by Hope Tarr
“Aye. I’ve been searchin’ for ’er ever since yesterday evenin.’ Just got back ’ere meself.”
Since yesterday evening. Guilt-riddled, Anthony turned away. Confessing would be easier if he didn’t have to meet Jack’s earnest gaze.
“She was with me last night.” And this morning. “I saw her home. I can vouch for her safety until…dawn.”
There, he’d confessed. Jack would likely pulverize him now, a far more palpable punishment than the tongue-lashing Chelsea would mete out when she learned he’d betrayed their secret. But he’d willingly accept both penalties in exchange for finding her safe.
“So, that’s the way o’ it.” Jack’s eye narrowed and his hands twisted into fists at his sides.
“Yes.” Anthony met the older man’s gaze head-on. Seconds crawled by as they stared each other down, neither willing to be the first to look away. “You should know that I love her,” he ground out through gritted back teeth.
“Humph.” Jack looked unimpressed. “Then ye must mean to marry ’er, aye?”
Anthony’s reply was his silence. Jack knew damn well he was betrothed.
Jack unballed his right hand and jabbed a thick forefinger in the vicinity of Anthony’s face. “Look’s like ye and me ’as a score to settle.”
Anthony didn’t flinch. “Absolutely, after we find her.”
Jack lowered his hand, signaling the beginning of their temporary truce. They’d put aside their differences and work together to locate Chelsea. Only after she was safe would they kill each other.
Heart pounding, Anthony stalked down the hallway to the parlor. Deliberately brisk, he asked, “I trust you’ve searched the usual places?”
Jack’s heavy footsteps trailed him. “Aye, I even went to the church where the blunt were to be left, but ’twas no sign o’ ’er there either.” Jack hesitated. “Yesterday, while I were on guard duty, I seen a toff in black go into the Rookery. I were suspicious, so I followed ’im inside and saw him meet wi’ Stenton. I couldn’t ’ear much o’ what they said, but what I did catch I didn’t much like.”
Anthony swung around. Now it was his turn to rage. “And yet you didn’t tell me!”
Jack scowled. “When I went to yer ’ouse, they said ye was out for the evenin’. And when I came back ’ere to find Miss Chelsea, she were gone too.”
Fresh guilt struck Anthony like a fist in the face. The previous night he’d been so busy conniving ways to get Chelsea into bed that he’d missed his golden opportunity to rescue her brother. He’d botched everything, and now Phoebe—and, judging by her disappearance, Chelsea too—were paying the price of his selfishness.
Deflated, he sank down on the window seat, Chelsea’s preferred perch. Her faint fragrance—orange blossom, he thought—wafted from the worn needlepoint cushion. Elbows on his knees, he kneaded his pounding forehead. Not even in the thick of battle had he known such despair, such helplessness.
God, Chelsea, where are you? Talk to me, darling. Send me some clue.
He shifted. Something crunched beneath his pants seat, and he snapped upright. Reaching beneath, he pulled out a crumpled sheet of paper. He saw the black-edging, and his chest tightened. He unfurled it, and his gaze swept over the contents, branding his brain with each word.
I shall expect you at the Rutting Bull within the hour.
Self-loathing assumed new, unchartered dimensions. He shot to his feet, balled the note into a fist, and slammed it into the wall. Once, twice…The third time, plaster cracked beneath his knuckles. Tomorrow his hand would probably be in a cast but for now the bruising pain felt right, even comforting.
“What a fool I am! What a goddamned, bloody fool.”
Watching him, arms folded, Jack shook his head. “Tell me somethin’ I don’t know.”
“Very well.” Breathing hard, Anthony leaned his forearms and head against the faded wallpaper. “They’re at the Rutting Bull. They’ve been there all along.”
Chelsea’s nose tickled. She chipped open an eye. Gossamer threads hung like doilies from the low rafter above her. Cobwebs. She pushed herself up on her elbows, the lumpy thing on which she lay scant protection against the hard floor.
Blood rushed her temples. The room spun. Small, mean, and windowless, it was a storage cellar of sorts. The pallet beneath her was the closest thing to furniture unless one counted the barrels. A brace of candles set atop a keg a few paces away. The air was thick with the scents of cedar, mildew, and dust.
Her nostrils tingled, the back of her throat scratched, and her eyes filled with water. She covered her mouth in anticipation and realized her wrists were bound. The same sturdy hemp lashed her ankles. This once, she followed the advice of her former governess and tickled the roof of her mouth with the tip of her tongue, trying to ward off the inevitable.
She sneezed anyway. Invisible fists, hundreds of them, pummeled the base of her skull. Dazzled by the pain, she braced her back against the stone wall, closed her eyes, and willed her treacherous stomach to settle.
“God bless you.”
Her eyes snapped open just as he slipped from the shadows.
Cloaked in black serge, Squire Dumfreys dropped back his hood and smoothed a hand over his dark hair. In the dim light, she could see the flecks of silver that winged his temples. Was there perhaps more gray than when she’d last faced him, less than a month ago, in his study?
“I trust you slept well?” he asked, as solicitous as if she’d awoke from a feather bed instead of a straw pallet on a dirt floor.
She was in no condition to fight him. Her head felt too heavy for her shoulders, her tongue too thick for the cottony confines of her mouth. Even so, she tried to match his jauntiness.
“These are mean lodgings for a man of your station. Or are these merely the guest quarters?”
He smiled. “Your brother expressed similar reservations at first, but I believe he has settled in.”
At the mention of Robert, her bravado cracked. “I want to see him.”
He came down beside her and fingered the rope at her wrists, already rubbed raw. “My dear, I do admire your spirit but even you must allow that you are in no position to be making demands. You are here at my bidding. My command.”
The vicious yank to the yoke knocked the breath from her lungs. When her head stopped reeling, she was on her knees, facing him. She tried not to look at his mouth, slick with slime, the upper lip coated with perspiration. Instead, she focused on his eyes, liquid pools of lust and lunacy. Somehow they frightened her less.
Distract him. Keep him talking. Above all, conceal your fear.
“He is nearby, then?”
He held her head between his palms. Gently, as though they were lovers, his thumbs traced the line of her jaw.
“He is safe…for the moment. Whether or not he remains so depends upon you.”
There it was, the threat. It was almost a relief to have it out in the open. “What do you want of me?”
“You have a beautiful mouth,” he answered instead, moving to trace her bottom lip with his forefinger. “’Tis made for giving pleasure.”
“What do you want of me?” The beginnings of hysteria bubbled inside her, trebling the even tones she’d meant to use.
Holding her head with one hand, he forced the thumb of his other between her closed lips and pumped her tongue. “Everything.”
She considered biting him but only briefly. Trussed like a chicken, she was completely at his mercy. And the look in his eyes told her she could expect precious little of that.
“Why me?” she asked after he withdrew.
His eyes glittered. “Ever since I first saw you, I knew you were the one for me. You were only twelve, but how I wanted you.” A muscle in his jaw twitched. “I would have had you, too, found a way, but I could never get close enough. That fawning family of yours was always underfoot, keeping you from me. So I waited, feeding myself with the promise that I would be your first, your only.”
His rapid breaths matched
Chelsea’s racing heart. He let her go and pulled a handkerchief from the folds of the cloak. She dropped back on her haunches against the wall. Watching him blot his forehead, she told herself that somehow she would manage to get both she and Robert out of this alive.
“But then you grew up and so beautiful. Every lad in the neighborhood was panting after you like hounds scenting a bitch in heat. It was only a matter of time before one of them caught your fancy, took you from me. I knew I could wait no longer, that I had to declare myself. I asked your father for permission to court you, but he refused. Said the difference in our ages was too great. That marriage between us would be unnatural.” His face puckered.
“He never told me.” A terrible foreboding stole over her. She had hoped talking would divert him, unravel him even, but it seemed she was the one about to come undone.
Dry-eyed, he continued. “He never had the chance. The next day he and your mother were leaving for Bath, a holiday to celebrate their wedding anniversary. There’d been a terrible storm the night before. The roads were bogs, do you remember?”
“Yes.” Horror, fascination, and fear crowded her mind. She thought of her kind father, her beautiful mother, smiling reassurances at her from beneath the big black umbrella. Had it been some premonition that had driven her to follow them outside and beg them to hold off until the weather cleared?
“Tampering with the coach was child’s play,” he told her, twining a lock of her hair around his forefinger. “With roads that bad, a loose carriage wheel might have sufficed but, to be safe, I sored the lead horse—drove nails into his front hooves.”
So that explained why gentle Jasper had appeared to go berserk. No one, especially Chelsea, had understood why their trusted carriage horse had crashed, at full gallop, into the downed tree.
“You killed Father and Mother.” The declaration emerged as a barely audible whisper, but the voice inside her head screamed, Murderer! Murderer!
His expression shuttered. “They were a…necessary sacrifice.”
Her eyes fixed on his face and, for the first time in her life, she knew what it meant to hate. “Did you really think I would marry you, even then?” she asked, past caring how her contempt inflamed him.
Her barb found its mark. Scarlet splotched his cheeks. “Of course, of course,” he answered, head jerking. “’Twas unthinkable that a slip of a girl could run an estate on her own. Alone, you’d have no choice but to seek my counsel, my comfort, or so I thought.” His eyes hardened. “You were stronger than I’d credited.”
He moved over her, straddling her thighs. His cape billowed over them. His hard sex pressed against her. Behind her was the wall, grinding against her spine.
Desperate to postpone the inevitable, she asked, “Why bother with kidnapping Robert if it was me you wanted?”
He slid a hand between them, palming her. Nausea rolled over her. “I thought of it, dreamt of it. But you would have been missed and then there would have been a search. I wouldn’t have been able to hide you for long. But everyone knew Robert had bought colors. No one expected him to return from abroad for years, if ever. That proved a most useful turn of events for I had to devise a way to get you to come to me. The usual bribery—gowns, jewels, trips to London—wouldn’t work with you. No, to get you to submit, I would have to appeal to your self-sacrificing nature. To take something, someone, you loved very much.”
The effort to hold back the tears was blurring her vision. “I hate you.”
He stilled his hands, a temporary reprieve. “Not yet, but you shall. Before this day is over, you shall hate me just as passionately as I love you.”
The dawning knowledge of the atrocities of which he was capable chilled her. She started to shake from cold and nerves. Her nipples, erect beneath her lawn shirt, were easy marks. He rolled one between his thumb and forefinger, squeezing until her eyes watered and she cried out.
He stopped, patiently waiting for the pain to ebb. “One day Robert came to me, shamefaced. The young scamp had been lured into deep play in a misguided attempt to win enough to set Oatlands to rights. He lost, of course—badly. And after the debacle at university, he couldn’t very well come to you, now could he?” His eyes bored into her, daring her to refute him.
She couldn’t. Losing her parents, struggling to save Oatlands, taking on the role of parent to Robert, had hardened her. Over the past year, she’d grown short-tempered, even shrewish. The result: her own brother had been afraid to come to her, to admit his mistake, to share his burden. Regret, bitter as gall, tightened her throat. Tears gathered, but she swore she’d not give him the satisfaction of seeing her shed them. She’d wait until she was alone. He’d leave her eventually, after he’d finished with her. Assuming he didn’t kill her.
His smile was beatific, his eyes pure evil. “Of course I agreed to advance him the sum. Even though he had no choice but to take it, it wasn’t easy for him to accept. As you know, the Bellamy pride can be heady stuff. He insisted that it was only a loan. He would repay me with interest once he’d made his fortune. To appease him, I agreed to hold his papa’s ring as collateral. Then, slowly, the idea began to take shape in my mind.”
“So you hired Stenton and Luke to kidnap him, and then sent the ransom note along with the ring.” It was so much easier to focus on minutia rather than the fear clawing at her. “You knew I hadn’t any money, let alone five hundred pounds.”
He inclined his head. “It was only a matter of time before you came to me. And what a charming supplicant you made. So grateful…” His eyes lost their mirth. “But not nearly grateful enough. Even after you left, I told myself you’d be back. I hadn’t counted on you turning to thievery.”
“You knew!”
He snorted. “One-Eyed Jack—hardly original, borrowing your butler’s moniker. I devised the plan for your capture only I had the devil of a time convincing that lily-livered magistrate it would work.”
Her head swam as she struggled to make sense of it all. “So you could see me hang?”
He shook his head. “I wouldn’t have let that happen. I would have offered myself as your guardian. With Oatlands confiscated, you would have had no choice but to come into my home…and my bed. If you’d allowed me, I’d have shown you gentleness, consideration. In time I might even have married you.”
“How generous. And now I suppose you are going to kill me?”
His fingertips played on her bruised cheek. “Kill you! Never! Your corporal self shall be disciplined but preserved to soar to new, glorious heights of degradation.”
Defiance blazed through her, burning away her fear. “You will have to kill me, then.”
“Oh, I don’t believe that shall be necessary. I have no doubt that you will prove an apt pupil. I’ll wager Montrose taught you a few tricks last night that will serve you well.”
With one swift motion, he tore open her shirt. She gasped. Buttons popped. He trailed his finger from the hollow of her throat to the valley between her breasts to her belly.
She ground her back teeth. Just rape me and be done with it, damn you!
“Such beautiful skin.” His tongue slipped over his bottom lip, and perspiration pricked the back of her neck. “So white and unblemished.”
“You cannot hold me forever against my will.”
He smiled down at her as though she had said something highly amusing and hopelessly naive. “We shall see. I shall visit you often and, when I return to Upper Uckfield, I shall leave you well-guarded.”
“One day I shall escape. When I do, you will hang.”
He chuckled. “Oh, I think not. What chance for a career and respectable life do you think young Robert would have if it were to get out that his sister was a thief and a whore?”
Did he intend to release Robert after all? If so, her ruin, this degradation, would have a purpose. And yet she was not prepared to surrender. Not yet.
“I will explain everything,” she said. “People will understand that you forced me.”
&
nbsp; He cocked a graying brow. “Did I force you to rob innocent travelers, to lie with the most notorious rake in London a week before his wedding? I think not. No, I doubt you’d win much sympathy were your sordid history made public. Who in their right mind would take the word of a thief and a trollop over mine?”
A knock on the door provided her reprieve.
Cursing, he got to his feet. “Damn you, Bess. I told you I didn’t want to be disturbed.”
The door cracked open. A big-boned blonde entered in a swish of cheap taffeta and even cheaper perfume.
“Beggin’ yer pardon, but ye said I was to watch for Tony…I mean, Montrose. ’E’s above stairs wi’ the big bloke.”
Anthony, here? Chelsea’s heart leapt. Then she glimpsed the triumph in Dumfreys’s eyes, and panic seized her.
“Is he? Well, the more the merrier.” He turned back to Chelsea. “I’m afraid I must leave you for a time. I must not neglect my other guests.” He withdrew a pistol from the lining of his cloak and held it up to the light. “I shall have to postpone our reunion while I make them welcome.” He followed Bess to the door.
As soon as the door closes, scream. Scream loud and long. Don’t stop until Anthony finds you.
As if reading Chelsea’s mind, he turned back. “Oh, and by the by, please do feel free to scream. It would save me a great deal of trouble if you could manage to draw Montrose below. By now, I know these catacombs like the palm of my hand.” He closed the door behind him. A moment later, she heard the lock click home.
Chelsea fell back against the wall. Even though the cellar was cold as a tomb, perspiration pricked her forehead and rolled down her back. Should she scream or remain silent? Beat her bound fists against the door or cower in the dark? Which course would do Anthony the greatest good? Or the greatest harm?
Feet, several pair, pounded down the hallway. Something heavy crashed. Whatever had fallen must be rounded on the sides, for she heard it rolling down the corridor toward her door. It bumped something and, seconds later, a man cried out. Anthony or Dumfreys?