“Just what I said. And I do smell wood smoke. One does not have this pronounced a nose without having an excellent sense of smell,” she whispered.
Osei said, “Sir, I think if I get closer I can perhaps see into the window.” Without waiting for a reply, he crept through the long grass at the back of the cottage.
“Darkefell, you have Grover. With him in captivity, whatever others are holding Julius will surely not put up a fight. They have nothing to gain and everything to lose. Bo will certainly be no trouble if he knows we are friends, not foes.”
“We don’t know that,” Darkefell pointed out, still watching Osei. “We don’t know how many are here.”
She said nothing for a moment, then said, “Of course, you’re right. He could have half a dozen armed assailants in there and we wouldn’t know a thing about it.”
“Grover would not affirm or deny anything this morning, even after a long night spent trussed like a Christmas goose, and despite some … persuasion on my part.”
She gave him a sharp look, but he did not elaborate. He hadn’t hurt Hiram, though he had been sorely tempted.
Osei, baffled in his attempt to see anything through the curtained window, looked back at them and shrugged. He pointed around the cottage to indicate he was sneaking around the other way. Darkefell almost bolted to him. “No!” he whispered. “Damn him,” he said as Osei crept out of sight. “I didn’t want him going around that way, out of our view.”
“Go after him,” Anne whispered.
“Can I trust you to stay here?”
“Of course!” she replied, her gray eyes brimming with injured innocence. “I promise this time. Look, Sanderson is right there,” she added, pointing back at her driver in the woods behind them with his two grooms.
“All right.” He glanced around, then pressed his lips to hers in a long kiss as Sanderson eyed him grimly. It was a public declaration of his intentions, deliberate on his part. After last night she was his, and he would carry her to Gretna struggling in a sack if need be. She looked a little dazed, her gray eyes wide and her lips moist and plump. “I’ll be back,” he muttered, and crept away through the tangled greenery.
Darkefell followed Osei’s path around to the front of the cabin. His secretary was there, pistol drawn and ready. Really, the fellow was absurdly ready to sacrifice himself for the good of others. It was ridiculous considering what he had suffered in his own life, but then, Julius was in there, they hoped. When Darkefell made that leap into the Atlantic to save Osei and his fellow prisoners from the slave ship, Julius did not hesitate a second but dropped into the water almost immediately after. Julius was a good fellow and had suffered afterward just as Darkefell had, remembering those they couldn’t save, the sickly slaves who had drowned in the cold water because of the disgusting greed and inhumanity of the sailors, under direct orders from Grover and his captain.
Hiram Grover had never once apologized for the deaths of the Africans. He had, in fact, repeatedly defended his hired crew tossing the ill slaves overboard as a business decision. If he had not tried to collect insurance on their loss, he would never have suffered any consequences at all. As it was, he had escaped a prison sentence for his attempt at insurance fraud, but he claimed it was the punitive fine that had driven him into bankruptcy. He blamed Darkefell, and, oddly enough, Osei.
“Have you seen or heard anything inside?” Darkefell asked his secretary.
Osei glanced back at him and nodded. “I hear voices,” he whispered.
“How many?”
Osei held up three fingers. So, there was more than just Julius and Bo, the gypsy, just as Grover had implied. It would not be so simple, then, to simply walk in and “rescue” Julius. Darkefell pressed himself close to the wall and listened. There were so many gaps in the wall the murmuring became more distinct as his heart rate slowed and he focused his attention.
Someone was moving around inside and it sounded like he was banging pots, or throwing things. One voice was too low in tone to hear any separate words, but another was loud.
“What the hell are they doing?” Darkefell whispered to Osei.
Osei simulated throwing die.
“Hazard?”
The other man nodded, then shrugged. “I believe.”
Darkefell listened again, but out of the corner of his eyes he saw Sanderson circling the cabin, directing the other men with him to opposite corners. The coachman caught the marquess’s eye and nodded, signifying that he and his men were ready for anything.
Voices were raised in the cabin and one in particular caught Darkefell’s attention. It was Julius!
“Shut up, you imbeciles,” he said loudly, “it’s just a game!”
One of the men roared, “You ain’t playin’ fair, you cheater, you!”
“Look,” Julius said, and a loud bang accompanied his words. “You didn’t untie me just to lose, did you? I’m the one who has the most money and I’m willing to lose it to you, but you two fellows must work for it! Now, I’ll explain strategies again. Bo will be on my side again, shall he? Make it even?”
Darkefell stifled a chuckle. Julius knew they were outside of the cabin! He was signaling that he was untied and ready to fight, that they had two opponents, and that Bo, the gypsy, was on his side, probably threatened by the other two and so quiescent until now. He whispered as much briefly to Osei, who nodded in understanding.
Darkefell caught Sanderson’s attention and made him, with hand gestures, understand to post one each of his fellows at the two windows on the other sides, but to join them himself near the door. It was a rickety affair. One good kick would do the job.
But first … he cleared his throat, and screamed a high-pitched wail of consternation. “Unhand me, Mr. Grover, unhand me!” he shrieked in his best imitation of Anne’s commanding but indubitably feminine voice. It sounded ridiculous and nothing like her, but it did the trick of attracting attention. Inside, a ruckus was raised and Darkefell, with a shouted command, leaped up and kicked the door in, pistol drawn, Osei at his shoulder. Julius would not have signaled that there were two men with him and Bo if those men were not some danger.
Two burly fellows had leaped up from a table in the middle of an empty room, and one, with a roar, charged Darkefell, who met him with a fist on the jaw and a kick to his shin. The man went down like a stone, but the other was both swifter and more collected. As Osei and Sanderson surged in behind Darkefell, the other man, a thinner, more intelligent-appearing fellow, grabbed Julius around the throat and pointed a knife at his jugular.
“Damn you,” Julius grunted. “Thought I’d be faster than that.”
Bo, the gypsy fellow, his dark eyes wide, darted past them out the door and was gone. Darkefell held a gun to the man on the floor’s head and glared at the other fellow. “You have a knife, but I have a gun. I think I could kill your friend here much faster than you could kill my brother.”
“Do I look like I care ’bout ’im? Do ’im in, then,” he growled, as the other, larger man on the floor whimpered. “I’ll still have a knife to yer brother’s throat.”
“But with your friend dead you would not dare murder Julius, or I’d kill you in a heartbeat.”
“He would, you know,” Julius said, a grin on his filthy face.
Darkefell examined his brother, who appeared fairly cheerful for having been held captive for who knows how long, and with a knife at his throat. But then that was Julius’s overriding charm, his ability to remain cheery while the world was going to hell. “Hallo, Julius,” Darkefell said.
“Hallo, Tony. I’ve missed you.”
“You’ve been around: to Hawk Park, then living in the woods, consorting with gypsies.”
“Yes, though my particular gypsy seems to have fled, hey?”
“Can’t blame him, really,” Darkefell said reasonably. “Not his fight.”
“You got a point. Leastways he didn’t join up with these two buggers.”
“Shut up!” the fellow roared and
his knife nicked Julius’s throat. A ribbon of blood trailed through the dirt down to his twin’s ratty cravat.
“Steady now, old man!” Julius said.
Darkefell saw a glint of fear in his brother’s chocolate eyes, but he was certain he’d be the only one to recognize it, for Julius always had been cool in a fight. The marquess kept his foot on the other fellow’s back and the gun pointed at his head, as he felt him move slightly. “Don’t even think about it, you,” he said, kicking the back of his head. “You try anything and you’ll be dead before you can lumber to your enormous feet.”
Osei said, “It seems we are at an impasse, gentlemen.”
“Eh, the blackie speaks!” jeered the man holding Julius.
“Better than you do,” Julius said. “Hallo, Osei.”
“Good day, Lord Julius. I hope you are well despite your situation.”
“Do we ’ave the bloody niceties out o’ the way now?” the man on the floor yelled, lifting his face off the filthy floor. “Billy, do summat! ’E’s chokin’ the life outta me!”
Darkefell put more weight on the man. “Shut up, you. You no longer figure into this particular conversation. Now you … Billy, is it?” he said, staring at the other man. “You must know you are both in very bad trouble. Playing cricket for the wrong team, as it were. If you had come to me when Grover offered you this kind of work, I would have been grateful. Very grateful. Monetarily grateful.”
There was silence for a few moments.
“Does ’at mean money, milord?” the fellow on the floor grunted.
“Yes, that means money. I would have been generous to anyone who turned Mr. Grover over to me. He’s a murderer. But it’s too late for that now.”
Billy, the cleverer of the two, still held the knife to Julius’s throat, but his pale eyes were steady, considering. “’Ere now, it may not be too late to make some kinda deal.”
“It is too late,” Darkefell said. “You, of course, were not in possession of this information before now, but I have your employer. You have nowhere to go and nothing to do but surrender.” While he knew he looked cool and calm, Darkefell was furiously trying to think how to get out of this with both villains in hand and Julius unhurt by the gleaming sharp knife edge at his throat. The blood continued to flow and a movement of the man’s hand—which had now begun to tremble ever so slightly—caused the knife to nick him a little deeper. If Billy did plunge it into Julius’s jugular, that would be the end.
“Billy, Bertie, come out here!” a male voice cried out.
It sounded like Hiram Grover!
Billy looked up. He laughed and shot a triumphant glance at Darkefell. “That must be our fat friend! So, ’e waddled away from ya.” He moved swiftly as if to kick out at Darkefell while he shouted, “Grover, your enemy is ’ere, help us out, willya?”
The door swung open, but it was Sanderson who burst in with Bo and one of the two other men, so Darkefell swiftly hauled the prone villain to his feet and thrust him to Sanderson, then lunged at Billy. That fellow was caught up in a struggle for the knife with Julius, but Darkefell’s help was all that was required, and soon Julius had the upper hand, holding a knife to Billy’s throat.
“I ought to cut out your liver,” he said with a deceivingly cheerful expression of glee.
“Please, not in front of a lady,” Anne said, following the others and entering the gloomy hut, her skirts fastidiously raised from the dirty floor. “Lord Julius, how lovely to see you. Again.”
Seventeen
“What are you doing here?” Darkefell roared.
Anne bit her lip, trying to keep from laughing at the near identical expressions of bewilderment tinged with fury on the faces of Darkefell and his twin. She examined Julius in the dim light of the overfull cabin and could see why, from a distance and in a hurry, she had mistaken him for Tony. They were twins, after all; it was true that Julius was not quite as tall nor as bulky and he had browner skin, likely from his adventures of late, but they were very similar, the shape of their faces, the lift of their expressive brows over identical brown eyes.
“That is not the greeting I was hoping for,” she replied.
“You promised to stay with the cart,” Tony said, pushing aside his jacket and thrusting his pistol in the waist of his breeches.
Her gaze dropped to those exquisitely tailored form-fitting breeches and she blushed, for the memory of their time together in the night was still vivid and had colored her thoughts and actions all day. Even in a moment of danger she felt Darkefell within her now, a part of her. “My lord, I did promise, it’s true,” she said archly, removing her gaze and her mind from such an improper object as the contents of his breeches, “but this was an extraordinary case. Poor Bo, here,” she said with a wave of her hand toward the skulking gypsy, “came racing out of the hut and one of Sanderson’s fellows caught him and brought him to me.
“Bo told me that he wished to help you, but I had to argue with Sanderson and his men before they would allow it. They didn’t believe him; unreasoning prejudice on their part, I think. Bo has a remarkable facility at mimicry, which we utilized to good effect. He copied Hiram Grover’s voice rather well, inspired by your copying my voice so poorly! Anyway, this whole episode would have been over much more quickly if they had just listened to a woman immediately instead of arguing with me.” She shot an annoyed glance at her driver, who had the grace to look ashamed, though he likely wasn’t. He would do whatever it took to keep her safe, and she supposed she ought to thank him for that. She wasn’t always right, just most of the time, she had to be humble enough to admit.
“Good man, Sanderson,” Darkefell said, the anger ebbing away from his handsome face. “And Bo, good job. My lady Anne, may I introduce to you my brother, Lord Julius Bestwick?”
“Good day, my lord,” Anne said, nodding at him. “I believe I owe you thanks for saving me from Hiram Grover on the top of the Staungill Force some months past? We surmise that you followed him that night, as he escaped death in the fall and rambled away. Where is your dog, by the way?” A sudden growling and hissing outside led Anne to whirl and rush out the door. “Aha, I no sooner speak … stop!” she cried, when she saw Irusan crouched in the shrubs, his fur entangled, facing a large, shaggy, snarling doglike creature of surpassing ferocity.
Lord Julius bolted out the door behind her, having foisted his prisoner off on Darkefell, no doubt. “Atim! My boy!” he shouted. The animal yelped and raced to him, leaping on him and sending him crashing to the ground. “I wondered what happened to him after I was taken prisoner,” he shouted, rolling about in the greenery and laughing as the wolf dog danced, yelped, and licked his face, then raced around in mad circles. Julius shouted in laughter.
Irusan watched the folly, hissing and arching, his fur standing on end and his tail four times its normal size. He slithered out of the brush and crouched beside Anne, his tail lashing back and forth. “Never mind, Irusan,” Anne said, watching the scene. “Dogs and boys will ever be companions, for dogs, as you see, are lacking in subtlety. It takes the feminine mind to fully appreciate feline intelligence and delicacy.” Irusan calmed at her even tone, and rubbed against her leg with a murmur of agreement.
Hiram Grover, who had been guarded by one of the Harecross Hall grooms, was silent as Sanderson and Darkefell hustled their prisoners out of the brush and toward the cart. But the moment they were thrown in the back with him, he began to berate them with a string of angry words, condemning their stupidity and questioning their mother’s morality. But beaten down finally by his ordeal and pale with exhaustion, he fell silent, closing his eyes, curling into a ball away from everyone else.
The cart was ideal for conveying the restrained prisoners to the magistrate for his deliberation; Billie and Bertie were both local fellows, Sanderson said, and their swagger was gone; both appeared utterly broken by their experience, judging from the shame on their faces and their weepy demeanor. Bo, having made up for his part in Grover’s plot, melted into t
he woods to return to the gypsy encampment to see his newborn baby, no doubt, Anne informed Darkefell. Sanderson agreed to drop Grover off at his shed jail cell, then take the two local miscreants on to the magistrate for confinement. Anne, Darkefell, Julius, and Osei, whom Irusan claimed as his conveyance for the distance, set out toward Harecross Hall, Anne and Julius on horseback and the others walking.
Once they arrived Anne immediately ordered a room for Lord Julius Bestwick and baths for them all, though Darkefell first visited Hiram Grover to tell him they would be going north to Yorkshire immediately so he would finally face the magistrate and be judged for his crimes. It was still not clear to anyone what he had intended to obtain by kidnapping Jamey and holding Julius hostage, but all admitted it was an impressive feat for a madman. They would take no chances with him.
Julius and Darkefell intended to visit Hawk Park the next morning to see if Lady Sophie had yet arrived, then travel north with Grover. Anne, soaking in her copper hip bath, wondered, should she go north with them? Mary entered her bedchamber with another ewer of hot water, dumped it into the tub and handed Anne a cloth.
“I’m more confused than ever, Mary,” Anne said, soaping her cloth with a fragrant bar of Castile soap and rubbing the grit from her neck and ears. The water was hot and lavender scented, utterly decadent in its perfumed steaminess. She lay back in the water and soaped her underarms.
“Confused? About marriage and his lordship?”
“Mmm,” Anne said, lathering her long legs. “He’s perfect.”
“Oh, I wouldna say that, milady.”
“No? What possible imperfections have I missed?”
“His temper is not perfect,” Mary said, picking up items of discarded clothing and folding them carefully.
“But I can handle that. He’ll never bully me. I do believe I’ve noticed an improvement just since we’ve been acquainted.”
“Oh?” Mary said, pausing in her tidying with an arch expression. “Have you, now?”
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