What he hadn’t imagined was having Minerva tied to a chair beside him in a derelict ruin that stank of rot and sewage. Somewhere along the way she’d lost half the pins in her hair, so most of that long selkie pelt was falling down her shoulders. Her redingote looked rumpled and dusty, and one of the faux militaristic epaulettes that he’d thought made her look rather like a female martinet had been ripped off. But other than that, the smudge of dirt on her nose, and the fact that she was as stuck to her chair as he was, she seemed to be unharmed.
In an extremely bad mood, but unharmed.
“Finally!” she said, scowling at him through her fallen hair.
It was comforting—and a bit daunting—to know that being abducted and tied up did nothing to dampen her temper. Though he did think he detected a bit of worry behind her flashing eyes. “I’ve been trying to rouse you for ages.”
She made it sound like it was his fault he’d been unconscious, though he felt rather confident that for once it wasn’t.
“What the devil happened?” he managed, though even speaking softly made his head spin and his stomach churn.
“We’ve been abducted, obviously,” she snapped.
It was a bit obvious, he supposed, but she didn’t have to look at him as if he were an idiot. “Yes, but why? How?”
“Why? I haven’t a clue, though I’m guessing it’s your fault somehow,” she accused.
He snorted and then wished he hadn’t, for it made the throbbing in his head even worse. “Of course it is,” he muttered.
“As for how, do you not remember?” she continued, sounding a bit worried underneath all of that venom.
He thought as hard as he could until his head felt as if it were about to launch itself to the moon. The last thing he recalled was arguing with her in the shrubbery along the Serpentine, and the smell of burning trees and leather, and . . .
Dear God, the bonfire. His books. That speech. He remembered everything now.
He flushed all over with renewed embarrassment. He’d never been comfortable speaking in front of large groups, much less making a public declaration.
Which had been rather thoroughly rejected—a caveat for going against his instincts if there ever was one.
He blamed Sebastian. And Montford. Definitely Montford with all of that talk of special licenses and grand romantic gestures. How could he have ever taken advice from a man who had wooed his bride by winning a drunken footrace?
He cleared his throat and looked everywhere but at Minerva. “The last thing I remember was chasing you into the shrubbery after you rejected me in front of the entire world.” If he sounded a little bitter, then that was because he was.
She growled at him and looked as if she wanted to kick his shins again. He shifted his legs away from her just in case.
“I did not . . . For the love of . . . Are you sulking now?”
“I’m not sulking,” he said, even though it wasn’t the least bit true. “But that is the last thing I recall. You wanted to know.”
She sighed. “Fine. You followed me into the shrubbery, and a ruffian came out of nowhere and coshed you on the head. I tried to run away, but he coshed me too, put us both in a carriage, and drove us here. We’re on the South Bank, I believe.”
Marlowe’s blood began to boil with fury at her recounting of events. “Did he hurt you?”
“My hand’s a bit bruised from punching him in the face, and I’ve a knot on my head, but other than that, I’m fine.”
His blood boiled even hotter. No one was allowed to manhandle Minerva. Besides himself, of course.
But at least she’d managed a decent bit of resistance. He didn’t doubt the potency of her right hook. She was a hellcat, after all.
“Now it’s your turn to explain what you’ve done to land us in this mess,” she snapped.
Well, that seemed unfair of her. But she was always quick to judgment. “Why do you think this is my fault?”
She looked at him incredulously. “Since I’ve met you, you’ve had me sacked, written a poem about my hip, blackmailed a duke, and had a prizefight with your own father over the dinner table.”
“I was entirely justified in my actions—other than the sacking, of course,” he finished contritely when the look she leveled on him could have frozen hell. “And the hip.”
“My point is,” she gritted out, “you’re the one with the long list of enemies, not me.”
He understood that she had every right to be angry right now, but she was being entirely unfair. His list of enemies was very short, thank you very much, as it contained only one name—Poxley—and the man was probably halfway to Egypt by now. Old Manwaring was dead—may his soul rot in hell—and as far as Marlowe was concerned, his fight with the French had ended with the Treaty of Paris.
And while he and his father felt a mutual antipathy, the earl would never stoop to hiring a third party to abduct him. The earl’s assaults were mostly verbal these days, and when they weren’t, they tended to involve his fists. Obviously. Barming would be satisfied with nothing less than injuring Marlowe by his own hand, not someone else’s. He was refreshingly predictable that way.
Marlowe had no time to defend against her accusations, however, before the villain himself descended upon them.
“Already cavorting with another woman, I see. I knew you were never deserving of Miss Honeywell,” a voice boomed from the doorway at his back, cutting their argument short.
Marlowe didn’t know whether he was relieved or annoyed by the interruption, since he and Minerva were finally making progress (i.e. speaking to each other). But he was certainly confused at the mention of Miss Honeywell. He knew a handful of females with that particular surname, but none of them had anything to do with him, last he’d checked.
Marlowe craned his neck around to find a short, paunchy man with a smattering of scraggly brown hair combed over the crown of his head marching in his direction, eyes glittering with a fury bordering on madness.
Definitely not Poxley, then.
The man was grinning victoriously at Marlowe, but that grin faded, and his confident swagger faltered shortly after Marlowe turned his head.
“Who the hell are you?” the man squeaked out in dismay, his once glittering eyes now wide with shock. “You’re not Montford.”
“No, I’m not,” Marlowe said, as thoroughly baffled by this turn of events as his captor. He gave Miranda a quick, smug grin. “I told you it weren’t about me.”
She just rolled her eyes.
He turned back to the squat little man. “And I’d like to know who the bloody hell you are, if you wouldn’t mind.”
The man’s face reddened in rage, and he stomped back to the door, bellowing for someone named Jem. He then stomped around the room for a moment in a temper, kicking at the cracked plaster and muttering to himself before turning back to them and glowering, as if it were their fault he’d kidnapped the wrong people.
A few moments later, a tall, weedy man with greasy blond hair and a swelling eye barreled into the room, skidding to a stop next to the other man.
“Wot’s it, gov?” the man—who must have been the aforementioned Jem—shot out breathlessly, side-eyeing Minerva with trepidation and giving her chair a wide berth.
“You!” Minerva breathed, struggling against her bonds as if ready to pounce upon the man.
Jem jumped back a few steps and touched his injured eye.
Minerva shot Marlowe a dark look. “He’s the one who coshed us over the head.”
“It weren’t personal. Just following orders, missy,” the man said rather querulously, holding up his hands placatingly.
“No, not following orders at all, you . . . you imbecile!” the paunchy man raged.
“Wot!” Jem looked totally baffled.
The man jabbed his finger at Marlowe with such violence Marlowe was rather surprised the air around it didn’t shatter. “That is not the Duke of Montford!”
“Wot?” Jem cried, bafflement swiftly giving
way to alarm. “But that’s not right now, is it? ’Cause you said as how ’is nibs were the tall one with dark hair in the silver jacket, and ’e were the only one in a silver jacket as far as I could see.”
Marlowe groaned. He’d known the minute he’d put on his friend’s jacket that he’d been making a horrible sartorial blunder, but he’d never dreamed that it would come to this.
“Are ye sure it ain’t him?” Jem asked hopefully.
The man just glared at his associate.
Jem turned to Marlowe instead with an imploring look—as if Marlowe could, perhaps, make himself into the right person with enough incentive.
“I’m fairly certain I’m not the Duke of Montford,” Marlowe drawled. “But I am wearing his jacket.”
Jem looked somewhat mollified that he’d gotten that much correct, until he glanced at his furious companion. His expression crumbled. “Does that mean I woan be gettin’ the rest of my blunt?”
The man growled and stalked in Marlowe’s direction without answering, pulling a pistol from the back of his breeches. That rather changed the game . . . and in a way Marlowe was sure to loathe.
“Who are you?” the man demanded, pointing the gun at Marlowe’s head as he neared.
The smell of something foul assaulted Marlowe’s nostrils—foul and familiar. He had more than a passing acquaintance with the sewer-ripe stench of the Thames at low tide after his ill-fated bath in it last winter, but it was not an acquaintance he’d wanted to pursue. He was fairly certain that the odor was emanating from their captor, for the closer he came, the more the stench intensified.
“What’s that horrible smell?” he demanded, breathing through his mouth.
The man faltered back a few steps and glared down accusingly at his boots, his ruddy complexion darkening even further.
Marlowe looked to Minerva, who seemed a bit green about the gills as well, but he wasn’t sure if it was from the smell or the pistol. Marlowe himself was a bit concerned about the latter, of course, considering it was trained on his head, but he had no intention of letting harm befall his governess. If the odorous little man so much as touched a hair on her head, Marlowe wasn’t going to be held accountable for his actions.
As for Jem’s manhandling . . .
Marlowe fixed the stringy Jem with a look that made all of the color drain from his face, his Adam’s apple working up and down nervously.
“Don’t try to turn the subject,” the paunchy man said. “Who are you?”
“I am the Viscount Marlowe,” he declared with as much authority as he could muster with a head wound and bound wrists.
Minerva snorted next to him.
Well, apparently not even the appearance of their abductors and a gun were enough to scare her out of her righteous indignation.
The lunatic looked between them with a furrowed brow. “Then he’s not the Viscount Marlowe?” he demanded.
Minerva scowled at him. “He’s Christopher Essex apparently,” she said reproachfully.
Marlowe guffawed. He had to question her decision to continue their argument while an obvious lunatic waved a gun in their faces. “Are we really going to have this out now, Minerva? In the middle of our bloody abduction?”
She shrugged and refused to meet his eyes. “Why not? It’s obvious they’ve abducted the wrong person. They wanted Montford, not you.”
“This is true.” Marlowe glanced at his captor. “What did you want with the duke anyway?”
The man looked two seconds from full-on apoplexy, as if offended to his core that they shouldn’t already know. “He ruined me! Had the courts send me to New South Wales simply because of a woman. Do you know what it’s like there?”
Marlowe’s coshed brain finally slotted the pieces together. “You’re Lightfoot, aren’t you?” he breathed. “You abducted Astrid and tried to force her to marry you!”
“The girl didn’t know what was best for her . . .” the man muttered miserably.
Minerva made a loud, disparaging sound at this.
“How the devil did you make it back here from Australia?” Marlowe asked, because he’d really like to know. It was . . . impressive. And a bit alarming. Montford had always told him how insane Lightfoot had been, but he’d not truly believed his friend until now. The man certainly had the eyes of a lunatic.
“Stop trying to change the subject,” Lightfoot barked. “Whoever you are, you’re wearing the duke’s jacket. Is this some elaborate scheme of his? Has he discovered I am returned and sent you as bait to flush me out?”
Marlowe was rather impressed at the extent of the man’s paranoia. “Nothing like that, I can assure you. He loaned it to me.”
“Ha! Likely story. If you are indeed Christopher Essex—which I highly doubt—there is no way the pompous Duke of Montford would loan you anything, much less associate with the likes of you,” Lightfoot declared.
Well, that was just not on. Marlowe had spent the entire afternoon battling dragons masquerading as bombazine-clad society matrons intent on burning England’s literary establishment to the ground. He didn’t really feel up to defending himself against felonious ex-brewers who were one step away from Bedlam.
“So you don’t like my poetry?” he taunted.
“I prefer prose,” Lightfoot growled. “Now tell me what the duke is planning.”
He sighed. The man was certainly tenacious in his delusions. “Last I heard? He was planning on visiting the archbishop to petition for a special license.”
Lightfoot looked baffled. “How can that be? Is he not wed to Miss Honeywell?” A strange gleam came into his eyes at the possibility that Astrid was still unwed.
As much as the duchess annoyed him sometimes, Marlowe shuddered on her behalf. Lightfoot was just . . .
No. God, no.
“He was to accompany me to the archbishop,” he amended.
“What?” Minerva cried.
He could feel his cheeks heat. He’d not exactly planned out how he was going to climb back into her good graces after his latest failure at Hyde Park, much less propose marriage. He certainly hadn’t expected to do so when they were both tied to chairs by a lunatic with a grudge. But he had learned his lesson about dragging his feet where Minerva was concerned.
“We meant to go today,” he said defensively. “After that business in Hyde Park—though that was wishful thinking, wasn’t it? I suppose he wouldn’t go there now, not without me. It’s not as if he’s the one who is planning on proposing marriage . . .” He trailed off and squirmed in his seat at the look of utter incredulity on Minerva’s face.
“Are you . . . are you asking . . . ?”
“Yes?” he prompted.
“Are you proposing . . . marriage? To me? Right now?” Her voice had started off soft but had ended up alarmingly shrill at the end.
This was not a good sign.
But the sudden loosening in the ropes around his wrists was. His last contortion had finally managed to unravel the final knot. They’d apparently been abducted by rank amateurs. It was rather insulting how easy it had been to free himself. He thought it best to bide his time, however, until he found his way around the pistol. If the idiots had even managed to load it properly.
“I might be. Yes, I am,” he said.
“Now. In the middle of our abduction?” She sounded extremely unimpressed.
He scowled at her. “Well, should I wait? Perhaps after they’ve shot us and thrown our bodies into the Thames?” She winced at that. “Someone said to me quite recently, in fact, that I was a coward for not telling you the truth sooner . . .”
“You didn’t tell me,” she interrupted hotly. “I found out! From your sister! After you seduced me under false pretenses!”
Ugh. She was never going to let that go. “Forgive me for being caught up in the moment with the woman I love. Besides, whatever you believe, I did plan to tell you that morning, but you ran away.” He squeezed his eyes shut and tried to tamp down his irritation, and he surreptitiously shucked the r
opes from his wrists. “And I have never hid who I truly am from you. I just happen to write a few poems under a nom de plume.”
He grimaced inwardly at this rather weak justification, but when he opened his eyes, Minerva was staring at him with wide eyes, her expression softened to something almost tender. He was so used to seeing her in a temper these days that the look totally confounded him. “What? What happened?” he demanded. “What did I say?”
“The woman you love?” she asked softly.
Oh. Oh. He could feel his body heat all over from that tone in her voice, a tone he’d not heard from her since she’d been beneath him on his bedroom settee.
“Yes, of course the woman I love,” he said gruffly, feeling quite at the end of his tether. “What the devil do you think I’ve been trying to tell you all this time? And today, when I made an arse of myself in front of the entire ton?” Not that that was anything new.
“You’ve never once said that,” she murmured, looking rather uncertain. “That you love me.”
“Have I not? And how can it not be perfectly obvious? Of course, of course I love you.”
She huffed a breath and wrinkled her nose, looking remarkably unconvinced, even after he’d just torn his heart out and laid it at her feet. Again. “Well, it’s not obvious to me. I thought . . . well, I don’t know what I thought. And your little spectacle today did nothing to convince me you were so . . . committed.”
He guffawed in disbelief. “Are you joking?”
She glared at him. “Byron? Really?”
“How is my recitation of one of the most romantic poems ever written not enough of a declaration?”
She just pursed her lips and refused to meet his eyes. As if he should be able to read her mind on the matter.
He looked to his two captors for guidance before he remembered how stupid an idea that was, all things considered. Lightfoot was just glancing between the two of them as if they were the lunatics, but Jem scratched his head in consideration and shrugged.
Regency Romp 03 - The Alabaster Hip Page 33