The Missing Heir

by Ranstrom, Gail

  She dropped the nightgown over her head and gloried in the cool fabric sliding over her skin as it settled around her. Adam’s sense of touch was acute, as he’d demonstrated on more than one occasion, and he would appreciate the sensuous feel.

  She went to the cheval mirror and looked at herself. Heavens! She looked younger than she had in years, and the nightgown was just the right touch to make her look both naughty and nearly virginal. The hint of darker tones at her breasts and the juncture of her legs would tempt Adam and make him smile the boyish smile that made dimples appear in his cheeks.

  She heard the click of her door latch and turned with a rush of anticipation. Adam. Adam was home at last.

  Shock froze her smile in place.

  “How did you get in?” she asked.

  “I followed Dianthe,” Barrington told her. “Your faithful servants are in the coach house, tucked up for the night.”

  “Where is she? Did you harm her?”

  “Don’t think to call her, Grace. She won’t come. She’s in the library, tied up and gagged.”

  “If she is injured—”

  “She is fine. But she won’t be any help to you, my dear.”

  Her relief was short-lived when she realized what Barrington must be planning. “Adam should be home any minute, and he will not be pleased to find you here.” She swept her dressing gown up from the floor and struggled to pull it around her, hating that Barrington had seen her thus.

  Barrington grinned. “You’re quite enticing, Grace. Too bad I don’t have more time at the moment. But your Adam won’t find me here. He won’t find you, either. That’s not in my plans.”

  Chills ran down her spine. “If you think I’ll go anywhere with you, you are mistaken.”

  “Not mistaken in the least, my dear,” he said in his most jovial tone. If not for the circumstances, Grace would have thought him in a drawing room or parlor. “I am well aware that you will not willingly go anywhere with me. That’s where the plan went wrong, you see. We should have been married a year or more ago but you are a stubborn wench. Your brother warned me, but we thought we could pull it off together. I knew I couldn’t push you too hard or you’d send me away. Patience, I told Leland. I am winning her slowly. But then Hawthorne turned up alive and everything went wrong.”

  “What did you think you could pull off?” she asked, edging toward the fireplace.

  “Wrapping up the Forbush inheritance, m’dear. Once we got the news that Hawthorne had been killed in the Indian attack I ordered, we put the rest of our plan to work. First, Basil had to go, then I’d marry you, the fortune would become mine and I’d pay your brother his share.”

  She shook her head. “There wasn’t enough money to warrant such a plot. How desperate were you and Leland for money?”

  “You don’t know the half of what Basil put away. He was a canny investor and knew how to hide it from the taxman. If he hadn’t bragged about it to me, we’d never have known.” He started for her, his smile growing larger.

  She had to keep him talking. If she could keep him distracted, perhaps she could reach the poker by the fireplace. “What investments? I’ve never seen anything like that in my factor’s reports.”

  “Aye, but now that the courts are on to it, they’ll find out. York and I won’t see a farthing of it now. Too bad it all went wrong.”

  “What went wrong?” she asked, inching nearer to the fireplace.

  “Hawthorne was too slippery. My best assassin couldn’t kill him. Then Leland’s amateurish attempts on you went awry. I had to have my man clean up after him.”

  Her accidents had been Leland’s attempts to kill her? The horror of it made her mind spin. Her own brother? And Barrington had tried to kill Adam? Kill both of them? “Why?” she asked. “If I were dead, how could I marry you? How would you ever inherit then?”

  “I wouldn’t. But Leland would.”

  Grace felt sick to her stomach. There was no fondness between them, but they sprang from the same womb, shared a father and mother.

  Lord Barrington grinned. “He was the one who suggested it. It’s the money, you see. There’s so damned much of it. Enough to set us up anywhere in the world, be rulers of our own kingdoms. Too much to let you gamble it away, or marry Hawthorne, especially when the best part of my plan was to have you at my side. Especially after Leland told me that Basil confessed he’d been unable to consummate your marriage. Then Hawthorne comes to town and moves in on my territory. He’s had you, hasn’t he?” His eyes took on a mad look. “The money slipped through my fingers, but you haven’t. I’ll have that much satisfaction, at least.”

  “What satisfaction?” She was nearly to the poker, but Barrington was closing the distance between them.

  “You. I’ve wasted four years on you, Grace. You owe me. You’re going to be my bait. And then you’re going to be my doxie. Get your cloak. The heavy one. Don’t want you catching your death.” He laughed again, as if he’d made some sort of joke.

  She frowned, her blood chilling at the implication of that word. “Bait for what, m’lord?”

  “Hawthorne. He’ll come after you, and I’ll be ready for him.”

  “Where are you taking me?”

  “East India Docks. I’ve booked passage for Australia, set to sail at dawn. I’ve left clues here and there. He’ll show up. And when he does, I’ll kill him.”

  Just a few more steps…she had to keep him talking. “Then what? Do you intend to kill me, too?”

  “Haven’t decided. Imagine, Grace. If you show me how agreeable you can be, I might let you live. You’d have to be very agreeable, though. I’ve always suspected you had the makings of a proper slut. Or would you rather be my servant in Australia, eh? Yes, picking up after me, seeing to my needs, scrubbing my floors. Yes, just might do that. Fitting, don’t you think, after the years I spent dancing attendance on you, cozening you, trying to make you love me? But you’ll need to persuade me. I’m not remembering your rejection too kindly. You’ll have to convince me.”

  Grace caught her breath on a gasp. This Lord Barrington was a stranger to her. He lunged and dragged her away from the fireplace.

  “Twit. Did you think you could get away with that twice? That’s no way to cozen me. Fetch your cloak and let’s be away.”

  He pushed her roughly in the direction of her dressing room, following her so that she could not shut him out or find something she could use as a weapon. When she hesitated, he pulled a winter cloak from a peg on the wall and dragged her from her room. Half stumbling, half dragged down the stairs, she began calling to Dianthe.

  “Di! Tell Adam not to come! Tell him it’s—”

  Barrington’s fist caught her a glancing blow on her cheek but it was enough to stun her. Her ears rang and her knees buckled. He dragged her through the front door and out to his waiting coach.

  Adam stared at the man next to Carter. “Renquist? How are you involved in all this?”

  The man looked impatient. “Carter and I have been investigating the same men. But when he started following Mrs. Forbush, he drew my attention. She is the one who hired me.”

  “You work for Grace?” Adam asked, just to be clear.

  “Indirectly, yes. I don’t know what sort of dirt you’re looking to dig up on Mrs. Forbush or her friends, but it will not go down well with a good many people. Most especially, me.”

  Adam held his temper in check. “Then what are you doing here now?”

  “I came to talk to Carter. We are in the same…fraternity. I wanted to warn him away from defaming Mrs. Forbush or her friends. And, since we were both following the same man, I thought it would be of interest to him that Lord Barrington booked passage to Australia this afternoon.” Renquist paused and glanced out the window. “The Blue Gull is cleared to sail from the East India Docks within the hour.”

  Adam puzzled this development. York was back in Devon and would not present a danger to Grace any longer. Barrington would be gone to Australia in another hour or t
wo. Suddenly his deep need for vengeance seemed less important than going home to Grace. Ah, but there was still Nokomis. Sweet little Nokomis, Daughter of the Moon.

  “Useful information,” he told Renquist. “We’ll follow it from here.”

  Renquist shifted his weight from one foot to the other. “He bought passage for two.”

  The second passage would not be for Leland York. Ice crept slowly through Adam’s blood. He glanced from Renquist to Carter and back again. “Grace,” he said, the hair on the back of his neck prickling. His heart began to pound. “I sent her home with Dewberry but I haven’t been able to find Barrington all night.”

  “Jesu,” Renquist breathed.

  “Where is the assassin?”

  “He…uh, had an accident,” Carter told him.

  “What kind?”

  “The kind you don’t recover from.”

  That, at least, was one thing he didn’t have to worry about. Already on his way to the door, he called over his shoulder, “Renquist, go to Bloomsbury Square. Stay with Grace until I return. If she is not there, send the police to the Blue Gull. Carter, where’s your horse?”

  “Just left him in the stable.”

  Adam took the stairs three at a time and raced for the stables. He caught the stable boy just as he was leading the stallion to his stall. With nothing but a bridle, Adam swung himself up onto the steed’s bare back. He looped the reins through his left hand from long habit, leaving his right hand free to wield a knife or war club. He was ready for battle. Carter’s voice carried to him as he wheeled the horse for the street.

  “I won’t be far behind!”

  While she was still stunned, Barrington had tied Grace’s hands behind her back, concealed beneath her cloak. The moment his coach left them at the ship, he dragged her to the gangway and held her in a painfully cruel grip, standing behind her.

  She fought her encroaching panic. Barrington was going to use her as a shield when Adam came, and then shoot him, certain Adam would not risk hurting Grace to get at him. Pray Dianthe had heard her screams. Pray she would tell Adam it was a trap.

  Grace shivered in the cold, damp night and peered to see through the rising mist. Her cloak strings had come loose and the front flapped open and closed in the breeze off the river. Her silk nightgown afforded her little protection from the damp and cold. “Adam will not come, Lord Barrington.”

  “He’ll come,” the man snarled in her ear.

  “He is angry with me. He sent me home without him.”

  “And that is why you were preparing for him?” He laughed, his breath rising in a moist cloud around them. “The only thing I feared was that I wouldn’t get you away before he came back.”

  “What if the ship sails before he arrives?”

  “His misfortune. I’ll just leave your body for him. An eloquent message, do you not think? A little memento of my regard. He will pay—one way or the other—I don’t care which. It would be a pity, though, since I had such interesting plans for you.”

  “He…he’ll hunt you down. Even in Australia. He’ll find you and make you sorry.”

  “He’ll never find me. I’ve already established another identity. You learn how to manage these things when you work with covert operations, m’dear.”

  Shuddering with the cold seeping upward from her bare feet, Grace began to lose hope. She closed her eyes to pray but she was too panicked to say the words. She said the only thing she could put into words. “Don’t come. Don’t come. Please, don’t come.” Over and over. Her tears were hot as they rolled down her cool cheeks. “Please…I’d rather be dead than live without him.”

  She felt the barrel of Lord Barrington’s pistol, concealed in the folds of her loosening cloak, grind into her ribs. “Too bad you never felt that way about me, m’dear. We wouldn’t be here now. I’d have been good to you. I’d have kept you safe from Leland.”

  The lapping of water against the side of the ship was the only sound to break the silence and Grace jumped when she heard the voice of the captain from the deck above them.

  “Come aboard, Mr. Short. Your friend is not coming to see you off, and it’s time for us to be away.” Silent seamen began to unfasten the ropes from the moorings and cast them up to the deck to be coiled.

  “Just a minute longer, please,” Barrington called back. “I’ll come aboard when you raise the gangway.”

  The captain disappeared from the rail and Barrington leaned closer to her ear, whispering, “Say goodbye, Grace.” The pressure of the barrel increased.

  The thundering of hooves reached her even before she felt the vibration of the planks beneath her feet. A terrible blood-curdling war cry sliced the heavy air as Adam appeared through the mist, riding as if all the demons of hell were at his heels.

  Barrington froze, as unprepared for this tactic as she had been. Elated, terrified, desperate, she tried to spin away from him. “No, Adam!” she screamed.

  He was coming at such breakneck speed that she feared he would not be able to stop. She saw him reach for something in his moccasin, then he threw one leg over the stallion’s haunches and dismounted at a run before the horse had come to a halt.

  “Adam, he has a pistol!”

  Barrington struggled to free his hand from the folds of her cloak and pushed her forward, out of his way. She fell to her knees and then forward on her elbows. Adam leaped over her, colliding with bone-jarring force into Barrington’s chest. The man went down backward, tangled in the folds of Grace’s cloak. She expected to hear the pistol discharge, but no sound came.

  When she sat up and turned, Adam, straddling Barrington, was grasping a fistful of Barrington’s hair and holding a knife to his scalp, his teeth bared in a savage sneer. He was terrifying.

  He was glorious.

  “For Nokomis,” he growled as he slashed sideways.

  Barrington screamed and dropped his pistol to flatten his palm to the top of his head.

  Grace sobbed with reaction, stumbling and struggling to stand. The hem of her nightgown ripped and she tripped over the shreds. “Adam! Oh, God! Are you all right?”

  He turned to her, his eyes obsidian-hard, and she shrank back from the fierceness there. She could see that he was still locked in some dark self-imposed hell and was struggling to reorient himself.

  “Adam,” she sighed, lifting her hand in entreaty.

  Her voice must have reached him because he blinked and the crazed look was gone. “Ellie…” He dropped the hank of hair he’d taken from Barrington and came toward her like a sleepwalker, his knife dripping at his side.

  She fell into his arms. “He was going to kill you,” she sobbed. “He said he ordered the attack on your Indian village.”

  “I know, Ellie,” he whispered against her hair. “I know. But it’s over. It’s finally over.”

  She heard other horses arriving coupled with shouted instructions. Someone called Adam’s name and then the captain’s voice rose above the rest.

  “You there!” the captain called. “What the—”

  Adam spun around, his muscles tensed. Barrington, blood dripping from the top of his head and trickling down the side of his face, had gotten to his feet and was taking aim at Adam with his pistol.

  “You should have been as easy to kill as your uncle.” He staggered slightly. “Watch your harlot die first.” He shifted the pistol slightly to bring Grace into his line of fire.

  Grace froze, her eyes riveted to the barrel of the pistol. Hands came out of nowhere and knocked her aside. As she fell, Adam’s arm moved and a lightning flash of steel blurred across the distance to make a deep thump as it landed against Barrington’s right shoulder.

  Barrington spun around with the force of the blow and his pistol misfired as it hit the ground. Barrington followed, crying out in pain.

  Dazed, Grace looked around at the sudden burst of activity. Mr. Renquist was there and draped her cloak around her and hurried her to a coach, reassuring her that Dianthe was safe and that he’d taken
her to Lady Annica. A moment later Adam came to her and touched her hand through the window. “Go home, Grace. I don’t want you here when the police arrive.” He slapped the side of the coach and it pulled away, leaving her to look back and pray that Adam would not be far behind.

  Adam unlocked the front door and stepped into the foyer. Dawn was not far off, but a candle had been left burning on the foyer table. Grace?

  He sat on the steps, unwrapping the thongs around his moccasins. He did not want to panic Mrs. Dewberry in the morning when she saw blood-dabbed footprints in the foyer. Wrapping business up had taken longer than he would have liked, but at least he knew that there would be no more mistakes or omissions. Barrington, after he’d been bandaged from Adam’s scalping, had been taken to a surgeon to tend the knife wound, then placed in Newgate to await trial. When the story was told and all the facts known, it would be impossible to save Leland York from a like fate. Grace would hate the notoriety, but at least she’d be safe with Leland locked away.

  He looked down at his bloodstained buckskins and knew he’d never wear them again. It was finally over. Nokomis could rest. Mishe-Mokwa could not read the white man’s language, but he would receive Adam’s beaded wristband and know that the deaths had been avenged. Still, the satisfaction of knowing that his promise had been kept was tainted by the knowledge that Grace had seen the part of him he’d most wanted to hide—the savage beneath his skin.

  The memory of her standing on the wharf, barefoot, in a nearly transparent nightgown, had driven him insane. When he thought of what Barrington might have done to her, he had lost any tenuous hold he’d had on his fury. Speed and surprise were his best weapons against a trap, and he’d used those elements to his advantage. God, but he hadn’t meant to scalp the man! It was the sight of Grace and the memory of Nokomis that had blocked his self-control.

  He climbed the stairs, his feet silent on the treads. When he reached the landing, he glanced at Grace’s door. It was ajar, and a soft glow seeped into the darkened hallway. Thank God she had waited up for him. He needed to see her. Hold her. Know that she was safe.