Fear. But also hope. Perhaps he would rescue her, come and release her when Tom was asleep?
Because she knew where they were taking her. It was a rundown house in Cheapside, one no one cared about and no one enquired too much about. They had hidden many a person there together, in pursuit of ransoms and riches.
And now she would be one of his prisoners.
“You have to help me, Jack,” she whispered as Tom pulled her once more to the horse. “Help me.”
His eyes were wide, full of expression and fear, but he did not make a move to help her.
Within twenty minutes, she and the unconscious Sir Edmund were dropped onto the floor of the house.
Molly rose to her feet with difficulty, rushing at the door – but it was too late. Her hands bound, she could not get to the lock quick enough to prevent her brothers, her own flesh and blood, turning the key.
“See you in a few days, Molls,” came Tom’s laughing voice through the door.
Their footsteps became quieter.
Molly turned around. Lying on the floor in a tangled heap, no ropes needed at his wrists, was Sir Edmund.
They were alone.
Chapter 4
Edmund’s eyes opened blearily and then immediately shut themselves.
Anything to prevent the horrendous light from pouring into his pupils and crashing against the headache to end all headaches.
God’s teeth, his temples felt as though an elephant had fallen asleep against them. This was absolute agony, agony he had never felt before. Not even after that New Year’s party when George decided to buy everyone a glass of whiskey for each hand, and he had whipped off his socks and attempted – successfully – to grasp a glass with each foot.
Edmund opened his eyes again, but this time more slowly. The tight pain around his head did not lessen, but this time it did not increase.
What did increase, however, was his confusion. If he was not entirely mistaken, he was lying on a very hard, cold floor.
His legs splayed, Edmund felt a sharp and unrecognisable pain around his wrists – which now he looked, were bound together with some frayed rope. He sat up and looked around him.
Well, this was new. He did not recognise a single thing around him.
He had been lying, from what he could make out through the pounding headache, on the floor of a kitchen. Not the kitchen of Mrs Bird, as far as he could make out. This was even smaller and meaner than hers, and it had a sort of, unlived in feel.
There were cobwebs in the corners and a moulding apple on the side. Surely, if someone had been here recently, they would have removed it.
One small window in the corner had no curtains and was allowing the weak morning sunlight which had proved so painful just minutes ago. Edmund could make out a church spire through it. A church spire he did not recognise.
So what was he doing here?
“Merry Christmas.”
Edmund jerked around and regretted it immediately, raising his bound hands to his sore head and wincing.
It was a woman. She was beautiful, though that would be the weak light and the inability to think clearly.
She was sitting at a table with her arms crossed and a fierce look on her face. Edmund blinked. She was beautiful, and what’s more, she was familiar.
“Miss…” The words crept from his mouth groggily and Edmund swallowed, trying to bring a little more moisture into his mouth before he tried again. “Miss…Kippers?”
The woman snorted. “Kimble is the word you are looking for, your highness, and I pray you remember that. ‘Tis going to be a long time before you need to use the words of anyone else.”
Edmund blinked. Each individual word made sense, or at least he thought it did, but the now throbbing pain at the side of his head made it impossible to fully understand what Miss Kimble was saying.
“I am not royalty,” he said slowly, still seated on the floor of the kitchen like a fool, is bound hands in his lap. “Miss Kimble, I think you have been misinformed.”
Miss Kimble stared at him and then narrowed her eyes. “Misinformed. Yes, that is about the sum of it. So, Sir Edmund, do you remember who I am?”
Edmund pushed himself off the floor to rise but his head swam, and so he lowered himself carefully back to the floor and wished to God that he was wealthy still, and his butler could bring him a restorative.
“Of course I remember who you are,” he lied, the haughtiness of his upbringing buying him a little time. “You are Miss Kimble.”
Miss Kimble raised an eyebrow. “What a succinct explanation. How did we meet, Sir Edmund?”
Edmund stared at her. Golden hair with dark eyes that sparkled even in this dull morning light. He could see little of her figure from the way that she was sitting, but that seemed purposeful. As though she did not want a man’s attention.
Or his attention.
“Oh, God,” he said heavily. “Did I proposition you last night?”
Miss Kimble laughed and it twisted his stomach into a hot mess. He knew it, the memories were seeping back now.
The card table. The game. The way her eyes glittered whenever she won a hand, and he had been unable to take his eyes from her, unable to consider not offering himself to her.
What he would not do to take her to bed and make her cry out his name.
“You did indeed,” she said drily. “I am not sorry to say that you were refused. What a Christmas that would have been.”
Edmund nodded and then immediately desisted. “That does not surprise me. What does surprise me are my current surroundings. This…this is not your home, I take it?”
Miss Kimble stared at him. “You think I live like this?”
Edmund sighed. It was so much easier being in conversation with young ladies when you were the heir to a duke. They were so much more polite, more pliant.
And they did not glare at him as though he was a disgusting insect accidentally – or purposefully – trodden on, as Miss Kimble was doing now.
“Miss Kimble, I think it is fair to say that I have had an interesting night, and I evidently do not remember how I got here,” he said, a little more tersely. “I would be grateful if you could tell me. Fill in the gaps. Explain how I slept on this floor.”
He held her gaze, which was no hardship. She truly was beautiful, but there was a ferocity and a fierceness in her that made every pretty feature sparkle like diamonds.
Edmund found more than stomach contracting. God’s teeth, if only she had said yes.
“You have been kidnapped.”
If he had not watched her lips moved, he would not have believed it possible for the words he had heard to be have been uttered by a human being.
Edmund stared at her. “I beg your pardon?”
“You have been kidnapped,” Miss Kimble repeated, not a hint of emotion in her tones. “I know it must be a great shock, but there it is. These sorts of things must happen to people like you – taken away, you know.”
“Must happen – must happen to people like me?” Edmund spluttered. “We do not live in the Stone Age, Miss Kimble! We have law and order, or at least, I thought we did!”
She smiled. “Sir Edmund, your very name, your very parentage makes you a likely victim, do you not see? Ransom is their game, I am sure of it. They expect a pretty pay out from those of your relatives who would like to see you live. I assume you have some?”
The way that she said it told Edmund that he had imparted, if not all, at least some of his family story.
He bit his lip. Truth be told, he was not entirely sure that there was anyone in the family who would cough up a pile of gold to see him safe and sound. Bitterness mingled with sorrow poured into his heart. Four brothers, and a parent still living, and he was not sure whether anyone would pay to keep him alive.
“Well, good luck with that,” he said drily in a more confident tone than he felt. “Ransom, from my family? You must be mad to think it, and I pity you for you will find no riches in my family line!”
“Do not raise your voice at me, sir!” Miss Kimble rose from her seat in her fury. “Do I look as though I am a willing participant?”
Edmund stared at her. She was slim, elegant, with curves exactly where he would want them. She was also standing there with her hair slightly unpinned at the back and a dishevelled look he associated with sleeping on a sofa overnight.
“You are kidnapped too? What do they want with you?”
Molly stood irresolute, slightly unsure why she was standing. Hot rage had boiled through her, but it had not been against the sorry sight of a gentleman who was seated on the floor before her with rope painfully keeping his wrists together.
No, it was at those vile and stupid brothers of hers. Never before had she been so angry at them, leaving her in this sort of mess.
She had stood by the door for almost an hour, by her reckoning, sure that they would come back for her and release her. When she had given up hope of both of them returning, she had still remained there for almost another thirty minutes, by the bells of the nearby spire, hopeful that Jack, alone, may return to release her.
Eventually, tiredness and exhaustion had pulled her away from the door and onto the slightly moulding sofa in the other room. Sleep had overcome her until birdsong had woken her and she had come through here – to find Sir Edmund still sprawled out on the floor.
“Well?” Snapped the now fully awake Sir Edmund who had risen to his feet.
Molly swallowed. She had forgotten how tall he was, how captivating his gaze was. What a pity he was so handsome.
It made it far harder to lie to him.
“Well, what?” She said quietly.
As her own rage dissipated, Sir Edmund’s seemed to disappear also. His shoulders slumped and he gestured around the room.
“I would not expect a woman in conditions like these, let alone be kidnapped with a stranger,” Sir Edmund said quietly, moving to sit at the table where she had been perched when he had come around.
Molly hesitated, and then sat at the table without saying a word.
Well, what could she say? The last thing she wanted to do was admit that their kidnappers were none other than her own brothers – her own brothers, moreover, who had pulled this trick before.
Grab a gentleman who looks worth a bob or two, abandon them in this old, run down house, leave them to stew for a day or two – until they are really hungry – and then turn up with demands for money.
Whether they had it on them, their family could send it, or a bank order could be written up in haste: it did not matter to the Bletchley brothers.
They would get their money, and the gentleman would be allowed to leave. It was the way they had always done it.
And every time before, the enticement into the trap had been Molly Kimble.
Molly started. She had been sitting there, staying into the eyes of Sir Edmund, without really seeing him, handsome as he was. But now he was leaning towards her as though expecting to kiss her.
“I-I had a disagreement with them,” she said hastily, leaning backwards and folding her arms across her chest, as though that would slow down her frantically beating heart.
Sir Edmund’s grey eyes narrowed. “You know them?”
“I barely know them at all,” Molly said as coldly as she could, though the truth of her words hurt. “I did not agree with them bashing you over the head, which I like to think any upstanding citizen would not.”
He raised his bound hands to the back of his head and winced. “That would explain the headache, at least.”
Sir Edmund looked in genuine pain and Molly’s heart, already a little soft on him, warmed even further. Poor man, he did not deserve to be in this mess.
But then, she did not deserve to be in this mess either. Neither of them did, and yet they were stuck here, not only in a disgusting old house – but with each other.
“So you…you argued with them?”
Molly swallowed. It did not quite feel right, lying to this gentleman. Gentleman he certainly was, you could see from the breeding.
“I argued with them,” she repeated slowly, “and they said they would…would put me in here as punishment.”
That was all true, was it not? Molly’s thoughts raced back to the night before, a time which felt an age away.
“You can go quiet,” Tom has said, “or you can go unconscious.”
“A punishment, indeed?” Sir Edmund’s eyebrows raised but there was a sardonic smile on his face. “I am flattered, to think that rogues and kidnappers are using my presence as a punishment.”
Molly felt her cheeks blush. “I did not mean – I think being locked up is the point here, not…not the company.”
“Kidnapped with a knight,” he mused, his smile now broadening. “Not exactly what you had pictured for your Christmas celebrations, I suppose?”
“Not in the slightest.”
Molly had said the words before she had really thought about them, and clapped a hand over her mouth when she realised that her bitter thoughts had become bitter words.
Sir Edmund laughed. “My word, Miss Kimble, you speak your opinion very decidedly for a woman so young.”
Molly smiled wearily. Every time he called her ‘Miss Kimble’, a small part of her felt even more uncomfortable. “Not so young in experience, Sir Edmund, though I be young in years.”
She had not intended her phrasing to be suggestive, but she saw in the countenance of her fellow captive that he saw, immediately, where her words could lead them.
“Well, far be it from me to argue with you, Miss Kimble,” he said lightly. “You are quite welcome to renegotiate my offer. Pleasing you would certainly please me.”
Heat seared across Molly’s cheeks, but not purely embarrassment. She could see, any woman could, that this was a man who certainly knew how to please a woman.
Those strong hands, those tender fingers, that mouth –
Molly stood up hastily, almost tripping over her own feet to be away from him.
“Miss Kimble, I do declare you want me,” said Sir Edmund slowly, turning with a smile to watch her stride across the room. “Why do you deny it? Why do you deny me?”
“There is a little food here,” she said loudly, looking anywhere but at the handsome man bound at the table. “Not much, but enough if we are careful to see us through for the next few days.”
Sir Edmund snorted. “Not much of a Christmas dinner, is it? I do not suppose your kidnapping friends – ”
“They are not my friends.”
Molly was unable, or perhaps unwilling to keep the bitterness from her voice.
Sir Edmund nodded shortly. “Do you think they will be back soon?”
“No.”
“Well then, we will have to make do with what we have,” he said briskly. “First port of call, get these robes from my hands. You do not happen to have a knife on your person, do you?”
Molly smiled. “I am afraid not – and even if I did, I am not sure whether I would release you.”
Sir Edmund was the most handsome man she had ever met, and one look from him did strange things to her knees.
His smile now made her whole body burn. “Do you like your men bound, Miss Kimble?”
Molly swallowed. She would not allow herself to be taken in by this trickster, even if every inch of her body ached for his touch.
“Yes,” she said sweetly. “That way there is no opportunity for them to touch me. Just how I like you.”
Chapter 5
“I am bored!”
His words echoed off the empty walls and reverberated back to him in even more dire tones that they had been when they left his mouth.
“Bored…bored…bored.”
Edmund shifted uncomfortably. The moulding sofa did not become any more comfortable the more he lay on it, and his wrists were starting to get sore. The frayed rope around his wrists wrenched at his skin with every movement but he could not stay still.
He never could, even when a child.
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“Miss Kimble, I am bored!” Edmund repeated, looking at the back of the young woman with which he was forced to endure this experience.
Not that she was much of a punishment. Miss Kimble was seated by the window, a book in her hand – God knows where she found that – and the weak Christmas Day sunlight was pouring through the window, bringing a golden shine to her hair. Even from his vantage point, he could see her smooth curves, just waiting to be touched.
Not that he would have much opportunity to, with his hands bound by this infernal rope.
“Do you not find it frustrating that we are in here, on Christmas Day?”
Edmund heard a petulance in his voice that he did not like, but it was impossible to remove. Christmas Day – it was Christmas Day! He should be four drinks in at his local watering hole, three hands into a winning stream, and two minutes away from another success.
Not holed up here, literally kidnapped like one of Mrs Radcliffe’s sordid novels.
“‘Tis only late afternoon,” Miss Kimble said distantly as she turned a page.
“But I am hungry!”
“You know how much food we have,” Miss Kimble said quietly. “And neither of us know how long we will be here, and so the best thing we can do is just accept it.”
Edmund sighed. “I did not think a Christmas Day could be so boring as this.”
“You have not even been here for a full day, and you are already bored?”
Edmund sighed and leaned back with his eyes shut. “I have never been good at entertaining myself.”
Miss Kimble snorted. “Well, that much is obvious. How rich were you, Sir Edmund, when you were younger?”
The question surprised him and Edmund opened his eyes to look at her. She had not turned around.
“Quite, I suppose,” he conceded, deciding not to tell her that his father had been the fourth richest person in the country, after the Regent, the church, and the Duke of Devonshire. “Why?”
Another page was turned, more slowly this time. “Because it is my experience that those with money never had to entertain themselves. They always had games, horses, theatre, servants to keep them occupied. Only the very wealthy have no wealth of mind.”
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