Part of her screamed inside, yelling at her to give the money back, that she had indeed been nothing more than an object of pity, something she despised and did everything to avoid. Until now. How could she give this gift back, when all by itself, it could almost pay for her passage to America? The rest of her savings could go toward room and board, food, and even getting a start on her shop. Davis smiled at her once more, a sight that melted her heart like butter on a skillet. In a trice, he was back at the top of the stairs. He didn’t go inside, just waved her direction. With the interior light behind him, she couldn’t make out his features any longer. She waved back, turned, and headed for the pathway, keeping her hand protectively over her bulging apron pocket.
Chapter Seven
Anne couldn’t help but walk practically sideways as she stole glances at Davis with every other step. He didn’t go back inside until she’d left the light of the yellow glow of the gas lantern outside the door of the Hamptons’ impressive residence. The facade had columns between window bays, making for a powerful-looking building.
When she crossed into the full dark of night, she turned back one last time just as the front door clicked shut. As when Davis and Clara had visited her at the shop and taken her for a turn about Berkeley Square, her mouth opened wide in a smile, a feeling both foreign and welcome, and she savored the accompanying sensations of gooseflesh breaking across her skin and delicious shivers of joy. As she walked into the center of Grosvenor Square, following one of the well-tended paths of the gardens, she slowed and wished Miss Hampton hadn’t appeared; perhaps the conversation with Davis would have lasted longer. He seemed to enjoy speaking with her and find her agreeable.
Might he even think me a little pretty? The thought made her mouth widen farther. She must have looked ridiculous smiling so wide that the paddle from a butter churn could have fit in the space. She retraced her path through Grosvenor Square, but in such a dreamy state that she failed to notice the leg of a bench that was askew. The toe of her right boot caught the curlicue metal, pitching her forward.
A cry of surprise escaped her throat, and she was in the air just long enough to realize that on crashing to the ground, her precious coins would go flying in all directions. Most would be lost to her forever, as she had no way to hunt them all out in the nighttime, and by the time she returned at daylight, others would have already pocketed them. She remained airborne long enough for those thoughts to flash through her mind, and then she landed with a heavy thump. Her arms bore the brunt of the force. They stung even as she grimaced, first at pain, but then at the thought that the blow might have ground mud stains into her sleeves or dress, though hopefully her apron had protected some of it.
Shakily, she pressed herself off the ground and got to her knees, then reached for the pocket, afraid she’d find it empty. Indeed, the pocket lacked most of the money, though by some good fortune, a few coins remained. Through the fabric, she could not tell which coins remained. Shaking her head to clear it, she reached for the rogue bench and clung to it as a support to get back to her feet. She’d only just regained her footing when something—or rather, someone—shoved her back to the dirt path with such force that her face slammed down and scraped against the surface. A hand gripped the side of her face with a viselike grip and pressed her cheek into the rough path. The man’s fingers felt like hot pokers digging into her skin.
He pressed his weight onto her, flattening her under his heft. So compressed were her lungs that she could not get a full breath, could not call for help. After a shuffle of footsteps and some whispered orders, she felt another weight, this time on her legs, as a second person sat on the backs of her knees and tied her ankles together.
Are these highwaymen? The thought came to her with no small measure of panic. What will they do to me? Who will ever think to inquire after me? With no family or friends, who would miss her? If she didn’t appear at work in the morning, Mrs. Argus might wonder at her absence, but would likely replace her instead of notifying a constable of Anne’s disappearance. Such was the life of an old maid of no name or consequence.
“Please,” she managed, so quietly she wasn’t sure her captors would hear it. “Let me . . . go.”
“Not likely, Miss Preston,” the first man sneered directly into her ear. Hank. As she lived and—sort of—breathed, it was definitely Hank. That meant the other man was almost certainly Eric.
She tried to look at them, but Hank pressed the side of her face into the ground even harder.
“You’re not getting away that easily, you aren’t.”
Eric chuckled at that. “No, indeed. Not after what you did, and not after this.” He yanked the rope tight, drawing her ankles together with such force that the bones slammed together. She whimpered.
Eric continued working the knot and then tucked in the end. “Cry all you want, old lady. It won’t do you a bit of good.”
Hank leaned down to her ear again, and when he spoke, his words were breathy, as if a snake were whispering in her ear. “After getting us thrown out of the hotel stables with nothing, you’ll deserve everything you get.”
Anne pressed her eyes together, tight, as if blocking out her sight would also block out reality. “But I didn’t—”
But Hank’s weight cut off her words as well as her breath. He ground her face into the dirt so hard that she prayed her face wouldn’t be permanently marked from cuts and scrapes. She didn’t try to speak again.
“There, all tied up,” Eric said, and he wiped his hands together, as if he’d completed a project to be proud of.
She’d done nothing that would have led to their dismissal. While she found their teasing to be vexing, she’d never want to do anything to send someone to the poorhouse or debtor’s prison. Ever. The rich did that to the poor. Those with power and influence. The stable hands knew as well as she did that no person of money or nobility would have listened to her on such matters—she didn’t have the influence to get them relieved from their positions.
They blame me because of Davis. Her eyes opened in fear, and she stared into the darkness, hoping they’d let her go. She tried to ignore the yellow glow of lanterns along the edges of the square—especially the one visible if she looked in the direction she’d come from.
He’d had no idea what he was doing. He just wanted to help me.
When she stopped struggling and trying to speak, Eric and Hank got off her. Before she could relish inhaling a lungful of welcome night air, Hank grabbed her under her arms and lugged her to her feet. He held her in place with an iron grip on her shoulders. She tried to wrench away, but Hank grabbed the back of her hair and yanked her backward into his chest. She gasped at the pain.
“Don’t. Move.” His tone was so dark that she wouldn’t have recognized it as Hank’s if she hadn’t already known it was him.
Anne managed a nod—rather, several half nods in succession, due to her weakness and utter terror. He shoved her back to standing, then released her hair. She got no reprieve from pain, however, as he didn’t release her shoulders but rather held on even tighter. She’d be covered in bruises by morning.
“No talking, neither,” Eric said as he proceeded to tie her wrists behind her back.
Fully restrained, her feet together at an awkward angle, Anne tried to maintain her balance, but Hank raised a boot and shoved her with such force that she fell to her knees and rolled onto her back. Her arms flared with pain, twisted and bound as they were with her own weight upon them.
Through shock and the threat of tears and burning anger, she managed, “Why?”
“Why?” Hank repeated in a voice of disdain. “Why? As if you don’t know.”
“I—I don’t. Honest.” Her eyes burned with welling tears. Would she be alive tomorrow? Would she live another day to ice one more cake? Would she live long enough to dream one more time of opening a shop in America?
Eric squatted down before her, but his face was little more than various indistinct dark shapes. Even so, she�
�d have recognized the voice and tilt of the head anywhere. “What did you expect us to do when you had your American friend demand our dismissal, with not so much as a penny to buy our next meals with and no scrap of recommendation? Did you think we’d be happy to starve on the streets?”
“We did consider that option,” Hank said, now walking slowly around her, as if circling a prisoner ready to be tortured. “But seeing as such a plan is only too likely to succeed, which would mean our imminent deaths, we thought that first, we’d enact vengeance on the old lady who brought this fate upon us.”
“Yes,” Eric agreed. He grinned; she could tell by the moonlight reflecting off his crooked teeth. “Consider it our own brand of vengeance, as it were.”
“What are you going to do with me?” She tried to sound brave but failed. Her voice trembled with each word. She tried to wriggle free of her bonds, tried to kick the men in the kneecaps, anything to get free, but with each attempt, one of them kicked her hard with the sole of his boot. In her stomach, in her ribs, in her head. All until she saw stars and wondered that she was still conscious, or alive.
“Let’s show her what we’ll do,” Hank said.
“Yes, let’s,” Eric agreed.
“First we do this . . .” Hank kicked her in the ribs again. Pain exploded through her side.
“And this.” Another kick, likely from Eric, this one to a soft spot on her lower back. She cried out, certain she was about to die.
“That is what we will do to you,” Eric sneered again. “And this!” He kicked her in the stomach, making her bend in half.
She retched onto the path, shaking. She hadn’t eaten in hours, and hunger, combined with such an assault, made thinking clearly impossible. As much as she prayed for the kicks to stop, she tried to stay awake, for if they succeeded in knocking her out cold, she wouldn’t be able to make any protest at all. They’d find transporting her elsewhere that much simpler.
And who knew what they’d do to her then.
Chapter Eight
Somewhere in the periphery of her mind, Anne sensed that she should call for help. Not that she could. Each breath took effort and sent shocks of pain through her. She couldn’t get enough air to so much as say a word of protest or pleading for the boys to stop. And who would hear her, even if she could cry out? If they’d cornered her behind the mansion, plenty of drivers waiting to take their lords and ladies away from the party would have been witnesses.
Precisely why they did this here instead. They must have placed the order at Gunter’s. They’d even requested front-door delivery.
The quietness of the night was broken by a carriage pulling into the square. Hank’s hold on her tightened, and Eric stepped forward, searching the street beyond Grosvenor Square, where the clopping of hooves seemed to be approaching from.
“Someone’s arriving late,” Hank muttered under his breath.
“Stupid, rich fools,” Eric added.
“You’ll keep your mouth shut and hide behind that hedge.” Hank spoke the words into her face so that spittle landed in her eyes.
Not reacting with disgust took everything in her power. He jerked her to her feet by one arm and pulled her forward to the hiding place. But he must have forgotten that she couldn’t walk with her ankles bound, let alone run. She pitched forward and nearly landed on the ground. When her entire weight hung from her arm in his grip, the pain was so intense that she wished she had collapsed to the ground. The carriage entered the square. Hank and Eric froze in place for a moment, then dropped to the ground. Anne ducked of her own accord.
Let them be distracted by the carriage. She needed time to think and catch a breath, then find a way to escape.
The driver alighted and opened the carriage door. A man and woman exited, and then the carriage was back on its way, heading around back to the mews, as the couple climbed the short staircase. The man used the elaborate brass knocker, and the couple waited. Anne ached. Oh how quickly her fortunes had shifted. But a moment before, by that very door, a handsome American had smiled at her and treated her with so much kindness that she’d descended the stairs with a pocket bulging with coins. Now she was the prisoner of two men she’d once thought of as mischievous and troublesome but not dangerous.
She felt a trickle at her temple and realized she must be bleeding. She licked her lips uneasily and tasted blood. From her nose? Her mouth? She didn’t know. With her hands bound behind, she couldn’t touch her face to find out.
“Don’t you think about yelling,” Hank snarled in her ear. He must have seen her mouth open when she licked her lips. He reached into his ragged coat pocket and pulled out a short blade. He held it just high enough for the dim light to gleam off the sharp edge. Anne’s stomach soured with fear. “Are we understood?”
She nodded several times, not taking her eye from the blade. Her heart beat so hard and so fast that it was a wonder she hadn’t fainted.
The door to the mansion opened, and her chest expanded with a drop of hope. Please let it be Davis answering again, she thought—begged—the heavens. Hank narrowed his eyes at her and twisted the knife nearer to her throat.
She swallowed hard, still sending her plea heavenward. Hank returned his attention to the mansion, and Anne began working at the knot binding her wrists. She’d already managed to loosen the rope slightly with twisting and pulling motions. If she could loosen it a bit more, she’d be able to wrest the rope free of one hand. But she couldn’t allow Hank or Eric to know that, so she kept her attention on the mansion door or on Hank’s blade.
The door finally opened. The face illuminated by the lantern was that of a sixty-year-old man. He bowed and gestured for the couple to enter. Not Davis, then. The butler. Her soaring hopes crashed, creating a heavy pit of fear in her middle. She worked the rope over her knuckles, and her left hand came free. But how could she flee the situation without help? She couldn’t outrun Hank and Eric on a good day, and certainly not tonight when she was weak and in pain all over from what they’d done to her.
The couple entered the mansion, and the butler moved to close the door. She willed it to stay open, for somehow it seemed that if it closed entirely, her doom would be sealed.
“Ho, Mr. Sainsbury,” a voice said from inside. The door hadn’t closed all the way yet, only partially.
Like a butterfly testing its new wings, Anne’s hope fluttered, but hesitantly, unsure. That voice. The door continued to move, cutting off light from inside as it did so. Only a slice of light a few inches wide. Time and opportunity were both nearly spent.
“Mr. Sainsbury,” the voice—clearly Mr. Whitledge—said.
Knife or no knife, she had to act. “Davis!”
“Have y—” His voice cut off, and the night stilled as if a heavy blanket had been draped over the square. Even the crickets had silenced as if on cue.
Anne glanced at Hank. What would he do now? He looked stunned into paralysis; he gaped at her as if he’d forgotten he had a weapon—as if she were a weapon. Almost as if he feared her.
Davis stepped outside, onto the top stair. “Miss Preston?” he called into the darkness.
“Here!” she yelled, fully expecting Hank to grind her face into the ground to silence her.
Hank pressed the point of the knife against her throat; she sucked in her breath and held it. He leaned close, the stench of alcohol hitting her as he spoke. “Make one more sound . . .”
With one hand held over his eyes, as if shielding them from the noonday sun, Davis took each of the four stairs slowly, then stopped on the walkway and peered forward, searching the dark square again. “Miss Preston?” he called once more. “Are you there? Are you well?”
Once again, Hank pushed the blade into her skin. A high-pitched whimper escaped her. Hank slapped his hand over her mouth, almost covering her nose and cutting off most of her air. But he’d acted too late; Davis’s attention snapped toward them. He’d heard her.
“Who’s there?” Davis said. “Whoever you are, release Miss
Preston at once.”
She wanted to yell again, knife notwithstanding. If it were daytime, he’d have easily spotted them only a stone’s throw away. But the darkness, the extra shadows cast by foliage, and the light behind him all made seeing into the paths of the park difficult. With his beefy hand still over her mouth, Hank wrapped his other arm around her and held her fast to his chest. Would he notice that her hands were no longer bound?
She slowly moved her left hand to her pocket and wrapped her fingers about the remaining coins. Only the briefest of regrets crossed her mind at the thought of losing them, too. Better to lose them than suffer who knew how much more at the hands of these filthy scoundrels.
Anne withdrew her fist from her pocket, the coins folded inside. With all her might, she threw them into the darkness. Hank started with a jerk. Startled, Eric jumped to his feet, looking ready to run for his life. Precisely as she’d hoped, her aim went true. At least a few of the coins went far enough to ping against the cobbled street.
Davis’s attention snapped that direction, and he ran toward the park, calling over his shoulder. “Sainsbury, fetch Mr. Cowley’s security!”
He scanned the area left and right but still squinted, clearly not seeing well, as his eyes adjusted to the darkness.
Careful, Anne thought, wishing she could tell him to watch for two men, one with a knife. And while Davis wasn’t lacking in strength, he hadn’t made his way in life through physical labor as Hank and Eric had, something their thick arms bore witness to. Two of them and a knife against the American did not seem like good odds. But then Davis reached across to his left coat pocket and withdrew the smallest revolver Anne had ever seen. Relief washed over her in a wave.
“A gun!” Eric said urgently and with not a little fear.
“Shut your mouth,” Hank retorted.
Davis’s even boot steps calmed Anne’s heart as he approached, even as she feared the unknown. When he reached the gravel-covered pathway, he planted his feet and waited, his revolver at the ready. Hank and Eric’s attention was fully on Davis.
A Night in Grosvenor Square Page 14