“How long?”
“Not half an hour, sir.
“Send for the magistrate,” Terence snapped as he leaped out of bed. “Have a horse ready for me, the head groom mounted as well. I trust he saw which way they went?”
“Yes, sir. Fly to the time of day is Tam Davie. Knows something havey-cavey when he sees it.” The butler straightened his shoulders, increased his customary stately pace to a near trot as he headed for the door.
“Ferris!” Terence called over his shoulder as he reached for his drawers. “Did you question Monterne’s valet?”
“Yes, sir. He was told to wake my lord at dawn . . . no matter–ah–no matter what his condition might be. Dawn without fail.”
Buggered, by God, by a madman. Terence closed his eyes, swaying slightly, before jamming his a foot into his knee-length drawers. Monterne hadn’t been faking last night. He himself was witness to every drop the viscount had poured down his throat. And yet . . . he’d allowed Monterne to outfox him. To snatch Beth right out from under his nose. The viscount had planned the whole. Last night’s battle of the bottles, the snake, catching poor Beth sound asleep, the gag . . . probably her hands tied as well, a saddled horse waiting at the door.
Pausing only to reload his guns and tuck his knife into his tweed jacket, Terence left his room on the run, carrying a leather bag with the dueling pistols inside.
Beth had long since ceased to struggle. The winding trail up to the high down behind the house was narrow and treacherous. Any distraction to Rodney or the horse could be fatal. Not that she had any doubt what Rodney intended, but the longer she could postpone the inevitable, the more likely someone would raise the alarm. Terence would come. Of course he would. Terence was always there. Terence could fix anything.
So why was she bound and gagged, being carried off to her death? Why was she married to this monster in the saddle behind her? A fine fixer, Terence was!
But what other hope did she have?
Beth wiggled her bottom, attempting to find a more comfortable perch. It was hopeless. Every clump of the horse’s hooves jarred the most intimate and delicate parts of her against the edge of the saddle. She could only hope Rodney was in agony as well. Her hands, tied in front of her, were going numb. Only the firm clamp of Rodney’s left arm was keeping her from falling off. The cloth binding her mouth cut into her flesh. Minute by minute, it seemed to come closer to cutting off her air.
Beth forced out a series of inarticulate noises, turned pleading but suitably cowed eyes, up to her husband’s face. Rodney paused their steady climb up the steep path to examine the trail behind them. Nothing moved but the slow circling of a hawk far above. Or was it a vulture? Beth wondered, unable to hide the shiver that shook her.
“Mm-m-ph!” she demanded, finding it harder this time to keep a spark of rebellion from her eyes. “Hm-m-m-m . . . ah!” she gasped as Rodney jerked the cloth away.
“Not a word,” he warned, “or I’ll strangle you right here.”
“Surely not without telling me why!” Silence. “Could you perhaps move back an inch farther?” Beth inquired with as much docility as she could manage. “I am truly quite uncomfortable.”
He laughed. The man actually laughed! In all fairness, she supposed she could see the dark humor of it. What did her comfort matter if he meant to kill her? But she felt Rodney ease back. With a sigh of relief, she wiggled tight against him . . . and was shocked to discover the swollen hardness of him. Why at a time like this? . . . But, of course. He thrived on violence. Craved it like some craved liquor or poppy juice or gaming.
The climb, with Rodney’s horse burdened by two, was slow. They rode in silence until the last U-shaped bend in the narrow trail brought them to the top. The laboring horse came to a halt, sides heaving. The down—alive with greening shoots of heather and gorse, dotted with a myriad sheep—lay before them. Was it the cliff then? Beth wondered. Did he intend to toss her down into the outer edges of the garden far below? Although her pulse raced, her mind was strangely calm, almost divorced from what was happening. Was this the clarity Terence and her father brought to crises? The ability to look at a situation—as if from above, from outside their own bodies—and decide what must be done?
She was close to death, she knew it, and yet from some inner strength she summoned the will to live. She would survive this. Truly she would. “May I ask where we’re going?” she inquired softly. Tentatively. A good little slave.
“A very pretty place,” Rodney assured her, offering the smile she’d once found so charming and now recognized as sinister. “You’ll be enchanted. A most fitting place to meet your Maker.”
A shadow swooped over the ground in front of them. The vulture. How could it know?
“Rodney,” Beth said, choosing her words with care, “if I die, you’ll lose all papa’s lovely money.’
“I’ve decided his earlier generosity is quite enough,” he responded, almost airily. “’Tis more money than the Renfrews have seen in last century or so. It’s mine, and it can’t be taken back. You, however, are weak, not up to my weight at all. The back of my hand, and you take to your bed for a week.” He dug in his heels, turned his horse south by southeast at an angle away from the cliff face. “Barren, as well,” he decreed, stern as a white-wigged judge from the high bench. “A useless bitch, no longer worth your keep. With you gone, I may marry Lady Victoria and have a bride with the proper blue blood as mother of my children.” He chuckled “My wealthy children, thanks to their father doing so well for himself in his first marriage.”
Beth’s clarity of mind threatened to slip into a whirlpool of horror. He truly meant to kill her. A cold, calculated act which had little to do with madness. She had not lived up to his expectations. Therefore she had to go. The Viscount Monterne, after all, was far from the first man to rid himself of a wealthy wife in order to marry the woman of his choice.
“Then it’s been you all along,” Beth breathed. “Even when I thought you so longed for a child—”
“Nary a bit,” Rodney declared, still oddly cheerful. “I was properly incensed by the attempts on your life. But when your dear brother arrived, I realized time had run out. He threatened me, you know, last summer before he left London. He and that bastard friend of his. Told me they’d kill me if you were harmed. I believed them. Still do. So I turned the tables on him,” Rodney chortled. “Adder in his bed last night. If your precious Terence isn’t dead, he’s close to it. Nasty things, adders.”
He didn’t know! How could he have slept through? . . . The port, of course. When Rodney was at the port, he frequently slept like the dead.
How very odd, Beth thought, but somehow her husband’s ignorance of Terence’s survival gave her a ray of hope. Rodney wasn’t omnipotent. And he was favoring his precious bay, their pace little more than plodding. He did not expect to be followed.
But Terence had been at the port as well, she recalled. Undoubtedly, he was still asleep, totally unaware of her plight. The hazy sun, still low on the horizon, seemed to dim. Beth swayed, abruptly steadied as she remembered she had a role to play. She must be shocked, appalled. Overcome by grief. Her beloved brother was dead. She let out an agonized cry, drooped in the saddle, shoulders heaving with sobs which were all too close to genuine. She was in a devil of a fix.
“How delightful,” Rodney breathed in her ear. “You’ll welcome death, instead of struggling against it. I’ve no desire to hurt you, you know. If I could let you live, I would. But divorce is such a scandal, requires an Act of Parliament, you know. You’d be ruined for life. Scorned, never able to hold up your head. Believe me, dying in a tragic accident is much to be preferred.”
Never! She’d fight him to her last breath. Terence, where are you?
“Go back!” Terence shouted to the figure on horseback two switchbacks below him on the precipitous trail.
“No!” Nell Archer shouted, guiding her horse behind the lead of one of the undergrooms. “There are others too,” she calle
d, gesturing down the hillside toward the house.
A blanket of treetops hid the stableyard far below. Terence was left to guess who else had joined the chase. Surely the magistrate couldn’t have arrived so quickly, not at this hour of the morning. Then again, he’d been told the magistrate was their nearest neighbor.
Terence urged his horse faster, knowing it was foolish. If the poor beast stumbled or cast a shoe, giving him a toss onto the precipitous slope, he’d have no way to catch up to Monterne before . . .
What if the deed was already done? What if his Beth was gone? Dark wrenching pain swept through him. Without Beth there was nothing. No sunshine, no stars or moonshine, no wind, rain, surging oceans. No beauty, no life. Just endless darkness. Pain.
Infinite rage. Revenge.
In spite of the danger of his horse falling on slippery pebbles, Terence kicked the beast into still greater effort. Monterne was riding double—he prayed Monterne was still riding double—therefore, there was a chance to catch up. With a snort, Terence’s mount crested the rise and paused, softly snuffling with equine satisfaction. Sharply, Terence scanned the undulating plain which extended out in front of him.
The trail led only to the lip of the gorge. Everywhere he looked, there were nothing but sheep. Thrice-damned sheep. But though the moor was pathless and treeless, it wasn’t totally flat. His quarry had to be here somewhere. In a hollow? Behind a rocky outcrop? But in which direction? Where?
“Over there, sahr,” said Tam Davie, pointing southeast. “There’s a dip-down in the land that’ud hide them.”
“And boulders, a high tor, over there,” Terence countered, pointing north.
“Too far, I think, sahr,” the groom countered. “We’d see them if they was making for the tor. More like, the Faeries’ Fall, I’m thinking. Aboot a mile or so south and east, it is.”
“Fall?”
“Waterfall, sahr. A big one, maybe forty feet onto granite rocks below. In t’ hollow over yon there’s a stream what runs doon to a drop into ta valley. Quiet water it is, but roars like thoonder when she drops over the edge.”
A life or death decision. The most important one he’d ever make. In his mind Terence saw it all clearly. Beth, his Beth, caught in an icy torrent, smashed like a rag doll onto the waiting rocks below. Was the clarity of his vision a sign? If so, it was the only clue he had. “The Falls it is,” he declared, and moved aside to let Tam Davie lead the way.
“You truly didn’t push me into the bog?” Beth asked Rodney, trying to keep him talking, trying to distract him from urging his horse to a faster pace.
“Most truly,” Rodney assured her. “I found you rather engaging, you know. Pretty face, nice figure—if a bit small—but well-mannered for a Cit.” Beth, straining against her bonds, longed to box his ears. “Too well educated, of course,” her husband added, “but an enticing armful in bed. I was most willing to give you a try.”
At the edge of a stream gurgling through a shallow channel in the upper tableland, Rodney turned the big bay, following the low grassy bank. “Alas, we simply didn’t suit,” he added on a sigh.
Bastard! “The cut rein?” Beth prodded.
“Oh, no, no, no! Not my work at all. Though after I came to think on it, I must concede it was quite clever. Unfortunately, I couldn’t repeat such a trick. An accident, a genuine accident was needed. Even a nobleman can hang for killing his wife.”
Beth’s only satisfaction—she doubted her husband would live long enough to hang. Terence would see to that.
But what good was vengeance if she were dead and it was Terence who was sentenced to hang? Leaving Papa, Tildy, Jack . . . and possibly Nell Archer to mourn them both.
A cold breeze seemed to pass over her as the horse came to a halt. A frisson of fear plunged all the way to her toes. For the past few minutes an unusual sound had pierced her curtain of terror. Had continued to grow, crescendoing now into a rushing thunder of water. Waterfall. She could only see the crest of it and had no desire to get any closer. This, then, was her fate.
Rodney dismounted, lifted his hands to her waist and dragged her down. Without the use of her hands for balance, Beth landed awkwardly, oddly chagrined as she teetered back against the horse’s sweaty flank, giving every appearance of being as insignificant and weak as he thought she was.
Naturally, Rodney smiled. See, I said you were worthless. I’m glad to be rid of you. “Beautiful, is it not?” he breathed, moving closer to the rim so he could look over the edge, admire the water tumbling down to the rocks below in a torrent of whitewater and wisps of rainbow-hued spray.
His horse shied as Beth pressed against its heaving side, refusing to take a single step closer to the rim. Rodney held out his hand. “There’s no place to run, you know. Come, my dear, and see the exquisite view.”
“I see it well enough from here,” Beth declared over the rush of the falls. “And hear it quite clearly.”
Rodney shook his head, as if saddened by her lack of cooperation. “Don’t make me come for you, child. It’s a glorious death, you know. Think of yourself as the Lady of the Lake . . . or should I say the Faery of the Fall? Immortalized forever.” He cocked his head to one side, thought for a moment. “Perhaps they’ll even rename it Beth’s Leap. What do you say to that?”
She turned her back on him, struggling to fix her fingers around the stirrup. If she could just hang on . . . But her fingers had lost circulation, sliding off the cold metal as if it were greased.
“Foolish girl. You’ve the strength of a newborn kitten—” Rodney broke off, swearing, his eyes fixed on a spot above his horse’s neck. Color drained from his handsome aristocratic face. “Speaking of cats,” he ground between his teeth, “your tom seems to have his nine lives intact.”
Disregarding all caution, Beth ducked beneath the horse’s belly, stumbled, fell to her knees. Pushing off the ground with one hand, she began to run, her thin nightgown flapping around her ankles. But Terence was too far away. Even as he broke into a gallop, Rodney seized her, squeezed her tight.
“He can’t save you, you know,” he purred. “There’s no way he can get here before I throw you over.”
“There’s no way you can escape the hangman either!” Beth snapped.
Rodney didn’t answer. Keeping his eyes on Terence and the riders, he stepped backward, pulling her toward the edge of the falls. Beth went limp. With an oath, he seized her by her long nightbraid “Too late,” her husband hissed, dragging her over the rocky ground flat on her back. “Much too late.”
Beth’s eyes watered from the pain, but she refused to cry out. Fisting her bound hands around a prickly gorse bush, she tried to hold on. The bush ripped through her fingers, her head bounced off a rock. A scream tore from her throat, pain and rage combined. Damn him!
“If I go,” Beth panted as she swung her leg out hard, trying to trip him, break his shins, break his balls, “you’ll follow me down. I promise you. Terence will never let you live.”
Her answer was a dash of icy water as Rodney hauled her into the stream. A rock . . . if she could just grab a rock. But her hands were nearly useless. In the middle of the rushing streambed Rodney heaved her to her feet. This was it then. He’d truly gone mad. He was going to kill her with Terence bearing down on them like the avenging wrath of God.
Terence, I loved you. I hope you know it! Papa, I’m sorry, so very sorry.
“We’ll wait,” Rodney confided calmly. “I want him to get a good look. I want him to suffer.”
Wait? A sudden flicker of hope. Some way . . . some how . . .
Terence! A call, soul to soul.
“No false hopes now, my dear,” Rodney chided. “O’Rourke knows better than to come close. He’s no fairy tale hero, your merchant. He has no magic wand to whisk you away to safety. See, there, he’s slowing. Dismounting. Walking this way. Those pistols won’t do him much good, either, you know. If he shoots me, we’ll both go over. No sense crying to the Fates. This is the end for both us, it would
seem.”
Terence O’Rourke. Knight errant in country tweed and buckskin breeches, carrying a dueling pistol in each hand. Yet Rodney was right. There was no magical way out of this impasse.
“That’s far enough,” Rodney called when Terence neared the bank, scarce ten feet from where they stood in the middle of the stream.
Even with sopping wisps of hair threatening to blind her vision, Beth could see Terence clearly now. Standing nonchalantly, almost as if he were a spectator at a rather boring cricket match. Black waves of hair, tousled but gleaming. Eyes more brilliant than the blue sky above. His mouth, which should have been grim, strangely soft. Inviting? A message? Beth’s head swam, her teeth began to chatter. Terence was standing there as calmly as if he hadn’t a care in the world. The pistols had disappeared. She doubted Rodney would be any more fooled than she, but she’d watch and wait, be prepared for anything.
Terence lifted one booted foot atop a rock, rested his elbow on his knee, cupped his chin in his hand. “Sure and it must be cold in there,” he drawled in broad Irish. “I should think a warm peat fire and fifty thousand pounds in your pocket would be far more appealing.”
Beth blinked. Terence was bargaining when he should be shooting! The current swarmed around her ankles, threatening to finish Rodney’s task for him. Only her husband’s strong legs anchored to the streambed, his arms tight around her body were keeping them from being swept over the edge.
“They call me the Fixer,” Terence called over the rush of the Faeries’ Fall. “I can mend just about any situation, no matter how dire. I promise you, Monterne, you can walk away from here, go back to the life you had with no one the wiser. The scandal of divorce damages the wife, not the husband. You’ll scarce lose an invitation, at least not one you value. Let her go, divorce her, and I’ll make it a hundred thousand. Tobias is always good for half,” he added with a flicker of the lips that almost looked like a smile.
O'Rourke's Heiress Page 29