by Gaelen Foley
“Shut him up!”
“Derek, please, don’t fight them!” Her call fell like soft cool water on his burning face.
“You listen to the little lady, Major.” Bates had hold of him now, judging by the voice. “She’s got good advice for ye there.”
Still struggling, he was gagged with a foul cloth while two others held him down and clapped his wrists in irons.
“Get ’im in the coach,” Lundy grunted. “Maguire, bring his ’orse.”
Bates and Jones hauled Derek roughly to his feet. He tried to resist with sharp and angry movements, nailing one of them in the stomach with his elbow, but all it got him was a hearty punch in the gut from Bates.
Lundy’s ex-prizefighter coachman nearly knocked the breath out of him. “Hard or easy, Major,” Bates said evenly. “It’s up to you.”
The gag across his mouth muffled the obscenity with which he responded. The next thing he knew, he was thrown into a vehicle. At once, it started away.
Back at Edward’s castle-house, Lily was locked in a Gothic bedchamber on the third floor to await her fate.
Meanwhile, they had imprisoned Derek in the large metal cage normally reserved for Edward’s vicious fight dog. After chaining Brutus to a tree below Lily’s window, Edward had ordered his men to drag the cage into the stable, the better to conceal its new occupant, their prisoner. Lily could see the stable from her bedroom window, but she had not caught another glimpse of Derek since they had arrived an hour ago.
For a while, she had paced back and forth across the eerie, dark-paneled room, pounding on the heavy wooden door for them to let her out, but nobody came. Below her window, Brutus barked incessantly, perhaps spooked by the wind, which had picked up. Gusts rattled the window panes now and then as Lily curled herself into the window seat and stared out anxiously into the pitch-black night.
She could not stop thinking about Derek. Indeed, she was half frantic with concern over his welfare. How badly was he hurt? They had hit him so many times. That first blow to the head had looked awful, but the spice powder in his eyes was their cheap way of rendering him a more manageable foe. That had to have been extremely painful.
She hoped it had worn off by now.
For as long as she lived, she would never forget those excruciating moments in that alley. She could still recall in detail the cautious way he had approached, like he had sensed something was wrong. But he had come anyway. Why? Out of concern for her?
The thought of what he had just gone through and being unable to go and check on him was driving her mad! If only there were some way to make him understand she was trying to save him, not destroy him. She had done what she’d had to do to save his life.
The ghostly reflection of her face in the window pane wore an expression of despair as she stared out toward the stable. She touched the glass, wishing there were some way she could get to him.
The flickering flames from the candelabra were superimposed over her image in the glass like golden tears, but when the window’s mirrorlike reflection also showed her the huge canopied bed behind her, a frightening fortress-mound of sharp carven spires, Lily looked away.
Her skin felt ice-cold, but her heart was still numb to her fate. She had agreed to this devil’s bargain because there was no other way. She had to save Derek. What other choice had she had? At her wits’ end, she dragged her hand slowly through her hair. Perhaps it was best if Derek never knew…
The sound of shuffling movement in the hallway outside the locked door of her chamber broke into Lily’s thoughts just then. She whirled around and stared at the door, her heart suddenly pounding in dread.
Edward.
The blood drained from her face. Oh, God, had the time come already to fulfill her end of the bargain?
She knew that Edward had been holed up in his office in a late-night meeting with the corrupt East India Company sea captain whom he was bribing to smuggle Derek out of England. They must have arrived at some agreement. It sounded as if their meeting was done.
Holding her torn riding habit together, Lily moved away from the window and prowled toward the center of the dimly lit chamber, prepared to meet her fate with her head held high. She was not going to hide by the wall, cringing. She was a Balfour, by God. She would not give this low brute the pleasure of seeing her cower.
Perhaps Derek’s brash courage in the midst of being beaten by several men had inspired her to go down fighting. Hearing the jangle of metal as the big, awkward key plundered the lock, she did her best to force away an unnerving flash of terror over what would soon befall her.
But when the heavy door swung open with a ponderous creak, it was not Edward who appeared on the threshold.
One of his surly underlings came slouching in with a tray of horrid-looking food for her very late supper. Lightheaded with the sudden relief, Lily kept her gaze down and her arms folded tightly across her chest as she waited for her acting jailor to leave again. It occurred to her to rush past him and escape out the open door, but she didn’t dare try it. If she caused trouble, they would take it out on Derek.
Even if, by some miracle, she could find a way to escape, she and Edward had a deal. She didn’t dare go back on her word while Derek was still in their grasp.
So she held her ground in chilly silence, barely breathing until the burly servant was out of the room and locking her door once again from the hallway side.
She closed her eyes with a shaky exhalation. Good Lord, that was close. Well, her fate had not been averted, only postponed.
Knowing that Edward was bound to come soon, she had no appetite for the food that had been brought to her, even less so when she lifted the tray’s lid. Underneath it she found a disgusting bowl of cold, congealing pea soup with a gnarled hambone sticking out of it, a hunk of hard bread, and some watered-down wine. Curling her lip, she replaced the lid without interest and returned to the window.
Beneath the swathe of heavy velvet curtains, she sat down on the built-in window seat and stared out again toward the stable. But when her gaze moved beyond it to the sculpted grounds of Edward’s estate, her thoughts drifted back to the night of the masked ball, meeting Derek for the first time at the garden folly. Under its silly pineapple roof, she had thought at first that she had wished him into being.
And now look at them.
Oh, if only I could do it all over again, she mused in a rising wave of sorrow, I’d have gone out on the lake with him in that gondola.
If she had known she would fall in love with him, she would have let him ruin her then and there.
Derek’s makeshift jail cell was not tall enough to allow him to stand up straight, so Lundy’s henchmen had provided him with an empty crate to sit on.
Once he was in the cage, they had freed his hands long enough to let him flush his eyes with water, warning him that if he misbehaved it was Lily who would pay for it, but he had no sooner blotted his face than he was manacled again.
Well aware of the threat to her, he had he stood obediently and let them do it.
Now he sat on the wooden box, leaning back against the metal slats of his cage, his legs stretched out before him, his wrists still bound behind his back.
His head was throbbing from the blow to the back of his skull, but his outward stillness concealed a brooding rage.
If anyone had hurt her, they would pay.
Derek wasn’t even sure how this turn had come about. What had happened while his back was turned? Something must have set Lundy off.
He hated to think that Lily might have used the information he had confided in her last night to do something she ought not to have attempted. Something rash.
All he knew was that he had to get her out of here.
How?
Well, he’d just have to figure something out.
He had heard he was being shipped off to India, to be smuggled out of England in the cargo hold of one of the Company’s many merchant ships. But these lads didn’t know him very well. He was not abou
t to go back and tell Colonel Montrose he had failed. He still had his orders: to find out what had happened to those army funds and get that damned river of gold flowing to the troops so they could beat the Maratha Empire for once and for all.
He was not about to let the likes of Ed Lundy stop him from carrying out his duty.
One step at a time. First, he would have to get rid of the shackles. This might require a bit of finesse. Lundy’s three main henchmen had been ordered to guard him.
An ugly trio. He studied them through bloodshot and aching eyes. Bates was the leader; Jones was naught but a mean-eyed thug; Maguire was the youngest, about five-and-twenty. He was missing a finger, courtesy of Brutus the dog, if Derek recalled correctly from a prior—and friendlier—visit to Lundy’s stable.
Having secured their prisoner, it was barely an hour before the three resorted to warding off boredom with a game of cards. They huddled around the light of the lantern that Maguire had placed in the center of their makeshift gaming table, a warped board resting atop a crate like the one they had given Derek.
From his shadowed cage, Derek studied them for a long moment, his raw stare unnoticed. The men were soon caught up in idle argument over their game.
The three of them and the cage with its keen metal lock were all that stood between Derek and his freedom, but he reflected that he had never killed an Englishman before. He had never anticipated having to use his warrior training on his fellow countrymen.
If they were smart, he thought, they would know when the time came to stand aside.
“Gentlemen, pardon me for disturbing your game. I don’t believe it was your intent to kill me,” he said in a rather breezy tone, “but this gash on the back of my head has not stopped bleeding even now. Might I trouble you for a length of bandage that I may bind it?”
The request and his polite tone seemed to startle them. Then Jones began laughing. “Got ’im good, didn’t ye, Bates?”
“Nothin’ personal, Major,” Bates said with a modest chuckle. “I never ’ad nothing against ye.”
“Yes, of course,” Derek answered in a gentlemanly tone.
“Maguire, get him a bandage and a wet cloth, too. No harm in letting the blackguard clean ’imself up. Took quite a beating, he did, and took it well.”
“Yes, sir.” As Maguire got up and went into the tack room, Derek stood, ducking his head under the low top of his cell. He moved to the slatted metal wall of the cage nearest the men as Maguire came back with a clean white cloth of the sort normally used for bandaging horses’ legs.
“I’ll wet it for ’im,” Jones said wickedly, taking the cloth from Maguire. The thug went over to the nearest horse’s stall, dipped the rag in the animal’s water bucket, and then wrung it out with one hand.
Bates’s magnanimity did not extend to stifling Jones’s humor. He and Maguire both laughed at this cheeky insult as Jones brought the still-dripping cloth over to Derek.
“Are you going to unlock these shackles, or would you like to clean the wound for me, as well?” he asked mildly, unable to take the rag from the man, considering that his hands were still manacled behind his back.
Jones scoffed. “I ain’t doin’ it!”
“Don’t look at me!” Maguire said. “I ain’t touchin’ ’im.”
“Ah, ye both can hang, ye useless pair o’…” Still muttering under his breath, Bates trudged over, taking the key to Derek’s manacles out of his pocket. “Turn around, you coxcomb. You try anything, we shoot you. Understood?”
“Quite.”
A moment later, Derek’s hands were free. He rubbed his chafed wrists a bit, thanked Bates for this favor like an agreeable captive, and accepted the cloth with its share of horse slobber mixed with water.
So far, so good.
He returned to his seat on the wooden crate, where he tended the lump on the back of his head in watchful silence until the men largely forgot about him again.
With a careful survey of his surroundings, he searched for any way out. Damn it, if his head were not thumping so badly, it might have been easier to come up with a plan.
“Awful quiet over there,” Jones remarked after a while, glancing warily in his direction.
“Aye,” Bates agreed, “too quiet. If you’re scheming something, you may as well forget it. Unless you want another thumping.”
“Or a bullet in the heart,” Jones muttered as he took another swig from his bottle of whisky. “Don’t care what kind of bargain your little miss made with the boss.”
Derek moved forward, his gaze homing in on Jones suddenly. “What?”
Maguire began laughing. “Rather a shame, ain’t it, seein’ as how she’s a lady and all?”
“Was,” Jones corrected.
“Aye, was. Until now!” Maguire agreed.
They both started laughing, taunting him.
“Boss said he’d have her one way or another, didn’t he?”
“Smart man, our Mr. Lundy.”
“That’s why he’s rich and we ain’t.”
“What…bargain?” Derek asked again in a deeper, nigh sinister tone. The hair on the back of his neck stood on end. He could almost feel his blood beginning to curdle in his veins.
Their hilarity expanded.
“He wants to know what bargain!”
“I’ll bet ’e does! Don’t you worry your pretty head about it, Major Knight.”
“Aye, it’s only the reason you’re still breathing,” Jones said under his breath, flashing a dark grin.
Derek got up and went to the edge of the cage, gripping the bars. “Bates.” The single word, fraught with desperation, expressed his demand for answers, but Bates hesitated.
“You might say your young Lily promised Mr. Lundy certain favors,” Maguire piped up.
“It were sweet, weren’t it, the way she pleaded for this blackguard’s life?” Jones taunted, but Bates reached across the table and smacked him in the head.
“That’s enough! Shut yer maw! He don’t need to know the rest.” He turned to Derek, cutting off his questions before he could ask them. “Never mind about it!” he ordered. “The little fool brought it on herself.”
“Burglary’s a crime, you know,” Maguire chimed in. “Mr. Lundy could’ve turned her over to the constable.”
“Burglary?” Derek looked at them as horrified understanding dawned.
“You two, not another word!” Bates ordered, pointing in his underlings’ faces.
Derek was too wary of them to beg for information; it would only give them something more to use against him. But he was beginning to piece it together.
And he blamed himself.
Oh, Lily. He closed his still-stinging eyes with a thousand curses speeding through his mind. His head throbbed harder. I will get us out of here.
Think.
He needed to create a diversion.
He had to get out of this cage, and one of these men was going to have to be a pawn in his escape.
Longing to tear them and especially Lundy apart, somehow Derek found the self-control to approach them once again with a calm, steady demeanor. Resting his elbows on the bars of his cage, he cleared his throat. “Sure could do with a drink.” He watched them with a keen stare.
“I’m not surprised, after hearing that news about your little girly friend,” Jones said with a callous chuckle.
“You’re a pain in the arse, you are,” Bates muttered at Derek. He nodded at Jones. “Give ’im some of your whisky.”
“The hell I will! Give ’im yours!”
“Do it,” Bates repeated, giving Jones an icy stare. “It’s proper-like. Ask the soldier.” He nodded toward the cage. “An Englishman does not abuse his prisoners. We ain’t savages.”
Debatable, Derek mused.
Jones snorted, but seemed to recall that Derek had dedicated his life to defending the same England they called home.
Derek hid his satisfaction.
Giving Bates a disgruntled look, Jones kicked his stool away as
he rose. He swiped the tin dipper that Maguire had been drinking from.
“Hey!” Maguire protested, but Jones ignored him, pouring a splash of his whisky into the cup and then slouching over to deliver this to Derek.
Derek waited calmly as Jones approached. He could feel the savagery that years of war had taught him, alive, surging in his veins. A dark power, his to use. He didn’t really want to hurt the man, but if it came down to it…
Lily was all that mattered at the moment.
Perhaps Jones noticed the strange look in Derek’s eyes, for he hesitated slightly and hung back, reaching out almost gingerly to hand him the cup.
His fears were well founded.
Derek disregarded the cup and grasped Jones’s forearm, yanking him forward so he smashed his face on the bars and let out a bellow. Derek spun Jones about-face and with a wrench of the man’s shoulder pulled his arm high behind his back. He thrust his left hand through the bars, catching Jones about the throat in a choking headlock.
“Unlock the cage if you want him to live.”
It happened so fast that Bates spit out his mouthful of whisky while Jones flailed in astonishment, and Maguire stared, slack-jawed.
“Do it!” Derek roared. They didn’t move fast enough. “You want to see me break his neck?” He began to squeeze, and Jones’s face started turning scarlet, strange choking sounds tumbling from his lips.
Jones’s one free hand scrabbled at the arm around his throat, but Derek ignored his struggles, only applying more pressure. “You let me out or I’ll kill him.”
“Why, you damned colonial.” Bates shot to his feet and reached for the nearby pitchfork. “You let him go or I’ll skewer you.” Bates angled the pitchfork through the slats and stabbed at Derek with it.
Derek arced his body out of the way, but when Bates took another vicious jab at him, trying to poke him full of holes, he had no choice but to release his hostage, grabbing the handle of the pitchfork instead. He wrenched it out of Bates’s hands and pulled it into the cage. In the next instant he had spun it around, prepared to use it as a weapon, but Jones, now freed, wanted his blood.