She nodded, forgetting that he wanted her undivided attention, regardless of whether he was listening to her or not. “I’m glad for you.”
“Don’t condescend me. That’s how you always made it harder on yourself.” He shook his head and gestured wildly. “And here I had the plan to do this properly and marry you first. Once we’re wed, everyone will realize that you only left Hampshire because you were trying to make me chase after you, and that you wanted to make me jealous by pretending to be engaged to Sterling.”
“It isn’t a p-pretense,” she stammered in a rush. “In fact, he’ll drop by any moment to fetch his cat. He—he won’t like to find you here.”
From the sneer curling his lip, she realized that was the wrong thing to say.
“I’d like that. I’d like him to catch us together, to see you squirming beneath me, to know where I’ve been.” He snickered. “I’m going to be the man who took Sterling’s woman. He thought he could toss me out of his club without fighting me? Well, by the time this is over, I will have done what no other man could do. I will have bested the great prizefighter.”
Ainsley tried to push down the panic threatening to freeze her in place. She focused her thoughts on Reed instead, remembering all the times he’d held her and soothed her.
At once, her senses cleared. Her gaze flitted to the candelabra standing on the edge of the chiffonier. A plan to get out of this room quickly formed in her mind.
Attempting to reason with someone like Nigel was a waste of time.
“I won’t scream,” she lied softly, hoping to calm him. “We can talk about this.”
“There’s a good girl. Now, come over here. I don’t want to waste time chasing you around furniture.”
Ainsley’s fingers lightly skimmed the polished surface of the low shelf as she stepped around to the other side. But her progress was slow, her legs shaking like dahlia stems in a storm.
“Are you planning to become a prizefighter?” she asked, knowing that all things Nigel was Nigel’s favorite subject.
He hiked up his narrow chin. “I could. I’ve even been the premier fighter at Lord Savage’s townhouse these past two days, all the men cheering me on, ladies batting their lashes, hanging all over me like I’m a king.” He laughed, his expression dripping with self-satisfaction. “You’re jealous. I can see it in your face. Well, if you’re a right proper wife and do as you’re told, you might be able to keep me away from the temptations of London.”
“Is that where you were this evening? Lord Savage’s, I mean.” She glanced to his eye, noting the color had darkened, the flesh more swollen than before.
It was always a risk, pointing out a flaw in his appearance, but she hoped it would only encourage him to keep talking about himself and become so distracted that he didn’t realize what she was doing.
Lifting a hand, he frowned, wincing as he tested the raw flesh. Then he noticed the dirt smudged on his cuffs and straightened sharply, tugging on his sleeves. “I caught a man sniffing around your garden and took care of him. He won’t be dragging anyone out of Sterling’s club for a long time, I should think.”
Ainsley felt a jolt of alarm at the news. What had Nigel done? And if one of the men from Sterling’s was in the garden, had he been sent over by Reed to fetch the cat?
Did that mean Reed didn’t plan to come here, after all?
Her stomach fell with cold dread, sending shivers through her. Unable to hear any more, Ainsley lunged for the candelabra.
But so did Nigel. Her hand grasped the heavy silver base just as his covered hers in a punishing grip, digging into her tender flesh and bones. A pained whimper escaped her.
He grinned in triumph, his eyes flashing in the light, crazed. “You see. That’s what I—”
Ainsley shoved hard. The motion caused the flames to sputter. Then she drew in a deep breath and blew with all her might. Droplets of hot wax peppered his face.
Nigel shouted, eyes screwing closed. His hand released hers as he sought to wipe the wax from vulnerable skin. “You worthless cow! Oh, you are going to pay for that.”
Ainsley raced from the room and down the dark corridor, memory guiding her steps. Rounding the corner, she ran to the faint glow of sconce light rising up the staircase opening, and filtering down from the tapers burning in the second floor hall.
Freedom was only a few steps away. If she could just make it to the stairs . . .
But in the next instant she found that the stairs to the foyer were blocked. Chairs were piled sideways, stacked high and interlocked in a barricade. That must have been the noise she’d heard earlier—Nigel preparing to trap her inside!
“You’re not going anywhere, Ains,” he called, his voice echoing down the corridor. Coming closer. “You’ll never be too far from my reach.”
* * *
There were a dozen tasks waiting for Reed, but he found himself at the window again. He’d been drawn to this view even more than usual tonight.
He couldn’t explain the reason, but something about it unsettled him.
The dim reflection in the glass revealed Raven’s form striding toward him and Reed glanced over his shoulder. “Any news from Teddy?”
Raven stopped beside him. “Last report was that he was heading into the garden to have a look.”
He knew that Teddy, more than anyone else, would be thorough, investigating every shadow. Then he’d give a report, every half hour, to let Reed know if he needed someone to take over. “And how long ago was that?”
“The top of the hour.”
The standing clock in the corner showed that it was half past. Teddy should be making an appearance on the pavement any minute now.
“But I have a report of another kind,” Raven continued, a dark glower settling over his features. “It has to do with Lord Savage. Apparently, he decided to enter his own ring this evening. And when word spread through the hazard room, we lost a dozen more patrons.”
Reed cursed. “Well, I hope Savage and Mitchum beat each other to a bloody pulp.”
“He isn’t fighting Mitchum. Savage is welcoming anyone who has the bollocks to put up his fists.”
“Then where’s Mitchum?”
“In the crowd, I s’pose.”
Reed shook his head, tension clawing at his neck. “No. He’d need to be at the center, lapping up the attention. Send a runner to the man I have watching Mitchum. I need to know exactly where he is.”
* * *
The servants’ stairs were just ahead. Ainsley could make her escape. But knowing that Nigel had a carriage waiting out back—and likely a driver he’d hired to assist him with her abduction—made her too leery of falling into a trap.
She couldn’t risk it.
Thinking quick on her feet, she sprinted up the stairs instead. He wouldn’t expect it, and that might give her just enough time to make it to the window and scream for Reed.
She had complete faith that he would come for her. Or perhaps, it was the only hope she could cling to.
Yet on the second floor every sconce was lit, flooding the corridor with light. If Nigel were to come up here, it wouldn’t take him any time to find her.
Needing to disorient him, she pinched out the flames of each sconce, slowly immersing herself in darkness. Then she locked bedchamber doors, collecting keys in her fist. Hopefully, he would be fooled into thinking that she’d sealed herself inside.
Everything she did was to give Reed a little time, because he would come for her. She chanted the words inside her mind like a mantra. Reed will come for me.
He would surely recall teasing her about her overuse of candles and her responding explanation that she had a system. So when he would look at the agency tonight, he would notice that the lights were mismatched.
He had to notice. She was pinning all her hopes on him.
At last, she made it to her own bedchamber and locked the door. The only light came from the streetlamps below, sifting in through her open drapes.
She flew
to the window. Setting her hands on the frame to lift it, she pulled with all her might. It wouldn’t budge. She tried pushing the edges to crack the seal. Still, nothing. The rain and heat had likely warped the wood, making it swell in the frame.
But she couldn’t stop trying. Sterling’s was only a single pane away.
Frustrated tears gathered in her eyes as she dug in with her fingernails, straining until they chipped and broke, her fingertips raw.
A door rattled not too far away. Nigel had come upstairs.
The next sound she heard was a shriek of splintering wood and then a hard boom that vibrated the floor. He must have kicked the door inward.
“You know I detest childish games, Ains,” Nigel called, his voice agitated above the beat of hard-footed steps. “I’ll break down every door! I’ll find you. Don’t think I won’t. And when I do, I’m not going to be pleased. I was going to make this nice for you, but not anymore.”
Another loud shriek and boom as a door fractured open and crashed against a wall. He was getting closer.
Ainsley flattened herself against the wall and stared at the door in the faint light. Then somehow, even with her heart thudding with dread in her ears, she heard a plaintiff meow.
The cat! She’d forgotten all about her.
Dropping to her knees, she peered underneath the bed and spotted one green eye glowing in the shadows.
“Shh . . . it’s going to be fine. Just stay there,” she whispered, wishing she could hide beneath the bed as well. But the space between the rails and the floor was simply too narrow.
On her knees, she scanned the room, looking for a hiding place.
The wardrobe? No, it would be the first place he would look, surely. And behind the screen would do no good either, for her shoes would show beneath it.
Her shoes . . . This gave her a thought. Slipping out of them, she positioned the toes to peek out from beneath the curtain. If he came in here, perhaps he would cross the room and think he’d found her. That might give her enough time to slip away. That was, if she was hiding someplace near the door.
Or nearer, she thought, spying the cedar chest at the foot of her bed.
Carefully, so the hinges would not squeak, she lifted the lid. Inside was one of her mother’s gowns and a fur-lined winter mantel, and not much else. It wasn’t a very large chest. When she was much younger, she used to slip inside when she would play hide-and-seek with her sisters.
Ainsley wasn’t sure that she would fit now, but she had no other option than to try.
Hastily, she pulled out the clothes and set them on the floor, then she stepped inside. Hunkering down, she squirmed, arranging her legs and hips in a cramped, uncomfortable position. But it worked. Then she picked up the clothes and covered herself.
However, it wasn’t until she heard the door rattle and Nigel’s gruff explosion into the room that she realized she might have sealed herself in her own coffin.
* * *
Reed was restless and uneasy, waiting for the report from his runner.
Attention fixed on the townhouse, he studied the windows, his gaze searching from one to the next. Some were darkened, and some glowing with their usual light. Nothing too odd, considering how Ainsley kept the sconces lit until she was ready for bed. And yet . . . something niggled at the back of his mind, gooseflesh raising hairs on his arms.
He looked again.
This time, he noticed that the ground floor was still lit, but the first floor was dark. Most of the second floor was, too. All but one.
That wasn’t like Ainsley. For as long as he’d been looking across the street, he’d seen those windows all aglow until—systematically, floor by floor, from bottom to top—she doused the lights.
A cold breath rushed out of his lungs. Seeing Raven on the stairs, he called out, “Get Finch and Pickerington.”
Chapter 23
“I know what you mean—but Emma’s hand is the strongest.”
Jane Austen, Emma
“I’ve found your hiding place,” Nigel said in a cruel sing-song as he entered her bedchamber.
Buried inside the cedar chest, Ainsley felt the bump of hard-footed steps growing closer and she struggled not to make a sound. Then she heard a hollow sound of a wooden door clacking open.
Her wardrobe. She was glad that she hadn’t chosen to hide there.
“Ah-ha. Now I see you! Shivering behind the curtains, hmm?” A muffled clatter followed, the wrenching of drapes from the heavy rod. “Damn it all! I’ll tear this house down room by room. I know you’re here. You’re not clever enough to elude me.”
She had to get out, but she was frozen in terror, too afraid to lift the lid and try to dart away.
Reed would see the lights, Ainsley told herself. He had to. He noticed everything.
And yet, small doubts were creeping into her foggy mind. What if he didn’t see her windows? It was rather arrogant of her to think that he spent any time watching the agency, thinking of her. For all she knew, she was the only one who looked across the street day and night, thinking of him.
And what if Nigel was right? What if she would never truly escape him?
“I bet you’re hiding under the bed. I’ll have you on top of it in short order. I’ll cut every scrap of clothes from your body with my boot knife. And then I’ll teach you a lesson you won’t soon forget.”
A knife! Ainsley sucked in a breath. Had he brought a knife because he planned to kill her if she didn’t cooperate?
She was starting to hyperventilate, her breaths coming up short. The cedar air grew hotter by the second. Darkness threatened to swallow her whole.
“What’s this . . . a cat?”
Ainsley jolted. She wanted to burst out of this chest to help the creature. But she was afraid that she wouldn’t be able to keep either of them safe. All she could do was hope that the cat would flee the room and save herself.
Nigel snickered. “You’re the most pitiful looking—Argh! Bloody hell! Get off!”
Staggered steps clomped around the room. “Bleeding cat, get off my head! Stop scrat—ah!” The stumbling continued. A heavy thump hit the chest. Then Nigel’s rants seemed to come from the floor as if he’d fallen. “Damn you beast! I’ll kill you!”
Then all at once, a high, keening wail pierced the air.
The room fell eerily silent.
Ainsley sucked in a breath, tears stinging her eyes. No, no, no . . . Not that precious cat. The creature had been through too much misery to meet an end like this. She deserved a long, happy life, not a cruel act of fate.
Gripping the woolen mantle tight, Ainsley tried to muffle the choked anguish of her tears as she sobbed, wishing that she’d been half as brave.
That cat had lived more of a life than she had ever dared.
In one way or another, Ainsley was always hiding herself to keep from being hurt. Shutting away her feelings. Making excuses that she was being responsible rather than impulsive and uninhibited.
The simple truth was that she had stuffed herself in a cedar chest a long time ago.
But Reed had challenged her to show herself, drawing her out bit by bit. Teaching her that she didn’t have to be afraid.
Ainsley wasn’t ready to die without ever having lived. She wanted more. Wanted to collect moments and memories by the bunches, to press them between slips of vellum in the book of her life. And one day, when she was ancient and grizzled, she wanted to sit beside Reed, hold his hand, and look through the pages with a smile.
* * *
Reed wasn’t expecting to find an elderly man—dressed in a nightgown and brandishing an umbrella—in the foyer of the agency. The man was as ghostly white as his stocking cap but what his cloudy blue eyes lacked in sharpness they made up for in ferocity.
“I’ll take you all. I served in the regiment under General Wolfe.”
Reed didn’t wait for conversation. He began searching every room on this floor.
“Be at ease, Mr. Hatman,” Finch said, ducking his head
as he came inside. “We’re here to see that Miss Bourne is safe. That’s Mr. Sterling and this is Raven, and Pickerington will be coming through the back. We’ll need to let him in.”
Reed returned to the foyer. “Where is she? Where is Miss Bourne?”
Mr. Hatman lowered his weapon and looked up the stairs. “I’m not sure, sir. I heard some terrible noises—a man’s shouting and knocking around. Ginny heard it, too. But the door to the garret had been locked and it took a lot of force—and time, I’m afraid—to open it. We heard someone on the stairs when we were coming down. By the time we reached the bottom and saw the open kitchen door, everything was still as a churchyard. Then we heard Mrs. Darden shouting from her room, and saw the chair locking her inside. She’d heard the shouting, too, and hard footsteps running past her door. Now she and Ginny are upstairs, still searching. Don’t you worry. No one will get past me. I served in—”
Someone screamed from above.
Reed jolted and ran to the stairs. Taking them two at a time, he shouldered through a blockade of chairs at the top.
Then he found Mrs. Darden in her frilly nightdress and ruffled cap. She was standing at the end of the hall, just beyond the offices, her face pale and twisted in anguish.
“A knife, Mr. Sterling,” she sobbed, pointing to the rug at her feet. “And there’s blood on it. What do you think happened?”
Nigel Mitchum, Reed thought. Icy terror rushed in his ears, drowning out whatever else the cook was saying.
Like a madman, he began searching offices, tearing through them one by one. Then the parlor. He sprinted down the next corridor to the library. That was where he found an upended candelabra on the floor, broken tapers, spatters of wax. But no blood.
The blood . . . He tried not to think the worst. Instead, he focused on the search. He would tear this house apart to find her.
Dashing up the stairs, he saw the horror of doors splintered open, the contents in the chambers ransacked.
Ainsley must have put up quite a fight. The thought tortured him.
Halfway through the bedchambers, he came upon the maid, startling a cry out of her. But by the looks of her tear-shredded face, she’d already been sobbing a good deal.
The Rogue to Ruin EPB Page 24