by Lucy Monroe
“I thought at first, she’d withdrawn to the watercloset,” Pansy inserted, her voice full of distress, “but she weren’t there. She weren’t anywhere milord. Not anywhere!”
Lucas’s gut told him that something wasn’t right, but a commotion at the door caught his attention before he could question the two servants further.
Mrs. Drake had returned.
She rushed into the room and went straight to her husband. “Is it true? Is she missing? I’ve been terrified the entire trip back from our townhouse that I would arrive to find her gone.”
Lucas didn’t let Drake answer. “Why?”
She turned to face him. “I wasn’t worried she’d run away if that’s what you’re thinking.” He ignored the angry retort and waited for his sister-in-law to go on. “I received a message that my son was ill and I was needed at home. Only when I arrived, I discovered him sleeping soundly in the nursery and no one knew who had sent the message.”
Lucas faced Timothy. “You said you brought the message to Mrs. Drake?”
“Yes, milord.”
“How was it delivered?”
“A boy brought it.”
“What do you mean a boy?” Lucas asked with forced calm.
Lady Preston had employed street urchins to deliver her foul notes to Irisa.
“Just a boy, milord. The young ones that will carry messages for a bit of money. A street urchin.”
“Did you not think it strange that the Drake’s footman had not delivered the message?” He turned to Mrs. Drake before the underfootman could answer. “What about you? Didn’t you think it odd that your footman had not come if there was an urgent need for your presence at home?”
His sister-in-law’s eyes filled with remorse. “I should have thought of it, but the idea that my child was ill had rattled me. I didn’t think anything odd until I got home to find things calm and my son safely tucked in the nursery.”
Her voice was filled with self-deprecation.
Drake pulled his wife into his side and glared at Lucas. “It’s all right, my love. You are not to blame for what has happened tonight.”
Lucas gritted his teeth and did not disagree. The truth was, he had not protected Irisa well enough and now she would pay the price for his negligence.
Timothy had not answered his question and Lucas turned back to glare at him. “Well?”
“I did not think to question it, milord.” His tone implied that the ways of Quality were not always reasonable.
Lucas wanted to throttle him. “Obviously.”
“If you will pardon me for saying so, milord. Her ladyship acted peculiarly when she sent me to fetch her maid, as if she wanted to be alone.” Timothy cleared his throat delicately. He had all the makings of a very efficient butler one day. Except one. “I too wondered if she perhaps needed a bit of privacy to attend to necessary matters.”
“Are you implying you believe my wife left the house of her own volition?” Lucas asked in a dangerously calm voice.
Timothy’s face took on a deferential cast. “It is not my place to say, milord. However, it would appear that if street thugs had entered the house and taken off with her, one of the other servants would have heard.”
“I see. You have nothing more to tell me?” Lucas asked.
“No, milord. There was no trace of her ladyship or her shawl when we returned to the library.”
Lucas nodded and turned to the butler. “It’s late. Let the servants find their beds. We won’t find my wife tonight, not if she left of her own volition.”
Pansy let out a long wail. “Milady wouldn’t ‘ave left like that. She wouldn’t!”
Lucas faced her. “That will be enough, Pansy. Go to her ladyship’s bedchamber and see if any of her things are missing.”
Pansy nodded and left, too upset to say anything else.
Thea opened her mouth to speak, but Drake hushed her. Ravenswood stood still as a statue near the fireplace, his intent regard on Timothy. Lucas dismissed the underfootman and the butler, watching to make sure they were safely headed to the kitchens before closing the library door tightly and facing the remaining occupants.
“Surely you don’t believe she’s really run away?” Thea demanded.
Lucas frowned. “No.”
“Then why did you send Pansy to check her room? Why did you stop questioning the underfootman?”
“How are you at surveillance?” Lucas asked Ravenswood before answering Thea’s questions.
The huge man shrugged. “I’m large, but I can be silent when I need to.”
After their experience in the park, Lucas believed him.
“Go around to the mews and watch for him. I’ll join you shortly.”
Ravenswood made a brisk assenting movement with his head and left the room. Lucas did not hear the front door open and shut, but then he hadn’t expected to. His brother-in-law knew what he was doing.
“I don’t understand what is happening,” Thea said.
Lucas turned to face her, knowing she shared his fear on Irisa’s behalf. “It all comes back to how did Irisa get locked on the tower roof?”
“What?” Thea asked with bewilderment.
“At first, I thought your father had done it.”
“But if he didn’t that left one of your servants as the culprit,” Drake said.
“Right. And then there was the matter of the last blackmail letter. No one remembered its arrival. The simplest explanation for that would be that Lady Preston had someone on my staff in her employ.”
“If it’s such a simple solution, why didn’t you come to it earlier?” Thea asked with some acerbity.
Lucas felt the weight of failure pull at him. “I damn well should have, but I made a tactical error and assumed the threat came from without, not within, my household.”
“You believe Timothy is the culprit?” she asked.
“He is the last servant to see my wife. He said that she sent him in search of Pansy and then disappeared. We know Irisa did not leave voluntarily, so that leaves the only viable alternative. Timothy lied.”
Thea’s face creased with anxiety. “Then why did you let him leave? Why have you not forced him to tell you where she is?”
Drake answered his wife’s distraught questions this time. “We can’t be certain he knows where she is. I think Lucas plans to follow him when he attempts to leave the house and meet with his other employer.”
“But what if he doesn’t leave the house?” Thea sounded close to the breaking point.
“He will.” Lucas was sure of it.
He had made some mistakes in this fiasco, mistakes he could only pray had not caused his wife any true harm, but he trusted his instincts. And those instincts told him that Timothy would be reporting to his employer very soon.
***
His instincts proved correct when, an hour later, he and Ravenswood followed the underfootman as he skulked away from Ashton House wearing nondescript clothing that would never be mistaken for a footman’s livery.
***
Irisa’s head pounded and her mouth tasted like cotton wool as she slowly became aware of her surroundings. She tried to open her eyes, but it required too much effort.
A feeling of disorientation made it difficult to make sense of her predicament. She was lying down, but not in a bed. The surface under her body was too unyielding to be a feather-tick mattress and too narrow as well. Her fingers could feel the edge of what might be a fainting couch. They brushed against the rough pattern of velvet, but she stilled them when two voices somewhere to her left became distinct as the confusion receded from her brain.
The man was definitely not Lucas, nor any servant whom she recognized. “She’ll wake soon,” he said.
“Yes and when she does, she will learn the full extent of her mistake in marrying The Saint.” The woman’s vaguely familiar voice was full of venom.
Had they taken her from Ashton House? The room did not have the fragrances she associated with her new home. Instea
d it smelled of expensive perfume and dust. A strange combination and definitely not familiar. She forced her eyelids to open and was unsurprised to see the beautiful young widow, Lady Preston seated in a chair across a small table from Lord Yardley.
“The underfootman put something in the ratafia,” Irisa said before she thought better of speaking at all.
Lady Preston turned her head and smiled mockingly at Irisa. “So you have awakened and rather more alertly than I expected. The drug is usually more debilitating.”
Irisa believed it. She still could not move from her supine position on the fainting couch.
“You are quite right,” Lady Preston continued, “Timothy put a small dose of sleeping powder in your drink.”
“Why?” She did not mean why the sleeping powder. Clearly that had been necessary to kidnap her, but why kidnap her at all? Why hurt her family? Why hurt Lucas?
“We required your presence, Lady Ashton.” Lady Preston made Irisa’s name sound like a curse. “How unfortunate the Saint will return to his home tonight to discover that your honor was not up to the task of keeping you at the townhouse. Very distressing for a man who puts such store in his wife’s integrity, don’t you think?”
“But why?” Irisa persisted, ignoring the other woman’s taunt. Lucas would not believe she left of her own will. He could not. Memories of how he had caught her trying to flee London, not once, but twice during their engagement rose up to haunt her. She pushed them away and chose to instead dwell on Lucas’s own words of faith in her earlier that evening.
“Ah. You wish to know why I have done what I have done?”
Irisa nodded and immediately regretted the movement. The pain in her head throbbed.
“What is that saying? Ah, yes. Hell hath no fury like a woman scorned. Your precious Saint hurt me unbearably and he will pay for it.”
“Lucas had never been your lover.”
Lady Preston laughed, the sound a grating trill in Irisa’s pain ridden head.
“How naïve you are, Lady Ashton. Is that what he told you?” The implication was there, that Lucas and Lady Preston had been intimate.
“Lucas said you’ve never been his mistress and I believe him.” It was difficult to affect disdain when lying on a fainting couch, but Irisa endeavored to do so just the same. “He has much more fastidious tastes.”
Lady Preston’s eyes glittered with fury. “I suppose you think you are so much better than me? That your prissy behavior puts you above my notice. Yet your once pristine reputation is not nearly so spotless as before. By now, all of London knows that you are base born.”
“They know that I am Lord Ashton’s wife and that is all that matters,” Irisa responded with as much conviction as she could muster when feeling a distinct need to cast up her accounts.
“Ah, but he wants a perfect wife. All of society knows it and you are hardly that. You have consorted with actresses, been revealed for the bastard daughter you are and now the ton will be titillated with the scandal of you running off with your lover the day after your marriage to The Saint.”
“I haven’t run off with anyone.”
“Ah, but that is not what the servants will say. You know how effective servants’ gossip is. And my very dear friend, Lord Yardley, will have placed a wager in White’s betting book to that effect by tomorrow evening. A week from now your reputation will be in shreds and The Saint’s along with it. After all, what kind of monster must a man be for his wife to run off the day after their wedding night?”
Irisa was appalled, not only by Lady Preston’s words, but by the abiding hatred she read in the other woman’s eyes. “No one will believe it. You must let me go eventually and I will return to my husband, giving lie to the rumor.”
She refused to believe Lady Preston intended to murder her. If that were the case, wouldn’t she already be dead?
“Oh, you will return all right. In five days time you will arrive at a well known posting house, abandoned by your lover and recovering from the cruel treatment on your wedding night. Unfortunately, you will be unable to cover the fading bruises.”
For the first time real fear coursed down Irisa’s spine. “I have no bruises.”
“You will.” Lady Preston’s gaze shifted to Lord Yardley. “After tonight.”
He smiled, but his eyes remained quite chilling. “It is not often that I am allowed to indulge my little fetishes with ladies of the ton. I assure you, Lady Ashton. I quite look forward to entertaining myself with you.”
This time the bile could not be kept down and Irisa began retching. Lady Preston yanked her to her feet and shoved her toward the water closet where Irisa was violently ill. Lady Preston had not allowed her to close the door, so she had no time to collect herself or her thoughts before being summarily forced back into the sitting room. At least this time she remained in an upright position.
“You must tell me why,” she said, hoping to gain enough time for Lucas to find her before the beast, Yardley, made good his threats.
For Lucas would find her, she had no doubt. Until then, she must protect herself. She could not hope to win a physical battle in her current state against both Lady Preston and Lord Yardley, so she must keep her wits about her. “You have threatened my family, driven my parents out of England and terrorized me personally. Tell me the truth of why you hate Lucas enough to do so, if you can.”
“I’ve told you why,” Lady Preston said smugly.
“I’ve told you that I don’t believe you.” Irisa trusted Lucas and he had told her he had never slept with the woman.
“Your husband is responsible for six years of hell in my life and I will see him pay.”
“What do you mean?” Lucas would never hurt someone purposefully. The woman had to be unbalanced.
Lady Preston’s face twisted with remembered raged. “In the last year of the war your husband was responsible for the death of my fiancé.”
“But Lucas was an intelligence agent for the Crown. He was not a soldier.”
“I am aware of that.”
Sudden understanding dawned. “Your fiancé was a spy for Bonaparte. He was a traitor.”
“He was a gentleman,” Lady Preston said quite fiercely and then with an all too sincere expression of grief, she went on, “He was also a wonderful dancer, charming in every way and I loved him.” The last was said so chokingly, it could not be doubted.
Irisa could almost have sympathy for the other woman, losing the man she loved, but she refused to countenance the need for revenge that drove Lady Preston. She had lost her love through his own actions, not those of Lucas and her methods of extracting for revenge for the imagined wrong done her showed the same lack of moral character her fiancé had displayed in spying for Boney.
“Nigel would have taken me away from the provincial little town in which I had grown up. He promised me trips to London and to the Continent when the war ended. We wanted the same things. He was everything a gentleman should be.”
“Except loyal to the land of his birth.”
Rage twisted Lady Preston’s features. “What do you know of it? Politics have no place in matters of the heart. I would not have cared if he were French. I loved him and your husband killed him.”
For Lucas to have killed, he would have had no other choice. “Your fiancé drove him to it.”
“We needed money to live the lifestyle we dreamed of. His connection to France provided it.” The woman truly saw no problem with her fiancé’s occupation.
“He was a traitor.”
“He was a man living by his wits, but when word spread that I had been engaged to an enemy of the Crown my parents were appalled. They wasted no time in marrying me off to an aging peer.” Lady Preston shuddered, her revulsion unfeigned. “You cannot imagine the horrors of my marriage bed, allowing cold, dry hands to grope me in the dark.”
Irisa did understand. She remembered her disgust at the prospect of marriage to His Grace, a man old enough to be her grandfather. Then her gaze fell
on Lord Yardley and she could not see how sharing a bed with him could be an improvement.
Lady Preston caught her look and she laughed. “As Yardley has said, he does not get the opportunity to exercise his fetishes on women of Quality like myself. We have far more mutually satisfying forms of entertainment.”
Irisa shuddered. “Yet you will allow him to hurt me?” she asked accusingly.
Lady Preston sighed. “It will not be so bad. The bruises are necessary to my plan, so he will bruise you. But for all his talk, he does not like to truly hurt the women he beds. He just likes to scare them.”
It was Lord Yardley’s turn to laugh and the sound froze Irisa’s heartbeat. “My very good friend has a rather charitable view of me, does she not?”
Charitable, or not, Irisa would fight to her last breath before she allowed the foul man to bed her. “You do not care if he tosses another woman’s skirts?”
She would kill Lucas if he so much as considered doing so.
Lady Preston’s laugh was mocking. “You really are naïve. There are many forms of pleasure to be had between two lovers. Watching Yardley force you to submit will do a great deal for by my sense of vengeance and darker passions.”
Irisa felt a strong urge to throw up again. “Lucas will kill you.”
“I think not,” Lord Yardley replied, standing and reaching out to caress Irisa’s cheek.
His touch was nothing like Lucas’s and she was unbearably grateful that he still wore the gloves of a gentleman’s evening dress. Without thought, she brought her hand up and slapped his arm away.
“You’re a feisty little thing, aren’t you? Does Ashton know what a treasure he has in you, my dear? It’s always such a pleasure to bring spirit to heel.” He pulled off his gloves finger by finger, then curled one hand into a fist, his intentions clear. “He may challenge me, but all I need do is tender my apology. I will be most abjectly sorry.”
“That will make you no less dead.” Lucas’s voice whipped across the room and caused Lady Preston to gasp and Lord Yardley to visibly start.
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
The sight of Yardley’s hand against Irisa’s cheek sent blinding rage coursing through Lucas. He did not give the bastard a chance to touch her again. With two long strides he reached Yardley and with one solid blow, the man collapsed in a motionless heap on the floor.