* * *
“How late should we wait?” Beatrix asked softly. “Until they all go to sleep?”
“That’s the plan,” Edmund answered. “But if we see an opportunity sooner we shall take it.”
From one of the tiny windows, a short time later, they watched their two captors leave the house and head off in different directions. Immediately Edmund went over to the door where he had already loosened all the hinges using Beatrix’s knife.
“Adams must think he’s safe with us locked in here,” Edmund said, as he undid the hinges the rest of the way.
“How fortunate for us that he’s wrong.”
“Well, he’s safe for the moment. Unless he catches us trying to leave, I mean to get us to London and Bow Street to send Runners after him, not try to capture him ourselves. I want you safely back in London before that happens. You can stay with Lady Kenrick while I go to Bow Street. One of the Runners will come back with me to our townhouse to see who might have poisoned you.”
“How long do we wait before we leave?” Beatrix asked.
“We don’t. They might return at any moment.”
When the last hinge came off, he and Beatrix quietly lifted the door and set it to one side. Edmund gave Beatrix back her knife.
“I want you to be able to protect yourself,” he said.
“What about you?”
Edmund retrieved the metal object he’d found and hidden beneath the pallet. “I have this.”
She nodded and stashed the knife safely in her pocket. They both took off their shoes and carried them as they crept silently down the stairs, hugging the wall. Near the bottom of the stairs, they could see an open doorway with light spilling out of it and the sound of a pen moving across paper.
With great care they eased the rest of the way down the stairs and then around toward the back of the house, away from that open doorway. They went through the kitchen and to the back door, which had been left unlocked, and why not? Who would try to enter? And they were supposed to be safely locked away in the attic. Gingerly Edmund opened the door and motioned to Beatrix to go out ahead of him. He left the door faintly ajar behind him, not wanting to risk the sound of the latch engaging if he shut it.
A moment to put their shoes back on and then they were headed across the field to a stand of trees. Neither spoke until they were well hidden from the house.
“We came from this direction,” Beatrix said, pointing to the road.
Edmund nodded. “I think so as well. We shall need to stick to the bushes and shadows. Who knows how soon the man who went this way, or someone else we don’t even know to fear, might come along?”
“Or pursuit from the house,” Beatrix pointed out. “If Adams realizes we are gone, I do not think he will just sit there doing nothing.”
“Very true,” Edmund grimly agreed. “And the less talking, the better. Sound may carry farther than we think out here.”
Beatrix nodded to show she understood and they started moving. They did not run, but neither did they just walk. Not at first, at any rate. Both felt the urgency to put as much distance as possible between themselves and the house they had just escaped from.
The moon, when it rose sometime later, was a double-edged blessing. It was nice to be able to see where to place one’s feet. But it made them more likely to be seen, particularly on those stretches where there were no trees or bushes to hide them should anyone come along the road. It was at those points that they did run until they again reached the shelter of foliage.
Neither of them knew how far they were from London or how long it would take to walk there. They both could recall only that the ride had seemed interminable. So they kept walking, not daring to stop to rest, no matter how tired they were or how much their feet began to hurt.
“Once we get closer in,” Edmund said softly, when Beatrix stumbled for the third time in as many minutes, “we are bound to find an inn or such where we can hire a carriage to take us the rest of the way. We just need to walk a little farther.”
A little farther turned out to be far too optimistic a notion, but Beatrix said not a word. She understood as well as Edmund what was at stake.
Clouds had begun to obscure the moon when they heard the sound of a carriage approaching. Edmund pulled Beatrix deeper into the shadows as he reached for the knife she had given him. Beatrix could feel her heart beating far too rapidly as the horses drew closer. Suddenly Edmund rose to his feet and ran to the road shouting to the coachman to stop.
Beatrix grabbed for him, but she was too late to stop his madness. Fear clutched at her as she watched the carriage slow to a stop. Her heart continued to pound against her chest as three men piled out. Only when she saw them embracing Edmund did she realize who they must be. Letting out a sigh of relief, she emerged from the shadows to join them.
“Lady Rothwood! I cannot tell you how pleased I am to see you alive and with Rothwood.”
“Indeed! We’ve been looking all over for the both of you. Did you know one of your maids was being courted by a man helping Adams? You do know, by the by, that it was Adams who kidnapped you?”
“Yes, we know,” Edmund said grimly. “We escaped. But how did you know to come this way?”
“We got Adams’s name from the maid and the directions to his properties from another clerk in the office.”
“We came as quickly as we could, but took at least one wrong turning or we’d have been here sooner.”
“Well you are here now and we are very grateful,” Beatrix said. “Now may we please be on our way back to London?”
Another man who had been standing a bit off to the side said, “The lady ought to be sent back to Lunnon, but if you’ll give me the direction, I’ll continue on and arrest this Mr. Adams.”
Instantly there rose a vocal protest. No one, it seemed, wanted to miss the pleasure of seeing him captured. Indeed, they argued that the Runner would need their help in the event that the other two men had returned to the house.
“Wouldn’t want it to be three of them against one of you.”
“We’re all handy with our fists,” another added.
“I even have a knife and length of metal,” Edmund put in, retrieving it from where he had tossed it down upon recognizing the crest on his friend’s carriage.
“And I have pistols,” Lord Burford said. “Stashed in my coach in the case of highwaymen, but no reason they can’t be used for this.”
“Let us turn around and return to that inn a short way back. We can send Lady Rothwood on to London, and we can hire a coach there to take us to this house of Adams’s,” one of them proposed.
But Beatrix had had enough. “Oh, no. If you are going to get this man, I want to be there. I’m the one he threatened to give a painful death.”
Protests that it was too dangerous rose on all sides but Beatrix stood her ground. In the end, with much grumbling, they all piled into the carriage, Beatrix tucked against Edmund’s side. “But you will stay in the carriage,” he told her sternly. “If we have to worry about your safety, one or more of the men might get away.”
Beatrix decided this was not the moment to argue.
Edmund and Beatrix and then his friends, each in turn, told their experience of what had gone on over the past day and a half so that in the end they all had all the pieces of the story. Grim-faced, Beatrix shivered, all too aware of how close she had come to death, and Edmund as well. She would not feel safe until the Bow Street Runner had all three men in custody. She would not feel safe until she had seen with her own eyes that it was so.
Chapter 16
Beatrix rather hoped Adams would give the men an excuse to shoot him, but he did not. At the sight of the group, some armed with pistols, he collapsed into a quivering heap and was soon bound up. The other two men, returning separately, were easily captured as well.
Edmund was not pleased that Beatrix had not listened to his directions that she stay in the carriage, but by the time he realized her rebellion it was
too late to stop her. So she was there when Adams was captured, and she had the satisfaction of being the one to put a gag in his mouth so that he could not warn the two other men who were helping him. She was less pleased when the Runner removed the gag after all the men were in custody.
“We don’t want ’im suffocating like on the way back to Lunnon,” the Runner told her when she started to protest.
Adams did not seem in the least cowed. His fury was, as before, aimed at Rothwood. “Your father valued me! He wanted to make amends for the loss of my wife and son,” he all but spat the words. “Your father valued a great many of us, people most ignore. He made sure we would benefit when you failed to marry by your twenty-fifth birthday!”
“But I did marry by my twenty-fifth birthday,” Edmund pointed out gently. “And if you look at my father’s will carefully, you will see that those he valued received gifts directly upon his death. I regret to have to point this out, but other than my cousin Harold, who was family, my father specifically chose to name people he rather despised as benefiting should I fail to wed in time. He thought, you see, it would be an added incentive to me because he believed I would not want them to inherit anything, either. I am very sorry to have to tell you this, but my father neither respected nor valued you at all. Quite the contrary, in fact.”
That created such an explosion of rage from Adams that even the Runner agreed that perhaps gagging him again might be a wise thing to do. That and get all the prisoners back to London without further delay. There was a bit of confusion, of course, over how to do so, but out back Lord Burford found the carriage Adams and his men had been using, as well as their horses. It was soon agreed that all the men save Edmund would accompany the Runner back to London with the prisoners.
“It’ll be a tight squeeze,” Hawthorne told her, “but none of us want to risk the men escaping. With all of us there, they won’t have a chance to do so.”
Burford gallantly offered the use of his own carriage to Rothwood and his bride so that they could return to the city in comfort and, as he put it, the privacy due couples who have so recently been wed. Edmund and Beatrix gratefully accepted, and after some protest, even agreed to leave first.
“We don’t want to risk reaching London with our prisoners only to discover that by some misadventure you were recaptured after we left,” Totham said, only half in jest.
And so, as dawn was breaking, Edmund and Beatrix found themselves heading back to London, hopefully for the last time. As she watched the house disappear behind them, Beatrix said, “What a wretched house and what a wretched man.”
Edmund pulled her closer so that her head rested against his shoulder. He breathed in the scent of her and wondered at how it had become so familiar and so dear to him in such a short time.
“Adams was wretched and desperate,” he agreed. “But we need not worry about him ever again.”
“I hope not. I was so terrified when that man told me you would die if I did not come with him.”
“And so you did. Just like that.”
Beatrix lifted up her head and said, with some exasperation, “He already was dragging me off. Had he not had hold of me, I would have run for help. But since he did have hold of me, well, of course I could not let harm come to you if it was in my power to stop it.”
“Of course,” Rothwood agreed. “My meek and docile wife.”
In answer, she quite pardonably growled something under her breath.
He only chuckled and grinned.
It was good that he was jesting about this but a tiny core of fear still curled inside Beatrix. The last thing she wanted to do was ask him again whether any part of him still wanted a meek and docile wife. But if she didn’t, she would carry this fear forever and it would taint everything between them. She would forever be watching for small signs of his discontent and bristling to defend herself. It was true that she had asked him while they were captives, but what if he had only spoken as he did out of the emotions of the moment? If she was to go forward with Edmund, in this marriage just begun, she had to find the courage to ask again. Now, when they were no longer afraid for their lives. She was not a coward, was she?
Beatrix put her hand on his arm and looked up into his eyes. The serious expression on her face stood in contrast to his mischievous grin. “Do you,” she asked, “in any way still wish for that kind of wife?”
He placed his hand over hers, as serious now as she was. “I shall probably always have moments when I find myself thinking as my father did.”
When she moved to pull her hand away, hurting more than she thought she could, he refused to let go of it. He went on, his voice firm and deliberate, as if he wished to make certain she heard and understood what he had to say. “I shall always have such moments. It is useless to try to pretend otherwise. But such moments do not determine who we are. It is our ability to step back and say to ourselves that we need not see the world as we always have that matters. It is our ability to stop and challenge those beliefs when they appear. It is our ability to remind ourselves that we do not have to give in to our fears and prejudices and darkest impulses. We can choose to step back and be who and how we want to be. I may at times find myself wishing and perhaps even saying that it would be better if I had a meek and docile wife. But my best self, the self you make me want to be, will always know that I would rather have you, just as you are, than any other woman on earth.”
Beatrix felt a smile on her face, and a warmth that spread from the top of her head to the tips of her toes. Shyly she looked up at him and said, “No doubt there will be times I wish and say I wish you were different as well. But I, too, shall always know how lucky I am to have you as my husband. From the moment I saw you when I was still a young girl, all those years ago, and you were so kind to me, I have known I wanted you for my husband. And now I have you!”
“You did not think me a nuisance intruding on your family?” he teased.
She shook her head. “Never that. To be sure, even then I worried about how we would manage not to disgrace ourselves by setting too poor a table, but you were not an intrusion. You were kindness and knowledge and novelty. You were patience itself with my brothers, teaching them things Papa never could. I think I loved you more for that even than for your kindness to me.”
He kissed her hand. “Of course you did,” he said amiably. “From what I have seen, you always put the welfare of those you love above your own.”
She ducked her head, then changed her mind. She would not hide from him. They might never again have such an honest sharing of how they felt. Now was the time to tell him everything, even that which was not flattering to her character. So she met his gaze as she said, a wry twist to her lips, “I do not always put the welfare of others before my own. Remember that before I became ill and you were abducted, I had just visited a modiste and ordered a new wardrobe. I am, you see, sadly shallow. I truly do care how I look.”
“A terrible flaw, to be sure,” he agreed soberly, but his eyes were laughing.
She smiled, but then took a deep breath and confessed, “I—I married you, leaving my family on their own to manage. And I know they will not do it very well.”
This time his eyes were not teasing her. He took her chin in his hand and held it so that she could not look away. “You are not responsible for the choices your parents make,” he said. “It is unconscionable that they allowed the burden to fall upon your shoulders for so long. You have a right to be happy. You have a right to be here with me. And we shall, together, make certain your brothers and sisters do not suffer because you are away.”
Beatrix felt her eyes sparkle with unshed tears. “Truly?”
“Truly. As my wife, you will be exceptionally well placed to bring your sisters out, if you wish, when they are old enough. They will get to see London and be able to choose from far more potential suitors than if you had sacrificed your own happiness to stay home with them instead of marrying me.”
Beatrix threw her arms around Edmund
. “I do so love you!” she said as she lifted her face to be kissed.
He stilled and froze. “You love me?” he echoed.
She looked at him and saw, to her astonishment, uncertainty in his face. Who could have made him doubt himself so badly that he found such a thing so hard to believe?
Now it was Beatrix who put her hands on either side of his face and said fiercely, “I love you! Do not doubt it, Edmund. You are kind and good and everything I could ever want in a husband!”
Something changed, and now it was he who crushed her against him, kissing her breathless. The time would come for her to learn more about his past, to understand why he could ever doubt himself. But that moment was not now. Now was for embracing him. It was even, she discovered, for far more than that, if one were creative. And Edmund was very creative.
His hand slid up her leg, from her ankle up beneath her skirt to the bare skin above her stockings, and then even higher, between her thighs to her very core.
Oh, my! Mama and Papa would be shocked if they could see her now. But then again, perhaps not. Given how often they went laughing to their bedroom together, Beatrix rather thought they might have tried a great many things that would shock her.
But she didn’t want to think about her parents. She wanted to think about Edmund and the wonderful sensations that coursed through her with the touch of his hands. She wanted to touch every part of him, her hands already finding their way beneath his shirt to feel his chest. This was her dearest Edmund, whom she had so nearly lost, and she wanted to be as close to him as a man and woman could be.
In minutes, Edmund had undone her clothes and his enough to allow them to make love right here on the seat of the carriage. It was the strangest and most wonderful sensation to ride his lap as she was, the jouncing of the carriage adding to the sensations in the most unexpected ways. And when she came apart, the sound of the carriage wheels drowned her cries, even as it did Edmund’s when he spilled his seed inside her moments later.
April Kihlstrom Page 18