval of Ezra’s supposed interest in her apparent and anyone who mattered would have cut her out of a sense of loyalty, or more likely because they would prefer their own charges to make an impression upon the handsome duke.
But Ezra took little notice of his mother’s wishes and the lady knew it, so why go to such lengths—and worse, why involve someone else in her machinations, leaving herself open to blackmail and betrayal?
It made absolutely no sense.
Barnes must be working alone, there was no other explanation. He was systematically killing off Ezra’s family for reasons that had yet to become apparent, and was using her to get to Ezra. Which meant that neither of them would be permitted to live.
Despite her debilitated state, Clio felt fresh determination to get the better of her vile captor. And to do that she would need to escape. The storm had been both a hinderance and a help, Clio reasoned. She had seen the duchess leave the luncheon in her carriage not long after their arrival, which meant she had been right to assume she would call upon Lord Brennan and enjoy the entire afternoon in his company. She would not have kept check on her faithful coachman, who had returned with the intention of…
Of what precisely? Had she always been his target, bait to tempt Ezra into a trap, or had he improvised when the storm hit? The man was brazen and unscrupulous, but Clio would best him or die trying. She shuddered when she considered that the latter outcome was more likely since he currently held all the aces.
But he was not in love, as far as she knew, and did not have a compelling reason to ensure that the object of his affections remained alive.
Resolved to protect Ezra, Clio swung her bound legs until she could manoeuvre her feet onto the floor and then used her elbow to push herself into a sitting position. The room swam in front of her eyes as a result of that small effort, which was not encouraging. She took stock of her surroundings and discovered that she was in a small shed of some sort. The bed she had been resting on took up at least half of the limited space. There was one window high up in the wall, against which rain pattered, and a door that was almost certainly locked from the outside. Her hands were bound behind her but Clio lifted her legs and bottom and managed to bring them to the front.
From there she awkwardly fumbled with the knots that secured the rope around her ankles, which had been rubbed red raw by the rough hemp. It seemed to take an age and she kept having to rest and allow time for her muddled head to clear, but eventually she managed to free one leg, then the other. Euphoric at this small act of defiance, she stamped her feet to restore feeling to them and wondered what to do next. If Barnes came back, she was too weak to run away and knew that if she tried it he would likely kill her.
The gag tasted rancid and made it hard for her to breathe. She lowered her head into her lap and painfully pulled thick locks of hair free from the back of the gag where it had been tied around her head, her bound hands making the task awkward. She loosened it enough to flex her jaw until it slipped away from her mouth, enabling her to gulp down greedy breaths until the pain in her chest eased.
Then she heard footsteps approaching and her heart quailed.
‘So close,’ she muttered, desperately looking for a hiding place. But the room was too small; there was nowhere for her to conceal herself.
She heard voices. Not two people, please! The door flew inwards with a loud crash. Clio grabbed the first thing that came to hand, a china chamber pot, and raised it awkwardly above her head in her bound hands. If she had to die, she was damned if she would do so passively.
‘Argh!’ she screamed as the first body tumbled through the door. But before she could crack him over the head with her weapon, a steady hand took it from her. Clio, deflated and defeated, sagged against the wall. Then a cold nose pushed its way beneath her hand and a familiar aroma assailed her nostrils.
‘Ezra?’ She stared up at him in disbelief for a moment, thinking her addled mind must still be playing tricks on her, then fell against his chest, at which point his strong arms closed around her.
‘Hush,’ he said, kissing the top of her head. ‘You gave me quite a fright, but you’re safe now. Are you harmed?’
‘No,’ she said, her voice catching in her throat. ‘But I was so very afraid.’ She gulped. ‘And alone, and helpless.’
Then she burst into tears and sobbed her heart out against his shoulder.
Ezra untied Clio’s hands, draped a blanket around her shoulders, swept her into his arms and carried her from the shack that Merlin had led them to. It was not the accommodation that Barnes had been allocated but he must have seen the disused shed during the course of his duties and singled it out as an ideal place to hold a captive if the need arose. Without Merlin’s trustworthy nose, Ezra would have overlooked it completely.
‘We need to get her to her room without anyone seeing her like this,’ Ezra said.
‘Follow me,’ Godfrey replied, leading the way to a servants’ staircase directly off the boot room. ‘No one will be using this route at this hour of the day.’
Merlin and Godfrey led the way, with Ezra carrying Clio cradled in his arms. One of her arms had worked its way around his neck and she seemed disturbingly passive, which was not like her at all. Then Ezra reminded himself of the ordeal she had endured. Most women in such a situation would have been reduced to hysterics. He smiled down at her, thanking a God that he was unsure he believed in for her safe deliverance. Retribution would be his and it would be swift and brutal.
‘Were you really going to clout me with a chamber pot?’ he asked, when her tears had soaked his shirt and her snuffling subsided.
‘I certainly was,’ she replied with asperity. ‘Although I was not aware that it was you. I thought…I thought he was going to…’
‘At least it wasn’t full. Hush now, my sweet.’ Ezra rubbed his cheek against the top of her head. ‘I am so very sorry that I got you into this.’
‘But it was—’
‘I know who it was, but not why. Yet.’ The door opened onto the main first floor corridor. Godfrey put his head round it.
‘It’s clear,’ he said.
Ezra strode along it and Godfrey ran ahead to open the door to Clio’s
chamber. Her maid was pacing up and down and gave a little cry of alarm when she observed her half-conscious mistress cradled in Ezra’s arms.
‘Oh my good lord!’ She placed a hand over her mouth. ‘What has happened? Is she alive?’
‘Of course I’m alive, Daisy,’ Clio said, recovering her spirit. ‘And quite why the duke feels the need to carry me, I have yet to decide. Put me down, your grace, if you please.’
Chuckling, Ezra did as he was asked, but held her upper arm until he was sure she was steady on her feet.
‘Your face!’ Ezra was appalled when he noticed the redness and swelling to one cheek. ‘The blaggard struck you?’ He picked up one of her hands and examined the chafing on her wrist, aware that similar injuries had been inflicted by the ropes tied to her ankles. ‘He will pay a heavy price for that,’ he said, anger surging through him.
‘Shush, it’s all right. I am alive. Fetch some hot water, Daisy, and I will soon be as right as rain.’
‘I will leave you in your maid’s capable hands and deal with Barnes,’ Ezra said.
‘He is obviously the assassin,’ Clio said, once her maid had left the room and was out of earshot. ‘I don’t understand.’
‘No more do I, but he made a mistake. Your reticule was in my mother’s carriage. She said you left it there when she took you to the luncheon, but I saw you with it…’
‘I realised someone connected to your mother had abducted me, but it wasn’t her. Barnes was acting alone. At least I didn’t hear him speak to anyone else. He thought I was unconscious, you see, and I decided it would be better if I remained that way for as long as possible. I thought I might hear something useful if he assumed I was out of my senses, but he didn’t speak a word.’
‘I have received a message to meet him behind the stables in half an hour if I wish to see you alive again. Of course, he doesn’t realise I know his identity.’
‘Then we shall meet him together,’ Clio replied, straightening her shoulders and almost toppling over.
‘You can barely stand up,’ Ezra replied, leading her to a chair.
Fit for a Duke: Dangerous Dukes Page 23