Guy turned away to stare into the low, hissing fire. “Any mention of the prisoners?”
“No, my lord.”
Desperation bloomed. He could feel its tentacles crawling along the edges of his thoughts. He had one chance to save Cora and the others. The likelihood that Valère would take Cora and Jack’s sister to France was slim. Very slim. They would be a complication he could ill afford at this stage in the game.
“I can poison the ale,” Dinks said.
“What?” Guy swung around. His gaze slashed between the three servants; each sported a devilish grin of satisfaction.
“Well, not exactly poison, but they might wish for the Almighty to take them away.”
“How so?”
“Horehound, my lord.”
“Horehound?”
“Oh, yes. It’s good for cleaning out the system, if you know what I mean.”
He felt the first stirrings of a smile. “I’m beginning to.”
Dinks’s grin turned evil. “If I can gather enough horehound leaves, I can create a purging brew to slip into the casks.” She clasped her hands in glee. “It will have them guards sitting in the shiter for the rest of the evening.”
The trio held their collective breaths while Guy sifted through this new scheme. His slow smile of agreement had them all grinning from ear to ear and elbowing each other in the ribs.
He swooped Dinks into a celebratory whirl. “Well done, my wily Dinks.”
She shrieked her delight before exclaiming, “Put me down, you mad man, you’ll break your back acting like such a fool.”
He settled the maid back on her feet and, with a loud smacking noise, kissed her on the cheek.
Guy rubbed his hands together. “Now, let us get down to business, shall we?”
Later that night, Guy hunkered down to observe the stillness surrounding the grounds of Latymer’s house. Not a guard in sight.
His lips curled into a triumphant smile. Their plan had worked. They had sent Dinks to charm the gardener—much to Bingham’s consternation—into showing her where the casks were stored. A suggestion for an evening nip had given her an opportunity to empty her homemade concoction into the barrels.
Cora’s little group of misfits was more resourceful than an elite band of spies. She would be so proud of them. He relished the moment when he could tell her how the trio had helped save her life again. And he could not wait to tell her how much he—
An owl shrieked low overhead, and Guy ducked. The bird’s massive wings gracefully maneuvered the maze of limbs and branches.
The distraction refocused Guy on the mission ahead, on getting inside the house undetected. He had no way of knowing how many guards, unaffected by Dinks’s potion, were inside. The maid had given him a rough sketch of the mansion’s floor plan, along with a whispered warning of a secret room off the master’s bedchamber. There, she feared, was where that Frenchie kept their little mite.
The thought of Cora bound in such a chamber made his blood run cold. Casting away the image, he moved to take a closer look and was stopped by a distinctive click near his ear.
“I think it best if you stay right where you are, my lord,” a refined voice said.
A slender, well-dressed man edged into his line of sight. The gun he pointed at Guy’s head never wavered.
“Toss your weapons to me,” he ordered. “Slowly.”
“I have no need for weapons, sir,” Guy hedged, stalling for time.
“Indeed? Then you will not mind removing the gun tucked inside your waistband and the knife resting under your right hand.”
Guy swore. How long had the guard been observing him?
“Do you know the gentleman you work for is an enemy to England?”
The guard laughed. “Your puny attempt to tweak my conscience is wasted, monsieur. Toss your weapons. Now.”
Dread trickled down Guy’s spine. The man shifted from flawless English to pure Parisian French. His garments were not of the quality worn by hired mercenaries but ones any London gentleman would be pleased to wear.
“Lord Helsford, I would prefer not to make a mess in Lord Latymer’s woods, but I will.”
Guy narrowed his eyes. “Are you the chap who enjoys beating women?”
“Depends upon the woman, my lord.” Marcel raised the gun higher.
“What’s the matter, Marcel?” Guy nodded toward the man’s waist. “Equipment doesn’t work well anymore?”
The Frenchman’s finger curled around the trigger. “Ask your lady, English dog. She can provide great detail on how well my equipment operates.”
Guy heard the crackle of leaves right before the first loud thud rent the air, followed swiftly by a second. Marcel’s eyes rolled into the back of his head, and his now weaponless hand hung limply by his side. His legs buckled, and he teetered on his knees a moment before falling face forward into the bracken.
A wild-eyed Jack holding a large tree branch stood above the fallen man, his handsome face contorted into something wild and savage.
“Jack?”
“Yes, sir.” He continued to stare at the Frenchman.
“You did well.” Guy nodded toward the footman’s hand still clutching the makeshift weapon. “You won’t need that any longer.”
Jack’s gaze flicked to the branch and then to the prone man on the ground before tossing the weapon away. Without warning, he plunged his boot deep into the man’s ribs. “That’s for my sister, you fecker.” He stomped his broken wrist. “And that’s for Miss Cora.”
Jack’s labored breaths rent the air. Guy kept a wary eye on the footman when he bent to retrieve the unconscious man’s gun.
“Jack.” He waited for the footman to look up. “Do you still have your rope?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Let us make sure he does not cause any more trouble.”
While Jack secured Marcel’s limbs, Guy tied a handkerchief around the Frenchman’s mouth.
“Help me move him farther into the woods,” Guy said.
They stowed Marcel in a shallow den beneath a large, fallen oak tree.
“Thank you.” Guy squeezed the young man’s bony shoulder and received a jerky nod in response.
“Bingham is covering the back of the house. I need you to take the front and keep an eye on the drive,” Guy instructed. “God willing, Somerton is on his way to the hunting box, and Dinks can bring him here straightaway.”
“But, m’lord—”
“No buts, Jack. Given the lack of guards, Dinks’s concoction must have done its job. The handful of able servants inside will pose no problem.”
Jack’s scowl conveyed his displeasure at the order, but he moved to comply.
Guy surveyed the manor’s stone edifice, making his way to a side entrance. The fewer of their people inside the house, the fewer they would mourn if all went wrong.
It was his second to last thought before something solid connected with the back of his head and pain splintered through his skull. His last thought, the one that plowed through his mind a second before his face smashed into the ground, was the realization that at least one other guard had dodged the effects of Dinks’s concoction.
Thirty-Six
Cora fought to hold back a sigh of relief. The pounding on the bedchamber door could not have come at a better time. Of course, Valère did not share her opinion.
“Do. Not. Move.” He shrugged his coat back on and stomped across the room. He threw the door open, slamming it into the wall. “What is it?”
Mrs. Pettigrew stood in the doorway, wringing her apron between work-worn hands. Her eyes shifted about the room, landing on Cora near the bed.
“Speak up, you English cow!”
The housekeeper stammered out, “T-there’s something wrong with your men, my lord.”
“What do you mean?”
“I’m not sure. They all seem to have a putrid stomach.”
“All of them?”
“Yes, my lord.”
“Dammit.” Val�
�re stormed into the corridor, his French curses bouncing off the walls. “Lock the damn door. Marcel!”
The housekeeper stared at Valère’s retreating back, lines bracketing her compressed lips. She turned to Cora. “How are you, miss?”
Cora peered out the balcony door. “I have been better, Mrs. Pettigrew.” Something was definitely amiss. Not more than an hour ago, two dozen men milled around the grounds. And now, nothing but a curious stillness greeted her inspection. Switching her attention to the bedchamber door, she wondered if the guards stationed in the corridor were also affected by the mysterious outbreak.
“His lordship said you were set upon by highwaymen, and that’s how you received your wound.”
“Did he?” Cora responded in a neutral voice, not wanting to drag an innocent into their dance of death. She edged toward the bedchamber door.
“Yes.” The housekeeper glanced down the corridor before stepping closer. She lowered her voice. “I found it odd that he brought back no luggage or lady’s maid for you.”
“Mrs. Pettigrew.” Cora inched forward and instilled all the haughtiness she could muster into her next words. “I have no luggage because the distance I traveled was not so great and, women such as I do not need maids, only a man’s hands.”
The housekeeper’s eyes widened and, just as quickly, focused on her with an unnerving regard.
“I, and a few others, are close at hand should you need us.” Mrs. Pettigrew pulled the door shut.
“Mrs. Pettigrew!”
The housekeeper paused. “Yes, miss?”
“Are you aware of any other guests staying with his lordship? Perhaps a gentleman or a little girl?”
The housekeeper nodded. “His lordship’s niece.”
“Niece?”
“Grace is her name,” the housekeeper said. “A sweet child with a mane of red hair and an endearing gap between her front teeth. When his lordship first brought her here, the little thing cried day and night. His lordship said she had recently lost her brother, her last remaining relative. Besides him, of course.”
Although Cora had not seen Jack’s sister in a while, the description seemed to match. “Can you take me to her room?”
“Woman,” a man called from down the corridor, “stop your prattling and lock the door.”
The housekeeper’s friendly demeanor shifted to stoicism. “I’m afraid not, miss.” Before closing the door, she met Cora’s gaze. “Remember my offer.”
Cora’s throat clenched at the sound of Mrs. Pettigrew’s key clicking in the lock. The housekeeper made no mention of Ethan. Was he even here? Had she allowed herself to endure the Frenchman’s touch for nothing?
She shook her head. No, Grace was here. If Valère had not dangled Ethan in front of her, he would have used Jack’s sister. Cora’s decision would have been the same.
Devising a plan, Cora paced by the window and was once again struck by the absence of guards. Nervous excitement pulsed through her muscles.
Guy.
Bone-shattering fear and exhilaration filled her mind. He had found her. My God, he had come for her—the idiot.
If Valère managed to capture Guy, the unbearable days she had spent locked in his dungeon would seem like nothing more than a fanciful dream compared to what Guy would endure. The thought of her brother’s torture was enough to eat at her sanity. If Valère succeeded in taking Guy, she would be lost. All would be lost.
In desperation, Cora ran to the door and pounded. “Guard!” When he did not answer, she pounded again. Still no answer.
She glanced around the room for a long, thin item she could use as a pick. Nothing. Valère had made certain to remove all potential threats. She did not even have a pin for her hair.
Turning back to the door, she struck the panel several times, yelling for the guard. Past rational thinking, she hiked up her nightdress and flattened her foot against the wall. She grabbed the knob with both hands and pulled as hard as she could. The door remained closed tight.
In a fury, she jerked on the handle over and over, growling her frustration at the locked door. The next thing she knew she was hurdling backward, landing half on her bottom, half on her back, her bare legs sprawled in an unladylike manner toward the corridor.
The corridor.
She scrambled to her feet, feeling a twinge in her back. Dumbfounded, she stared at the open door. Then she remembered the knob turning in her grasp during her frenzy to be free. The housekeeper had not locked the door, only rattled the key a bit for the guard’s benefit. All she had to do was turn the damn handle.
She hastened from the chamber, almost colliding with the door in her haste. At the top of the stairs, she paused to listen for movement below.
When all appeared quiet, she inched her way down the stairs one at a time. Halfway down, she heard a pair of masculine voices streaming through a partially opened door to her right.
With careful steps, she continued her descent, keeping a wary eye out for a stray guard or the ever-present Marcel. An undercurrent of familiarity drifted at the edge of her conscience, almost as if she had lived this scene at another time and place.
Bracing a trembling hand against the door frame, Cora set her eye to the opening. Several candles illuminated a well-appointed study and, in its center, she found Valère towering over someone in a chair, with two guards flanking the French doors that opened onto the terrace. Unable to see around Valère’s back, she shifted her position to get a better look at the chair’s occupant, but all she got was a perfect view of Valère’s hand slashing through the air, connecting with flesh.
Every instinct told her Guy was sitting in that chair. The disturbance with the guards, Valère’s flight from her bed, the housekeeper’s assistance—it all pointed to an intruder. Another flesh-against-flesh impact sent her heart slamming against her rib cage. Blood rushed to her head, making her feel light-headed and slightly nauseous.
Squeezing her forehead, she took a couple of breaths, willing it back. She needed all of her mental faculties to be in proper working order, not be swooning like an overexcited debutante. Satisfied she would not fall flat on her face, she pushed the door open a little more with the tip of her finger.
“I’ll ask you one more time.” Valère’s angry words carried to her hiding place. “How many more of your comrades are outside?”
“My bare hands are enough to see you dead,” taunted a familiar voice. “What need do I have of others?”
Valère moved to the side, and Cora spotted Guy tied to a sturdy wooden chair, bloodied and breathless. The skin over his right eye was already swelling with fluid, and blood oozed from the deep slash in his full bottom lip. Cora clapped a hand over her mouth to silence a helpless scream.
“I would have given you a quick death had you answered my question the first time,” Valère said in a voice most people used to discuss the weather. “However, you have forced me to make this a very ugly scene.”
Valère turned to one of the guards. “Find Marcel.”
“That wouldn’t be chap I met in the woods, would it?” Guy spit out a ball of thick red phlegm.
Valère’s body stiffened. “What have you done with him?”
“I threw the bastard in a hole.”
A small, wobbly smile split across Cora’s face. How she would love to see Marcel crammed in a dirty, insect-infested hole. If they all came out of this alive, she would insist Guy take her to the henchman’s burrow. Such a fitting place for such a vile man.
Valère’s feral gaze landed on the guard again. “Do not come back until you have found him.”
“Yes, my lord.” The guard rushed from the study.
“You will pay dearly if my servant’s dead, Helsford.”
Seeing Valère’s furious intent, Cora pressed her hands against her ears and backed away from the door. Shielding herself from the violence did not stop her body’s physical reaction to the goings-on inside the room.
She had been here before.
As old
memories flooded into her mind, a flush of cold sweat coated her skin. Her body trembled against the onslaught of so many troubling images. From one moment to the next, she was ten years old again, terrified and alone.
Cora crept down the staircase, bending her ear toward the raised voices muffled behind her father’s thick library door. Several times over the last fortnight, she had heard her father’s rage pelt the four walls of what was once his quiet sanctuary. She paused in indecision, and then her father yelled something indecipherable.
Sighing, she turned to go back to her bedchamber. She wished her old papa would return, the loving and jovial man who had hugged her each morning and asked about her day every evening. This new papa, who had haunted their home for over a month, frightened her with his constant ranting and demand for solitude. His merry blue eyes had dulled to a lifeless gray, and he smelled of strong spirits more often than not.
A loud pop exploded through the lower level of the house, followed by her father’s wail. Cora’s head whipped around at the sound of anguish in her father’s voice.
She scurried down the stairs, her heart hammering against the wall of her chest. She reached for the door handle but stopped short when she heard an unfamiliar voice. Something told her to take caution rather than rush into the room. The decision to proceed slowly was distressing, for she knew her papa needed her. Edging closer, she peered into the room. Her father sat bound to a chair with tears streaming down his face. His tormented blue eyes were trained on the floor.
She followed the direction of his tearful gaze. At first, the azure slippers and silk-clad legs lying sprawled in an indelicate tangle on the floor did not register in her ten-year-old mind. Her gaze flicked to her father and then back down to the slippers. Understanding finally dawned. The loud pop, her father’s cry, her mother’s dainty feet.
Cora clamped her hand around her mouth to hold back a shriek of terror. She stumbled back a few feet from the door, keeping her father’s face in view. Numb with grief and overwhelmed with the awful events, Cora could do nothing but stare at her father as if he held all the answers.
“You will share your wife’s fate, Danforth,” said a male voice with a French accent, “if you do not tell me what I wish to know.”
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