Persistent Earl : Signet Regency Romance (9781101578841)

by Eastwood, Gail

  Dear God, Devenham realized, somehow the man had a hand in his own father’s death. Why was he telling him? No one would ever have been able to prove it.

  “What did he think I would gain by facing French cannons in the company of scum? The army was just a more dangerous way for me to lose all my money.” Brodfield was continuing almost as if there was no one there. “He was so ill already, a few doses of arsenic were quite sufficient to finish him. When he finally died, I was certain I’d find Phoebe again. She always had a soft spot for the old man. I had my friends watching for her. Then I watched, and I waited. And then I began to see that she had a tendre for you.”

  The earl could see that Brodfield’s motive for abducting him was much more than simply the investigation he had begun. Unreasoned jealousy and deep-seated resentment were all part of the mix. He did not believe Phoebe’s feelings toward him were at all as clear as Brodfield thought.

  “Tell me, did you kill Stephen?” he asked very quietly.

  “Oh, did you not get as far as that in your inquiries. Devenham? I thought you had almost figured it all out.”

  “Was the whole scandal fabricated? Did Stephen find out what you were doing to him?”

  “I needed to ruin him in Phoebe’s eyes, don’t you see? He was always so righteous—the perfect son, the perfect heir, the perfect lover, the perfect husband.” Brodfield’s voice shook with the force of his hatred for his half brother. “But he wasn’t so perfect, was he? What good is an heir who can’t father an heir? Phoebe was wasted on him, utterly wasted!”

  The earl recalled Phoebe’s distress in St. James’s Church as she had related the tale of Mlle. Gimard and her own failure as a wife. This was important. The pain in his head clouded his thinking and was sapping his strength, but he fought against it, trying to separate the pain from his consciousness. “How do you know it was Stephen who could not produce a child?”

  “Ha. It was not hard to see. Like most boys we went through a chain of women, learning our way. He was the heir—he almost always got first pick. We started with a delightful dairy maid who could have made her fortune if she’d have come up to London. But none of his women ever got with child. Imagine, no bastards! I used to taunt him with the number of brats I’ve made.

  “He always thought the next woman might be different. He thought so when he married Phoebe. I warned him, but he wouldn’t listen. Later I offered my services. Who would have known? Phoebe wanted children; Stephen wanted children; I wanted Phoebe. It would have been perfectly sensible. My father’s precious bloodline would have continued, after a fashion. But no, Stephen wouldn’t hear of it. He threatened to kill me if I ever laid a hand on her. Don’t you find that a rare joke?”

  So by rights you should already be dead, Devenham thought. He was filled with an anger so intense it drove out his pain and exhaustion. He remembered Phoebe’s bruised wrists and the scene in the garden. This thing, this worm, on the seat above him had committed murder twice in the name of lust and had almost completely destroyed Phoebe’s faith in herself as well as in the man she had loved. That itself seemed like spiritual murder. He felt quite capable of murder himself. This man filled him with such hatred and disgust that he was afraid it was a contagion. God forbid that he should become so blinded by it that he was no better than Brodfield!

  The mere thought of Phoebe pushed back the dangerous anger Brodfield had provoked in him, however. The villain would have enjoyed watching him try to display his rage while he lay helplessly trussed on the carriage floor. It was as if loving Phoebe saved him from being the wretched animal he might otherwise become. It was very clear to him now just how much he did love her.

  It was also very clear that he must keep a cool head if he wanted to survive. Suddenly that was something he wanted more than he ever had before in his life. He could not allow Brodfield’s plans to succeed. He must concentrate, not on violence, but on escape. Justice could follow in its own turn.

  Chapter Sixteen

  Morning did come to the Allington house on Wigmore Street, although there were times during the night when Phoebe felt certain that it never would. She had dozed fitfully on the sofa in the drawing room, awakening with a stiff, sore neck. Edward, Mullins, and Goldie had come back with nothing to report after several hours’ search. The earl had disappeared without a trace.

  Phoebe agreed to rest for a short while after a very early breakfast. By mid-morning, however, she was resolved to pay a call at Charles Street. She might not know what to say to Richard if he happened to be there, but at least it was something to try. She simply could not stand by and do nothing. She did not care if she awakened her mother-in-law’s entire household.

  “Phoebe dear,” Judith scolded gently, “you have not even changed your dress from last night.”

  Phoebe had given no thought to her attire whatsoever. She made a hasty mental survey of quick solutions. A pelisse thrown on over her gown? A spencer? She was not sure either would button over the decorative roses trimming her bodice. She settled for a shawl which at least concealed her upper arms and shoulders.

  Edward and Goldie were prepared to accompany her, and she was just tying the black grosgrain ribbons of her bonnet when the knocker sounded at the front door. A moment later Maddocks appeared, bearing a note.

  “For Lady Brodfield,” he announced in his usual dignified tones. Only an extra pair of small creases in his forehead betrayed that he shared the anxiety of those around him. “It was left in the door.”

  Phoebe held her breath as she opened the note.

  “Dear Lady Brodfield,” it said, “my deepest apologies for not appearing last night as we had planned. I am sorry to report that I have met with an accident and am injured. Surely you know that nothing less could have kept me away. I am in Willesden and do not know how soon you may receive this message, for I must depend on those around me to see it delivered into London. If you can forgive me and wish to see me, come to St. Mary’s Church near Willesden Green. I will be there or else will leave instructions for you. Yours, Devenham.”

  Phoebe threw down the note. “It is all nonsense, of course,” she said angrily. “What could he possibly have been doing in Willesden when he was supposed to be having dinner with us?” She looked at Edward and Goldie, and read the concern on their faces. “I don’t believe the note is from Devenham at all, but there is one way to be sure. Could Goldie go to the Clarendon and fetch Mullins? He would recognize the handwriting.”

  Goldie was dispatched at once. Phoebe began to pace in a tight little circle until Edward and Judith came to stand beside her. She took their offered hands and closed her eyes. “I am afraid the earl is in grave danger,” she whispered, “and it is all my fault. I have to make it right.”

  “Phoebe, please explain what you think is going on. You can tell us, you know.”

  She opened her eyes and looked into the kind faces of her sister and brother-in-law. She sighed. “It is a long story, but I will give you the short of it.” Without revealing her visit with Mlle. Gimard at St. James’s, she told them briefly what she and the earl had learned about Richard’s impersonation of Stephen, and about the investigation Devenham had begun to pursue.

  “I made a list of names from the papers that were found in Stephen’s desk after he died. Lord Devenham was going to try to talk to the various people. But Lady Tyneley must have told Richard I had been looking at the papers, don’t you see? He must have guessed what we were doing.” Tears had begun to roll down her cheeks. Judith slipped a comforting arm around her shoulders.

  “And you think this is Brodfield’s way of stopping you?”

  “What else could it be?”

  Edward shrugged, and Phoebe knew he must feel as helpless as she did.

  When Mullins arrived with Goldie, he took one look at the note and confirmed that it was not the earl’s writing.

  “Then
it is definitely some kind of a trap. What should we do?” A fresh pain stabbed Phoebe’s heart when she realized the one person whose counsel she would most trust on such a matter was exactly the one person who was missing. “Mullins, what would he say to do? He knows so much about strategy. Can we not try to think like him?”

  Mullins squinted up at the ceiling in an attempt at concentration that would have seemed quite comical under a different set of circumstances. “What advantage do we have?” he asked at length in a voice that almost mimicked the earl’s.

  “We know that the arrangement is a trap?” Phoebe guessed.

  “Yes,” said Edward with enthusiasm. “And they do not know that we know it.”

  “Also, they do not know how early we have received the note.”

  “No. That assumes that part of the note was true. Someone is well aware that we have received it already—whoever delivered it.”

  Phoebe began to grow excited. “But if they—whoever ‘they’ may be—are truly at Willesden Green, the note deliverer has not yet had time to return there. If we were to set off at once and go quickly, we might even overtake that person or at least arrive so soon behind him that they would not yet be looking for us.”

  Edward cleared his throat. “That might be good or bad. What we want to do is spring their trap. We won’t succeed if the trap is not ready for us.”

  “I think we need to make two approaches,” Mullins said. “We send an advance guard into Willesden Green to be ready near the church. We wait a little time for the enemy to ready their trap, and then we send in their quarry. Then the advance guard shows up before anything can go wrong.”

  There was some discussion over the risks and inadequacies of this plan, but in the end it was agreed to. “It is the best we can do on short notice,” said Phoebe. “We must act quickly, or we’ll lose some of our advantage.”

  The advance guard was to be made up of Edward, Goldie, John Coachman, and the pot boy, young Tom, who was pronounced a feisty lad and tough. Phoebe wanted Mullins to drive her when the time came to spring the trap.

  “Judith, you take Maddocks and Mary Anne with you and bring this note to the police office at Bow Street. We haven’t anything else for proof, but tell them the story, and they’ll send someone out, I’m certain. All we’ll have to do is delay until they arrive to help us. If you can go right away, they won’t be far behind us at all. Lizzie and Nurse and Mrs. H will still be here to mind the house and the children.”

  It was decided that Mullins and Phoebe should set out an hour after the advance guard departed, to make the two parties headed for Willesden Green seem convincingly unconnected. Edward borrowed a coat and hat from John Coachman to reduce the chance of being recognized. The hour of waiting looked impossibly long to Phoebe, so she went upstairs to visit the children.

  “Aunt Phoebe, your dress! You still have it on!”

  “Yes, I know,” she sighed. “I am going on a little bit of an adventure. I will tell you all about it when I come back.” Henrietta had crawled into her lap, and Phoebe found comfort rubbing the soft pup affectionately behind the ears.

  “When will that be?”

  Phoebe swallowed. “Later on today, I hope.” She added a silent prayer, Dear God, please let us find Devenham and bring him home safely. Please let our plan work. If the plan didn’t work, she did not know what anyone could do.

  At the appointed time, she and Mullins headed out the Edgeware Road in Edward’s gig. Paddington and Maida Hill were still little more than country villages, and beyond them open fields graced the road. It was only a few miles to the turn for Willesden.

  Phoebe frowned, resenting the sunshine. It did not seem right for the world to enjoy such a beautiful day, when so much wickedness was afoot. A thick, foul-smelling river fog would have been far more appropriate than this sparkling, warm summer day. Birds soared over the ripe fields waiting for the harvest, and harebells nodded in the hedgerows.

  Phoebe wished she could wake up and suddenly find herself in Kent. Then all that had happened since the end of July could be dismissed as nothing more than a nightmare. She could not deny Mullins’s presence beside her in the gig, however, and she realized with a pang that she did not want to wish away the existence of Lord Devenham in her life. The true nightmare had only begun last night.

  The gig took the left turn onto the Willesden road and proceeded smartly along the country lane. At a dip in the road ahead, a grove of trees shaded the rutted surface of the roadway, and Mullins started to pull up on the ribbons. As the carriage entered the patch of shade, however, chaos broke loose.

  A stout rope stretching across the road was suddenly pulled up tight in front of the horse, causing her to rear in panic, nearly oversetting the small vehicle. As Mullins struggled to regain control, two men leaped onto the gig. One struck Mullins a vicious blow to the head as the other seized Phoebe around the waist and pulled her bodily from the carriage.

  ,Screaming and kicking, she resisted the man’s greater strength as best she could. He was big and solid and the hand he clamped over her mouth was none too clean. She saw the other attacker push Mullins’s limp form out of the gig and climb down after it, rolling it into the ditch by the side of the road.

  “Keep fighting, and we’ll serve yer the same, miss,” the man who was holding her said roughly, giving her a shake.

  Even as the other man climbed back into the gig and took up the ribbons, Phoebe saw a closed landaulet emerge from the trees at the far side of the grove and come toward them. She needed to think quickly. The gig was being turned around. The trap had indeed been sprung but not where anticipated. Willesden Green, where help lay waiting, was not even in sight from here. Already the man who had hold of her was starting to push her toward the landaulet. She could well guess who was awaiting her inside it, and it would not be Lord Devenham.

  She glanced down at the hem of her dress, torn now from her struggling. Bits of jet beadwork and a few black roses hung by their threads. If she was clever, if she was quick enough, perhaps as she lifted her skirt to enter the carriage she could dislodge them, and no one would notice. She would not be able to leave a trail, but at least she could mark the place where she had been.

  ***

  When Devenham regained consciousness a second time, he was in a place so dark he could not tell if it was day or night. His head throbbed, and he felt exhaustion in all his limbs.

  It had still been night when Brodfield’s carriage had finally come to a halt in what looked to be woods in the middle of nowhere. Devenham had been manhandled out of the carriage, barely able to stand after unknown hours with his legs bent in the small space of the vehicle. As his eyes had adjusted, however, he had discerned the faint lines of an overgrown fountain and the edges of what once had been flower beds. There were shrubs among the trees that nature had never planted. What he had taken for woods was an ancient garden, long since abandoned and now overgrown.

  Neither one had seemed like a good place to die. He had looked around him, analyzing his chances if he broke away and ran. They were not good. Brodfield had two other men with him, helping with his dirty work. Devenham’s hands were tied in front of him, but they would have been of limited use for warding off branches or helping him keep his balance. If he had fallen, it would have been all up with him.

  Besides, had Brodfield not said he needed him for a little longer? To Devenham, that statement meant two things. One was that he might have a better opportunity to escape if he waited. The other was that Brodfield did not yet have Phoebe in his power.

  The earl had barely arrived at these conclusions before one of the men had pushed him forward along a faintly detectable path. They had rounded the corner of a rocky outcrop overgrown with vines and halted before what appeared to be a heavy wooden door. Brodfield himself had pried it open on its rusty hinges, and then Devenham had been thrust forward into
darkness. He had fallen and remembered nothing more until now. How much time had passed he did not know.

  So much for waiting for a better chance to escape, he taunted himself. How did he expect to get free from a tomb of solid stone? He felt tired and short of breath, and he wondered if he would die slowly there from lack of air. Brodfield would not have to worry about disposing of his body, certainly—that job was already done.

  But in the meantime, he could not sit still. He felt extraordinarily restless, and even his heart seemed to share an inexplicable and uneven excitement. It was a peculiar feeling combined with his lack of energy. If he got up and moved about in the darkness, would he hasten his own demise? The only way to learn what lay around him in the dark was to explore. If only he could get his hands free. His sword and even his spurs had been taken from him.

  He thought then of the ancient door on its rusty hinges; hinges were metal, and if he could locate the door and somehow pry out a corner of a hinge, he might be able to rub the rope binding his wrists against it and eventually cut through.

  He felt the floor around him. It seemed for the most part smooth and flat, like flagstones. His hands encountered small chunks of rock here and there, probably fallen from the walls or ceiling. The chamber he was in was like a cave, but he could not allow himself to think about that. Think only of your task, or think of Phoebe, he told himself sternly. He had no time to lose. He struggled to his feet and moved carefully in the darkness, ducking a bit in case the ceiling was low. There was no way to know if he was moving toward the door or away from it or only toward the side wall. If he could find a wall, he would simply follow it.

  As he searched, the physical sensations he had been noticing intensified, and finally the truth dawned upon him. His last dose of laudanum had been many hours ago. His body was reacting to the lack of it. The throbbing in his head was probably as much from that as from the blow he had received.

  He wondered, How bad will it get? He had seen opium-eaters in the army go through terrifying physical and mental agonies when deprived of their drug; it was how he had become aware of the problems of taking it. Over the past weeks he had slowly reduced his dose to a small amount, so he hoped to be spared their fate. He could tolerate what he was feeling now. He just hoped it would get no worse.