Edith Layton

by The Devils Bargain

  Alasdair returned within the hour, with a grim-faced Lord Leigh and a very shaken-looking Sibyl.

  “She never arrived at the gallery,” Alasdair reported to Lady Swanson. “So tell me exactly what this messenger said, what he looked like, and what the carriage looked like.”

  “He was just a man,” Lady Swanson said nervously. “One doesn’t notice servants in the usual way of things, and there was nothing to notice about him. He was neither young nor old, fat nor slim. He said he was told to bring Kate to the gallery, on your instructions, for you’d meet her there. I didn’t see the carriage.”

  Alasdair shot a look to the three elder Swanson sisters.

  “We weren’t here,” Chloe protested, shrinking back from the fury blazing in his eyes.

  “None of you looked down from your windows?”

  “To what purpose?” Frances asked bitterly. “So we could sigh over how pretty she looked? You expect us to flock to the window to wave good-bye every time she steps out, congratulating ourselves on the success of our country cousin?”

  “Maybe he thinks we ought to stand there twittering with happiness for her,” Chloe muttered from behind her sister. “Maybe even brushing away our tears of joy as she goes out and we stay here watching her go.”

  The look in Alasdair’s eyes was murderous.

  “You’re mistaking the matter,” Henrietta told him with a twisted smile, “We aren’t fairy godmothers, we’re the wicked stepsisters, remember? Believe it, because we never forget it.”

  “Henrietta!” her mother gasped.

  Her daughter ignored her. She kept her eyes on Alasdair. “But even so,” she said, “we aren’t responsible for this.”

  Alasdair looked hard at her. She raised her chin. He turned from her to the butler, standing in the doorway to the salon. “I need to know what color the coach was, trim and wheels. That at least will tell me which coaching company sent it.”

  “It was a commonplace brown, Sir Alasdair,” the butler answered readily. “Undistinguished, as was the trim. At least the trim wasn’t distinguishable, but that may have been because it was soiled with dirt and dust of the road. A simple coupe, badly in need of a washing, with two horses, both inferior, one dappled white, the other a rusty bay. The coachman had his head turned the whole while. I believed it to be a private coach and remember remarking that it wasn’t the sort one would have expected of you, sir.”

  Alasdair’s healing bruises looked darker against his suddenly ashen face. “And no one thought to insist she stay home instead of answering such a cavalier summons? Or at least thought of sending word to me to ask for an explanation, because the vehicle I sent was unsuitable for a well-brought-up young woman, not to mention the fact that my behavior was wholly inappropriate to a gentleman?”

  The silence that greeted this told him what they’d thought.

  “Well, then,” Alasdair told Leigh harshly, “we have a kidnapping, it appears. You have your sources. I have mine. Let’s try to find her before whatever demands are made arrive. They had the element of surprise; let’s see if we can too.

  “My lady,” he told Lady Swanson curtly, “please send for your husband and ask him to meet us here in an hour. This is the best place for us to gather because this is where her abductors will send their conditions. Since Kate wasn’t snatched from the street, we must assume this wasn’t a random abduction. Since she’s not wealthy and no one would expect her uncle to pay a high ransom for a cousin when he has daughters who might have been taken instead, we must also assume you aren’t the intended victim of this abduction. I, however, do have a certain reputation. It is not undeserved. I have funds, as well. And anyone watching, as your daughters say they were not, would know Kate and I have been seen together often of late.”

  He turned to Leigh. “I’ll put my staff on notice, too. It’s possible that’s where the ransom demand will be made. For now let’s see what we can discover. I’ll meet you back here in an hour’s time.” He paused on his way to the door. “Tell Bow Street, Lord Talwin, and any others you think might find her. Whether I get back here or not, don’t stop looking for her. Be sure, I won’t.”

  The coach rolled on. Kate sat quietly now. She’d stopped pounding on the window when the villainous-looking man shoved her shoulder to make her look at him—and the knife he held so close to her nose that her eyes almost crossed looking at it. He sat back when she fell silent. But he didn’t put the knife away.

  He’d been in the coach when she’d entered it. She wished she was the sort of female who screeched when she was frightened, but all she’d done was gasp when she’d ducked her head, entered the coach, and seen him sitting there glaring at her. Alice, the Swanson’s maid, entering the carriage behind her, had gasped, too, but she’d been drawing in breath for a really good screech, Kate was sure of it.

  But Alice hadn’t uttered more than a groan as she’d slumped down to the floor of the coach, because she’d been struck down from behind by an unseen hand that then slammed the door shut behind them. By the time Kate gathered her wits together enough to scream, the man sitting in the coach had half risen from his seat, gesturing with the long and horrifying knife, and growled, “Scream and die. Shut up and we’ll see. Now sit down. And shut your trap.”

  “But Alice…” she protested, looking at the maid who lay facedown on the floor between the two seats.

  Without taking his eyes from Kate, the man reached a hand down to feel Alice’s neck. “She’ll do,” he snarled. “Wake with a sore noggin, but she’ll wake. Which is more’n you’ll do if you don’t put a sock in your mummer, hear? Shut up!” he translated to Kate’s look of bewildered dismay.

  She did. The coach started up with a jolt that sat her down fast, which was as well because the muscles in her legs seemed to have turned to water anyway. She looked to the windows, but they were closed tight and covered with shades, so she couldn’t see where they were going. That was when she hammered on them—and when the man showed her why she couldn’t. She’d sat back again, not daring to breathe, or able to easily, because of her panic and the vile odor rising from the man with the knife. He smelled worse than any garbage she’d ever encountered, because at least garbage was disposed of after a few days, or melted away in the rain, which purified it.

  Kate almost wished she couldn’t breathe, but did, shallowly. She also wished she was the sort of female who fainted when she was terrified, because she couldn’t think of how to escape and she’d rather be oblivious to whatever was going to happen to her next.

  She tucked her feet in close to the seat to avoid hurting poor Alice further, and sat huddled in a knot in a hopeless attempt to vanish. She glanced at her captor again, then quickly away. He really was villainous-looking, far removed from all her notions of villains gotten from romantic fiction. He wasn’t colorful or dashing, the way she’d thought of pirates—the way Alasdair had looked with his eye patch. Nor was he mysterious and dashing, like a highwayman—as Alasdair seemed when he dressed all in black. This man looked like a villain in the rude, crude, ugly way of reality, like a man who had nothing and so had nothing to lose by trying to get something.

  She dared another glance. He was short, heavy, and dressed in ragged clothing that might have been brown when it was made, a dozen years ago. The seams in his somewhat simian face were outlined with grime, so though they made him look ancient, he could have been any age. His crooked features had been broken, but his eyes were small and sharp. If he touched her, she would die. She shuddered, as she realized with sinking heart that she wouldn’t. Death before dishonor sounded fine, but death didn’t come as easily as dishonor. She wasn’t a screecher or a fainter, so that ladylike escape would probably be denied her, too.

  But he didn’t seemed interested in touching her, and that slowed her pounding heart to a mere gallop. They drove on in silence, but the argument going on in Kate’s head was louder than the sounds of the carriage wheels on the cobbles.

  She should have known Alasdair wo
uldn’t behave in such scaly fashion, even if he had, she shouldn’t have held herself so cheap, nipping into a carriage he’d sent for her like a maid answering a summons from her master. Ladies didn’t do that—Alasdair wouldn’t have done that either, she realized, feeling stupid and shamed. It was what people might think he’d do, but he’d always acted like a gentleman and she was well served for imagining even for a moment that he’d act otherwise. But she’d been so eager to see him she’d let what she’d thought of as his little lapse pass. So it was her fault, as well as a crime, that she was there.

  The coach slowed. Kate felt herself turn to ice. It stopped, her captor tensed and crouched, knife high in hand. A door cracked open, a face peered in. Kate’s captor relaxed. “The mort on the floor’s the maid,” he said.

  The man at the door nodded, reached in, and hauled Alice out. Kate tried to stand on shaking legs, and sat right back as the door was slammed shut and the coach jolted to a start.

  “Not you,” the man with the knife said.

  The carriage rattled on to its unknown destination again. They rode in silence for what seemed like a long time to Kate, though she realized her sense of time was distorted by her dread. Were they leaving London? But she could still hear the mundane, comforting sounds of the city around her. The cries of the street vendors, the rattle of other carriage wheels, the sounds of horses’ hooves striking cobbles as they clattered by.

  Their own progress was obviously slowed. Because her captor seemed impatient. At least he put a filthy finger at the edge of the shade on his window from time to time to sneak a look out the window, and frowned. It was a small thing, but it gave Kate unreasonable hope. Wherever they were going, he obviously thought it was taking longer than it should.

  As time went on and nothing new and terrible happened, Kate’s terror began to subside and she became more clearheaded. She tried to reason out her predicament logically. The coach would stop sooner or later, and though she wished it would be later, she’d better be prepared for what lay ahead. She didn’t know if she could escape, but she wouldn’t dwell on that. If she could guess why she was there, it would help.

  She’d been kidnapped. But she didn’t have money, so why should anyone bother? Unless it was a mistake. No. As ugly a customer as her kidnapper was, she didn’t think he made that kind of mistake. But a man out for money would certainly take one of the Swanson daughters, and she didn’t look anything like them. Even an enemy of theirs wouldn’t make that mistake—most especially not an enemy, she decided. And she herself had no enemies she could think of, or any suitors so desperate for her hand—or body—that they’d have to take her in this manner.

  The only explanation that made sense was that Alasdair was somehow involved in this mad start. Their charade might have been too convincing. It could be someone who thought there might be gain made out of asking him for her ransom. It could even be someone from that dark past he continually hinted about. Someone who wanted revenge on him, and would get it by making him bargain for her safety—or worse.

  She’d had been thrust into a coach that was driving her to an unknown destination. The maid the Swansons had provided for her had been struck unconscious, then dragged away, leaving Kate alone and utterly defenseless. She was being held at knifepoint by as evil a man as she’d ever seen. But the fact that Alasdair would have to pay for her in any way was what she found really horrifying.

  17

  All bad things must come to an end, Kate thought as the carriage slowed to a stop again. But this time she worried it might get even worse, because her evil-smelling abductor rose to his bandy legs and gestured to the door with his knife.

  “Out,” he said.

  The door cracked open. Kate swallowed hard, rose, and crept out the door.

  The sunlight hurt her eyes, but she was relieved to note it was still daytime. She stood on the top step of the carriage stair and blinked, trying to see where she was through the tears the sudden light brought to her eyes. They were still in the city, but nowhere she’d ever seen.

  She’d expected a noisome slum like the one they’d just passed through. She didn’t have to see it, its odors had assaulted her nose and there was no escaping the sounds in the streets outside. Although she didn’t know that much about London, some things could be deduced by simple reasoning. Good districts didn’t have street vendors selling rags and bones and bottles. Even closed windows couldn’t muffle the earsplitting calls of the criers peddling their wares as they rolled their barrows by, nor shut out the voices of pedestrians as they shouted, quarreled, and whooped at each other. Kate heard them more clearly when they’d paused in traffic, but the accents were so thick she could hardly understand what they’d been saying. What little she did understand made her glad of that. God’s name shouldn’t be taken in vain, but these people took it and used it any old way, along with ruder things in greetings, jests, and curses.

  The noise had faded in the distance, and it had been relatively quiet outside the coach for a while. Kate knew it was too soon a time to have left London far behind, and felt some relief. She realized that was irrational, because terrible things could happen to her anywhere. But somehow the thought of being taken far from her cousins, and especially Alasdair, was even more terrifying.

  She’d expected to see tenements or bleak warehouses. That was where a person expected a kidnapper to take them. But they’d arrived at a street of ancient cottages crowded together close to the road, the kind that might be found in any old, depressed part of the countryside.

  “Move,” her foul captor said, prodding her in the back.

  Kate stepped down and walked toward the ramshackle cottage they’d stopped in front of. A door swung open, and, with a sigh that was half a prayer, she stepped inside.

  At least the room she’d been locked in met all her expectations, Kate thought drearily as she looked around the tiny attic again. A chair, a cot, and a table were the only furnishings. She supposed she wasn’t being deprived on purpose; there wasn’t room for a stick more. The ceiling tilted so abruptly a person couldn’t pace properly without crouching every seven steps to avoid being slammed in the head. She knew. Her head ached. The one round window was boarded over, a sliver of wood had been broken off to let some air in. Not much did. An eye to the space showed only a glimpse of a neighboring chimney stack and a tiny bit of mangy thatch on that other rooftop.

  Kate hadn’t seen anyone but her foul-smelling captor, and she hadn’t seen him in what seemed like hours. His absence made some of her dread evaporate, because she’d been more afraid of anything he’d do to her than of having been abducted and locked up in a strange room far from friends and family. Much to her relief, though she could occasionally hear snatches of muffled far-off conversation, no one else came near her either.

  Now panic gave way to annoyance. She felt more bored than terrified. She briefly marveled at the resilience of the human spirit, then set about trying to think of a way out. Her parents were too far away to help, and though Lord Swanson was clever, he had no experience with such matters. There was one person she automatically thought of as invincible, but in this, he couldn’t be. She thought longingly of Alasdair—and almost gave in to despair, wondering if she’d ever see him again, wondering if he’d be devastated at her loss, or merely bemused.

  No, she couldn’t think that. Certainly he’d be horrified and furious when he heard what had happened. But powerful as he was, he wasn’t omniscient, so it was up to her to save herself. She did waste a few minutes more imagining his reaction when he heard what had happened, picturing the look on that dark face, envisioning how he’d mutter a curse, tighten his lips, and clench his fists before he leapt into action and did…what? It warmed her to think how worried he’d be, but she knew that worrying was all he could do for her. And she certainly could do enough of that for herself.

  So it was up to her. She had to take it step by step. She’d been stolen, that was the only fact she knew. But why? What danger was she in? She
didn’t think her captor had rapine on his mind. The mere thought of it horrified her, but he’d looked at her with annoyance, not lust. She couldn’t be mistaken about that. The thought of rape made her nerves jangle, so she further reassured herself by doubting he’d been hired to deliver her to someone else for that purpose. None of her admirers was so overwhelmed with lust as to steal her away for their dire desires. Of course, one of them had looked at her with unimaginable depths of desire, but now they both knew he didn’t have to kidnap her to win a similar response from her. But who else…?

  They might have taken her for ransom money, but she didn’t have any, and everyone she met knew that. She smiled remembering Lord Markham’s face when he’d found out, and didn’t doubt he’d told everyone he knew in revenge. Did they want to extort money from the Swanson? If so, they could easily have snared one of her cousins instead. But suppose they’d been misled. What would they do when they found out she wasn’t worth much?

  Enough of imagining terrors, she told herself sharply. That won’t get me anywhere. It might take days to find out why she’d been taken. She didn’t have minutes to spare. She had to save herself because now even the mighty Sir Alasdair was helpless. And so she began studying ways out of her predicament again.

  The door was bolted. All she got from flinging herself against it was a sore shoulder. The boards in the window had been hammered in securely, and, besides, by the time she’d broken a fingernail and shredded a few others, she realized she couldn’t fit out of it even if she could pry it open. Thumping on the floor would only bring up her jailer. But the window drew her….