The Earl Who Played With Fire

by Sara Ramsey

  It didn’t sound anything like sincerity. Ellie laughed. “All right, no more questions. You should leave now. But we will wait here for Salford. It might do him good to hear our opinion on the matter.”

  “I very much doubt that he will appreciate it,” Prudence said.

  Amelia waved a hand. “Sometimes men need to be told what to do. In case Alex is still too much of a fool to see what he could have with you, we will make sure to explain it to him. Slowly, and with short words, so we don’t confuse the poor thing.”

  Prudence did laugh then. They had no idea just how much Alex knew what he and she could have together — what they already had together. But now was not the time to educate them.

  “Thank you for your company,” she said, gathering up her hat. Her dress looked slightly better, since she’d surreptitiously redone the buttons, but there was nothing to be done for her hair. “I shall send word when I’ve safely settled elsewhere.”

  “Make sure you move frequently at first,” Ellie warned. “And never give your own name. Pretending to be a widow would be a wise course.”

  Ellie had offered to go with her, but Prudence had declined. Ellie’s red hair was too distinctive to hide, and the marchioness couldn’t help but attract notice. Prudence nodded her thanks. “I shall be quite safe.”

  It was madness to think she could run away on her own. But if Boudicca had led the Celts into battle and Joan of Arc had fought the English, Prudence could get herself to a country inn without incident. She picked up her reticule, went to the front hall, found the sleepy footman who had been waiting to see the women home, and sent for Alex’s carriage.

  She ordered the carriage to take her to Ellie’s, but warned the driver that she would need him to take her out of London immediately after. The look he gave her said what he thought of that, but Alex had told her that he’d held the driver in readiness — the man wasn’t surprised by the order, just disapproving.

  She would retrieve her valise first. Then she would ask the carriage to take her west. Thorington might expect her to go to the Continent, despite the war, so Dover wasn’t safe. He also might expect her to go north, toward Lancashire and Alex’s country seat. So she would try Cornwall, and hope that the wilds there would dissuade the duke before he searched for her too intently.

  But she planned to send Alex’s carriage home from the first inn — the coat of arms emblazoned on the doors was too easy to find for anyone who searched for it. So perhaps she should take the coach north, to the first major carriage inn on the Great North Road. There, she could send the coach home, and then hire a new conveyance to double back and take her west.

  It was a good plan. When the carriage stopped ten minutes later, she was still considering it, mulling over options and whether to use some of Thorington’s money to hire outriders as well as a carriage. It was unlikely that she would be attacked by highwaymen, but…

  The door finally opened. She turned, expecting the driver to help her down.

  Instead, Thorington stepped up and pulled the door closed behind him. “Good evening, my dear,” he said, taking the seat across from her and tossing a valise on the floor. “Where are we off to?”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

  Alex awoke with a blinding headache. He turned onto his back, but the movement made everything spin. He waited out the spinning sensation, waited until everything cleared. The headache still sawed viciously behind his eyeballs, but at least he could see when he opened his eyelids.

  He was no longer drunk. He wished he was. Or perhaps he wished he was dead.

  “I think he’s awake,” Nick said from leagues away.

  “He should have stayed asleep,” Ferguson said. There might have been a note of sympathy there, but it sounded mostly like laughter. “He cannot feel well.”

  Alex pushed himself up into a sitting position, then paused as everything spun again. When the world righted itself, he scowled. They were back in Nick’s study, but he couldn’t quite remember getting there after his heroic attempt to reach Prudence had been thwarted earlier. “What time is it?”

  “Just past two,” Ferguson said. “Really, Salford, you shouldn’t drink if you react like that. I haven’t seen someone lose consciousness after two glasses of brandy since Malcolm smuggled a bottle into Eton.”

  “In my defense, I was twelve,” Malcolm said. “I can hold my brandy now.”

  “At least Salford hasn’t puked all over his bed like you did,” Ferguson observed.

  Alex wanted to drop back to the couch and cover his eyes until they all left and his head stopped hurting. But it was two in the morning — far too late an hour for what he needed to do.

  He was going to do it anyway. “I must go up to Miss Etchingham,” he said.

  He stood. The room spun, but it wasn’t as bad this time…until Nick spoke. “She still isn’t here. Nor is my wife. Do you think they met each other?”

  Prudence shouldn’t be out of the house this late. Had she already left London?

  “Did she take your carriage?” he asked Nick.

  “Only to your house. She sent it back. That was hours ago, though.”

  Alex wanted to punch the man. “Could you not have told me this hours ago?”

  Nick held up his hands. “I didn’t know until we found Miss Etchingham missing. By the time I questioned the stable staff, you were already incapacitated.”

  That just made Alex want to punch himself. “I need to find her.”

  “Do you want us to come with you?” Ferguson asked.

  “No.”

  He walked away. They followed him like a party of peasants following a tumbrel to the guillotine.

  “Leave me be,” he said.

  “My wife is at your house,” Malcolm pointed out. “So is Nick’s wife, if the stable staff is to be believed.”

  Ferguson sighed theatrically. “Which means my wife is likely there too. A shame, given Amelia’s influence, but I tolerate it.”

  “I shall have to call you out for that eventually,” Malcolm said. “Not now, though. We should take Alex home before he faints again.”

  “Or before he leaves you here,” Nick observed. “I don’t think he appreciates your meddling.”

  “I don’t,” Alex said over his shoulder.

  But they didn’t listen. They never did. He didn’t have cause to be grateful for it until they reached Salford House, found three of the four women they sought in Alex’s study, and learned that Prudence had departed twenty minutes earlier.

  “How did you miss her?” Ellie asked, as though it was Alex’s fault. “She should have been there within ten minutes.”

  His blood ran cold. “Thorington.”

  “Do you really think he would be able to find her in the middle of the night?” Ferguson asked.

  He didn’t answer them. He ran for the stables instead.

  * * *

  “I shall tell you again, even though you don’t seem capable of comprehending,” Prudence said, growing desperate. “I have absolutely no desire to marry you.”

  “You are boring me with your refusals,” Thorington said, leaning back into the cushions and crossing his arms. “But I commend you for not crying. I would have to gag you then, and that would be unpleasant.”

  “You’re mad,” Prudence said. “How does no one know you’re mad?”

  “I’m not mad. I’m powerful. There is an important difference.”

  The carriage was moving too fast for her to jump from it, although she’d already considered it twice. But she didn’t know where they were. If she broke her leg in the jump, Thorington would probably take her to a priest before he took her to a bonesetter. And if she somehow managed to escape, it was still the dead of night — she could walk into a far worse situation than this one.

  Although as she met Thorington’s mocking gaze, she wasn’t sure how many situations were worse.

  “Why are you so determined to keep me?” she asked. It had bewildered her since the moment of his proposal. If
she was trapped with him, she might as well get an answer.

  “You have my fifty thousand pounds. I find that I need it back immediately.”

  She threw her reticule at him. “You can have everything on my person. We can go to the bank tomorrow to draw the rest of the funds. I haven’t spent any of it.”

  He actually opened her bag to see how much money was inside, but the sum didn’t impress him. He tossed it back to her. “Spend it at the modiste I shall take you to tomorrow. That hat is an abomination.”

  She was going to scream. She was still too angry to be scared — angry enough that she had completely lost control of her tongue. “If you force me to marry you, I shall wear sackcloth every day. I shall tell the entire ton that you are a wretched blackguard, and…and impotent, besides. I shall put arsenic in your soup and ants in your bed.”

  That last threat started off well and ended poorly. She stopped, flustered. Thorington laughed. “You sound positively pleasant compared to my last wife. We’ll get along quite well after the second or third year, I’m sure.”

  “She was probably unpleasant because you were so horrid,” Prudence spat out. “Did you beat her?”

  Whatever humor had played around Thorington’s mouth fled into the shadows. “I am many things, Miss Etchingham. But I have never beat a woman. You are tempting me, though.”

  She had crossed some line that she didn’t realize the duke had — he was too outrageous for lines. She felt the oddest compulsion to apologize, but she bit it back. “Can you please return me to Lady Folkestone’s? That is where I was going before you waylaid me.”

  “Do you wish for me to take you up the Great North Road as well? Or were you planning to go to Dover?”

  She thought about brazening it out, but it was clear he planned to force her whether she had thought of escape or not. “How did you know I planned to leave?”

  “You have been a trifle less grateful for this match than I had expected,” Thorington said. “Not that it bothers me. But I plan for all eventualities.”

  “Were you following me?” she asked. “How did you know I was in this carriage?”

  “I bribed servants in Alex’s house to keep track of you. You should have used Lady Folkestone’s carriage instead — I wasn’t able to pay off any of them.”

  It was the only time she’d heard of him being thwarted, but it didn’t give her much comfort. “Alex will find me, you know.”

  “He won’t.” Thorington leaned back, as calm as ever. “We’ll be married before Alex even gets his boots on.”

  She sucked in a breath. She still wasn’t scared. But her anger was giving way to an ugly, trapped feeling — as though all those choices she’d debated endlessly over had suddenly evaporated, leaving her only with this. “Where are you taking me?”

  “St. George’s. The priest is a friend of mine from childhood, and I gave a very large donation to the parish recently. I had so wanted to be married there — my mother is buried there, after all. The wedding will just have to be a few hours earlier than I had planned.”

  Her mouth tasted like ashes. “You’re mad,” she whispered.

  He shrugged. “You’ll recover. Wait until someone calls you ‘your grace’ for the first time. You shall forget Salford ever existed.”

  CHAPTER THIRTY

  On horseback, Alex reached Thorington’s house within three minutes. But even though he banged on the door, awoke the butler, and demanded to know where Thorington was, he didn’t receive any satisfaction.

  The duke had vanished. And Prudence had vanished along with him. The only information he received worth noting was that Thorington had left the residence in a carriage that wasn’t his.

  Alex was in a killing mood. His headache still raged, but it was nothing compared to the wild, desperate beat of his heart. He had to find Prudence before she came to harm. Even if he hadn’t broken the curse, he would have felt that way. But he loved her more than anything — far too much to lose her now.

  He wanted to betray the footman who occasionally spied on Thorington for him and demand to see the man, but it was unlikely that he knew where Thorington was going. Before he could do it anyway, Nick pulled him away from Thorington’s door and nodded at the butler. The servant took the opportunity to shut Alex out and slam the bolts against him.

  “No sense murdering a servant,” Nick said as Alex pushed away his hand. “Save your wrath for the one who deserves it.”

  “I shall. If I can find them in time,” Alex said, striding back to his horse.

  Ferguson and Malcolm were waiting on the street, holding the horses and, seemingly, betting on the outcome of Alex’s search. “Where next?” Malcolm asked. “Ferguson put ten pounds on Scotland, but I wager that Thorington has a special license. He won’t need an anvil wedding at Gretna Green.”

  “Easier in Scotland,” Ferguson said.

  “But he would have to get Miss Etchingham there. Too much risk she would knee him in the bollocks and escape at the first coaching inn,” Malcolm pointed out.

  “I agree,” Alex said. “She would have to be willing. And she most certainly isn’t.”

  He looked across Grosvenor Square as though it could give him an answer. The grand houses were all mostly dark, its inhabitants either in bed or still out at their clubs. The streets were quiet enough that a carriage should be relatively easy to find, but Thorington had at least fifteen minutes on them. He had likely gone too far for them to catch without knowing his direction.

  “What would you do if you were Thorington?” he asked them all.

  Ferguson yawned. “Marry someone who appreciated me more.”

  Alex turned to the other, marginally saner, members of their group. “Carnach, what would you do?”

  Malcolm shrugged. “Wait for you to force me to marry her — worked for me before.”

  He was going to murder them all. “If you cannot help, leave me to find her myself. I do not have time for your humor.”

  “We will find her together,” Ferguson said, his tone suddenly serious. “Depend upon it.”

  Alex sighed. “Folkestone, do you have an idea that is more helpful than the others?”

  “I would take her to the closest priest and pay him to ignore her protests,” Nick said, showing a bit of the ruthlessness that had earned him his fortune. “Thorington has the blunt to bribe anyone. No need to go to Scotland to do it — he could do it in London for the right price.”

  Thorington would never spend three days in a carriage with a crying woman — not that Prudence would spend three days crying. She would spend three days trying to kill him.

  But the duke would want to stay close to London anyway. Alex knew the pressures on him well enough to know he wouldn’t waste his time on an extended jaunt to Gretna Green. Thorington would want to end this quickly, with minimal fuss, in a place of his choosing.

  And then, suddenly, he had his answer.

  * * *

  She wasn’t going to be saved in time. She sensed the seconds ticking forward. Time was passing at the same rate it always did, but it was much too fast for her preference. They had reached St. George’s within ten minutes of leaving Thorington’s — almost as soon as he had told her where they were going. The priest was not entirely pleased to see them, but he wouldn’t deny Thorington’s presence.

  He also wouldn’t listen to her refusal. She had started to tell him that she would never, ever marry Thorington, but he had just told her to settle her nerves while he arranged for witnesses.

  “I am going to kill you, your grace,” she said mutinously. She was sitting in the priest’s parlor, but only because Thorington had pushed her into a chair and told her, quite politely, that he would tie her to it if she tried to run.

  “I look forward to the attempt,” the duke said. “Now, will you put on the dress, or do you need me to play lady’s maid for you?”

  The valise he’d brought wasn’t for him — it was for her, with a lovely dress of green silk that would be perfect f
or her coloring. She loved it on sight, and hated him for it.

  “I am not wearing it,” she said, trying to stall.

  “I wanted to marry in St. George’s, but I shall not marry a lady dressed as an urchin,” he said. “Put on the dress, my dear.”

  “No.”

  He stood up. “I suppose I shall have to help you.”

  She had begun to despair. She didn’t want him to touch her. She didn’t want this night to draw to what seemed to be its inevitable conclusion. She didn’t want…

  She heard voices in the chapel. Raised voices. Masculine voice. Angry masculine voices.

  “Alex,” she breathed.

  “Damn it all to bloody hell,” Thorington said. “Stay here.”

  He left her. He should have tied her up if he’d meant for her to obey — there was no way she was staying there otherwise. She dashed after him, sliding into the chapel just in time to see Alex striding up the aisle. He had her friends’ husbands with him, but he was the only one she could watch. She’d always seen him as scholarly before — handsome, but more at home with a pen than a weapon.

  But tonight, he looked like a knight coming forward to defend his lady’s honor. There was a dark menace in his eyes, along with a clarity of purpose that made her heart sing.

  He had come for her. He would protect her, pull her into his arms and kiss her…

  He didn’t come for her yet, though. He walked directly to Thorington and punched him in the mouth.

  “You bloody arse,” Alex swore. Thorington raised his fists, but Alex swung again before he could shield himself properly, striking him just below the eye.

  Thorington retreated, but only far enough to avoid Alex’s next punch. He came back with a swing aimed precisely at Alex’s jaw, snapping Alex’s head back.

  Prudence shrieked, but she clasped her hands over her mouth to avoid distracting Alex. He didn’t even seem to feel the blow. “The lady doesn’t wish to marry you,” he said savagely, punching Thorington again. “Take your revenge on me if you must, but leave her out of it.”

  The priest came up and tried to pull them apart, but Malcolm strong-armed the priest back into the periphery. Prudence thought of interrupting…