by Olivia Drake
Maddy forced herself to look down again at the steep slope. She realized her mistake in thinking the house was situated on the very edge. A narrow verge of grass lay two stories below. From it, a hardy tree had grown up to hug the stone wall, its roots sunk into the side of the cliff.
Leaning out, she could easily touch one of the stout branches. She had climbed plenty of trees as a child. She also had clambered like a monkey over stage sets. Surely this should be no different. At least not much.
Maddy quickly prepared herself. She reached beneath her gown to untie her petticoats, kicking them aside. Freed of that bulk, she placed a stool beneath the window and scrambled up onto the ledge.
Her courage nearly failed her as she glanced down at the long drop. Instead, she focused her steely gaze on the tree and stepped to the end of the ledge. Her palms felt damp. A cold breeze nipped at her skin and tugged at her hair, sending loose tendrils blowing around her face.
It was now or never.
Whispering a prayer, she stepped out onto the branch. It swayed beneath her weight and her fingers scrabbled at the bark of an upper branch. Bit by bit, she inched toward the trunk. Luckily, her shoes were soft-soled to prevent slippage. Several times, she had to stop to yank her skirt free from a twig or another protrusion. Finally arriving at the trunk, she felt her way down, branch by branch.
Despite her best efforts, however, she half slid down the last section, her arms hugging the tree. As her toes met the earth, a sense of triumph filled her and she eased her grip. She’d made it!
Abruptly, the sandy soil began to crumble beneath her feet and she grabbed at the trunk again. Her heart thumped wildly. Hearing the waves booming onto the rocks below, she feared to let go. But she couldn’t cling forever. Taking a fortifying breath, she edged over to the stone wall and then crept toward the corner of the house.
At last she emerged onto a wider, grassy stretch. Maddy allowed herself a moment to recover. Her cheeks stung from several scrapes and her nerves felt battered. Setting her hand over her belly, she gave thanks to God Almighty that she and her baby had survived the first hurdle.
Now, she just had to find her way back to London.
She mustn’t linger, either. The moment Pidgeon discovered her absence, he would mount a search. He looked a rather dull-witted sort, but it wouldn’t take a genius to realize she’d escaped out the window.
After readjusting her gown, Maddy hastened along the side of the house. Scrubby bushes impeded her progress and the darkness made it difficult to keep from stumbling on stones or dips in the ground. There must be a lane ahead. She’d follow it to the main road. After that, she’d have to use her wits to convince someone to return her to the city.
Nearing the front of the house, however, she heard something over the roar of the waves. Voices.
She crept forward and peeked around the corner. Two shadowy figures loomed in the darkness a short distance away. Her eyes widened on Alfred’s wiry form standing on the graveled drive. He appeared to be giving orders to Pidgeon, who held the team of two horses.
Maddy had imagined her cousin would already be on his way to London. It seemed a lifetime since he’d left the bedchamber. But perhaps no more than fifteen minutes had passed. Since the horses would have been stabled for the night, it must have taken Pidgeon that long to attach the harness and hitch the team.
His dark cloak flaring, Alfred bounded up onto the high seat of the carriage. He grabbed the reins and snapped them. The wheels rattled as the horses went trotting down the drive. Pidgeon clomped back up to the porch and vanished inside the house.
Knowing that the servant might go upstairs and discover her gone, Maddy lost no time in hurrying after Alfred. She kept parallel to the drive while staying out of sight beneath the cover of the trees. The thorny underbrush snagged her skirts. Scarcely able to see her way through the gloom, she stumbled more than once on some invisible obstacle.
The damp sea air made her shiver. Until this moment, fear and determination had kept her warm, but now that she’d made her escape and felt somewhat safe, the full effect of the night chill enveloped her. She crossed her arms, her teeth chattering. She’d cheerfully sign away her inheritance for a thick, warm cloak.
Instead, she would just have to walk briskly to keep herself warm.
Maddy had no sooner formed that thought than a sound came from somewhere ahead of her. A shout.
No, she had to be mistaken. It must have been the hoot of an owl or the distant howl of a dog. Then she heard it again. This time, it sounded distinctly human and definitely masculine.
Prudently keeping to the trees, she rounded a bend in the lane. The sight ahead made her stop dead in her tracks. Moonlight bathed Alfred’s carriage with its team of horses at the side of the road. Another horse, riderless, cropped the grasses alongside a ditch.
In the middle of the lane, two men grappled with each other. Alfred’s flaxen hair gleamed in the darkness. As he tried to scramble away, his assailant lunged at him, catching his legs and knocking him down. A glimmer of moonlight lit the newcomer’s resolute face.
Maddy stared in wide-eyed, glorious astonishment. “Nathan!”
Chapter 26
Neither man heard her; they were too intent on their battle. She had to help Nathan. Seeing a stout branch lying on the ground, she snatched it up and hastened toward the combatants.
The smack of punches filled the air. Both men taunted each other in between gasps and strikes. They parried and struck.
Maddy brandished the stick like a sword. But she couldn’t find an opening. They were too close together and she feared to hit her husband by mistake.
Then Alfred kicked him hard in the shins. As Nathan crouched in reflexive pain, her cousin stepped away and reached inside his cloak.
Terror galvanized her. “Nathan, watch out! He has a pistol!”
In the next instant, a shot rang out. Her husband stumbled backward and fell to the ground in a crumpled heap. Horrified, she started toward him.
But Alfred was getting away.
Her cousin lurched toward the carriage and pulled himself up onto the coachman’s perch. A savage rage fueled Maddy. If he’d killed Nathan, by heavens, he would pay!
The branch upraised, she ran toward Alfred. He fumbled for the reins. As she swung out at him, the team abruptly danced toward her.
Instead of hitting Alfred’s leg, as she’d intended, her makeshift weapon glanced off the hindquarters of the nearest horse. The animal squealed and then charged forward. The carriage traveled for only a few yards before it careened into a ditch and tilted to the side.
Alfred howled as he slid off the high seat and vanished from sight. She heard a thud as he struck the ground on the other side.
The carriage leaned at a crooked angle, one set of wheels in the ditch. No longer able to pull the disabled vehicle, the pair of horses stopped in place. They snorted in alarm, their front hooves pawing the ground, but appeared otherwise unharmed.
Dropping the stick, Maddy dashed around the carriage to see her cousin sprawled unmoving in the shadows a few feet away. That was close enough for her. She cared nothing for his fate.
Only Nathan’s.
Running toward her husband, she saw to her great relief that he was pushing himself into an upright position in the road. She dropped to her knees beside him, reaching out to caress his whisker-roughened jaw.
“Nathan, darling! Are you all right? When you fell, I feared you were dead!”
In the pale moonlight, his face was twisted with pain. “Damn bullet ploughed a furrow in my arm. But I’ll survive. And Dunham? I saw him take a tumble.”
“He’s lying over there,” she said shakily. “I—I didn’t look very closely at him.”
“I’d better go see, then. Lest he come to his senses and draw another pistol.”
She gently touched his upper arm and her fingertips came away sticky. With her hand on his shoulder, she stopped him from rising to his feet. “Don’t move! You’re ble
eding.”
“It’s merely a scratch.”
“Then at least let me bind it.”
With trembling fingers, she untied his cravat to use as a bandage, the white folds barely visible in the shadows. He didn’t protest. At least not until she began to wrap the strip of linen around the wound, right over his sleeve.
He sucked in a breath through his teeth. “Have a care!”
“It has to be tight or it won’t stop the bleeding. And you’re to see a doctor as soon as possible!”
Nathan gave a low chuckle. “Well, I’m glad you don’t wish me dead, anyway, after the way we parted.”
Her fingers froze on the binding. Maddy glanced at his moonlit features, realizing she’d forgotten all about their estrangement. It seemed a lifetime ago that she’d informed him of her plan to leave Gilmore House. A lifetime since she’d told him she loved him and he had not returned those tender words. Yet he had come after her, anyway. He’d cared enough to ride for hours through the night just to rescue her.
She didn’t dare let herself hope he had changed.
Too shaken at the moment to contemplate their future, she tied off the bandage. “How in the world did you find me?”
“I’ll tell you in a moment. First I’ll see about Dunham.”
Nathan sprang to his feet, wobbled a step or two, then caught his balance and paced across the road to the lopsided carriage. As he vanished from sight, Maddy arose, too, following cautiously in his wake.
Her arms crossed to subdue her shivering, she watched as he knelt down and leaned over her cousin. A sick apprehension stirred inside her. There was something about Alfred’s stillness that looked unnatural. She wanted to close her eyes and go to sleep and forget all about him.
After a few minutes, Nathan arose and trudged toward her. His face looked grim in the moonlight.
“Is he—” she whispered.
He tightened his lips. “He isn’t breathing, I’m afraid. The fall must have broken his neck.”
“Oh, no…”
Maddy felt herself sway; then Nathan’s arms came around her, cradling her against him. All of a sudden, she found herself sobbing into his coat, her breath shuddering. It was out of character for her to fall apart. Especially since she hadn’t even liked her cousin. Yet she felt miserable to know she’d been the cause of his death, however inadvertently.
Nathan pressed a folded handkerchief into her fingers and she dried her cheeks. “This all happened because Alfred wanted my inheritance,” she said, sniffling. “He was intending to take me out on a boat and dump me overboard.”
“Thank God he didn’t succeed,” Nathan said roughly. “But why was he leaving here, then?”
She swallowed, gaining control of her emotions again. “I convinced him that I would sign over my share of the inheritance to him. He was returning to London to have the papers drawn up by his solicitor.”
Nathan frowned. “Without you?”
“He left me locked in an upstairs bedchamber. Pidgeon was supposed to be guarding me.”
“Pidgeon?”
“He’s a treacherous brute in Alfred’s employ. I escaped out a window and climbed down a tree.”
“Good God! You might have been the one with the broken neck—” Nathan’s appalled voice broke off as he stared at a point beyond her. “Well, look at that. It would seem I am about to make the acquaintance of this brute.”
Maddy turned to see the bulky man stomping toward them down the road. He’d either realized she was missing—or he’d heard the gunshot and had come to investigate.
All of a sudden Pidgeon stopped and peered at the scene ahead, the cockeyed carriage and the two of them standing beside it. Then he abruptly wheeled around and took off running back toward the house.
“Wait here,” Nathan ordered.
He dashed after the man, though Pidgeon had a long head start. Maddy hastened after them. She didn’t care what Nathan said. She had to stop him from engaging in another fight, especially when he was weakened by the bullet wound in his arm.
It was only a short distance to the house, and this time Maddy made better time by hurrying straight down the rutted lane rather than being forced to creep through the trees. Nevertheless, she found herself panting by the time she spied the outline of the roof with its many chimneys against the night sky. She ran across the scraggly front lawn to see her husband heading toward the edge of the cliff.
The terrifying vision of him tumbling down to the rocks seized her. “Nathan, stop!”
Amazingly, he turned and waited for her. She rushed to join him, and he pointed to a steep staircase cut into the cliff. Halfway down, a large figure was descending to the rocky beach. A fishing boat was moored out in the dark water.
“Don’t you ever listen?” he asked tersely. “This time, you’re not to follow me. It’s far too dangerous.”
Maddy held firmly to his good arm. “Let him go. Pidgeon never actually harmed me, and it isn’t worth the risk if he happens to have a pistol, too. I doubt he’ll trouble us again.”
Nathan scowled down at her. Resistance radiated from him, so she slid her arms around his lean waist and held tightly to prevent him from continuing the foolhardy chase. They watched together as the big man hopped into a small rowboat bobbing in a sandy cove. Then he paddled out toward the larger boat.
Maddy subdued a shudder. That must be the boat that Alfred had intended for her to board, to be sailed far out to sea and tossed into the deep waters. She tucked her face into the crook of Nathan’s neck, breathing in his familiar, wonderful, masculine scent. How awful to imagine that she might never have felt his warm embrace ever again.
“So the Pidgeon has flown,” he said, flexing one of his fists. “Are there any other brutes around for me to vanquish on your behalf?”
With a tremulous smile, Maddy looked up at him. “Just the two, no more. Oh, Nathan, I never thought you would find me in time. How did you?”
“Come along, and I’ll tell you.”
As they walked arm in arm back toward the carriage, he related how he’d read the forged note, then found her shattered lamp in the square. Having surmised at once that Alfred had abducted her, Nathan had saddled his mount and ridden to the Duke of Houghton’s house, where he’d summoned Lord Theo and confirmed Alfred’s absence.
As an alibi, Alfred had told his younger brother that he intended to spend the night with a whore. Once Nathan had convinced Theo of the gravity of the situation, however, Theo had confessed that he’d overheard a curious conversation the previous day between Alfred and a hulking fellow who’d come to the garden gate, something concerning a boat.
“Pidgeon!”
“Indeed,” Nathan said, “and since the only coastal property owned by the duke is this one, we surmised that he’d brought you here. Theo drew me a map, but I can’t tell you how many times on the long ride that I feared we might be mistaken.”
“Thank God it was a clear night, or you’d never have found me.”
“I did take a wrong turn once and had to backtrack. But all’s well that ends well.”
“Shakespeare would agree. And so do I.”
He slipped his arm around her waist as they walked, and Maddy marveled at the joy of being close to him, feeling the heat and vitality of his muscled form. He had come for her, risked his own life to rescue her. Surely that meant he felt more for her than mere possessiveness.
But she couldn’t bring herself to ask him if he loved her. She felt too weary and wrung out to chance a denial.
As they spied the carriage up ahead, she realized that the night didn’t seem quite so dark anymore. A faint glow had appeared along the horizon. “The sky is lightening,” she said. “It’s nearly dawn.”
Nathan drew out his pocket watch and flipped open the lid. “Indeed. And I should think the coach should be arriving soon.”
“Coach?”
Even as he spoke, the drumbeat of hooves and the clatter of wheels could be heard over the hiss of the sea. A bl
ack coach drove into view, and as Nathan raised his uninjured arm and waved, the coachman drew the team to a halt. Nathan urged Maddy forward and they reached the boxy vehicle just as the door opened.
Much to her surprise, Theo stepped out. “Madelyn!” he exclaimed. “You’re all right! We’ve been terribly worried!” With that, he turned to lend a hand to a stout woman in the plain garb of a servant.
Maddy rushed forward. “Gertie!”
The maid caught Maddy in the pillowy comfort of her arms. “My precious dear! So ye’re fine, then?”
“Yes, I am! But … I had no idea you were on your way here.”
“Lord Theodore came fer me last evening. In case ye needed my help.” She held Maddy by the shoulders to scrutinize her in the uncertain light. “A few scratches t’ yer face, I see.”
“There was no real harm done … at least not to me.” With a jolt of distress, Maddy looked at Theo. He stood watching, his gold-rimmed spectacles glinting in the darkness. Her heart went out to her cousin, for he didn’t yet know about his brother. It would be such a terrible shock.
Nathan placed his arm around the younger man’s shoulders. As he led Theo to the other side of the tilted carriage, Maddy murmured the news to Gertie. “It was dreadful. I never meant for Alfred to fall.” All of a sudden, weariness overwhelmed her and she swayed on her feet.
“O’ course ye didn’t.” Gertie helped her into the coach. “Sit down, dear girl. Ye need a good long rest after such a night, and ye in such a delicate condition.”
Maddy sank gratefully against the plush cushions. “Shh,” she whispered. “Nathan doesn’t know yet.”
How would he react when she finally told him about the baby? I’ve no wish to give Gilmore a grandson … Did he still feel that way? Would he reject their child and sail off to China?
She didn’t want to contemplate it anymore. She was just too exhausted. It would have to wait.
Gertie had brought blankets and pillows, and a short while later Maddy was curled up half asleep when Nathan came to inform them that the coachman would drive them back to London. He and Theo would set the other carriage to rights. They would transport Alfred’s body to Houghton House and relay to the duke the grim news of his heir’s death.