He gently slipped his hand into his greatcoat pocket, letting his fingers cradle the loaded pistol there. He eased forward. Nora stirred as he thought she would and sat up. Nathan laid his now free hand over her mouth. Her eyes flew open. He shook his head, and she became deathly still. Later he would think about how beautiful she looked when she first woke up. There was probably just a problem with the carriage or the road. Nothing was truly wrong.
He laid his hand on the door handle and pushed. The door swung out and smacked lightly against the carriage. Nathan waited. There was no sound. He could not even hear the horses. He put one foot out on the step, not putting his weight on it. He kept the pistol in his pocket, but his hand softly gripped it. There was still no sound. Nathan put weight on the foot on the step and leaned to see around the edge of the door. Nothing was there. Nathan stopped and focused on his heartbeat. It was steady and solid. He measured his breathing. Calm. He stepped out of the carriage, his boot sinking into the soft mud of the road.
And the world went black.
~
The carriage rocked as whoever had been standing on top it swung something large and scary at Nathan's head. Nora was flung back against the cushions and slid down the bench, the scream stuck in her throat. She watched Nathan fall, heard the mud as it squirmed around his prone body.
Someone jumped off the carriage and landed in front of the open doorway. Nora sat up, her hair swinging into her face. She pushed it away, and the air flew out of her lungs. The Duchess of Chesterfield's face was inches from her own.
"What are you doing here?" the duchess demanded.
Nora had suddenly forgotten how to speak English. She saw Nathan unconscious in the road and simply could not breathe. Her heart would not even pump. She could not. . . live.
The duchess grabbed her and shook, hard. "I asked you a question."
The sing-song cadence of the duchess's voice brought Nora back. "I...I...I should ask you the same thing." Nora reached up and shoved. The duchess fell backward landing on her butt in the mud. The sudden flare of satisfaction had Nora smiling.
And then three very big men stepped out of the trees, and Nora really did not feel like smiling. She shrank back into the carriage.
"That's not 'im," one of them said. They were identical. Same broken noses, same long, lanky, greasy hair. Same tattered clothes. And, much to Nora's dismay, same God awful smell. She moved further into the carriage out of choice and not fear.
The duchess was attempting to dislodge herself from the mud. "What do you mean it's not him?"
"This ain't the earl," another of the triplets said.
Her butt came unstuck with a resounding smack, and she stood, wobbly, her hat falling into the mud she had just dislodged herself from. Red hair flamed around her small shoulders. The Duchess of Chesterfield looked every bit like the aristocratic bitch she was. It somehow made Nora feel better about the whole situation.
"It must be the earl," the duchess said.
"Well, it ain't."
Nora leaned forward. "You wanted the earl?"
"Speak when spoken to, servant," the duchess sneered. "Perhaps people of your class do not learn manners, but I belong to a higher peerage, and I will teach you." The duchess huffed.
One of the triplets rolled Nathan over. Mud caked one side of his face. Nora pressed her hand to her stomach to keep from vomiting. Her stomach was suddenly not as strong as it used to be.
"This ain't the earl. It's the other one. The bastard."
The duchess bent clean over at the waist and stared at Nathan. Nora watched the other three men back away. She gauged the distance between her and the trees and instantly discarded the partially formed idea. She was not going to abandon her husband even to go for help. The forest looked far too dense for her to get anywhere anyway. She would be lost a hundred meters in and no good to anyone. So she stepped down from the carriage and stood resolutely beside her unconscious husband.
The Duchess of Chesterfield snapped upright. "Where is the Earl of Stryden?"
"That's a very good question," Nora said.
And that's all she said.
"Well?" the duchess asked.
Nora did not say anything.
"So that's how it's going to be." The duchess sneered making tiny lines form between her eyes.
Nora raised a finger and pointed at them. "You shouldn't make that face. You're going to get permanent wrinkles between your eyes, and that would look terribly funny."
The duchess raised a fist, but one of the triplets grabbed it.
"His grace wouldn't want that. He likes them untouched."
Nora was impressed at this one's English. He did not drop a single "h."
"Load them up. We're going back to the manor." The duchess strode off toward the forest, and a triplet stepped in front of Nora, keeping her from seeing where the duchess was going.
"If you please, ma'am." This was the polite one with the good English. Nora nodded and stepped up into the carriage.
Nathan's body was thrown none too gently in behind her. He landed haphazardly across Nora. She struggled to lay him more comfortably with his head in her lap, but the best she could manage was to just keep him from falling onto the floor as the carriage started moving. She brushed the drying mud from his face.
"Oh, Nathan," she whispered and bent over to lay her lips gently over his as the carriage rolled toward their unknown destination.
The pistol in his pocket bumped her knee.
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
"How long should we wait before we start to worry?" Jane asked, leaning over Richard to look out the window of the carriage at Lord Franklin Archer's townhouse.
"I really don't know," Richard answered her.
Jane frowned. It was never a good thing when Richard did not know something. They had sent Samuel through the back door of Archer's townhouse nearly an hour earlier. And Richard and Jane had sat in the carriage staring at the house since then. Just staring. There had been no touching, no inappropriate, wanted groping. No anything.
True, they were here on business. But Richard could at least hold her hand.
Which meant something was really, truly bothering him.
Which bothered Jane, really and truly.
She bumped his booted foot with hers.
Richard looked up at her innocently.
She touched his face, kissed him softly, and felt the sigh escape his lips.
He leaned his forehead against hers. "I'm worried about Alec."
"I know," Jane whispered.
Richard exhaled again, letting his frustrations crash into her, and she welcomed their weight.
And then Richard pulled her into his arms. Jane laid her head on his shoulder, letting their mutual worries coalesce. But she was not worried about Alec. Not at all. She was going to throttle him when she saw him. Putting the people who loved him most through this. She was definitely going to throttle him. But for now, she would steadfastly deny she was worried about him, and just let herself rest on Richard.
But Richard was tense beneath her touch.
It was only moments later when Richard said, "I think Samuel's coming."
Jane sat up as Richard opened the door, and the small boy jumped inside the carriage.
"Well?" Richard asked by way of greeting.
Samuel shook his head and climbed onto the bench.
"The Duke of Chesterfield took Lord Archer," Samuel said.
Richard raised his eyebrows. "Took him? How? Nora said he was at the ball the other night. How did he get to Lord Heathenbaum's that quickly?"
Samuel shook his head. "Mama said the Duke of Chesterfield was not at the ball. The butler was certain the duke took Archer but didn't know why. Just that Lord Archer had been seen in the gardens of Lord Heathenbaum's estate chasing after some woman when the Duke of Chesterfield approached him. The duke put an arm around the man and forced him to walk in the other direction."
"Put an arm around him?" Jane asked.
; "Then who shot at Nora and Nathan after Nathan shot Archer's brother?" Richard asked on top of Jane's question.
Samuel said, "The Duchess of Chesterfield."
"The duchess?" Richard asked, incredulous.
Jane punched him in the ribs. "Women are more than capable of doing the dirty work.
Richard rubbed his violated ribs.
"So the duchess is behind all of this?" Jane asked.
Samuel nodded. "At least the parts here in London. And she is Jacobite Scottish," he added, looking at Richard.
Richard harrumphed.
Samuel continued, "There's more though. And it's worse."
Richard waited.
"Alec?" he finally said.
Samuel nodded again. "Chesterfield wants him. Something to do with taking him back to France, but the butler wasn't sure. They're only just rumors still."
Richard crushed Jane's hand in his grip but did not notice. "How do servants know so much?"
"How do peers miss so much?" Samuel countered.
Richard grinned unexpectedly. "We'll find Alec first."
Jane interrupted, "How do you know they haven't found him already?"
Now Samuel cut in, "They haven't. Or at least they hadn't as of this afternoon."
Richard and Jane looked at him.
"Flo, an upstairs maid, saw the Countess yelling at him in Hyde Park at about four o'clock."
"What the hell was he doing in Hyde Park?" Richard asked.
Samuel shrugged his shoulders. Jane patted their joined hands.
"I think we should ask what we're going to do now," Jane said, soothingly.
Richard nodded and looked at her. "We are going on a long overdue honeymoon, my love."
Samuel's eyebrows went up as did Jane's.
"Is that so, dear?"
Richard nodded.
"It's the perfect cover for travel. And it appears we are going to be traveling quite a bit in our future."
"What about me?" Samuel asked.
Richard looked at him, put his elbows on his knees and leaned forward.
"I don't want you involved in this any more. I don't want anything happening to you," Richard added after Samuel had looked hurt after the first statement. The second made him blush.
"Great Aunt Lydia," Jane whispered.
Great Aunt Lydia, indeed.
Great Aunt Lydia had a passion for big dogs and bigger guns. And she lived alone on a huge estate in York, far away from any danger. It sounded perfect.
"Have you ever been to the country, Samuel?" Richard asked.
Samuel shook his head negatively.
"Now is as good a time as any," Jane said.
"Where will you be honeymooning?" Samuel asked.
Richard looked at Jane. "The first stop is Chesterfield Manor."
Jane's eyes widened again. "So blatant, Richard. I'm surprised."
"I'm done playing games."
~
This mattress was very, very uncomfortable.
Nathan opened both of his eyes at once.
The mattress was a stone floor.
And it was near pitch black around him. Water trickled somewhere in the void. A rat scurried and squeaked.
Nora.
Nathan sat up too quickly, and the world spun. He grabbed for something to hold him up, and his hand collided with cold, slimy metal. He held onto it as his senses balanced the world around him.
"Easy there, Mr. Black."
Nathan turned his head in the direction of the nasally voice. The gloom was stifling; his eyes strained to dilate and take in more light. Finally, a fuzzy image of iron bars and a face came into focus.
"Who's there?" he asked, but his voice was scratchy and faint. He cleared his voice and repeated it, louder.
"Your good friend," the voice said. "Franklin Archer."
Nathan's eyes stopped trying to dilate. Archer remained a fuzzy shape in the distance.
"What have you done with Nora?"
Archer laughed. "What have I done with her? I haven't done anything. It's hard to do much in this dungeon."
Nathan looked around him again. Heard the water trickling and the rats scurrying.
"Dungeon? I'm in a dungeon?"
Who used dungeons any more? Nathan thought.
"We are in a dungeon, Mr. Black," Archer corrected him.
Nathan looked back at Archer. There were two sets of iron bars. The one Nathan was gripping and the other shadowing the shape that was Archer.
"What's going on, Archer?"
"Now, before I answer your question, I need to ask myself one of my own. Should I answer the questions of the bloke who tried to kill me?" Archer said.
Nathan thought it telling that Archer cared more for his attempted assassination than for the fact that Nathan had killed his brother. Nathan's head was pounding, and he did not need this right now. He wanted to know where his damn wife was and who he was going to have to kill to get to her.
Archer tsked tsked in the dark. "I am thinking I shouldn't."
"I am thinking you should."
"Why?" Archer asked.
Nathan felt his pocket for his pistol. Obviously, it was not there.
"The enemy of my enemy is my enemy. Or the enemy of my enemy is my friend."
Archer shuffled in the distance. "Good point."
Nathan nodded, and the world tilted again. He had been unconscious way too much in the past few days.
"He probably has your wife upstairs somewhere. He figures females will talk," Archer said.
"Who is 'he'?" Nathan's blood boiled, and he started listing in his head all the ways he was going to torture him.
Archer's shape had grown longer, and Nathan figured he had stood up.
"Chesterfield. He likes to play mind games with females. He's a few cards short of a full deck." Archer's head turned right and left as if he was checking to see if anyone was listening. "I should have seen it right off, but well, there was Liza."
Nathan's heart stopped abruptly in his chest. It simply froze and hung suspended by the tissue that surrounded it. The Duke of Chesterfield had Nora. The Duke of Chesterfield. The man who had raped her. Nathan stood up, a roar of frustration and anger surging from his throat as he swung a fist at the blackness. It collided with a solid wall of brick, and Nathan welcomed the pain. He just wished he had swung harder.
"Easy there, mate, easy there," Archer cooed from the darkness.
Nathan concentrated on breathing. He had to be alive in order to kill Chesterfield, which meant he had to breathe. He also had to concentrate on something else before the frustration swamped him into a blubbering mess that was not going to be any help at all to Nora.
So he turned around and sank against the wall, determined to have a conversation with the man he was supposed to have shot a week ago.
"Liza?" Nathan asked, forcing his mind to focus.
"The Duchess of Chesterfield. God, what a woman. I should have known better. A woman like her." Archer was shaking his head.
"You betrayed your country for a woman?" Nathan thought of Nora again, which caused the anger to surge briefly, but he squashed it down and rethought the validity of his question. "Never mind," he said.
"Oh yes, what a woman. But now it doesn't really matter, does it? I'm titled and all."
Nathan knew he had been whacked pretty hard and his mind was wandering to another subject quite a bit, but he also knew this conversation should be going more smoothly for him.
"What does your title have to do with this?"
Archer did not say anything for a while as if he were studying Nathan. Nathan felt the urge to smooth his hair, which was ridiculous. Maybe he should punch the wall again.
"You really don't know anything at all, do you?"
Nathan's eyeballs were going to fall out of his head. He leaned his head back against a cold, hard surface. The cold seeped into his head, and he thought it would make it feel better, but laying one's head against a brick wall was never very comfortable for long.<
br />
"No, I don't know anything," Nathan mumbled.
Archer rustled in the dark, and his voice came back at Nathan, somehow closer. "What would I get in return for what I know?"
Nathan rolled his head in Archer's direction. "I won't kill you."
Archer laughed. "That's not a very good return considering you're in a dungeon."
"Fine, tell me what you know and then I will kill you."
Archer laughed again. "Did you not hear what I just said? You can't kill me."
"Not right now. But when Chesterfield comes around, I can keep you from getting killed or I can let you be killed."
Archer stopped laughing. "What are you talking about?"
"I'm talking about eight months of letters to, what was the name, Liza, or should I call her Lady Lover?"
Nathan let out the breath he had been holding when he heard the outstandingly loud gulp. Nobody in the War Office had actually known who Lady Lover had been, and he had taken a very large gamble in assuming that Lady Lover was indeed this Liza Archer for whom he had committed treason.
"What do you want to know?" Archer asked.
Nathan would have smiled if it had not hurt so much and if he had not been grinding his teeth quite so hard.
"Everything."
"He's kidnapping titled men. Figures he'll pawn them off for the highest price."
Nathan held up a hand.
"Wait. Who is kidnapping titled men and why?"
"Chesterfield. He has desperate orders from above. Kidnap titled men and auction them off. Ransom them if he has to. Napoleon needs liquid assets."
"And he thinks selling noblemen is a good idea?"
"I said desperate. Not good," Archer was speaking quickly. Too quickly.
"What else?" Nathan prompted.
Archer's shape shrugged its shoulders.
Nathan forced himself not to hurt his hands by gripping the iron bars too tightly.
"What else, Archer? Or am going to call your mate Chesterfield down here and tell him all about the milky white skin of Lady Lover's-"
"All right, all right." Archer's head was swinging madly in the gloom, looking for eavesdroppers.
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