How to Catch an Errant Earl
Page 31
“Oh, how lovely. Congratulations to you both,” said Arabella with a heartfelt smile. Perhaps Dr. Radcliff had harbored a tendre for the attractive nurse all along. That would certainly explain why he hadn’t corresponded with her while she was away. “I’m very happy for you,” she added. And she genuinely was.
“Now, what can I do for you today, my lady?” Dr. Radcliff gestured to the wooden chair that still sat in front of the desk. “Last time we met, you were telling me all about your marvelous philanthropic ventures. I was discussing them with Helen the other day”—he turned to smile at his fiancée—“wasn’t I?”
“Oh, yes indeed,” agreed Miss Reid. She took a seat upon the nearby leather sofa, and Dr. Radcliff sat behind his desk. “I’d love to hear about your ideas to establish more dispensaries like this. And perhaps a well-funded orphanage up north too?”
“All going well, those plans will come to fruition.” Arabella sat carefully and removed her bonnet and gloves. She was grateful that Dr. Radcliff hadn’t brought up Gabriel’s intrusion and rather abrupt departure when he’d visited two days ago. She didn’t really want to discuss anything to do with her husband right now lest she burst into tears. “Since my last visit, Dr. Radcliff, I’ve met with the Marchioness of Chelmsford and the Mayfair Bluestocking Society, and things are moving along quite nicely. In fact, Lady Chelmsford wanted me to—”
The door behind her burst open and then slammed shut, and Arabella jumped like a startled rabbit. At the very same moment, Miss Reid gasped and Dr. Radcliff leapt to his feet so abruptly, his chair toppled over. Good heavens, had Gabriel decided to interrupt a second time?
“Now see here—” began Dr. Radcliff, but as Arabella turned in her seat to see what was going on, a strong masculine arm snaked about her body and roughly yanked her out of the chair.
Oh, God. It wasn’t Gabriel. It was the strange man she’d observed in the waiting room. Arabella sucked in a lungful of air to scream, but the man’s hand clamped over her mouth as he hauled her up against his body. Cold terror sliced through her, freezing her blood as something hard and metallic was jammed against her temple. Was that the muzzle of a pistol?
Judging by the horrified expressions on the faces of Dr. Radcliff and Miss Reid, it was indeed.
A timid knock came at the door, and the voice of Dr. Radcliff’s assistant filtered through the wood. “Doctor? Is everything all right? I had to assist a patient for a moment, and then I heard the door slam.”
“Tell her everything is fine and to go about her business,” growled the stranger. “Then lock the door and throw the key out that window behind the desk.”
Dr. Radcliff, as white as a sheet, nodded. “It’s all right, Mrs. Fraser,” he called out. “A draft blew the door shut, that’s all.” After he locked them in, he directed his attention back to Arabella’s captor. “What do you want?” he asked in a low, urgent voice. “If it’s money—”
“Shut the fuck up, or Lady Langdale gets a bullet in the brain.”
He knows who I am? Arabella’s mind felt sluggish. Everything was sharply in focus yet didn’t seem quite real. Surely any moment she’d wake up. This had to be a nightmare.
The man’s breath drove in and out in hot, rapid gusts against her ear. With a jolt of surprise, Arabella realized that beneath the pungent odor of male sweat, he smelled of money and refinement. His shirt was freshly laundered, his cravat starched, and his soap had sandalwood and citrus notes. Even though his tone had been harsh and his words coarse, his speech marked him as someone from the upper classes. What on earth did he want with her? If only he’d take his hand away from her mouth, surely she could reason with him. Make him see sense. Find out what he needed.
While every fiber of her being urged her to struggle against him and scream for help, to call out to Soames and Gabriel’s other footmen, she didn’t. With a gun pressed to her head, to do so would be foolhardy indeed. She didn’t want to inflame the situation further.
Dr. Radcliff was speaking again. “Tell me what to do.” His hands were raised in a placatory gesture. “Whatever’s wrong, I’m sure I can help. Just let Lady Langdale g—”
“I said shut it.” The man began dragging Arabella toward the second door at the back of the room. “Where does that lead?”
Dr. Radcliff swallowed. “To an alleyway. But it’s locked.”
“Well, fucking unlock it,” the stranger snapped. “You.” Miss Reid started so violently, the man had clearly addressed her. “Do you have a key?”
When she nodded, he barked, “Then open it. Now.” The pistol’s muzzle jabbed into Arabella’s temple again, and she whimpered against the smothering crush of the man’s fingers. She clutched at his sleeve but his tight grip didn’t ease up, even for a second.
Dr. Radcliff gave a curt nod, and Miss Reid retrieved a key from the desk drawer. But as she started forward, Dr. Radcliff grasped her arm. “I’ll do it.”
“No, you bloody well won’t,” hissed the man. “Step back.”
The doctor immediately released Miss Reid and she hurried over to the door. With shaking fingers, she pushed the key in the lock and turned it.
“Open it and then lock the door behind us. I’ll be listening. So don’t you dare try anything.”
Arabella’s knees were like jelly, and there didn’t seem to be enough air in her lungs as she was forced into the dark, narrow laneway.
And then Miss Reid shut the door and the key scraped in the lock.
Oh, God. She was all alone with an armed madman in a deserted back alley. And she still had no idea what he wanted. Was he trying to kidnap her to extort money from Gabriel? Did Gabriel have an enemy she didn’t know about?
Before she could think on it further, her captor slammed her hard up against the rough bricks. Her cheek scraped the wall as he released her mouth.
“Now, my lady, you’re going to walk briskly to the end of the alley. I’ll be behind you the whole way.” The man’s voice was harsh in her ear. “You’re not going to scream and you’re not going to plead with me or ask questions. And you’re not going to run. Because if you do, I’m going to put a bullet between your shoulder blades. Do I make myself clear?”
The man grasped her head so tightly, Arabella couldn’t nod. But she managed a fractured whisper. “Aye.”
“Good.” The man’s large hand remained on her neck in an uncompromising, bruising grip. “Walk.”
With no other option left open to her, that’s exactly what Arabella did. The alley wasn’t long; she could see a brightly lit main street up ahead. Other people. Perhaps when they got to the end, she could make a run for it. Scream. It might be her only chance to escape. Bow Street and the Runners’ office weren’t that far away. Maybe Dr. Radcliff was in the process of sending for help already. Soames could be looking for her right this minute.
She had no idea where Gabriel was. If he’d taken up with Lady Astley again, would he even care she’d been kidnapped?
Tears stung Arabella’s eyes, and she pushed the horrible thought away. Speculating about her husband’s fidelity, or lack thereof, would prove fruitless in this situation. She needed to keep her wits about her, not let terror or despair take over.
All of a sudden, her captor pushed her sideways into another, far narrower alley. “In here.”
What? No! Arabella stumbled over a pile of rubbish, and her shoulder connected painfully with the sharp brick corner of one of the buildings. She cried out, but the stranger was relentless, driving her on before forcing her down another passageway, then up a short flight of stairs. And then all at once she found herself in a dismal, squalid courtyard. Decrepit lodging houses towered above them, their open doors and broken windows staring at her like dark, impassive eyes. Sagging lines of washing hung overhead like limp, ragged flags, and the air was fetid with the smell of human waste and garbage. A small group of street urchins barreled past, ducking down
the passage from which she’d just emerged.
“Remember, if you scream, you’re a dead woman,” the man ground out. He forcibly marched her across the courtyard toward another dark alley.
No doubt, a man gripping a woman about the neck wasn’t an unusual sight around here, so no one—not the drunken man sprawled in a doorway, nor the old woman lugging a bucket of water, nor the adolescent girl throwing slops from a window—called out or tried to intervene.
Panic and anguish rose up in a great wave, clogging Arabella’s throat. No one was going to help her, and her chances of escape were diminishing by the second. She had to do something. All at once she twisted her body and made a break for it.
Behind her, the man swore but she’d barely made it five steps before he tackled her; her glasses went flying as he sent her sprawling, face-first, onto the filthy ground.
She tried to kick out, to crawl away, but then his weight was upon her and he grunted, “Bitch.” Pain sliced through her head, and then her world turned black.
Chapter 20
Word about town is that a certain countess—who recently wedded London’s most Errant Earl—has become a champion of the poor, and that the Seven Dials Dispensary is her charity of choice. Why else would a coach bearing the earl’s crest and his liveried staff be seen in the vicinity of this establishment on more than one occasion? Unless something else is going on . . . Lady L. does possess her own disreputable reputation after all. Our intrepid reporters will be sure to keep an eye out for any further developments.
The Beau Monde Mirror: The Society Page
Langdale House, St. James’s Square, London
What do you mean, someone has taken my wife? That a gun was held to her head?” Gabriel roared at an ashen-faced Soames. “Where did this happen? When?”
He’d barely crossed the threshold at Langdale House when the footman had greeted him with the news that something unbelievably terrible had happened. That Arabella was missing.
Kidnapped.
To his credit Soames didn’t shrink away from Gabriel’s fulminating glare. “Two hours ago, my lord, and I believe it might have been your cousin, Captain Holmes-Fitzgerald, who took her,” he replied. “I caught a glimpse of him when he entered the Seven Dials Dispensary, but I didn’t realize he was up to no good until—”
“You took my wife into Seven Dials again? What were you thinking?” Gabriel clenched his fists so he wouldn’t wrap his hands around the footman’s throat to throttle him.
“I’m sorry, my lord, but she asked—”
Gabriel made a chopping motion with his hand. “I don’t want to hear your pitiful excuses. What else can you tell me? And it had better be helpful.”
“Yes, my lord. Dr. Radcliff summoned the Bow Street Runners as soon as he was able. Lady Langdale was in the treatment room, talking to the doctor, when your cousin burst in and forced her to leave via a back entrance. Radcliff reported her captor held a gun to her head and threatened to shoot her unless she complied. But I believe the Runners are scouring the streets of Seven Dials and Covent Garden as we speak. There should be someone here to apprise you of the situation shortly.”
“I should bloody well hope so.” His stomach churning with fear and wild anger, Gabriel strode across the vestibule in the direction of the library, where he kept his dueling pistols locked away in a cabinet. “And make yourself useful. Send for Lord Sleat and the Duke of Exmoor,” he barked. The more men he had on hand that he could trust implicitly, the better.
Once Gabriel had gained the library, he poured himself a cognac and tossed it back in one savage gulp. Christ. He wiped a shaking hand over his mouth.
How could this have happened?
Arabella, the first woman he’d ever fallen in love with—the woman he loved beyond all reason—was in dire danger.
Timothy must have gone mad. What did he have to gain by doing something as insane as this?
Revenge. Because I thwarted him. Because I taunted him and publicly humiliated him.
The answer sat more uncomfortably in Gabriel’s gut than the cognac.
One thing was certain: Timothy was a dead man. To think of him putting a gun to Arabella’s head, of frightening her, of hurting her in any way, it made him want to smash his cousin’s head in. To tear him to pieces, slowly. To gut him with a blunt, rusty butter knife.
He’d just loaded his pistols when MacQueen and Max arrived. He poured them and himself another glass of cognac, then explained what was going on.
His friends were both grim-faced when he finished.
“Whatever you need us to do, we will,” said Max.
“Aye,” agreed MacQueen.
“Just help me find her.” Gabriel tucked a pistol into the back of his breeches. Taking a deep breath, he looked them both in the eye. “Because I love her.”
Somewhere in Seven Dials . . .
When Arabella came to, she had no idea where she was for several seconds. Lying facedown on a hard, dusty floor, she turned her throbbing head to the side and then groaned. A heavy fog clouded her mind, and her mouth felt odd, as though it were packed full with dry sawdust. And then she stiffened and her heart hurtled against her ribs as everything came back to her with terrifying clarity.
Oh, God. The man at the dispensary. The gun at her head. She’d tried to run but he’d knocked her down, and she had the vague, dreamlike recollection that at some point, he’d forced her to drink something bitter and foul. Laudanum perhaps.
No wonder she felt so cloth headed. She was drugged and gagged and bound up like a trussed goose on Christmas morn. Her arms were tied so tightly behind her back, her shoulders felt as though they’d been wrenched from their sockets. Her ankles were lashed together too. Indeed her bonds were so tight, she was certain her circulation had been cut off; she couldn’t feel her toes.
Icy terror trickled through her veins, making her shiver, and nausea swelled. Cold sweat prickled along the length of her spine. Was her kidnapper still with her? She still had no idea who he was or what he wanted.
If she had any hope of surviving this ordeal, she couldn’t give in to the panic careening through her body. Or the pull of the laudanum. Even now, it tugged at her consciousness, making her groggy as a drunkard. Forcing her heavy eyelids open, Arabella tried to take stock of her surroundings.
The room she was in was dimly lit, and from her position on the floor, all she could see was a warped, scuffed skirting board, a cracked plaster wall, and, if she tilted her head upward, the chipped sill of a curtainless window with a broken glass pane. A glimpse of dark, gunmetal gray sky.
Somewhere in the distance, thunder grumbled. And there were voices. A woman’s raucous cackle. The high, wailing cry of a baby. A man swearing. A door slammed.
A barrage of questions skittered through her mind. Was she still in Seven Dials? How long had she been missing? The weather had changed, so perhaps several hours had passed. If that were the case, the Bow Street Runners might already be searching for her. Surely Dr. Radcliff had sent for help by now. He would have informed Gabriel as well.
Gabriel. Unbidden tears of despair flooded Arabella’s eyes. Was he worried about her and looking for her too? She didn’t want to believe the article in the Beau Monde Mirror.
But what if was true?
Arabella forced herself to take slow, even breaths around the gag. Stop it. You can only deal with one mess at a time.
A noise behind her—a scrape like a leather shoe on the wooden floor—made Arabella start. Her breath froze in her lungs as she listened, ears straining for another sound.
“So you’re awake are you, Lady Langdale?” The stranger hauled her up into a sitting position so quickly, Arabella’s head swam and she had to fight another wave of nausea. She slumped against the wall, eyes closed, her head pounding, her breath coming in short, shallow gasps around the gag and through her nose.
His wide mouth lifted at one corner as he smirked. “You know who I am, my lady?”
Ignoring the pain in her head, she nodded. Yes.
Although the stranger’s eyes were a pale icy gray rather than vivid green, there was no doubt in her mind that he was related to Gabriel. His hair was a riot of dark brown curls, and beneath his derisive expression, he was handsome with a bone structure similar to her husband’s: she could see it in the lines of his strong jaw, his slashing brows, and high cheekbones. There was even a dimple in his lean cheek.
This man had to be Timothy Holmes-Fitzgerald.
But what did he want with her?
As if reading her thoughts, he said, “My cousin has something I need, so I’m going to arrange a trade. Don’t worry”—he reached out and touched her face, almost tenderly—“one way or another, this will soon be over.”
He stood abruptly and walked a few steps past the end of a bare, narrow cot to the other side of the small, ramshackle room. Snatching up a dark bottle from a scarred packing crate by the closed doorway, he took a swig, then leaned back against the dirty wall, scratching his jaw.
Was he quaffing Kendal’s Black Drop like water?
Fear churned in Arabella’s belly. She’d thought Timothy’s pupils were constricted by the light coming through the window, but now she realized he was more than a little affected by the opium in his veins. That would explain his jerky movements, the slight tremble in his hands as he raised the bottle to take another large sip. And perhaps even this insane course of action he’d set in motion.
Had the laudanum made him go mad? Her grandfather had personally observed that too much of the drug could have a negative effect on a person’s state of mind as well as the body. Over time, a patient who used opiates regularly could become irritable and anxious, have changeable moods and irrational thoughts, and unpredictable behavior.