Vicky scowled daggers at him. He was mad. How had they never noticed? How had he hidden it so well?
He snickered again at her expression, and explained how he’d played Carmichael’s and Tom’s dislike for each other against them. How he’d used Charles and Silby to ensure it came to a duel.
Silby, too, was part of Dain’s horrible scheme? No wonder she couldn’t seem to be rid of him. “How did you convince Mr. Silby to join you?”
He looked disappointed she hadn’t guessed. “How guileless you are. Money, my dear. His father stopped paying his debts long ago, and the old man is the hearty sort—it will be many years before Silby inherits the title. I offered to pay him generously for any services rendered. The demands of Silby’s pocketbook were more pressing than any scruples.” He paused and regarded her with narrowed eyes. “He is, regrettably, not particularly capable. He drew more attention than I’d wished with his clumsy curricle.”
Vicky’s skin crawled. The runaway curricle had been a ruse. The confirmation that Silby had actually tried to kill her that day left her cold. She remembered how put out he’d acted when she’d had Tom escort her home. What might Silby have tried if she hadn’t insisted?
Dain smiled, his amber eyes now as inexpressive as stone.
“At least I will have the pleasure of punishing you for your impudence personally. One should never let one’s lackeys have all the fun.”
Her stomach dropped. She sat back, though her heart threatened to burst from her chest. She needed to gauge his sincerity. “Come now, you might as well stop the pretense. You’re no killer,” she said, trying to sound confident.
“Am I not? You should tell that to your solicitor, Mr. Barnes.”
Her palms grew clammy with sweat, and she struggled to control the trembling in her legs. He could be lying to scare her. But Carmichael had told her father Mr. Barnes had gone missing.
She looked into Dain’s eyes. His eyebrows arched up, and he stared back with a slimy grin.
Then he reached into his coat pocket and retrieved a pocket watch. He held it by the chain and let it dangle in front of her nose.
Bile rose in her throat as she saw the rust-red blood encrusted on the chain. Then she saw the engraved initials on the silver surface: EB. Edward Barnes. Nausea rolled over her. She couldn’t now doubt what Dain was capable of. And if he could do something so terrible to a man he barely knew, what would he do to her?
Still, she couldn’t help glaring at him. “Why do this? You need neither money nor land.”
He tucked the watch back in his pocket. “Oakbridge was promised me, and I shall have it. Halworth is but a bonus, yet one well worth it to exact my revenge on that self-righteous fool Tom Sherborne. I would have done it long ago had he not disappeared to the Continent.”
Vicky recalled Tom telling her how he’d thwarted Dain when they were at Eton.
A small muscle jumped in Dain’s cheek. “No one wounds my reputation without paying the price.” Then his eyes raked her from the top of her head to the tips of her ankle boots. “A lesson you will learn well today.”
Her stomach lurched. “You may have blocked the writ of supplicavit, but the case for the separation in the ecclesiastical court still stands.”
He cut a sharp glance her way. “I can still bargain with Althea to drop the suit. When she knows I have you, she won’t hesitate. That doesn’t mean I need actually return you.”
She swallowed hard.
His leer settled on her torso. “What a shame I didn’t meet you before Althea. You would have made a deplorable wife, but I gather I would have much preferred your company in my bed.”
The blood rushed from her face as another swell of bile surged upward. She coughed, trying to choke it down.
“I’m certain you’ll have more vigor than that dullard I married,” he said, glancing out the window.
“She had enough courage to flee from you,” Vicky hissed.
He shrugged. “Courage, you call it? More of an instinct for survival, which I’ve seen mongrels display.”
“You’re repulsive! How dare you speak that way?!”
He laughed.
The sound made her limbs shake. Evil like Dain’s didn’t exist in the novels she’d so long escaped to—those same novels she’d insisted her own life emulate. Tom and Althea and even Mr. Carmichael had been right. She’d been so absurdly naive. And now her punishment would be death and—she knew not what else—at the hands of a madman.
“Such spirit.” His eyes roved over her body.
She struggled against her bonds to keep from being sick all over the carriage.
“We’ll see how much spirit you have when I’m through with you.”
Chapter the Thirty-First
What he means to do, I am sure I know not . . .
—Jane Austen, Pride and Prejudice
Tom kicked the flanks of Carmichael’s horse, urging it to gallop faster. He’d just received more detailed directions from a local innkeeper and now hurtled down a country lane toward Dain’s cottage. Trees grew densely on both sides of the road. He hadn’t passed another building since he’d left the inn.
The early morning mist had dissipated as he’d left London and though dark clouds loomed in the distance, the weather was holding. Wet roads would’ve put him even farther behind Dain’s carriage, so perhaps, for once, luck was on his side. He must be getting close now.
He’d been thinking of how he’d make Dain pay for every sick scheme in his sick brain. Those thoughts alone had kept Tom sane amidst the onslaught of fury, anxiety, concern, and the fifty other emotions he hadn’t felt with such intensity in years. The rage inside him still blazed, crowding out rationality and reason, but he didn’t care.
What good could levelheadedness do him now when Vicky was in danger? The day after the Astons’ carriage was attacked, she’d told him Dain was behind it, but in jealousy he’d turned her attention to Carmichael. Yet Dain was a monster far more akin to his father than any of Henry Halworth’s children had turned out to be.
Tom’s fists tightened on the reins.
He shook his head, allowing the molten anger to obscure all other thoughts besides getting to Vicky. He had to be close.
Then, beyond tall trees, on the right side of the lane, a gabled Tudor cottage with dark wooden beams showing through the white plaster appeared. It was small, but well-kept, and exactly as the innkeeper had described. Relief swelled through him. Tom slowed Carmichael’s horse and dismounted a good distance from the cottage.
He led the horse between the trees on the left side of the road and tied the reins to a low branch. With steady hands, he took his dueling pistol from inside his greatcoat and examined the powder in the pan.
The pan still appeared full. Yet the gun had been bouncing around in his coat during the entire ride from London. He clenched his jaw. All he could do was hope that when it came time to use it, it would fire correctly.
Tom inched his way toward the cottage through the trees, watching for any movement. A large coach sat in front of the cottage, but he saw no coachman. Tom stopped behind a hedge near the house and crouched down, listening. When he heard nothing but rustling leaves, he crept to the door on the side of the cottage. Pressing himself against the wall, he peered through the closest window, looking for any sign of Vicky. A kitchen lay beyond the door. The room stood empty save for a wooden table in the center of the room.
The handle gave under Tom’s hand. The door’s hinges squeaked minimally as he eased it open. He stepped past the threshold and slowly closed the door behind him.
At the far side of the kitchen, a narrow stairwell led up to another floor. Beside it stood a door leading to what he presumed was the rest of the ground floor. Tom snuck across the kitchen and put his ear to the door. No sounds of movement.
Then, from above him, a thump echoed. The blistering wrath within him flashed to life. Moving to the stairs, he mounted the steps as rapidly and quietly as possible.
Vicky
cringed as Dain dropped his heavy black greatcoat to the floor. Her stomach still churned, and she squeezed her eyes shut, hoping she could keep the nausea under control.
Dain walked to the foot of the bed.
Vicky opened her eyes and gave him a defiant glare, even though she felt anything but daring. He stared at her with a depraved look in his eye. A moment later, his waistcoat fell to the ground. Vicky forced herself to breathe. Her head swam.
She couldn’t believe this was happening. She was alone with a madman in a deserted cottage without hope that anyone could save her. Of course, Susie knew someone had abducted her, but Susie had been lying unconscious on the ground when they’d driven away.
And now Tom or Mr. Carmichael or both might very well be dead because of her foolhardiness. She tried to suppress the image of Tom lying on a grassy field in a pool of blood, but nothing she did could keep it from invading her mind.
When they’d arrived at the cottage, Dain had dragged her up the stairs and into this small room. Although she’d kicked and screamed and scratched at him with all her strength, she’d been no match for his crushing grip. He’d dealt two blows to the side of her head, and she’d been so dizzy with pain he’d been able to gag her, throw her on the bed, and bind her to the posts by her hands and feet with little resistance.
She tried to shut out the panic threatening to engulf her. She squashed her eyelids together to block Dain’s terrible face looming over her. Her life couldn’t have turned out more dissimilar from one of Miss Austen’s novels. Yet even after Dain’s cutthroats had nearly beaten her father to death, Vicky had continued to think all would end well with some handsome gentleman who loved her proposing marriage. She had to be the foremost imbecile in England!
Dain had ruined so many lives— Althea’s, Tom’s, Carmichael’s, her own, and, if Dain did kill her, everyone in her family and on the estate would suffer when he gained control of Oakbridge.
If only she hadn’t let Tom and Carmichael rile her. If she’d accepted one of their proposals instead of acting like a child, none of this would have happened. Dain wouldn’t have had a chance to abduct her unseen in the predawn hours.
She and Tom could have been happy. He might have come to love her eventually. Susie thought he already did. But now he would be lost to her forever.
She gasped for air beneath the gag, wishing for a way out of the room—out of this nightmare—but she knew there was no escape. It was all she could do to hold back a scream. She wouldn’t give him that satisfaction.
Perhaps sensing her despair, Dain grinned his sadistic smile and started to laugh.
When Tom reached the second level, he peered around the corner of the stairs. Three doors led off the hall, two on the right side of the corridor and one on the left.
Dain’s voice emitted a repulsive laugh from behind the nearest door on the right. Tom pulled the hammer of his pistol back until it was fully cocked.
He rushed the door.
Wood splintered and flew as the door crashed back on its hinges.
The scene before him made the hairs on the back of his neck stand on end. Vicky lay on a bed in the center of the room, her mouth gagged and her hands and feet tied to the bedposts. Dain, down to his shirtsleeves and trousers, his outer garments lying on the floor, hovered over her.
Vicky screamed beneath the gag.
Dain turned, and Tom saw the disturbed glare of a madman.
The blaze roared in his head. He leveled his pistol at Dain’s heart. “Step away from her.”
“It would seem Silby and your brother have failed me. I can only hope Carmichael is lying dead in the park,” Dain said with a half smile, half sneer.
As he spoke, he inched toward a table near the bed. A pistol lay on its surface.
Tom stepped forward. “I will shoot if you take one more step,” he said through clenched teeth.
Dain stopped. “Somehow I doubt that. You were always one to shy away from a fight.”
Tom gripped the pistol tighter as an image of his father’s cruel smile flashed before him. The vile old man: Tom’s unrelenting reason for never fighting. But this time, he refused to close his mind to his father’s memory. Despite this scorching wrath within him, he could never be like that man. Or like the man in front of him. He knew it now as he knew his own name. As he knew he would protect Vicky and those he loved with his last breath. The inferno in his brain subsided and he felt a great weight fly off his shoulders.
The corner of Dain’s mouth curved into a smirk. “As I thought. All censorious bluster and no ballocks.” He stepped toward the table.
“Not today.” Tom pulled the trigger. The powder in the pan flashed, exploding with a deafening boom.
Vicky squeezed her eyes shut as the blast echoed through the room. For a moment after it ended, she lay motionless on the bed. Then, she inched her eyes open.
Dain still stood. The pistol had misfired. Dain laughed, and Vicky watched in horror as Tom charged him. Their bodies collided with a thud, followed by a crash as Tom slammed Dain against the wall. But Tom was alive. Alive!
Vicky worked her right hand back and forth, trying to loosen the leather around her wrist. She cringed at each impact of fist against flesh, but she continued to struggle with the cord. Finally, the bond relaxed. She wriggled and pulled until her hand came free.
She untied her other hand, and then her feet, tore off her gag, and swung her legs over the bed.
In another moment, she’d snatched up the gun from the side table. She pulled back the hammer, swinging the weapon toward Dain, but he and Tom still struggled on the floor. She didn’t dare shoot while they were so close together. Then with one quick move, Dain struck Tom in the head and pinned him to the ground.
“Stop!” she screeched, aiming the gun at Dain’s back.
Despite the command, Dain didn’t turn until he’d punched Tom again, this time squarely in the jaw. Still holding Tom to the floor, he turned his torso and looked at her newly liberated wrists and ankles with that same twisted sneer, his face bloodied and swollen from the fight.
“Get up,” Vicky ordered. “Get off him or I’ll shoot.”
Dain stood slowly, and the sneer disappeared. “You couldn’t possibly shoot me, Victoria.” He clucked his tongue against the roof of his mouth. “I’m afraid you’re too kindhearted.”
He stepped closer to her, his hands raised in a placating gesture.
Her arm steady, Vicky raised the gun higher.
Dain stopped moving. “Besides,” he continued, “what would everyone say when it became known that you killed your own brother-in-law?”
Vicky glanced at Tom out of the corner of her eye. Blood covered his face, but he stood and took a slow step away from Dain—moving so she could shoot the fiend. Vicky almost smiled.
Tom had come after her. Just as he always did. But he trusted her to do what she must—to save them both.
And she loved him for it.
She forced her attention back to Dain. During her silence, he’d crept even closer.
“Come now, dear sister, I don’t think you could live with yourself knowing you’d taken a life.”
Sister? How dare he call her that now? She thought of how he’d broken Althea into a frail, nervous creature. She thought of poor Mr. Barnes and the family that would never see him again. She thought of her father after the attack, lying bloodied on the road. And finally, she thought of what might have happened to Tom at the duel.
All because this man before her thought himself entitled to more land and more power.
Blood roared in her ears. The world would be well rid of him. But could she really do it? Could she kill him where he stood?
“Put the gun down, and I promise I’ll be gentle,” he said with a confident smile.
Monster.
Vicky pulled the trigger. She smelled the acrid tang of the smoke, felt the gun recoil in her arm, and watched Dain’s face as his eyes went wide with shock. She held his gaze as he registered he’d be
en shot. His body crumpled to the floor.
Vicky dropped the pistol.
A moment later, Tom’s strong arms surrounded her. “It’s over.”
She buried her head in his chest as relief washed over her.
“Are you hurt?” he asked, pushing her away from him so he could look her up and down.
“I’m fine now that you’re here,” she replied, wishing to be back in the safety of his arms.
His eyes lingered on something at the side of her face, and she saw the muscles in his jaw harden.
“He hit you,” he said in a cold tone. His eyes flashed with anger, but he raised a gentle hand to her cheek and lightly touched the edges of the bruise.
Vicky pulled her handkerchief from her pocket to wipe the blood from his face. “Are you all right?” she asked.
The side of his mouth quirked upward as she dabbed at his split lip and battered chin. “It’s nothing some rest won’t mend.”
Vicky lowered her hand and caught Tom’s gaze. His rich brown eyes stared into hers and something fluttered in her stomach. Her heart still raced, so she took a few deep breaths. He rubbed his hands over her arms, which were cold despite the long sleeves of her dress. How had he known that?
“It seems you can no longer fault my heroic timing,” he said with a smile that reached his eyes.
Her breath caught in her throat as she glimpsed the old Tom grinning down at her. She scoffed for effect and tilted her head to the side. “I do believe I delivered the final blow.” She couldn’t help but smile back at him. “I suppose without each other, we might not have succeeded.”
Dangerous Alliance Page 32