by Regina Darcy
When they arrived at the inn, the innkeeper, alerted to their visit by Edwards the day prior and paid in advance as well for his silence, led them to the room where they would be able to hear what transpired next door. As the meeting was set for midnight, and it was not yet ten o’clock, James proposed that they order supper.
Georgette, who had kept the hood of her cloak well forward so that her face could not be seen, realised that the innkeeper assumed that they were there for an illicit assignation. It did not matter, she thought.
Tomorrow, she would be Lady Georgette again, mindful of her reputation and the need to maintain propriety.
Tonight, she was a woman who had been awakened to passion and the questions that it stirred. It did not matter that she was an unmarried woman in the company of a man who was not her husband, dining privately in a room in an inn.
They did not speak, but the silence was not particularly uneasy. The meal was a simple one, the fare humble but tasty, the wine a respectable vintage.
The room was lit dimly by a single candle and that lack of illumination lent an atmosphere of strange enchantment to the meal. They did not share in conversation and yet there was an understanding between them that made words irrelevant. What was there to say when two people had kissed one another with such abandon?
When they finished eating and the plates had been taken away, James arranged the chairs next to the door leading into the room where Edwards and Lathan would meet. When he turned the key to ensure that the door was locked, he gave Georgette an ironic grin. She returned a faint smile. James left the key in the lock and bowed his head in rueful acknowledgement of his act.
Georgette was nervous. Not because of what she would overhear, because she knew that the Viscount’s innocence would be proven tonight. No, she was nervous because she did not know what she would do when the Viscount would learn her whereabouts and she would be free.
She would marry him, of course. At the thought, her heart started racing and her palms became sweaty. She wrung her hands and shook her head. No, she would not let this weird malaise influence her decision.
She would invite Valerie to join them later, over the holidays, perhaps, so that she could thank her as she deserved.
Georgette did not want to stay away from her mother for long. She had already been away for too long. She supposed that her father had engaged a nurse for his wife, as he had long wanted to do. With Georgette gone, there was no choice but—
James heard footsteps down the hall and then the sound of a door opening. Edwards, of course, would be there first. He would make no attempt to reveal that he knew anyone was in the room next to the one where he would meet the Viscount.
James placed his hand atop Georgette’s in warning, but there was no need. She had also heard the sounds and knew that the meeting was about to take place. When a second set of footsteps was heard, she felt her heart begin to beat with trepidation.
They heard the opening of the door.
“’Ello, guv’nor.”
“You have information on the location of my fiancée?”
Viscount Lathan, sounded impatient.
Of course he was, she thought to herself. He had expected to be married by this time, not searching for the bride who had failed to show up at the church.
“I do,” Edwards’ cheerful, Cockney voice spoke up loudly. Or perhaps he was no louder than usual and it was merely that the thin walls made it sound as though he was very near. “But there’s a cost.”
“Yes, so you said,” the Viscount replied sounding irritated. “I am not a wealthy man and so it’s no use trying to dun me for more money than your information is worth.”
At first Georgette was startled by his response but then she realised that he was being shrewd. There was no point in letting it seem as though he would pay any price for what might be erroneous information.
“My information, guv’nor, is worth you getting your ‘ands on your bride. Ain’t that worth a fine reward?”
The Viscount ignored the question.
“I am curious as to how you have come by this information.”
“I keep me ears open, that’s how I come by it. Funny what you ‘ear when you listen to the right people.”
“She is . . .well?”
Georgette could not resist sending a look of triumph in the Duke’s direction. There it was, proof that her fiancé was concerned for her wellbeing.
“As well as can be expected.”
“She is alive?”
“Oh, aye, she’s alive. Eating proper and kept in comfort. No ‘arm ‘as come to ‘er.”
“I shall need proof. I shan’t give you a shilling without proof that she is alive.”
“What sort of proof?”
“A letter, in her hand.”
“Oh, come now, guv’nor, ‘ow do you expect me to get that? She don’t know me from Adam’s and she don’t know that I know she’s where she is. I can’t get no proof. I can take you to where she is, though, but I’ll only do that if you give me ‘alf me pay in advance.”
“Fair enough. I’ll give you five pounds now and five pounds when I am taken to her.”
“Five pounds! Guv’nor, I’d expect more if I was to tell you that I’d found your favourite hound what you’d lost. Five pounds!” Edwards was convincing in his disgust.
“What do you want?” the Viscount asked warily.
Of course he was wary, Georgette thought. He knew that he was in the presence of a rogue who would take him for a vast sum if he could get away with it. She did not look at James, knowing that he was probably interpreting the exchange in a very different manner.
“One hundred pounds.”
“You must be joking! Where would I get that kind of money?”
“You’re a viscount, ain’t you? Got a title, land?”
“My estate is in arrears and I will have nothing until I marry Lady Georgette and her dowry is mine. You shall have to wait until we are wed if you want that kind of a reward.”
They began to haggle, Edwards pointing out that he had no guarantee that he would be paid at all once the Viscount had been reunited with his fiancée, but by this time, Georgette felt as if she were frozen in place.
His estate in arrears!
This was not what Valerie had told her. Valerie had said that he was a man of substance.
“You presumptuous little bloodsucker,” the Viscount’s voice snarled, “I had to borrow the money to finance the engagement festivities. I haven’t a penny that isn’t owed in a dozen different places. I need to marry the Earl’s daughter in order to restore my own finances. But I tell you what,” he said and his voice took on an insinuating, familiar note. “I’m going to need someone to do a deed of some . . . risk. You look like the sort of a man who’s not afraid of danger.”
“Not afraid of it, no, but I ain’t going to let someone put a rope around my neck just so ‘e can get the plums and I get the pits.”
“I assure you, there’s no risk of hanging. No one will even know.”
“Now you’re talking. Secrecy, that’s what I’m after.”
“I thought as much. You see, here’s the matter. There’s another woman.”
“Ain’t it always so? But the other woman ain’t an heiress.”
“Precisely. I’m glad that we understand each other.”
“You want the money but not the woman it comes with.”
“Precisely.”
Georgette thought her heart might stop beating. The Viscount was as despicable as James had told her he was. He was intending to murder her. The magnitude of the betrayal hit her like a brick. She felt sick to her stomach.
The Viscount and Valerie planned to profit from her death by taking the dowry that she would bring, with no intimation of regret.
She was standing up and had turned the key in the lock before James could stop her. Suddenly, she had opened the door and was standing in the room.
The Viscount, alarmed at the invasion, turned. When he saw Ge
orgette, his face took on an expression she had never seen before. He called her a name which she had never heard before but knew, from the reaction of James, who had entered immediately behind her, that it was an insult.
“You’ll regret your meddling,” the Viscount said and from his coat, he pulled a pistol. James pushed Georgette out of the line of fire and as she was thrust away, she saw that James also had a pistol in his hand.
James shot first. The smoke prevented Georgette from seeing what had happened. She heard Edwards chortling.
“Oh, you got ‘im, sir. Got ‘im good.”
“It will be a while before you sit down comfortably, Lathan,” James said crisply as he leaned over the fallen viscount to judge his injuries. “But your comfort is none of my concern.” He turned towards Edwards.
“Edwards, would you alert the innkeeper to summon the magistrate so that this wretch can be taken off to gaol where he belongs?”
“With pleasure, sir,” Edwards replied.
James kept his pistol trained on the subdued viscount, whose pistol had been taken by the enterprising Edwards.
Georgette stood frozen in the middle of the room. When the Viscount began to curse her, James prodded him with the toe of his boot.
“You’re in the presence of a lady, Lathan; I suggest that you remember that or I’ll shoot you where you stand next time.”
It was a threat sufficient to earn the silence from the Viscount who was aware that bleeding from the seat of his trousers was sufficiently humiliating.
Georgette still said nothing as the magistrate, accompanied by a burly man who picked the Viscount from the floor without effort, arrived an hour later.
“You’ll need to arrest a woman as well,” James said. “Miss Valerie Duncan. Edwards here can provide you with the details.”
“And you, sir, are?”
“I am the Duke of Summersby. I have been working on behalf of Lady Georgette. Will you be so good as to alert her father, the Earl of Parsonville, that his daughter is safe and well?
“The missing bride!”
“Quite. There has been a plot against her life. But once you have arrested Viscount Lathan and Miss Duncan, Lady Georgette will be safe again and free.”
James smiled winningly at the magistrate.
“For now, I must take Lady Georgette back with me where she can rest after her ordeal. Miss Wright, my associate, will see to her comfort when we return.”
“Yes, sir,” the magistrate said. “Lady Georgette, I am glad to see that you are not harmed.”
Georgette nodded her head.
“Thank you,” she said to the magistrate.
“It’s very late,” the innkeeper, who had joined them at some point, interjected. “If you wish to stay here, tonight, rather than travel . . ?”
Georgette shook her head.
“No, thank you,” she answered.
She wanted to leave this place. As if he understood, James took her arm and helped her down the stairs. The stableboy brought their horses.
“I am sorry,” James said as they began their journey back to his home.
“I am the one who is sorry. You told the truth.”
“It is not such an unbelievable thing to acknowledge,” he said wryly.
“But I was hateful to you and unkind.”
James thought of the searing kiss.
“There were compensations.”
Georgette blushed and was glad that the night hid her cheeks from view. Nervously she moistened her dry lips.
“You asked me earlier what would happen after tonight. May I tell you what I would like to happen?”
Silence descended between them.
Fear knotted inside Georgette as she clenched her hand until her nails entered her palm. She had wished and hope for freedom. Now that, that freedom was here all she wanted was for her captor to never let her go.
She took a deep shuddering breath. There was no way to avoid this conversation. No time to steel herself in case all the Duke felt for her was desire. No, there was only one answer to his question.
“Yes,” she whispered, her gaze fixed somewhere in the horizon.
“I would like to meet your father and ask his permission to be a suitor for your hand.”
Georgette was left speechless. It was the very thing she’d secretly wished for…his affections. Slowly she lifted her head until her gaze locked with his. His eyes smouldered with fire and longing. A sigh of relief slipped from her lips.
“But before doing that though, I would like your permission to court you. Not with a locked door, but in all the usual ways.”
“I’m not sure I know what the usual ways are,” she whispered in response. Her eyes shone with unshed tears.
James reined in his horse and leaned forward in his saddle. “Perhaps, for you and me, an unusual courtship would be best,” he agreed, as his horse adjusted to the shifting balance as he reached his arm around her neck and gently tugged her towards him.
“Perhaps that would be best,” Georgette agreed, edging closer as she surrendered to the kiss of the man that she intended to marry.
The End
The daring escape
Copyright © Regina Darcy 2020
All rights reserved. This book or any portion thereof may not be reproduced or used in any manner whatsoever without the express written permission of the publisher and writer except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.
This is a contemporary work of fiction. All characters, names, places and events are the product of the author’s imagination or used fictitiously.
For queries, comments or feedback please use the following contact details:
reginadarcy.cleanandwholesomeromance.com
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Contents
ONE
TWO
THREE
FOUR
FIVE
SIX
SEVEN
EIGHT
NINE
TEN
ELEVEN
TWELVE
ONE
“I hope you are as happy in your choice of bride as I am in mine,” James, the Duke of Summersby said to his cousin Geoffrey, the Duke of Ivanhoe.
Both men were watching the lovely Lady Honora Westing perform the intricate steps of a dance from France with graceful ease.
“Happier, you mean, than I was with my first choice?” Ivanhoe snapped as his fiancée passed by again. She gifted him with a radiant smile.
“Happier in the result, of course,” Summersby said sounding somewhat irritated. Why should his cousin bring up that wretched business now, when there was some hope, after the passing of six years that the macabre fascination regarding Ivanhoe’s marriage to the now-dead Lady Amelia might have faded.
“No need to remind the ton of your colourful past,” Summersby muttered.
“Of course,” Ivanhoe drawled with that insufferable ironic tone that so often sorely tested Summersby’s jovial spirits. “And yet, you brought upon yourself no lack of scrutiny in your private matters. Kidnapping someone else’s bride . . . as a family, we appear to be prone to attract public attention.”
Summersby glowered.
“It’s rather ungentlemanly of you to bring up such matters,” he said loftily. “Lady Georgette is quite content now and we look forward to seeing you and Lady Honora at our nuptials.”
“Really, then why is Lady Georgette not here tonight?”
“She wanted to be, but she was needed at home to look after her mother. The Earl is away and they are both in agreement that the Countess should not be without a member of the family to tend to her. No other reason.”
Ivanhoe raised an ironic eyebrow.
“No?”
“Of course not,” Summersby said hurriedly. “She’s just very devoted to her mother.”
Ivanhoe allowed this explanation to pass but his grim expression indicated his suspicion that his cousin’s
fiancée had merely utilised a convincing excuse to deliver a cut. She clearly did not want to be introduced to someone with a reputation as notorious as his.
The dance over, Lady Honora was returned to her fiancé by her partner, who bowed as he left.
“I believe, my lady, that you have made a conquest,” Ivanhoe said, noticing the enraptured expression on the young man’s face as he gazed upon his fiancée.
Lady Honora beamed, showing a perfect half-moon of a dimple inserted into each smooth cheek.
“I have no interest in conquests,” she said, looking up at Ivanhoe’s face with affection. “I am content with what is mine.”
The Duke of Ivanhoe, whose gloomy countenance did not waver, bowed in acknowledgement of the compliment but did not return it. It was not his way to indulge in frivolous conversation.
Summersby frowned at his cousin.
“Really, Ivanhoe, if you can’t do better than that, I shall ask Her Ladyship for the next dance myself.”
But Lady Honora merely laughed. She was accustomed to her fiancé’s ways and thought no less of him for his absence of joviality. It came, she supposed, from having inherited his ducal title at such a young age. He was only twenty-nine now and he bore his responsibilities with a gravity that was very unusual for a man of such a young age.
“No,” she said, “I will dance with him now. Come, sir, will you dance with me?”
She made a very fetching picture with her stunning raven hair arranged about her gamine face in ringlets that shimmered beneath the candles in the chandeliers. Her aqua-blue eyes, of an olive cast rather than the Duke’s emerald gaze, sparkled in the light. She was exquisitely attired in a white satin dress sewn with pearls that matched the ancestral Winterhaven jewels at her neck and wrists.
She was a tall young woman, but the Duke preferred height and had been heard to say that he welcomed marrying a woman who was not so diminutive that he would mistake her for a child. At his own height of over six feet, the Duke was well able to appreciate Lady Honora’s inches.