Chapter 28
Lizzie sat back in her carriage, her heart in despair.
Gladys looked much put out by her failure to capture the viscount. “I had him, Lizzie. He strolled out of the church right into my clutches, or so I thought, but no, he went to the necessary. I could hardly follow him there waving my pistol for all to see.”
“No, you couldn’t,” Lizzie agreed.
“I waited a full fifteen minutes then I asked the vicar to go and see if his lordship was all right. Bless me, if he hadn’t disappeared into the mist.”
“If you waited by the door, how could he escape?”
“I had to leave to get the vicar. My guess is the viscount got wind of our plot from one of the Thwaites. The next thing I hear is you casting up your accounts, of course I went to your aid, and there he was. Drawn, as I was, to the sound. Blast him if he didn’t disappear into the mist just as the vicar arrived to find out who was making all the noise.”
Gladys pulled the pistol from her reticule. She checked the powder and shot. “The viscount is up to something, my lady. This one is the trickiest of the lot, barring Mr. Bertram Felmont, who being older, has more experience in sneaky behavior and plotting.”
Gladys nodded to herself. Lizzie knew her companion had long regarded Bertram Felmont as the most entertaining of them all.
“We will catch him,” said Lizzie. “Even if it is folly to try to save a Felmont from his worst instincts.”
She started as a shot rang out.
Gladys looked astonished and dropped her pistol onto her lap. “I didn’t fire!” she protested.
Lizzie grabbed the pistol. She took aim at the door. “What is going on?” she called. She could hear the outriders milling behind the carriage, unable to see what was happening.
Dickon’s smiling face appeared at the window. “It’s Dace, my lady. Oh ’ell, I forgot, my ladyship, your worship, ‘tis his lordship himself. Eee, by–” Dickon disappeared from the window. She heard him shout to the outriders, “It be Lord Felmont!”
His laughter had dispelled Lizzie’s worst fear, that they had been waylaid by a highwayman. She heard the boy say, “What’re you doing, our Dace?”
Lizzie peered out the window, she could see only as far as the wall. There, not five feet from where she sat, slouched Quentin Seraphim Dacey Felmont himself. Weaponless, hatless, gloveless, wrapped in a black cloak. He had cast off his wig and showed a handsome head of cropped hair, which somewhat softened the effect of his nose.
The most beautiful Felmont she had ever seen.
Lizzie opened the carriage door herself, for the first time in her life, and pointed Gladys’s pistol at her husband. “Get in,” she commanded.
He showed no inclination to obey her.
Lizzie leaned out and poked him with the pistol. He took a hesitant step in her direction, never taking his eyes from her weapon. She hoped he was afraid, very afraid, yet she quelled the urge to shoot him.
“Get in,” she hissed in a fierce whisper. “Sit forward.”
The carriage lurched under his weight and the springs groaned. Lizzie forgot herself in the excitement and waved the pistol at her companion. “Gladys, come sit with me.”
Both of them did as she commanded.
Gladys gave a snort of disgust. “You watch out, Lizzie,” she warned. “Lord Felmont is making a game of this.”
“He won’t, not when we get home,” replied Lizzie. Chains must have a sobering effect, even on Felmonts.
The viscount kept his eyes on her pistol.
A wise man. The urge to make him sorry for being a Felmont, to punish him for fornicating with a horrid woman in their bed, made her itch to shoot him.
During the journey back to the Folly, the viscount said not one word. Probably the longest time he had ever kept silent in his life. No apologies poured from his lips. They did not quirk in mockery, nor smile at her.
Lizzie did not accuse him of his crime. She stared at his clumsily tied neck cloth and wondered how he came to look so hastily dressed when he had been so neat in the church. His clothes swam about his body, as if made for a taller, broader man. He wore top boots, badly scuffed at the toe. His new haircut made him look like a different man. He’d worn his hair short in his youth. It made him look younger, but there was no doubt as to who he was, though the expression on his face was wrong. He seemed, questioning. He no longer threatened her with the end of their pact, he did not warn her she could not leave him. He said nothing at all, just sat opposite her and looked at her as if he’d never seen her before.
If he wanted to play a game with her, then she intended to let him, as long as she held the pistol.
They entered Felmont’s Folly by the front door, which Charles and Arthur held open under Gordon’s ferocious glare. Lizzie covered her pistol with a shawl. The viscount looked around as if this was the first time he had seen the house.
Was the Beast insane? He looked around as if he didn’t recognize the Folly. He looked surprised to hear his footsteps echo under the dome. The black top boots seemed to be made for a giant. The Beast clunked along, prodded by the pistol. The way he walked seemed odd, his body no longer moved with the air of owning the world, as all Felmonts did.
Instead, he moved in fits and starts, stopping to peer around at every detail as if he’d never seen it before. Whatever game he was playing, Lizzie was having none of it.
He seemed particularly taken with the painting in the dome. Lizzie looked up and saw the portrait of her as an angel had been changed.
She was naked! Sitting on a cloud, naked! Her great belly making her the only pregnant angel in creation. Drat the man! Only the wings folded coyly around her hid most of her breasts from every man’s view. Even then, more was revealed than she had ever possessed.
Why had no one pointed it out? Why had no one told her?
Her husband’s eyes shone with suppressed laughter. His amused glance at her body and then her portrait and back again, drove her wild. She gritted her teeth. Why should she care what he did? She meant to lock him up for eternity!
“Gordon, where is James?” asked Lizzie.
Gordon shook his head with a cackle of laughter. “Yon coward’s gone to the Priory to see his mother, my lady. I’ll chain up this rascal for you, with the greatest of pleasure.”
At the mention of chains, the Beast gave a great start. Lizzie poked him with her pistol to persuade him not to flee, an effect quite spoiled by Gordon’s laughter.
She prodded the Beast in the belly to make him walk backwards towards the staircase.
The twins giggled together like the youths they were, as she followed the Beast up the stairs. Lizzie had given careful thought to where she intended to chain her husband. The obvious choice, her mother’s bedroom in the east wing, the last of a suite of rooms that opened into one another, seemed cruel and too remote.
If the Beast called out in the night, if he wanted to confess his sins, if he wanted to beg for mercy, she intended to be close enough to hear him.
Gordon hurried ahead to open the viscount’s bedroom door.
Everyone seemed to be taking enormous enjoyment in what to Lizzie was a glorious revenge. The only person standing hesitant and silent, not stifling laughter, was the Beast himself.
He sat on the edge of the bed and allowed Gordon to fasten a chain around his ankles. The scuffed, black boots rumpled as the old man tightened the fetters that had been borrowed from the stables.
Gladys and Gordon left to fall into hysterical laughter as soon as they were out the door. She could hear them plainly enjoying themselves. Gladys cried out, “Serves him right!” to which Gordon replied, “Hear, hear!”
The Beast stared at her in silence. He held out his hand as if in supplication. Lizzie shook her head.
She felt obliged to say something. The words fell from her mouth before she could stop them. “I won’t let you die like they did.”
Lizzie Tempest Ruins A Viscount (Felmont Brides Series Book 1) Page 46
