She should tell Noah…
Noah might get hurt… He would get hurt, being protective and fierce and determined. These thoughts and a flock of others flitted through Thea’s mind on wings of worry, anger, and sheer terror for the girls. She scooped up her music box and fled the room, even as panic had her insides in an uproar.
At the back hallway, Thea paused only to trade dancing slippers for half boots before slipping out into the long evening twilight. No guests would arrive for two hours, not even the nearest neighbors.
So Thea hurried across the back gardens toward the home wood, intent only on keeping the children safe.
* * *
“James.” Noah kept his voice quiet, but the baron casually sidled closer to his host at a bay window. “My duchess is decamping across the back gardens at a forced march, when this buffet was to be a moment shared with all of our family.”
“Nerves?”
“Has to be.” Noah set his drink down, for Thea had been nothing but nerves for the past two weeks. “If I’m not in view again within twenty minutes, make a discreet effort to locate us. I have no one to thank for this but myself. The Furies might have to coax Thea into the receiving line.”
Thea was heading for the trees of the home wood at a brisk walk, not a panicked run, but Noah felt a crashing urgency to retrieve his duchess.
“Noah, what are you going on about?” James asked, picking up Noah’s brandy.
“My wife dreads this evening,” Noah said, “has dreaded the whole ordeal of this gathering, and I would not listen to her. Now the poor woman is likely weeping into her handkerchiefs and cursing the day she married me.”
For Thea had been ill-used at a house party, and somebody wanted to threaten her with that memory.
“Any woman of sense…” James began, but then he stopped. “Apologize, pet her a bit without messing her hair, and grovel, but be back here before Patience, Pru, and Pen sniff out trouble.”
Noah nodded his thanks and nearly jogged through the house and out the back door. Thea had been headed onto the bridle paths in the home wood, but she hadn’t much of a head start. Once Noah cleared the back door, he shamelessly sprinted in her wake. When he caught a glimpse of bronze silk turning up the path to the gamekeeper’s cottage, he resisted the urge to shout.
If his wife was going to pieces, bellowing at her would hardly help the situation, and the cottage was uninhabited—a perfect place for groveling and apologizing.
As Noah reached the cottage, though, he heard Thea’s voice raised in an unmistakably furious shout, and his blood turned to ice in his veins. He watched in silent horror as Maryanne ushered the little girls out of the cottage, and turned them not back toward the manor house, but deeper into the woods, away from Noah, safety, and what should have been one of the happiest nights of their short lives.
* * *
“Quiet, bitch! I liked you much better when you were my sister’s cowering companion. You shut your mouth now, or so help me, I’ll have Maryanne tell her mother to make soup of those two little brats.”
“You wouldn’t dare,” Thea snapped. She had no patience with Corbett Hallowell and his schemes to ruin the Winters family gathering. “You harm a hair on their heads, and Anselm will hunt you down and make you regret every moment of your misbegotten life. And God help you when Maryanne realizes you won’t marry her and she’s shared her favors with you for nothing.”
“As if I’d marry an illiterate nursery maid,” Hallowell spat. “I’m to marry a fortune, because my blighted sister is allowed to marry for love. My benighted father has a notion I’m to repair the damage done to the family coffers since I came down from university.”
Hallowell wouldn’t know a love match if it waltzed him down the room at Almack’s.
Thea felt a glorious urge to turn the idiot over her knee. Noah would come, of that she was confident. Davies would be looking for the girls, or Noah would be expecting his wife in the library. Somebody would sound an alarm, and Noah would come.
“What did you bring me to lure your worthless duke out here?” Hallowell asked.
No duke had ever been of greater worthiness.
“A music box,” Thea replied, setting her keepsake on the plank table near the door. A broken, useless music box, which was more than Hallowell deserved. “What are you about, Hallowell? Your sister will still marry happily, your debts will still require payment, and you will have made a powerful enemy of my husband with this stunt.”
“Cowper won’t marry Marliss,” Hallowell sneered. “I told him she’d allowed Anselm liberties, and the idiot believed me because everybody knows the Winters men aren’t to be trusted. Marliss will have to cry off as soon as everyone has left Town for the summer.”
Thea trusted Noah, trusted him with her life, and her heart.
“Oh, well done,” she retorted. Hallowell was a nasty, mad imbecile, while Thea was a furious duchess. “Now your parents will have the expense of a second Season, when they must entertain even more lavishly, lest somebody decide your sister didn’t take. Brilliant, Mr. Hallowell.”
He took a step closer. “Shut your mouth, now, or you really won’t see those whelps of Anselm’s again.”
“They are my daughters.” This close, Thea could smell drink on Hallowell’s breath and see the desperation in his eyes. “You will excuse me, but guests have been invited to my home tonight, and I have responsibilities.”
Noah would kill Hallowell if he knew what nonsense the fool was spouting. Marliss and her parents didn’t deserve that misery, or the expense of a proper funeral.
Thea got her hand on the door latch, even though she heard Hallowell moving behind her. She wrenched it open, prepared to dash into the increasing gloom of the woods, but was stopped by two things:
First, her husband stood right in her path, scowling thunderously.
Second, she heard the distinctive sound of a pistol hammer being cocked.
“Turn around, Lady Thea,” Hallowell said, “and step away from Anselm, so I might have a clear shot.”
Lady Thea would have cowered; a duchess needed to think.
A beat of silence went by, just long enough that Thea could see cold, cold fury in Noah’s eyes, and something else, something that looked like infernally intense determination. Noah brushed by her and murmured something like “girls…safe.”
Then he stood between Thea and Hallowell, and Thea wanted to clobber her husband for his chivalry.
“You’re here early, Anselm,” Hallowell said, “but I can work with an audience. Move away from your wife.”
“An audience to your stupidity,” Thea muttered, but Noah shot her a look that silenced her more effectively than even Hallowell’s gun. As Noah moved, Hallowell advanced, putting himself before the only door.
“An audience to your ruin,” Hallowell countered, looking directly at Thea. “I’ll have my pleasure of you, Duchess, and your husband can either give up my markers or keep them. If he keeps them, then all the world will know I’ve cuckolded Anselm himself, and no one will blame me for it, when the Winters menfolk have poached on many a preserve. If he surrenders my markers, I might keep my mouth shut, for a time anyway, until my pockets are empty again. By then, a man as enterprising as Anselm will think of some way to encourage me to silence.”
Had there been no gun, Thea would have scoffed at Hallowell’s scheme, but there was a gun, pointed at Noah.
“You think yourself capable of sexual congress with my wife while I watch?” Noah didn’t so much as glance at Hallowell’s gun, and his voice suggested incredulity, if not outright humor. “Have you considered how you’ll hold a gun on me, pleasure yourself, and deal with the lady’s reluctance all at once?”
Hallowell snorted. “She isn’t a lady. She whored before she tricked you into marriage. It was only a matter of time before she flaunted her wares at some other hapless fool. You…” He waved the gun at Thea. “Tie him up with that rope, and bind him tightly, or you’ll wish you had.”
>
Noah obligingly backed up against the center post holding up the little dwelling. He held his hands behind his back, above the level of the table that stood next to the post as well. Thea did a creditable job of tying his hands, for all hers shook badly.
Then she saw Noah mouth the words, “Be ready.”
Thea could deal with Hallowell’s taunting, deal with his strutting and pawing and carrying on. If he’d wanted to beat her, she wouldn’t have minded that so much either, but this… Her worst nightmare—intimate violation, again—made more vile by the prospect of Noah watching. Noah, whose respect Thea craved like she craved air.
Be ready, he’d said.
Thea managed to finish with the rope and stepped back.
Hallowell checked the tightness of the binding, while Noah stood quietly, exuding a vast indifference.
“If you’re wearing drawers, Duchess, get rid of them,” Hallowell said, his gaze riveted on Noah’s face.
“Do as the boy says, Your Grace.” Noah spoke easily, nigh yawning with boredom. “Excuse me, the man. Or so he’d have us believe. What do you think? Boy or man, or perhaps not even a boy.”
“Shut your mouth, Anselm,” Hallowell bit out. “And you, Duchess, do as I say, now!”
The only thing allowing Thea to draw breath was the steadiness in Noah’s blue eyes. She bent to comply with Hallowell’s command, when her hand brushed over the knife tied above her knee.
“Hurry up, Duchess,” Hallowell taunted. “Your husband might enjoy your whore’s tricks, but I don’t need them.”
Thea worked as quickly as she could, the yards of her skirts and petticoats camouflaging her efforts. When she straightened, she had her silk drawers wadded up in her hands. Stepping beside Noah, she turned her back to Hallowell and folded her drawers tidily, laying them on the table directly behind Noah’s hands.
A duchess needed to think. To be worthy of her duke.
“Over here, now.” Hallowell gestured with the gun. “Prepare to be thoroughly ruined, Duchess, and behold, your husband does nothing to safeguard what few pretenses to virtue you still have. Undo my falls.”
“How precious,” Noah mused. “You get to undress him like a little boy. Is your heart beating in anticipation of what you’ll find in his underlinen, Your Grace? Perhaps he’ll be wearing nappies, and it will be my silence we’re bargaining over. Then again, I seem to recall my great-grandpapa wearing nappies as his life neared its end too.”
“Quiet, Anselm,” Hallowell bellowed. “Shut your mouth, or she’ll pay.”
“As if enduring your attentions wouldn’t be trial enough for any woman?” Noah scoffed. “Get his breeches around his ankles, Duchess, so I might be impressed with his mighty sword and cower in shame at the size of his weapon. Honestly, Hallowell, did you think this situation through? The duchess is my wife, and in a position to make detailed comparisons.”
Noah was reminding Thea of something important, buying her time to think, to plan, to be ready—
“She’ll be your ruined wife in a very few minutes,” Hallowell said, his voice cracking as Thea undid a button on the falls of his breeches.
“Dearest Duchess,” Noah said. “I have reading spectacles in my pocket if magnification would help.”
“For God’s sake, hush!” Hallowell screeched at Noah, then turned back to Thea, realizing a moment too late that his bound prisoner had won free, and his unbound prisoner, his intended rape victim, had melted out of his reach in the same instant.
For Thea, time took an odd, slow turn. Noah hooked an arm around Hallowell’s neck and jerked back, using his superior height for leverage. When Hallowell ceased struggling, the knife Thea had tucked into her folded drawers wasn’t held to his throat, but low, near a place Thea couldn’t convince her gaze to stray.
Thea let go with a scream, a wonderfully loud, angry sound that went on and on, even as she told herself Noah was safe and screaming wasn’t necessary.
While Hallowell bleated about the family succession and the Lords taking a dim view of mutilating a peer’s heir, Thea grabbed for the first thing that came to hand.
She brought a solid weight down on Hallowell’s head, as hard as she could, and the damned idiot jackanapes fell blessedly silent.
* * *
Thanks to one brave, clever duchess, Hallowell ceased his babbling and slumped heavily against Noah. In the next instant, the cottage door swung open so hard the hinges shook, and James, Heath, Erikson, and Wilson burst in, armed to the teeth.
About damned time.
“My duchess has subdued this miscreant. You may take him now.” Noah shoved Hallowell at James and Heath, and then opened his arms to Thea. She flew to Noah’s embrace with gratifying speed and wrapped her arms around his waist.
“I’ll fetch the magistrate,” Erikson said.
“You won’t have to,” Noah replied, arms around his wife. “Squire Sterling will be here in another hour or so, and tomorrow is soon enough to take statements. For now, put Hallowell in the groom’s workroom, and set two footmen to watch him at all times. He’s not to be let out even if the stables catch fire.”
The knife in Noah’s hand had been temptation itself, but the blade belonged to Thea, who shouldn’t have her weaponry tainted by Hallowell’s blood.
“Noah,” Thea said. “Where are the children?”
Of course, she’d ask about the little ones first.
“Maryanne had no idea what Hallowell had planned,” Noah said, “but she understood clearly enough that he was using her when he lured you here then dismissed her to take the children to the village, not the manor. She was more than happy to return them to the house.”
Noah was impersonating a duke now, though his husbandly heart was going like a rabbit’s, and Thea could probably feel that, so closely did they embrace.
“If we don’t get back to the house immediately,” Wilson pointed out, “the Furies will be on armed patrol. We’ll make excuses for you as long as we can.”
Into next week would do nicely.
“Come along, you.” Erikson wrapped a large hand on Hallowell’s biceps.
“Ouch, damn it!”
“You thought to trouble Anselm’s beauties,” Erikson said. “This was naughty of you, and naughty boys sometimes meet with accidents.”
“No accidents,” Thea said, untucking her nose from Noah’s throat. “His sister is our guest tonight.”
“You heard my duchess, gentlemen,” Noah said. “My thanks for your assistance. Now be off with you, lest we hold our opening waltz in the home wood.”
The men left, and the silence in their wake yawned widely. Noah was angry at Hallowell, angry at himself—Thea had been threatened on Winters land—and grateful to his bones that no harm had befallen her.
Noah held the dagger out to its rightful owner. “This belongs to you.”
Thea clasped the knife in a shaking hand, set it aside, and pitched herself back into his arms.
Brilliant woman, for she’d spared Noah having to ask her to linger in his embrace.
“Go ahead and cry.” Noah stroked Thea’s back, loving her lissome strength. “You were magnificent, Wife. I doubt Hallowell will ever function normally again, not that he deserves to. You entrusted your knife to me, when it’s you who deserved to slit Hallowell from his appetite to his aspirations.”
Noah went on in that soothing, praising—albeit slightly violent—vein until Thea regained a measure of composure, though still she clung to her husband.
Thea had apparently heard every word of Hallowell’s bile, and possibly sensed that her past was catching up with her future. Now was not the time to face that dragon, not when she’d already been through a trial.
“Wife, my sisters will fetch us and read me the Riot Act if you’re in the least disrepaired. Look at me.” Noah cupped Thea’s jaw, so she had no choice but to meet his gaze. The tears in her eyes made him hope a very bad accident befell Hallowell.
“We have a ball to get through,” he went
on, “unless you’d rather plead indisposition. I won’t leave your side, I won’t travel more than six feet from you the entire night, and we’ll end the dancing promptly at two of the clock. The moon will set at four, and people won’t linger long if they want to get home safely. What say you?”
Noah offered her vows of companionship and protection, small comfort but sincere, for he needed to remain near his wife if he was to avoid doing permanent violence to Hallowell.
Thea tucked her nose against Noah’s evening jacket. He wanted no gossip to touch her—no more gossip—particularly regarding the sordid doings in this little cottage, but more than that, he wanted Thea to once again feel safe and content.
Always to feel safe and content.
“I’ll be fine,” she said, more a resolution than an assurance. “Stay with me, though, or keep the family near me.”
As if Noah could bear to let her out of his sight. “You are my duchess. Of course I’ll remain by your side, and you will dance with no one save your own dear, devoted duke.”
Twenty-five
Noah guided Thea through the cottage door, and kept an arm over her shoulders the whole way back to the house. They didn’t speak, and that silent proximity set the pattern for the entire evening.
What was Noah thinking? What was he feeling?
He remained immediately at Thea’s side until the receiving line was finished, then he swept her into the opening waltz.
Thea looked up at him in surprise as he drew her close in a turn. “This is the tune from my music box.”
Her ruined music box, though the sacrifice had been for a good cause. In the corner of her mind not absorbed with remaining composed and coherent, she fretted about what Noah had heard in that cottage, and whether he believed Hallowell’s taunts.
“Erikson recognized this tune when I played it for him,” Noah said. “Some old German fellow wrote it as a minuet. I thought you’d like it.”
Thea bundled herself close to her duke, despite neighbors, family, and servants looking on, and despite the disclosures yet to be made. If she hadn’t loved Noah earlier, she’d be enthralled with him now and for the rest of her days.
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