by Gaelen Foley
It had taken all his charm merely to dare the prim little miss into showing him her ankles, and then, tonight—whoosh!—off came her clothes.
He laughed to himself and shuddered with admiration of that sweet body even now. Ah, ’twas a memory he’d savor until he was old and gray. She never ceased to surprise him, that girl…
“What’s with you, mate?”
Connor looked over to find Rory eyeing him with a skeptical frown.
“Who, me?”
“You seem…funny,” his friend said suspiciously.
Connor gave him a secretive smile. “I have no idea what you’re talking about.”
“Oho, you made up with Lady Maggie.”
“Aye,” Connor said.
Rory chuckled. “Good for you. I’m glad your mood is improved, at least.”
“More than you know.”
Rory laughed, then looked askance at him. “Miss Penelope came to see me.”
“Oh, did she, now?”
“We’re taking a stroll in the garden tomorrow, two o’clock.”
“Well, how about that. Well done, man. And you said she wouldn’t look at you twice.”
Rory snorted. “No accountin’ for taste, eh?” Then he shrugged, his expression turning more serious. “She’s a fine woman.”
“They’re out there,” Connor agreed. “You just have to look.”
At length, he put out the cigar to finish for later, since there was no point in taking it out in the rain with him. Then he clapped Rory on the shoulder, asked if he needed anything more, and when his friend said no, that he was set till the end of his watch, Connor left the gatehouse and went back out into the downpour.
The horse snuffled with indignation at being put through this, but Connor patted the animal’s neck. “It’s for a good cause, mate. I wouldn’t do this to you if it weren’t necessary.”
Then he rode back up the drive, clipping along at a more hurried walk to go check in with Pete. Passing the garden, he reined out across the fields and moors, where he and the men had looked around earlier.
Well aware that the heathlands were filled with treacherous footing for horses, he kept his mount to a walk and followed an eastward trail that branched off from Uncle Rupert’s main footpath to the Thinkery.
He eventually found Pete sitting stoically under the shelter of the old shooter’s hut out on the moors. The grouse hunters’ refuge had a small stone hearth, where he’d built a fire to warm him.
“How are you faring out here?” Connor called as he approached.
“Feels like old times,” Pete answered wryly, rising to his feet. “What time is it, anyway?”
“Quarter past midnight,” Connor said. “Have you seen anything?”
Huddled under his oilskin, Pete shook his head. “Quiet as the grave. Except for the thunder.”
“Good,” Connor replied.
“Am I missing anything exciting back at the manor?”
If you only knew, Connor thought. But he just shrugged and shook his head. “Everyone’s asleep.”
“Have you got someone ready to take the next watch?” Pete said. “Because if not, I can stay out here till dawn. I don’t mind.”
“No, one of Aunt Caroline’s footmen will replace you.” Connor looked at him, both of them splashed with firelight. “I truly appreciate this, Major. It’s a lot to go through for someone you barely know.”
Pete smiled sardonically. “Eh, bloody peacetime. What else have I got to do?”
“Well, I owe you,” Connor replied.
“Nonsense.” Pete waved him off. “I’m sure you’d do the same for me.”
“Count on it. If I ever can repay you, I shall do so gladly.” Connor paused, glancing out at the landscape. “Although I must say, I certainly hope you never face the prospect of someone trying to kill off your family.”
Pete gave a snort. “Can’t even imagine it. Anyway, there’s only Felicity and me. And Jason, if you count my brother-in-law. And his two children.” His weathered face softened a bit. “Fond of them.”
“Aye? How old?”
“Simon’s five, and Annabelle’s three, and has the lot of us wrapped around her little finger…”
For a few minutes, Connor listened as his fellow warrior revealed this unexpected soft spot for his wee niece and nephew. He thought of Gable, rhapsodizing over his three-month-old son.
It would be good to start a family of his own with Maggie, he thought. Such things were on his mind tonight after deflowering his soon-to-be wife. But as he stood there by the fire, on a night watch like the many hundreds of them he’d been on in his life, he made a private vow that he’d never force any son into the military for the sake of family tradition, the way his father had signed him up as a mere child.
God willing, there’d be no need. He prayed there would not be another war in his lifetime—or theirs.
“Well,” he finally said, clapping his fellow veteran on the back, “time to move on, then. You need anything?”
Pete covered a yawn and shook his head. “No, I’m fine. Just make sure I have a room with a dry bed to sleep in when three o’clock rolls around, would you?”
“You already do. Second floor of the new wing. I believe yours is the third door on the right. You’re bunking with McFeatheridge, by the way. Hope you don’t mind.”
Pete shrugged. “Doesn’t bother me.”
“Good hunting.”
Pete held up a hand in farewell, and Connor went on his way to continue making the rounds to see if the footmen he’d stationed around the sprawling perimeter of the property’s hundred acres had anything to report.
Riding through the darkness, it wasn’t long before his thoughts filled up again with Maggie. The kisses they had shared, the delicious softness of her silken arms and legs wrapped around him. The enchantment of her eyes, the welcome of her virginal body. Her passion had astounded him. Made him feel so loved.
Truly, what he’d found with her had so far surpassed all his fondest hopes for the future that he was in awe. What he felt for her was deeper than anything he’d ever expected to experience. She’d drawn forth a side of him that he hadn’t known existed…or had lost long ago.
Perhaps it had been wrong not to wait for their wedding night, but now the peacetime life he had envisioned for so long danced before his eyes, so close that he could almost touch it.
These were the soft, satisfying thoughts that filled Connor’s mind as he rode the horse along slowly, continually scanning the sable landscape, pounded by silvery rain.
Then he rode the horse up over the next rise and spotted something strange in the distance.
He pulled the horse to a halt and stared, unsure of what he was seeing.
A burnished ball of light glowed in the middle of the blackness where no light ought to be, about a mile and a half across the moors.
Instantly, his defenses went on alert. He urged the horse forward again, brushing the rain out of his eyes, and squinting until he realized where the light was coming from.
The Thinkery.
What the hell?
He could just make out the spiky silhouette of the miniature castle standing black against the indigo sky.
Who on earth would be out there at this hour?
Maybe one of his sentries had needed a break from the weather.
But as he urged the horse a little closer, the light he had mistaken at first for one lamp or torch split, on closer inspection, into two.
And Connor stopped cold.
Two lanterns set in the upstairs window…
He stared in disbelief as time dripped to a halt.
Two lanterns.
The signal he and Maggie had devised.
Come to me, it signified.
Two lanterns meant it was an emergency.
Staring at them there, like devil’s eyes burning in the night, his own blurred with rain, Connor felt a horrifying rush of deep, instant knowing.
His throat closed with dread, for there w
as no possible way that Maggie could be out there. Not of her own volition.
Nor did she have any possible cause to summon him now. Not after the way he had just left her, ravished, completely satisfied, and ready to tumble into bed.
No. Whether by logic or instinct, Connor instantly grasped the import of what he was seeing, and he went numb.
Numb and clear as a crystal blade.
Then came the slow drip of rage into his veins as he stared, drawing in a breath through flaring nostrils. His hands tightened on the reins.
It was a trap, of course. But he didn’t care.
He had no idea how his enemy could’ve learned about their lantern signals. He only knew with steely certainty that they had been followed all the way to Dorset.
He has her. He’s here.
* * *
“I should have let Amberley kill you when he had the chance,” Maggie spat, thrashing uselessly against the ropes that bound her wrists behind her and fastened her to the hard desk chair in the Thinkery’s upper room.
“Yes, you probably should have.” Pacing past her to check out the other window, Seth Darrow smirked at her despite his black eye and swollen lip. “Mercy is a common fault of ladies. But then…” He paused and leaned down to whisper in her face, “You’re not a real lady, after all. Are you, my lovely?”
Maggie turned her face away in disgust.
His breath stank of stale liquor, and his cold hazel eyes were deadened of any emotion but lust-tinged scorn.
He snickered at her and straightened up again, then continued on his way, tracking muddy boot prints across the oval carpet.
After he’d passed behind her, Maggie glanced over her shoulder, barely daring to let the murderer out of her sight.
But the battered dragoon merely went to peer out once again from between the long green curtains drawn over the window nook, looking for any sign of Connor.
Likewise, his father was keeping watch out of one of the two windows that flanked the unlit fireplace on the back wall.
A short, stocky man, rugged and compact, Elias Flynn had a bald head, wire-rimmed spectacles, and a weathered face carved with a stony expression.
Other than snapping orders at his son, he had said very little so far.
His lack of conversation made Maggie nervous. For, despite his smaller frame and greater age, Elias was clearly the more dangerous of the two. Napoleon was supposed to be a man of small stature, too, after all, but that hadn’t stopped him from wreaking havoc across the Continent for over a decade by sheer force of will.
Occasionally, Elias patted his rain-dampened face with the loose-hanging end of the plaid scarf wound around his neck, tucked inside the collar of his black wool coat. Other than that, he seemed impervious, indifferent to the weather, and nonchalant about the crimes he had underway.
He’d glanced at her a few times in a calculating manner that made Maggie extremely uncomfortable. She knew he owned brothels, after all.
She had a horrible feeling he was wondering how much money he might be able to make off her. But he was impossible to read behind the candle’s glint off his little round glasses.
Far easier to interpret were his son’s randy leers. These made her skin crawl. Seth Darrow had a cruel, petty quality that made her think he probably enjoyed rape far more than seduction.
Ruthlessness emanated from both father and son, though. A family trait, perhaps. For neither seemed perturbed that their plan to lure her noble Connor into a trap using her as the bait was the very nadir of treacherous dishonor.
Maggie felt sick to think that they were going to use his love for her as the very weapon with which to kill him.
As soon as he saw the lantern signal, she knew he would come, just as they’d promised each other. But the moment he stepped through the door, her captors meant to open fire.
Please, God, no. Maybe he wouldn’t see the signal. Or, maybe, seasoned a warrior as he was, he would realize something was wrong. They had just been together, after all.
Surely he’d sense it was a trap.
But with his very life at stake, Maggie didn’t dare take that chance.
Somehow, she had to figure out a way to warn him it was an ambush before he walked in.
Unfortunately, fear and fatigue both clouded her mind. The powerlessness of her situation made her furious, as well, to say nothing of her sharp physical discomfort, her arms pinned behind her, ropes chafing her wrists.
Wet and muddy from having been dragged out of the house by way of a servant stairwell that she hadn’t even known existed, and then out into the night, past the lifeless body of some poor footman who’d been guarding the morning room door that let out onto the garden, the father and son had hauled her out across the moors in her night rail and dressing gown.
They had pulled her into the Thinkery, where she presently sat shivering and soaked to the skin.
None of this mattered, though, compared to her rising desperation to find some way to save her love.
Every tick-tock of the mantel clock in the vicar-duke’s study warned her that time was running out. Any minute now, Connor would walk through that door and they’d shoot him—and shoot her, if she screamed to alert him.
Tick-tock, tick-tock…
The sound frayed her nerves. I have to think of something.
Finally getting hold of her terror, Maggie scanned her cozy prison, searching for anything that might be of help.
The rectangular room was partly lined with tall, pointy-arched, gothic bookshelves. Matching wooden arches adorned the red-painted walls above the door, the three windows in the room, as well as the curtained window nook overlooking the chine.
Before the unlit fireplace, an oval rug marked out the area for a comfy grouping of jewel-toned furniture: a deep-cushioned sofa and two slouchy armchairs, with a small, round table between them. On it sat a double-armed candelabrum, whose two ivory candles provided the chief source of light inside the Thinkery.
Her captors had also lit a small jar candle on the mantel, but none of this was enough to quite dispel the gloom. There were also the two signal lanterns, of course, but these perched on the windowsill on the other side of the drawn curtains, their light beaming out into the ebony night.
Calling Connor to his doom.
Maggie swallowed hard, kept trying to twist her hands free of the ropes, and continued her wary search of the vicar-duke’s study.
It was a very personal space, and its contents soon led her to conclude that the churchman must’ve made an even more unlikely duke than Connor.
The room also gave her a strong impression of the sort of simple, goodhearted family man he had been, and it saddened her to know that one of these two monsters had murdered him for no reason at all.
The sight of his orphaned daughters’ framed embroidery samplers proudly hung on the wall enraged her. But, from the cross on the mantel to the religious paintings on display, showing scenes from the Acts of the Apostles, certainly, Maggie got the impression that Uncle Rupert had been sincere in his calling.
His writing desk, about a foot away from her, was positioned under the largest window in the room, where the lanterns had been set.
Though she did not enjoy being tied to the wooden desk chair, from here at least the vicar-duke must’ve had a very inspiring view of the moors when he’d sat here writing his sermons and spiritual essays.
His notes and writing instruments had been left untouched since his death, it appeared. On the desk sat a well-worn Bible, paper and ink, a few quills, and a beautiful bronze statue of a dove in flight, carrying an olive branch in its beak.
Maggie gazed at it. A symbol of peace and reconciliation—of which her captors wanted no part.
Tick-tock…
“What’s wrong with you?” Seth asked, eyeing her suspiciously. Restless as ever, he had prowled over to the little table between the armchairs, where he picked up the candle branch and used it to light a cheroot. “You look like you got indigestion or somethi
ng. Problem?”
“You,” she said. “You make me sick.”
“Oho! Saucy. You hear that, Father? I don’t think she likes me.” He set the candelabrum back down and sauntered toward her again, puffing away.
Maggie glared at him. “You must think yourselves such brave fellows, clobbering a poor young maid and terrifying old ladies.”
“Shut her up,” the father ordered the son.
Casually exhaling a stream of smoke, Seth glanced over at his sire. “I’m sure that won’t be necessary.” Then Seth looked at Maggie again with a speculative gleam in his good eye; the blackened one was nearly swollen shut. “Are you going to be quiet or do I have to gag you?”
“Don’t touch me.”
He seemed amused by her snarl. “Then be polite.” His tone was soft, but a world of ominous meaning danced behind his simple words; Maggie knew a threat when she heard one.
She swallowed hard and tried to slow her pounding heartbeat.
Think. Maybe agitating them was not the best idea, she admitted, even if it would take their minds off Connor.
Still, it made sense to keep them talking as best she could. A bit of conversation would distract them, and she might even learn something useful.
Surely that was worth making the effort to be civil.
Unsure how to begin, she studied the dragoon, who at least seemed interested in her, while the father was entirely focused on the darkness outside the window.
Seth held her wary gaze, simply watching her as he smoked.
“How did you find out about our lantern signal, anyway?” she asked. “Have you been stalking me?”
“Him, mostly. You, some.” Brushing past her chair, Seth leaned across the vicar’s desk to glance out briefly at the landscape, then he let the curtains fall shut again and turned around. “Watching you’s more fun, I admit.” He perched on the edge of the desk right near her.
“I’m honored,” she said dryly.
“Oh, I’m a very observant fellow.” His leisurely gaze traveled down over her body. “I was minding my own business one night, y’see, merely taking a stroll around Moonlight Square, when, lo and behold, I noticed two lanterns burning side by side in your upstairs window. Then you came out.”