Risking a quick glance at Alec and Pearl—she was lying sprawled on the bed with him, and Isabella didn’t even want to think about what his hands were doing—she stepped out from behind the chair. As she walked toward the bedroom, her head began to swim. Her knees shook, and she suddenly felt icy cold. Another step and she had to catch hold of the doorknob to keep from falling to the floor. She must have made a slight sound, because Paddy was by her side in an instant, seemingly oblivious to her state of undress as he looked anxiously into her face. Isabella was not oblivious, though, and despite her weakness, tried to cover herself with her hair, cringing away when he would have touched her.
“Pearl, leave off fawning over Alec and come help this chit back to bed,” Paddy said.
“You do it, Paddy. You don’t need me—but I think Alec does.” A throaty, suggestive giggle punctuated the words.
“Go help the lady to bed, Pearl. I’m not up to much right now, anyway.”
“Oh, Alec!” Pearl protested, pouting.
“Do as I say, now. I need to talk to Paddy. Business.”
“Oh, you and your damned business! That’s all you ever think about!” Pearl snapped, flouncing off the bed. Out of the corner of her eye Isabella could not help but see Alec’s next appeasing gesture.
“All, Pearl?” He squeezed her bottom, his grin beguiling.
Pearl giggled, turned, and planted a kiss full on his chiselled mouth. “Well, maybe not all,” she agreed, relenting. Her good nature thus restored, she adjusted a drooping plume while apparently wasting little thought on the bosom that was even more daringly exposed than before. Then she moved over to where Isabella watched her with half-frightened fascination.
“Come on, angel, let’s mind Alec and tuck you back into bed.”
Isabella instinctively shrank as Pearl slid an arm around her waist. She was not used to being touched, especially by strangers. Especially not by a stranger like Pearl, who was absolutely scandalous in dress and behavior. But after a moment she permitted herself to be helped away from the door and led into the bedroom. Her weakness was not feigned, but her meekness was. Such meekness had helped her to escape before, by lulling the suspicions of her captors. It might help her again.
Although she was a little lightheaded, she was not so far gone that she did not notice the key that Pearl had left in the lock on the inside of the door. If she could just get away from Pearl, she could be out that door in a trice. And through that door lay the way home.…
If she took the key with her, and locked the door from the outside, Pearl and Paddy and Alec would be unable to follow her.
She would be free.
Behind them, Paddy shut the door to the dressing room, leaving the two women alone. Pearl helped Isabella toward the bed. Isabella’s thoughts were becoming sluggish even as her body was growing increasingly weak, but she fought to stay alert. Should she try, or bide her time?
She might never get another chance.
Isabella took a deep breath, inhaled Pearl’s pungent floral perfume, and succumbed to a totally unexpected fit of sneezing that nearly sent her to her knees. Pearl jumped back, shaking her head, and when the sneezes subsided, withdrew a lace-trimmed handkerchief from her bosom and passed it to Isabella.
“Here, angel, use this.”
Like Pearl herself, the handkerchief was drenched with scent. Isabella tried not to inhale as she accepted it.
“Come on, then, let’s get you into bed.”
Pearl put her arm around Isabella’s waist again. Isabella, realizing that it was now or never, prayed that her last remaining reserves of strength would be equal to the task. Then, gritting her teeth, she shoved the unsuspecting Pearl as hard as she could. Taken by surprise, Pearl staggered backwards and, tripping over the long train of her gown, crashed to the floor.
“Why, you little slut!” she cried, but Isabella was already at the door, fumbling with the key.
“Alec, Paddy, help! Quick!”
Pearl came after her, scrambling on all fours. The door to the dressing room flew open just as Isabella managed to turn the key in the lock. She jerked at the knob, got the door open. Paddy barreled through the dressing room door. Behind him, Alec had managed to get out of bed and was leaning, panting, against the jamb of the dressing room door, clearly able to go no farther. He was as white-faced and weak-looking as Isabella felt.
Stumbling through the opening, Isabella was felled by a violent jerk on the hem of her nightdress. She staggered forward, falling. Her knees hit the polished wood floor of the hall, and she cried out. A young female in a nightdress as diaphanous as her own was in the hall with a well-dressed gentleman in tow.
“What…?” the gentleman said, starting forward. Isabella noticed that Paddy had faded back into the bedroom, while Pearl hurried forward to yank Isabella to her feet.
“ ’Tis only one of my girls, out of her head with childbed fever. And she lost the child, too, poor creature.” Pearl jerked Isabella back toward the room.
“Can I help you, Miss Pearl?” the girl asked in a soft, dreamy voice.
“No, Suzy, you just take care of your gentleman,” Pearl snapped, then smiled at the gentleman as if to soften her words. Isabella, knowing herself defeated and too dizzy and exhausted to struggle against her fate anymore, allowed herself to be pulled back inside the bedroom.
“Ungrateful little besom,” Pearl muttered, shoving her to the center of the room. Isabella fell to her knees again, not caring any longer that Alec and Paddy were seeing her near nakedness or that they were all angry with her. She didn’t even care that she had failed to escape.…
“Be careful, Pearl, you’ll hurt her,” Paddy said in a scolding tone as he bent to pick Isabella up.
“If she gives Alec’s hiding place away, I’ll do more than hurt her.” Pearl carefully locked the door, then turned to glare at Isabella. “I’ll kill her!”
“Such fierceness, sweeting. I’m flattered,” Alec murmured from where he still leaned against the doorway.
“Darlin’, you shouldn’t’ve got out of bed!” Pearl remonstrated, flying to his side, casting Isabella a fulminating look as she did.
Isabella, held awkwardly in Paddy’s arms, glanced at the pair, then away. Paddy laid her on the bed, looming over her.
“Please don’t hurt me,” Isabella whispered, and amazingly, Paddy straightened away.
For the moment, it seemed, she was to be spared. Giving in to the weakness that now washed over her, she closed her eyes, and let exhaustion claim her.
XI
When Isabella awoke the next time, the room was once again shrouded in darkness. Had she slept the clock round? Only a soft orange glow from the dying embers in the hearth provided any light at all. Disoriented, dry-mouthed and in some pain, she stared at the dark shadows around the bed, wondering what had awakened her. Then, for no reason at all that she could think of, she had the disquieting sensation that she was not alone.
Holding her breath so as to listen for the faintest sound, Isabella was conscious of her heart knocking against her chest. Lying on her stomach, her head sliding sideways off a deep, downy pillow, she was frighteningly aware of her own vulnerability. Someone was in the room with her, she knew it. And if they were creeping about under cover of darkness, what could their intent be but evil? Was she to be strangled—smothered—bludgeoned—while she slept?
A shadow moved near the foot of the bed, separating itself from the voluminous bed-curtains.
Isabella gasped, and wound or no wound, turned over onto her back, swarming up over the mound of pillows piled against the headboard.
“For God’s sake, don’t start screaming.”
She would know that voice with its dry intonation anywhere. It belonged to Alec, and immediately, though for no solid reason that she knew, a great deal of her panic left her. Although his intentions toward her were most likely less than benign, she did not fear that he personally would murder her in cold blood. At least, not tonight. She hoped.
“What … what are you doing in here?” she whispered, staring at him. He was no more than a denser darkness against the gray-black of the room.
“You were whimpering like a kicked pup. I listened to you for a while, then decided I’d better check and see if ought was amiss. Obviously not, so I’ll return to bed.”
He made a movement as though to leave. The idea of being left alone in the dark suddenly frightened Isabella far more than he did.
“Wait!”
“What is it?” His voice was harsher, and she remembered that he, like she, had been confined to a sickbed the last time she had set eyes on him. Perhaps it was an ordeal for him to stand.
“Could … could you tell me where I am? And what’s happened? And what you intend to do with me? Please?” This last was said in a tiny voice as he made no response to her questions. There was a few moments’ silence, and then he moved again. Isabella thought he would leave without responding, but to her surprise he sank down on the end of her bed.
She squeaked, unable to help herself as Alec made himself at home on her bed, and hitched herself up higher against the headboard. Having him in her bedroom was bad enough, going against every tenet of decency Isabella had ever learned, but for him to actually sit on her bed…! Only a husband was accorded such privileges, and then only rarely.
“If you want to talk, I’m willing, because God knows you must be frightened to death and I hadn’t considered that, but if you let loose with one more squeal I’m likely to throttle you. My head aches like bloody hell.” The warning came grumpily out of the darkness.
His language in her presence was almost as unsettling as his presence on her bed. Certainly no gentleman would swear so in front of a lady. But since she had been kidnapped the proprieties had been flouted so many times in so many ways that bad language was a mere bagatelle.
“I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to scream. But—you’re sitting on my bed.”
“It’s either sit on your bed or go back to my own. I’m not exactly in ruddy good health at the moment, you know. But I can bloody well leave if you wish.”
“No!”
From the satisfied quality of his silence, Isabella guessed that that was the response he had expected.
“All right then. If the idea of being ravished out of hand is what’s making you so nervous, pray dismiss it from your mind. Even if I wished to—which I don’t—and were capable—which I don’t think I am just at present—I don’t go in for forcing myself on unwilling females. There are too many willing ones.”
Isabella was both embarrassed at his plain speaking, and shocked at what she perceived as his uncanny ability to read her mind. Ever since she had become aware of his presence, a tiny part of her mind had been afraid that he had come into her room in the middle of the night for just such a purpose. After watching him disport himself so shockingly with Pearl, and remembering how his eyes had heated as they’d moved over her own body, she felt she had good reason to be wary. Alec obviously liked women, and she could rely on neither his morals (she was convinced he had none) nor his breeding (he had none of that either) to keep him in check. But he had said he did not force himself on women, and to her surprise, she discovered that she took him at his word. He might order her murder, but she believed him when he assured her that he didn’t indulge in rape.
“Now that we have that settled, what do you want to know?” His disembodied voice was curiously comforting. It was nice to know that there was someone with her, that she was no longer alone in the dark. She would be quite comfortable with him, if only she could be assured that he felt toward murder as he felt toward rape.
“What happened? How did I get here, and why are you … hiding … in the dressing room?”
Isabella could feel him looking at her. “I don’t much like the word ’hiding,’ “ he said finally. “Though I suppose it’s true enough. I was shot by a man who’s worked for me for years, someone I thought was totally loyal. From what he said before he died, he was paid by someone else within my organization to kill me. Hardy—that was his name, Rat-face Hardy—died before he could identify the man who hired him. With me half-dead, Paddy got his protective instincts up. Not knowing who the traitor was, he elected to trust nobody with my precious person but himself.
“You were felled by what I can only assume was a stray bullet, so Paddy had on his hands two badly bleeding bodies that he didn’t know quite what to do with. He bundled the pair of us up and brought us to Pearl, who is as shrewd as she can hold together. Paddy trusts Pearl, and so do I. She’s one of the few people that I absolve of a wish to harm me. Pearl came up with the idea of putting you and me into a single bedchamber, you quite openly as one of her girls taken ill, and me in secret. Whoever wants me dead had a taste of success, and he’s likely to try it again if he can. Until I’m up to full strength again we decided that it was best if I lay low. Paddy is playing bodyguard while my men try to ferret out the weasel who wants to take over the organization. With me out of the way, we figure he’s bound to get nervous and make his move. Then we’ll have him.”
“What kind of organization do you run?” He did not seem overly concerned that someone was trying to kill him. From her own experience, Isabella knew that facing one’s own prospective murder was terrifying. But perhaps killing was an everyday matter to him.
He hesitated. She could sense him mentally drawing rein on himself again, as he debated what to answer. Isabella realized suddenly just how little she knew of this man, and how misleading her earlier sense of familiarity might be.
“Are … are you going to kill me?” Her deepest fear came blurting out before she could stop herself. Isabella sat with her hand pressed to her mouth, eyes wide with horror at what she had said. She should have pretended to have no such notion, and waited for another chance to escape.…
Unexpectedly he chuckled. The sound was oddly engaging. “So, far from fearing rape, you thought I came in here to put a pillow over your face, eh? That’s not a bad idea, considering the noise you were making.”
Isabella sat mute. After a moment she could feel him peering at her through the darkness.
“That was a joke, you know. You don’t have to fear being murdered. At least, not by me.”
“What do you mean?” The last part of that statement was definitely sinister. Isabella stared at him through the darkness, feeling less than reassured.
“You and I are in the same boat, my dear. Someone wants you dead quite badly too.”
Isabella must have made a protesting sound, because he continued with a touch of impatience. “I’m assuming you know that the bastards who kidnapped you meant murder.”
It was a statement more than a question, but Isabella nodded, forgetting that he couldn’t see her through the darkness. But apparently he sensed her movements as she sensed his.
“Aye, then. Well, somebody hired them—Cook Parren never took a step in his life unless there was somebody to pay him for it. He meant to kill you right enough, but it wasn’t his idea. Before we restore you to the bosom of your family, you should know that somebody in your life wants you dead.”
Isabella stared at him. “That’s impossible! Who?”
From a slight movement of the mattress she thought that he might have shrugged. “Now, that I don’t know. Not knowing you, or your family.”
“My family wouldn’t want me dead.”
Again she had the sense that he shrugged.
“They wouldn’t! You must be mistaken.”
“You know your family better than I do. But Parren was hired to kidnap you for ransom, which he did, and then paid more to kill you, which he would have. Somebody hired him, somebody with something to gain. Who stands to benefit from your death?”
“Benefit? You mean financially? No one. My husband got my dowry when we married. I have very little in my own name. And my father … my father wouldn’t do that. Besides, he certainly has nothing to gain. Sarah—my stepmother—doesn’t like me, but she wouldn’t hire someone
to murder me. There’s no one. I’m sure of it. No one.”
“Believe me, there is someone, someone who wants you dead badly enough to pay a goodly sum to have it done. I can try to find out who for you, if you wish. One of the advantages of my position is that I can ferret out any amount of unsavory facts. If someone knows who hired Parren, and why, my men will find him sooner or later. And then you’ll know the worst. Of course, if you’d rather not know, that’s up to you. I can have you sent home to your family as soon as we no longer need you for cover, if that’s what you want. You’ll have to provide me with your name and direction, of course.”
“You don’t know who I am?” Isabella’s eyes widened as she realized that he didn’t even know her name. And here she’d been feeling more at ease with him than she had ever felt with a man. Certainly more comfortable than she ever felt with Bernard.
“We got word that Parren had contracted to kidnap a lady without going through the proper channels, so to speak. I’m the proper channel, so I moved to put an end to his insubordination. Your identity was incidental.” His voice was almost apologetic.
“Well, that’s very nice to know!” She was unaccountably nettled, and it showed in her voice.
“Are you going to tell me your name, or not?”
“Oh, yes. I’m Isabella St. Just, Lady Blakely.”
“Oh, my, a lady! Just what kind of lady are you?”
“My husband is the Earl of Blakely.”
“You’re married to Bernard St. Just?” His voice was fractionally sharper.
Forgetting again that he couldn’t see, Isabella nodded.
“Well?” He was impatient.
“Yes.”
There was a silence. Then, “How in hell did you end up married to him? You’re not much more than a just-hatched chick!”
“I am three-and-twenty!” Isabella retorted. “Bernard is forty-five. My father says ’tis the prime of life.”
“And just who is your father?”
“The Duke of Portland.”
“Ahhh. So you Ye a very juicy plum for the picking, indeed.”
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