The Road to Ruin

by Bronwyn Stuart

  “Making yourself at home?” he said with a raised brow.

  Daniella shrugged and wriggled her toes again.

  “There are some questions I wish to ask, if you would come this way?”

  Daniella looked around and wondered if she should refuse. At least in this tiny room she was safe from his intentions and his anger.

  “I’m not going to hurt you.”

  Damn him. Was he a mind reader too? “But you’re not going to let me go either, are you?”

  His gaze narrowed and he made as if to say something but instead shook his head.

  “Then I shall leave my shoes.” She stood and followed him into what appeared to be a cross between a study and a library. The diminutive one who had manhandled her was already seated in front of the desk but rose and bowed his head before waiting for her to sit in the chair next to him.

  “I must say, this is all very strange,” she remarked as she settled her skirts to hide her toes. Not very effectively.

  “Indeed,” agreed her neighbour, as he stared at her ankles.

  “Hobson,” the marquess warned, his tone low, almost growly.

  Ah, so that was his name. Daniella looked to where the marquess perched on the edge of the desk, swirling liquid in a tumbler between his fingers. Her mouth watered.

  “May I have a drink?” she asked. “Please?”

  “So you do have manners?”

  She bristled. “Of course I do.”

  Hobson choked on a laugh and Daniella had to resist the urge to glare at him. Instead, she saved her glowers for the marquess. “You had questions. Let’s get on with it.”

  “Do you have somewhere more pressing to be?”

  “As a matter of fact, I do. The sooner my father hears you have me, the sooner I might get home.”

  “Home?”

  “The Aurora,” she pointed out with an impatient roll of her eyes. “How about you cease pretending you don’t already know everything about me.”

  This time the marquess sighed, poured her a drink in a matching tumbler, and then sat behind his desk. “Not everything. If I had known what you were up to tonight, I would have abducted you this morning.”

  “Why didn’t you?”

  “You sound almost glad to be my hostage.”

  “Don’t mistake me, my lord, I’m not one to easily hand over control, especially not when it comes to my future, but you seem to have a plan that is far better than my own. For the moment, I bow to your superior scheming.”

  “Why do you want to rejoin your father so badly?” he asked. “I would think some amount of continuity and safety would make a young lady happy.”

  “Then you would be wrong again. Safe is boring, stability stifling. You wouldn’t understand since this is the only life you know.”

  He snorted and she knew she’d missed something by the expression on his face.

  “Where do you think your father is right now?”

  “I’m not just going to hand over information like that to someone like you.”

  “I didn’t think so,” he said with a wide grin. As much as Daniella tried to ignore it, his grin did things to her insides that she didn’t want done. He really was very nice to look at now he was clean. Since arriving in London, she’d not been in the same room as a gentleman in his shirtsleeves other than her brother. Especially not one with his shirtsleeves rolled to his elbows and no necktie. Dark hair sprinkled his wide forearms and chest, similar growth darkening his jaw also. Perhaps he wasn’t a gentleman after all?

  “Who are you?” she asked, before thinking the better of opening her mouth.

  “James Trelissick, the Most Honourable Marquess of Lasterton. I assume you know how to get a message to the captain?”

  She shook her head and looked at him narrowly, ignoring the insulting bow he offered with the repeat of his name. “No. Who were you when you weren’t the Marquess of Lasterton?” There was more to his story and she wanted to know what it was. How could she hand over her fate without all the facts?

  Hobson chose that moment to intervene. “His lordship was a major in his majesty’s army.”

  “Hobson.”

  The man stared at Lasterton for a moment and then gave a small nod. She would have to remember that Hobson knew just as much as his master.

  “I didn’t know marquesses went to war.” When The Aurora took a ship, the titled were always the fattest and laziest men and she often wondered if they did anything at all for themselves. This marquess was not fat and she doubted very much he suffered from idleness.

  “I didn’t have the title when my commission was purchased. How do you communicate with the captain when you are away from the ship?”

  “I don’t. I was forbidden any further contact.”

  “I don’t believe you.”

  Fury warmed her cheeks. “Don’t you think if I had a way to speak to my father, I would have considered that before putting my innocence up for sale?”

  “Perhaps he ignored you and you retaliated with your ill-thought-out plan?”

  Damn him. That’s exactly what she had done. Desperate measures for desperate times. Still, she couldn’t very well tell him that. “I am not five years old, sir.”

  His long sigh floated across the desk. “Yet you behave as though you are.”

  *

  Pressing a finger to his temple to ease the growing pain there, James stared at her across the table, trying his hardest to ignore the flash of her ankle as she tucked her feet beneath her. “How do you even know your father hears of your antics?”

  So far Miss Germaine had been quite free with her answers, more than he would have been if captured, but this time her gaze shuttered and only her anger showed. “He has me watched.”

  “How do you know that?” James barely suppressed his eagerness. Maybe her brother had already been informed he had her?

  “Because I’m not a simpleton. Send Hobson here to have a look around. I’d wager there is at least one man watching the house.”

  “Aye, don’t even have to look. Felt his eyes on me when we came up the walk. Good at his job too. Didn’t realize on the road that we were being followed.”

  He flicked his gaze from the smugness in Daniella’s to the certainty in Hobson’s. “And you didn’t think to mention something like that?”

  “You want the captain to know the miss is with us, don’t you?”

  “You two seem far too casual with what happened here tonight. Hobson, pirates are dangerous criminals. I should like to know when one loiters around my home. And you, Miss Germaine, had better hope you’re right. Without a sure way to inform your father I have you, we could be stuck together riding up and down the coast for the better half of the month.”

  “Or we could go straight to him.”

  He leaned forwards once again. “You said you had no way to contact him.”

  “I don’t—he and my brother made sure of that—but I do know where he docks The Aurora, and I happen to know what times of the year he makes for home and how long he usually settles in.”

  “And where is that?” The chit was a liability. He wondered if that’s why her father got rid of her. She talked far too much.

  “First, what is the plan? You said you had one.”

  He nodded. “One I may need to rethink now depending on how far we are to travel.”

  “Well, I’m not going to tell you where he is. I might yet decide to escape.”

  James laughed. As much as he didn’t want to, he admired her tenacity. “Escape? Not likely.”

  “You haven’t completely convinced me you know what you’re doing.”

  “Convinced you?” No, this was the reason the captain had dropped her off and sailed away. She was far too cocky.

  “You’ve barely told me anything. In fact, you still haven’t told me what my father has that you want back so desperately.”

  “And nor shall I.” He stood and walked around the desk, or rather, stalked. When he was close enough, he reached out
and dragged her chair so she faced him, his large hands on the arms to trap her there. “Just so we’re clear on the details, Miss Germaine, I am in charge here. You are my prisoner. There will be no escape. There will be no quarter so long as your father has what is mine. If I have to use you to get his attention, believe me, I will do whatever I must to achieve my ends. Do you understand?”

  She gulped once, the smooth line of her throat giving her away. But then she firmed, her back straightened and she rose nose to nose with him, her bare toes sinking into the rug under his feet. “You may think you’re in charge, my lord, but you have no idea who you’re dealing with. You work on the assumption that my father will care that you have me, though he has in fact abandoned me, and may simply consider you a happy solution to my unmarried state. You can clearly not rely on me as bait, but I have his location and you have the means to travel there. Could an agreement between us not be mutually beneficial?”

  James stepped back and crossed his arms over his chest. “Do you remember a fight two years ago, on the Channel, just off the coast of Calais? Your father flew French colours and took an army vessel disguised as a cargo ship?”

  She paled.

  “I rather thought you would. Your ship sustained damages as did your captain.”

  “You were there?”

  “I was.”

  “You stabbed my father in the leg? That was you?”

  “It was.”

  “If he finds you, he’s going to kill you.”

  He rather doubted that. “I assume that’s why he stole from me.” Why he toyed with him now.

  Curiosity flashed in her eyes while she thought about that. “He’s drawing you out? But why?”

  The last part of her question he imagined she asked herself but he answered anyway. “I hurt his pride. I escaped his capture and therefore cost him several ransoms. Several very lucrative ransoms. I would be upset with me too.”

  “But he didn’t need the gold and we don’t hold to pride the way you English do. He would have admired you for escaping if it hadn’t been for…”

  “For what?”

  She had her head down but he could practically hear her thoughts. “If it hadn’t been for what?”

  “I can’t be right. There must be something else you’re not telling me.”

  He shook his head. He nearly shook her. “There isn’t.”

  “Then you have to tell me what he took of yours. Otherwise it just doesn’t make sense.”

  “What doesn’t?” he roared and leaned towards her. His mother and sister depended on him to save them and she was the key. He didn’t have time for guessing games.

  “Revenge,” she whispered, her green eyes wide.

  “For escaping? You said he didn’t have pride.”

  “I did not.” She slipped past him to lean against the mantel. “I said hurt pride wouldn’t make him do something like this.”

  “But revenge would? I don’t understand, Daniella. Why would he risk it? And why now?”

  “After you stabbed him, he developed an infection. We thought he would die.”

  “Well, he shouldn’t have attempted to take a ship of returning servicemen. We were on our way home after months and years of fighting only to be drawn into another fray. Your father does not own the ocean. He has no right to take anything he wants.”

  “No more right than the English to think they own it, or the French to try to claim it. My father lost his leg after that day. He can no longer run the decks of the ship as he used to—he no longer sails as he used to.”

  He hadn’t been aware of that. Guilt pricked through the hard shell of his numbness—one of the few emotions that could. “That is why you’re so sure he will be docked?”

  She nodded.

  “Where?”

  “I won’t tell you.”

  “How do I arrange a meeting?”

  “Nowhere in England, certainly.”

  “We stick to the plan and draw him out, get him to meet us. Hobson, search the gardens and see if you can discover the eyes watching Miss Germaine. A live messenger would serve our purpose better than an undelivered note.”

  “We don’t need any of that. I tell you I can take you to my father. And if he hates you as much as you imagine, his home ground is the safest place to meet him. He keeps the peace there, and he ensures the rest do too.”

  “If you knew where he was all this time, why did you not go to him?”

  Daniella sighed and the guilt was there to needle him again. “’Tis a twelve-day land journey if the weather is kind. My brother doesn’t allow me enough pin money to hire a crew or passage on a ship and overland would be even harder to arrange without his notice. I might make thirty miles but then what? Alone and penniless. My plan was much the same as yours: draw my father out, make him send for me. It hasn’t worked, can’t you see?”

  When her chin drooped all the way to her chest in defeat, James knew what she was thinking. That her father didn’t care enough for her to risk his own life.

  Nor would he if their situations were reversed.

  Daniella frequently behaved recklessly and without thought. Her father probably held out hope that she would one day wake up a woman and act like one. To James that day seemed a long way off.

  “I assume we’ll find him in Scotland?” It’s where most of his intelligence gathering had led him so far.

  She nodded.

  “Where?” He gritted his teeth.

  And she hers. “I won’t tell you but I can take you.”

  “You expect me to blindly follow you into what could be an ambush? A trap? Worse?”

  “Don’t be ridiculous. I didn’t know who you were or what you planned to do—when would I have had the time to create yet another scheme?”

  She was right but a smart man never went to battle without weapons or know-how. “Twelve days is too long to travel: we’ll go by sea.”

  “He’ll see you coming.”

  “How? You said he would be docked. Since he is a pirate who wishes to remain undiscovered, he would be moored somewhere shut off, out of the way.”

  “There are many Scotsmen who still hate the English. Hours after the first one lays eyes on you, the message will be passed along the coast until everyone knows who you are. The news always gets through. How do you think we were so successful?”

  “I don’t spend my days pondering the inner workings of pirates and thieves.”

  “We wouldn’t have to thieve if we were allowed to be about our business without constant harassment by your king and his exorbitant taxes.”

  He had to admire her spunk. She was a prisoner yet she acted like a houseguest helping him with complex puzzles and arguing about politics. That was preferable to sullenness but her calm might let them down once they were on their way.

  “So we travel by road but send messages by sea?”

  “That’s right. And after we cross the border, we’ll need guards. You would never pass for anything but English and the danger will be high.”

  “How far into Scotland must we travel? Into the Highlands?”

  Daniella smiled and sat back in her chair, her fingers steepled before her. “You can stop asking me our final destination because I’ll never reveal it.”

  “How am I to know which direction to give the driver?”

  “You won’t. After we cross the border, I’ll navigate. You’re going to have to trust that I want the same outcome as you do.”

  “Trust you, a pirate? Once again you mistake your place in this.” In truth, James trusted no one save Hobson. It had kept him alive throughout countless campaigns so far.

  Daniella stood and James fought to keep his eye from wandering to bare little toes once again peeking from beneath her revealing gown.

  “You can’t control everything,” she pointed out. “Even generals have need of intelligence from the lower ranks.” She swished past him into the corridor where Mrs McDougal held a platter of sandwiches and a pot of tea. “Let me know when yo
u decide my place in all of this.”

  “And then what?”

  But she didn’t answer. Just climbed back into the room below the stairs, took the tray from his housekeeper’s hands and closed the door.

  Chapter Five

  It took only another hour until James was forced to admit he might need Daniella’s help if he planned to reach his mother and sister. Each sweep of the minute hand around the clock face was another hour they were in danger, another hour his sister’s reputation sustained lasting damage and another hour he blindly stumbled about and prayed they were still alive. He’d wasted enough time on dead-end leads. If he couldn’t draw the captain out, he would have to risk marching up and knocking on his door—for which he would need Daniella. He didn’t take to inaction kindly and it had been nearly five months since their disappearance. He was a man who charged into battle and came out victorious time and again. So why now, when the players numbered only a handful, did he feel so useless, as though hope had deserted him? Was it because the stakes were the highest he’d ever known or was it because he had no idea where to start the campaign? Perhaps it was because he had to place himself and his family in the hands of a selfish, spoiled girl.

  Boot steps on the tile outside his study signalled the return of Hobson. “No sign of anyone outside now. Whoever it was left as quietly as he came.”

  “Damn. You were both so sure there was a watchman.”

  “Probably just some drunkard having a piss or something. I think the miss suffers an overactive imagination but I was sure I felt someone watching,” Hobson said gruffly.

  “If there isn’t a spy then no one knows she is missing yet.”

  “It’s only a matter of time before the alarm is raised. The maids have to go to her rooms to feed the fire eventually. And there was someone out there at some stage.”

  They’d collected and collated knowledge about the inner workings of Sir Anthony’s home for a month and now the information would help them. “Germaine might not seem to care for his sister a great deal, but he would already be on the doorstep if it was his spy. He doesn’t enjoy appearing the fool.” James shook his head. “We’ll work this to our favour. I don’t want to wait until someone tells Sir Anthony we have his sister. I don’t even care if the useless blackguard never knows where she is. As long as we reach the captain and have her to trade, the outcome will be favourable.” James sat behind his desk and took out four pieces of parchment. On each of them he wrote the same words of ransom for Captain Germaine to read. He was to prepare his “items of value” to swap them for his daughter.