“We?” Devon repeated. He gave her a glare because he had a very unpleasant notion about Emily’s willingness to wait patiently or otherwise while they went after Anne. “You, Miss Sinclair, are not going anywhere.”
“It’s far safer to bring me along than have me follow.” She put her hands on her hips. “I will follow. You cannot stop me since I have heard where she is.” Her mouth firmed. “She is my sister. She may need me.”
Ruan pretended, or at least Devon hoped he was pretending, to humor her. “Ben, go with Emily and Henry in my carriage. If you’re game, Thrale, you’ll ride with us.”
“You can’t mean to let her come,” Devon protested.
“She will follow, Dev,” Ben said in a weary voice. “You’ve not lived with her for these weeks. A more willful girl there has never been since the day the earth was made. No, don’t think for a moment she won’t follow.”
“Lock her in a room,” suggested Thrale, evidently not closely acquainted with Emily.
Emily marched to confront them. Devon couldn’t look away from those fiery eyes and didn’t imagine Thrale was having any easier a time. “If you succeeded, I would only climb out the window. Or break down the door. I’d remove the hinges if I had to. You won’t keep me from this. Anne needs me. She needs all of us.”
“I ought to ride,” Ben objected. “It’ll be faster that way.”
“I can’t sit in a bloody carriage.” Ruan pushed two pistols across the table. “Besides, someone has to teach Emily the rudiments of firing one of these.”
CHAPTER 34
In the concealing shadow of the oaks Henry described, Ruan waited with Thrale and Benjamin, never once taking his eyes off the house. Small as houses went and reminiscent of a hunting box. The two-story structure, built of yellow-gray brick, stood like a once strong man past his prime, hale at the first glance but unable to withstand scrutiny. Peeled shutters, broken newels, a cracked window. Ruan doubted its owner knew anyone was there. A thin curl of smoke rose from the far chimney.
Devon came, silent as death. Ruan felt his approach and turned, watching Dev assess the house. “Easy enough to get in I should think.”
“Ho, there,” Benjamin softly called in the same not-quite-a-whisper voice as the others used.
“Emily?”
“Henry’s with her. Told her I’d come back for her once we had a look round.” He gave a grin that was not a grin, eyes scanning the house, pausing at all the spots Ruan had himself marked as vulnerable. “Left her armed to the teeth and itching to shoot someone.”
“Wonder who owns this?” Dev asked too innocently.
Thrale glared at them both. “It’s not mine.”
“One man came out for a look,” Ruan said. “He didn’t do much, though. Stood a while in the doorway. Drinking.”
“The rest are probably drunk on wallop, too.”
“With luck.”
“Well.” Devon stroked his nose. “I’m off. Wish me luck.”
While Devon reconnoitered, Benjamin, Thrale and Ruan checked and rechecked their guns.
Moments later—it felt a lifetime to Ruan—Devon reappeared. “Two men downstairs. Drinking. Five horses in the barn, though. Two nags. A dray for the gig. Two thoroughbreds. One almost as fine as yours.”
“Anne?”
“Not downstairs, anyway. Upstairs most likely. We ought to assume she is there somewhere.”
“No sign of others?” asked Benjamin.
“None.”
“Standing guard wherever they’re holding the duchess,” Thrale said.
Devon gave him a look. “I’ll watch the back while the rest of you take on the ones inside. Agreed?”
As it happened, the first of the kidnappers fell easily. Before any of them could move into position, one of the men came outside and wandered over to the oaks to relieve himself. Thrale stepped up and punched him in the stomach. While he struggled to breathe, Dev coshed him and that was that, except for making sure of the knots that secured him to the trunk of an oak. The man sprawled, trousers open, head hanging to his chest. A heavy odor of ale and piss rose from him. He was young, healthy, well-formed and handsome enough to have obtained a good position in the best of households.
Thrale stood over him. “Hell. That’s the footman I sacked for theft.”
“Give me to the count of fifty to get around back and to the window,” Dev said. “Then go in. I’ll step in if you need me.” He turned back. With a cockeyed grin, he said, “Check you’ve loaded your guns, milords.”
The ruffian they’d overpowered had left the front door ajar. All to the better. Ruan stepped in far enough to make room for Benjamin. Thrale remained behind them, just out of sight. Ruan cleared his throat and took aim.
“That you?” the man said, picking up his lager and taking a long swallow before he turned to the door. He had a barrel chest and arms the size of clubs.
“Twitch and you’ll not live to see another day.”
The boulder of a man froze, tankard halfway to his mouth.
“Where are they?” Benjamin said. The man pointed upstairs, cautiously in case one of these angry gentlemen took it in his head to squeeze a trigger. “Up you go, Ruan,” said Benjamin cheerfully.
“Ned!” The shout was accompanied by the sound of shoes on bare wood. Ruan first saw low heeled shoes, then white stockings and black breeches. “It’s your watch.” The voice came closer. “What the devil are—” The rest of the man appeared. He saw Ruan and stopped dead, one foot poised above a stair.
“You are?” Aldreth said.
With a polished smile, he tugged at the edges of his black coat. “Why, I’m a gentleman’s gentleman, milord. At your service.” He gave a short bow and then clasped his hands before him as if about to pray. “I am here looking after my employer. At the moment he is not at home. What may I do to help you?”
“I am here,” Ruan said, “to fetch my wife.”
“Your wife? Oh, I’m afraid there’s been some—” Though his smile remained pleasant, his eyes flitted around the room like a starling on the wrong side of a closed door. Then he saw Thrale. “Why, my Lord Thrale, here you are hours before you said to expect you!”
“Basset!” Thrale leapt forward, but Benjamin grabbed his arm, stopping him short.
“Your valet, I presume?”
“I’ll have your head for this, Basset.” Basset’s valet’s mouth dropped open, a perfect likeness of confusion, but his attention skipped from Thrale to Ben and Ruan and there lingered and Ruan saw in them not a sign of perplexity.
Basset fled up the stairs, Ruan on his heels. He just missed the man’s collar before a door slammed in his face. One kick broke wood, a second shattered the door from its frame. Ruan tore past, frantic at what might have happened during the seconds it took to batter his way in. Basset stood at the broken down window.
“Where is she?” he demanded when a quick glance around showed him a room empty but for the other man. He lifted his gun.
“I told that coxcomb you’d find him.”
“Where is she?”
“Kill me, and you’ll not find her ’til it’s too late.”
“I won’t ask again.”
“Damned fine-looking woman, your wife.” He licked his lips and edged toward the window. “He’s enjoying himself with her right now, I imagine.” He put a hand over his crotch, taunting. “Shall I tell you whether I’ve had my turn yet? Or perhaps that stallion downstairs?”
Ruan heard himself roar but did not recognize the agonized shout as his own. Basset’s eyes opened wide, and he backed against the rotting window frame.
“I ought to kill you.” How he had ended with the gun extended to within a foot of Basset’s heart, he didn’t know, but there it was, and he was eager to pull the trigger.
“Then I’ll be dead, no mistake, and you’ll be too late to save her. You’re too late all ready.”
He let the gun drop to his side. The other man relaxed and stayed that way even when Ruan took a
step closer. Ruan pressed the weapon to Basset’s cheek. “Start talking.” He didn’t move the gun.
Basset paled when he saw Ruan’s dead eyes and the promise of certain death. “Up there.” He tilted his chin toward the ceiling. “With her. Right now.” Ruan’s hand tensed, and Basset’s eyes widened. He launched himself backward shattering glass and wood.
Whether the fall killed him mattered not to Ruan. If it hadn’t, he had a lifetime to make sure Basset died and perhaps none to find Anne. He ran from the room, taking the stairs three at a time. The door at the top wasn’t locked. He threw it open, half-afraid Basset had lied and the room would be empty. It wasn’t.
Julian Durling wore only a loose shirt open to the waist, trousers and boots. In eerie silence, he knelt on a pallet of the sort given to servants by skinflint masters, holding Anne close to his chest, a parody of a concerned lover. Light glinted on the wicked blade of a knife in his hand. Her skirts, twisted and torn, exposed one leg to the knee. Rope bound her wrists behind her.
Anne’s head flopped back, and Ruan understood why Durling had made no attempt to hide his face from her. She was unconscious. Strands of flaxen hair fell around her face and a bruise rose purple on her cheek. Slowly, Durling turned. A gash from the bottom of his ear to mid-cheek still oozed blood.
“Damn that Basset,” Durling said. Ruan’s pulse tripped when he caught the glitter in Durling’s eyes. “I knew he couldn’t be trusted to follow a simple instruction.”
“Not a bit.”
Durling softly laughed, a dry and ironical sound. “Somehow, I don’t think you brought my diamonds.” With a tender motion, he lifted his hand to Anne’s face, intending, Ruan understood, to brush the hair from her cheek. His shoulders jumped once, as if seeing a knife startled him. Icy fear coiled in Ruan’s gut. The man’s sanity stretched thin as a blade. Durling’s mouth twisted when he looked at Anne. “No wonder you threw Mrs. Forrest aside. I’d have done the same myself.”
“Let her go.”
He shook his head as if declining a glass of wine and hauled her upright, one arm clamped tight around her waist. He used her as a shield, knife in his free hand, an awkward position, for she was dead weight.
“Let her go.”
“She’s a loyal little thing, I’ll say that much for her. Wouldn’t have me to save her own lovely neck, and I tell you I begged most prettily.” He shrugged, sagging against the wall behind him. “Probably do it to save you, though.”
“You are dead.”
A look of regret flitted across his face. “Undoubtedly the case.”
“Do as his grace says, Julian,” came another voice from a darkened corner of the room. “And let her go.”
Durling’s grip on Anne tightened, and he added the support of his other arm. The flat of the knife lay across her waist. “Shoot him, Cyn. Her life depends upon it.”
The hair on the back of Ruan’s neck lifted. Turning his head, he saw first the gun held unwaveringly, then the man who held it.
“Shoot him, Major,” Martin said. He grinned. “Of course. Begging your pardon. Shoot him, your grace. You’ve a better shot than I.” The gun lifted. “Shoot, I say, or it’ll be too late. There’s no telling what he’ll do. He’s mad. If you won’t shoot him, then step aside and let me do it. Look at him. Can’t you see he’s mad?” Martin aimed where Durling’s ribs would be if Ruan stepped aside. “He owes me money, damn his soul, and I wanted to collect. I went to his house. Saw him leaving, you know, and I followed him. I saw him kill that servant of yours, the one you set on him, following him day and night, and then I followed him here. Managed to conceal myself only just. Now shoot, damn you.”
“For God’s sake, Cyn, shoot him.” Durling looked frantically from him to Martin. He turned his torso slightly so that Ruan’s margin for error became slimmer yet, though he still had a better shot than Martin. “He’ll kill her if you don’t.”
“Hesitate much longer,” said Martin, “and he’ll slit her throat. Shoot or step aside. You’re the only man I know who could make a shot like that.”
Anne stirred and everyone jumped in response. Martin lunged, trying to get around Ruan. In a flash, Durling raised the knife to her neck. “No!” His cry rent the air, rising to a shriek.
Immediately, the ex-soldier backed down. “Cynssyr,” he hissed. “Move or shoot, damn you!”
Durling’s drawl came back in full force. “I thought I was violent with the women until I saw Martin. He wants her alive, Cyn. And you, for now. He wants you to die knowing what he’ll do to her. That’s why he hasn’t killed you where you stand.”
“Madman!” Martin cried. “A Bedlamite.”
“I wouldn’t let him touch her,” Durling said. “I couldn’t. And here I thought I could stand any depravity. Imagine my shock when I discovered my mistake.” He laughed, and Ruan fancied a touch of madness rang in the sound. Then Anne shifted again, her feet moving as she tried to stand and found she could not. Durling lurched to compensate.
Suddenly, Ruan had a perfect shot. If only his thundering heart didn’t throw him off and kill Anne instead. Durling’s blade rose, arcing through the air.
CHAPTER 35
The back door slammed open with a bang that sent Devon’s pulse surging to racehorse speed. One of the men, the larger of the two who’d been downstairs playing dice and drinking, burst out and flat-out ran over Devon who hit the ground hard enough to knock the breath from him. While Dev gasped for air, the giant man, stinking of ale, recovered his balance and was halfway to the stable by the time Benjamin came in pursuit.
Benjamin tackled him twenty feet from the stable. The moment he managed to pull in a lungful of air, Devon went to Benjamin’s aid. The fellow fought with the strength of a man drunk enough to have no sense: graceless and with massive arms flailing. It took the two of them to subdue the ox, as tall as Ruan and wider by half.
Devon fell on him, crushing his knee onto the back of the ruffian’s neck. “Where’s the other one?” Devon asked with a backward glance.
Benjamin, for all that he’d fought as hard as Dev, looked ready to walk into any London salon. He brushed a bit of dust off his shoulder and grinned with only the faintest chill in his eyes. “Passed out. With a little persuasion from Thrale. Man’s got a fist like iron.”
The sound of breaking glass fractured their attention. Devon looked up just in time to see a man jump or fall from a second story window. He made a lucky landing. With a shake of his head, he rolled to his feet and ran like hell.
“I’ve got this one,” Benjamin said, nodding at the man prostrate on the ground. “That’s Thrale’s valet, Basset,” he said. “After him.”
Devon took off at a dead sprint. This Basset fellow possessed not an ounce of finesse. He could think of a dozen better ways to escape a house than crashing out a second story window. But, then, he’d never had Ruan after him, either. The devil headed for the road, taking a straight line through brush and tall grass until suddenly he veered off at an angle. Devon’s feet hardly touched the ground. The carriage, with Emily inside, was clearly his target.
Afterward, he was never really sure precisely what happened. Basset leapt for the carriage—Devon nearly on him, certain his chest was going to burst for want of sufficient air—and managed to haul himself onto the seat and tumble Henry backward onto the road. Basset got the reins in one hand and the driver’s whip in the other. With a bellow to fairly split the eardrums, he lashed the drays.
Unused to the whip, the startled horses bolted. Dev caught the back of the carriage by the tips of his fingers and damned near had his shoulders dislocated by the jolt. He hauled himself onto the step where a postilion would cling. An undignified yelp came from inside: Emily being knocked to the floor.
“Stay down!” he roared, not knowing if she would hear him over the rumbling, snapping rush of a carriage out of control. The rest was more or less a blur. Dev crawled over the top of the vehicle, he later could not recall that he feared being dashed to his death
, though he ought to have, and gave Basset a tremendous blow to the jaw as he snatched for the reins. And nearly got them, too.
By the time he did have them, he was upside down on the seat with Basset trying his damnedest to throttle him. A kick to Basset’s chin freed Devon long enough to right himself and haul on one of the reins. The other flapped just out of his reach. The carriage took a stomach-churning lurch to the left. Basset toppled sideways off the driver’s seat. He clung to the side, feet dangling inches from the ground and the wheels that would snap his legs like twigs, leaving Devon to stop the pell mell rush of the horses.
The coach swayed like a ship on a swelling sea. At last, Devon caught the other rein and hauled back until he though his arms would burst his skin and his feet punch through the boards. Basset dropped off the side but Dev now had the horses stopped, and he threw himself down with shout to bring down all the fiends of hell. In ten steps, he had Basset by the collar and then fell to the ground in a heap.
Basset jackknifed and nearly threw Devon head-over-heels. Dust choked him, filled his eyes and mouth. Basset landed a punch to his ribs, then he had Dev by the throat. Air became a suddenly precious commodity.
“Stop.” A woman’s voice.
With a desperate surge of strength, Devon clapped Basset’s ears as hard as he could. Roaring with pain, Basset fell back and Dev rolled away, head hanging, gasping. He saw the absurd sight of Emily Sinclair, divinely, daintily beautiful in her pristine gown, pointing a gun in the general vicinity of Basset’s chest. She held it like she knew what to do with it, no sign of a tremor, her eye steady. Just as he’d taught her. Blessed girl had the courage of twenty men.
“If you move, sir, I will shoot you. Bracebridge, are you all right?”
Basset, alas, underestimated the enemy. Laughing, he leapt for Emily and the gun. Just in time, Devon covered his ears. Basset spun around and hit the ground, writhing and screaming like she’d got him in the balls instead of the shoulder. Devon staggered to his feet.
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