The Road to Ruin

by Bronwyn Stuart

  “In there,” he said to Hobson, holding the door open.

  “Are you sure you couldn’t put her in one of the upstairs bedrooms? It would be more comfortable.”

  He shook his head. He didn’t need his partner in crime to go soft on him now. “She was about to throw herself from a fast-moving carriage. I’m sure a second-story window and a fifteen-foot drop to the ground wouldn’t deter her from freedom. Put her in.”

  Hobson lowered Daniella to her feet and waited, hesitation written all over his face and body.

  Daniella swiped the hair from her face and stared hard into James’s gaze. “You will pay for this.”

  “I certainly hope so,” he replied before gesturing for her to climb over the threshold. “And don’t think about starting a fire or any other nonsense because it won’t help your cause. In a moment, Mrs McDougal will be along with refreshments and in an hour I’ll let you out. Do you understand?”

  She huffed but then strangely did his bidding. He’d expected a lot more fight from the daughter of the notorious pirate captain. All she did was square her shoulders and plop down on a stool, her back poker straight against the timber-panelled wall.

  His conscience complained when he closed the door and threw the bolt but he pushed the unfamiliar niggling aside. Without a backwards glance to either McDougal or Hobson, standing in the hall with their mouths open, he charged into the study and headed straight for the liquor cabinet.

  “That was a little harsh, was it not?” Hobson commented as he sank into a chair in front of an ancient carved mahogany desk.

  “Not harsh enough for that wench. Do you have any idea at all what she just did?”

  Hobson shook his head.

  James sloshed whiskey into two glasses. “First she illegally purchased the filthiest virgins I have ever laid eyes upon.” He contemplated the glasses, one for him and one for Hobson, and then with both hands and two smooth movements, drained them both. “She then put her own virtue up for the bidding.”

  “She did not.”

  “She did so. Leicestershire almost had her for the paltry sum of three hundred pounds.”

  “What did you do?”

  “I purchased her myself. What else could I have done?”

  “You could have let the old earl have her. Odds are her father would have been a mite more upset about him locking her up than you.”

  James raised his brow because he rather doubted that. “She could—no, would—have been harmed and I could not let that happen.”

  Hobson took a moment to think before replying and it grated on James’s nerves in the most dangerous way. Whenever his man thought, dire consequences and a bucketful of reason ensued.

  “You must know this plan of yours isn’t going to work.”

  “It most certainly will—though I admit she is correct: her father likely won’t come to us here. By the time anyone knows she is missing, we’ll be well on the road north and I expect the good captain will meet us somewhere along the way.”

  “What will you do when all of these forces come together? How will you escape his vengeance?”

  “He won’t get close enough for the chance.”

  Hobson shook his head but asked, “What exactly are you going to do?”

  “I’m going to swap his daughter for my mother and my sister.”

  “That easily? What of their reputations?”

  “My mother and my sister will survive. We are the only ones who know they are even missing.”

  “I was also referring to Miss Germaine’s.”

  He knew that. James rolled his eyes. “Hers will also be intact, if not perfectly—whether or not she wishes to return. She seems to have some notion of staying with Germaine. Either way I’ll put it out that she was assisting me in some way or another, chaperoned of course, romanticize the whole fiasco.”

  “She’s not going to appreciate that one little bit.”

  James leaned forwards and picked up a worn piece of paper from the top of his neatly ordered desk. He unfolded the note and stared at his mother’s handwriting. Her words were curt, concise and to the point. Exactly three things his mother was not.

  “What if they are no longer…alive?” Hobson asked.

  He refused to think on it. If it had been any other pirate to snatch them from a passenger ship headed for the Americas, he would be searching for bodies, not living family members. Anyway, the letter attested to the fact they were hale and happy. Right before the do not look for us part. “They are alive.”

  “But taking Miss Germaine—you are playing with fire.”

  “Her father and his crew are holding my mother and Amelia against their will and it is up to me to get them back. Fire or no.”

  Thinking of his timid sister made his chest ache. He had been almost ten when she’d come wailing into the world. He and his brother John had been fighting the constraints of the new nursery for over a year, their obligations all changed now their family was titled and respectable. His bedroom had been situated right next to his enchanting little sister’s. What no one knew was that he had lain awake at night, waited for her to stir. Then he would sneak into her room and play with her or keep her company until she was tired enough to fall back to sleep.

  He’d loved her from the moment he’d laid eyes on her tiny red face screwed up and ready to let loose yet another cry. He’d wrapped his hand around her little fist and hummed to her and she’d quieted. Instantly. It wasn’t long before she smiled for him. Laughed for him. Had his very being held tight and precarious in that fist of hers.

  “And what of your name?” Hobson said, his loud voice banishing the happy memories. “What if these deeds get out and paint you in a worse light? You are finally starting to banish your past and move into your future.”

  James snorted. “That sounded alarmingly as though you care, Lieutenant.”

  Hobson drew himself up, his chest puffed out, and replied, “Only for the women. One such as you, Butcher of the Battle, can look after himself.”

  “I wish you wouldn’t call me that. I would be happy to never hear it again as long as I live.” He’d thought of little else but both his names since he received the note from his mother saying that she and Amelia were safe and happy and that he shouldn’t search for them. The letter she had been forced to write by her abductor. If his mother had indeed authored the note, it would have gone on for at least four pages and would have said something about where they were and why they had left. There would have been wailing apologies and nonsense about the whys.

  It had taken only two days to track them to a merchant ship where they’d paid for passage to the promised land. But news came back that that ship had sunk to the bottom of the ocean, her entire crew and all passengers taken aboard another.

  Bloody pirates. They were a menace to everyone who thought to sail across the sea. From there he’d wasted more than a few thousand pounds and two months hiring mercenaries who’d found less than he had himself. One band of roughened men had even returned some of his blunt to him with the advice to stop chasing dead men and get on with his life.

  Dead men indeed.

  “I must get them back.” Why in the world his closest relatives would want to head to the Americas without even offering a goodbye was the biggest puzzle in all that had happened so far. His mother could be flighty but his sister usually kept a level head. She was looking forward to more balls and picnics in the park and had spoken of nothing else in the months he had been home. They had all finally put scandal behind them and resigned themselves to normality and a second season on the town for Amelia when he’d arrived home from his club to find them gone without a trace.

  James rubbed a hand against his breastbone. The pain there was uncomfortable. He wished the post-battle numbness would return: at least then he wouldn’t have to feel regret or listen to his conscience or worry incessantly. What if he was the reason they’d left London? As much as he’d worked hard to return to his witty, charming self, war had changed
him. Nightmares that made him cry out in the night left him grumpy and tired. He drank more, smiled less. He knew it. Amelia knew it. His mother did too. Perhaps they couldn’t stand the man he’d become?

  “Do you really think he holds them because you got away?” It was the first time Hobson had asked the question and he was glad for the distraction.

  He’d thought about it too. But as much information as he’d gleaned about this pirate said his prisoners were always ransomed back to their families. He’d wished he’d known that when the ship he travelled on was taken off the coast of Calais. He would have sat on the deck in the weak sunshine like a child and waited for rescue. “Stabbing the captain in the leg was not my finest moment. I should have driven the blade into his black heart.” His hands had been so cold and numb. Months spent as an army assassin in Egypt had impaired his resistance to the cold. And he’d seriously believed his life in danger. Butcher of the Battle indeed. He couldn’t even dispatch one annoying pirate in the middle of a sea fight.

  “It certainly would have made for a quieter retirement,” Hobson said glumly.

  “I’m a gentleman now. I’m supposed to be staid and boring and bored. I should not be planning an abduction to attract the attention of a bloodthirsty pirate.” He refolded the note and placed it in the top drawer of his desk. Taking out his heavy signet from the box where he left it when masquerading as a coachman, he slipped it back on his finger with a sigh. Was it heavier today than it had been the week before?

  Hobson clucked his tongue in a way that said he had more to say on the matter but would hold off for another time. James hoped he would hold off forever. He could not predict how long it would take for Captain Richard Germaine to get the notes James planned to send him or what actions her brother would take when he discovered her gone. These variables had been better allowed for in his original plan, but that couldn’t be helped.

  He would make their journey quite easy to follow but not easily predicted and therefore ambushed. He hoped that whatever Sir Anthony chose to do about his sister’s disappearance, their father would fear a man named Butcher enough to rescue her. Just as he was rescuing his gentle Amelia.

  Of course there was nothing gentle about Daniella. Where his sister was the most English of girls, with her light brown hair, brown eyes, pale skin, perfect posture and presence, Daniella Germaine was entirely a Scot, with all the fire and immoderation of that lawless race. Her flame-red hair had not been properly tamed once since he’d had the unfortunate pleasure of knowing her. A light tan darkened her skin despite London’s dreary skies, freckles spotted her nose and cheeks and the chit didn’t walk, she had a stride that ate up ground quicker than a lad’s. And the piratical accent—it beggared belief that she’d ever been to a ton party making sounds such as those. Her green eyes were always full of mischief and never had she smiled serenely. She grinned. Constantly. It irked him.

  See if she grins now, he thought irritably as he tipped another glass of whiskey down his throat.

  “Where to first?” Hobson asked, his hand outstretched for the other glass before James drank it too. Again.

  This is where all of his headaches and hard thinking would come to fruition. A full military assault was easier than putting up with that girl. “I believe Gretna Green should be our north. If we stay close to the west coast, he may come inland just far enough to collect his wayward child. We’ll make our bargain, a hostage for the hostages, and then we can all go our separate ways. I just wish I knew exactly what it was he wanted.”

  “And if he doesn’t meet us? If he only wants to kill you?”

  “If you think I won’t use Miss Germaine to save my own arse, you don’t know me at all.”

  “But Gretna? What if he doesn’t want her back or doesn’t hear that you have her in time? Tell me you’re not going to marry the girl.”

  “Hardly.” He shook his head. “But her father doesn’t have to know that.”

  *

  From the cover of dense shrub, leaning against an ice-cold fence, a man watched the house where only moments before, the strangest scene had played out. Was it not enough the Butcher had already made two women disappear? He needed a third? Perhaps Lasterton preyed on young women and that was the real reason he was known in military circles as the Butcher?

  Where he stood afforded him a partial view of the front door so he settled in to wait. He recognized the young lady who’d been taken inside and agonized over his next course of action. The way he saw it, he had three choices. The first and only choice he should have considered would be to go to the Germaine house and let Sir Anthony know his sister had met with fouler play than she could concoct on her own. Another option was to walk right up to the front door and demand to know what was going on. Always a hothead in times of pressure, the stranger remembered his father’s shouted words and drew a deep breath, settling farther into the damp branches.

  Right now, there was too much at stake to risk spooking the marquess. He would wait, bide his time, keep watching his movements and, when the moment came to take back what was his, then he would pounce. The marquess had no idea of the trouble hurtling his way.

  Chapter Four

  Daniella peered into all four corners of the small room and nodded her admiration of the housekeeper—there was no dust even here. She didn’t like dust. It made her nose itch and her eyes water followed by sneezing fits that would not cease. Even though she had been taken against her will by a stranger, sneezing for the next few hours—or however long they planned to hold her—would not do. She needed a clear head to plan her next move.

  The space was completely void of anything except for the wooden stool upon which she now sat, backside cushioned by the thin fabric of her cloak, and a single candle. Escape wasn’t an option. Yet.

  Should she let this James Trelissick keep her and hope there was indeed something about him that might force her father come after her? Could she take that risk? So far she’d tried everything she could think of to gain her sire’s attention and none of it had worked. Perhaps this would.

  She wasn’t sure she could put herself so entirely in the hands of another though. Especially not one such as him.

  Though the carriage had been dark, and his home was not much better lit, Daniella hadn’t missed the intensity in his large brown eyes or the tension gripping the hard lines of his body. What puzzled her was why she hadn’t discovered his identity when he’d masqueraded as her servant. She should have noticed the way he held himself was different, sure, almost arrogant—or had it been? Had he walked differently as her coachman? Were his acting skills that good or had she been so self-absorbed he had duped her with no effort at all? Now she had the time to dwell on it, she realized he’d stared at her with that unnerving gaze before. And she’d dismissed it. How perfectly obtuse—how perfectly aristocratic—of her.

  She cursed under her breath. She could not and would not ever accept a position in English society. If her father had wanted that for her he should have lived a respectable life and never introduced her to the rolling deck of a ship or constant sunshine and crystal-blue waters. He especially should not have let her experience the thrill of a chase or let her taste battle. Now the dreary skies of London left her feeling sad, sullen and incredibly irritable. Well, more than usual. And of late, with the kind of husband her brother talked about finding for his wild sister, she had been more than a little desperate to make it back to the decks of The Aurora. A privateer’s life should not be denied her simply because she had been born female.

  Daniella huffed, leaned her head back against the wall and stretched her feet out beneath her confounded skirts. What she wouldn’t give for trousers, to kick her shoes off and wriggle her toes. Well! As to that, there was no one to stop her. She leaned forwards and removed her delicate green shoes and then, feeling decidedly daring, her stockings as well.

  The air was cool on her toes and she grinned.

  The bonus to this detour in her plans was that her brother couldn’t
arrange “chance” meetings for her with his cronies. Her grin got wider when she thought about how red Anthony’s face would turn when she didn’t arrive for her own ball two nights hence.

  It would serve him right. His priggish attitude towards his only sister grated on her nerves. He knew as well as any other that there would be no palatable offers for her hand. He should have stood up to their father then and there and refused to host her season rather than giving in to the farce that there was a husband somewhere in London who would make her more respectable. Just because her brother had been knighted for saving the prince didn’t mean their family history would be erased or forgotten. More likely the monarch needed to keep peace on the streets and so knighted a reasonably educated, lowborn nobody for seemingly being in the right place at the right time.

  Her smile slipped and she sighed, stared at her feet, at the small half-moon scar on the edge of the left one, where she had carelessly stepped on her own dagger while sparring.

  Life had been simple once. Happy and content. How she longed to be again but it couldn’t happen until she was safely back on the decks of her father’s ship. Her brother kept talking about compromise. Search for a husband with a shipping line; marry a naval officer or a man with property close to the coast. Then she might be able to sail some of her days away.

  Daniella snorted. Even she was not that naive. Perhaps a Scottish husband would allow a little of her wildness out to play for a time, before any children were born, but an English lord would expect her to embroider and take tea and generally be quite limpid and useless.

  Her heart gave a wild thump when suddenly the silence was interrupted by the door lock sliding open with a click. The timber flew wide but she didn’t get up, didn’t bother to move at all as the deceitful marquess himself stood on the threshold and took stock.