Now she needed to not only escape West, but also find a way to secure safe travel back to London, and she hadn’t the faintest idea of where to begin.
Her temporary surge of courage wavering, she almost considered stepping back into the room until the girl grabbed her arm and began to pull her down the hall.
“Follow me and donna say a word to anyone,” she hissed over her shoulder.
Left with little choice in the matter Emily did as she was told and soon found herself in another wing of the inn all together, this one far darker and dingier than the last. “Where are we?” she asked, her gaze darting the length of a hallway that seemed to grow both narrower and shorter with every step they took.
“Servants quarters,” came the prompt reply before the girl slipped through a door, her grip on Emily’s arm unyielding. “Here we are. Ye can stay in my room until I figure out what to do with ye. Sit down and donna make a sound.”
Emily squawked like a startled chicken when she was shoved onto the bed; the only piece of furniture in a room that was easily half the size of the one she’d just run from. The mattress was hard as a rock, and Emily shivered as she scooted to the edge of it and looked up at the girl. The only light in the room came courtesy of a tiny window high on the wall and even then it was only moonlight, the sun having set sometime between her arrival and her attempted escape. “I am Emily. Emily Wilmington. Thank you for helping me…er…”
The girl’s wide set eyes narrowed, as though she were suspicious of Emily’s politeness. “Dora,” she said after a short pause. “Short for Isadora, but no one calls me that.”
“Thank you for helping me Dora.”
Dora gave a jerky nod of her head. “Ye said your pa was a duke?”
“He is,” Emily confirmed. “The Duke of Brumleigh. I am his only daughter and he must be so very distraught over my disappearance.” For the first time since her wild journey had begun she felt a wave of homesickness so overwhelming it nearly bowled her over.
Emily had always been rather proud of her independence – such as it were – but now she wanted nothing more than to crawl on her father’s lap and bury her head in his shoulder as she had when she was a child. Heavens, but she missed him. She missed everyone from her London townhouse, for in the absence of any immediate blood relatives the household servants had become her family. They must have been frantic with worry, her father and Petunia in particular.
Her hands flattened on the mattress and then curled into fists, bunching up the thin top quilt. “I must return home, Dora.” To her embarrassment tears burned the corners of her eyes and she blinked them back, refusing to let herself cry. “I know it is a lot to ask of someone in your situation, but if there was any way I could borrow the money to rent a hackney—”
“Rent a hackney?” Dora said with a snort. “Do ye ken how much that would cost? Stars, I donna have that kind of money.” Her mouth flattened, the corners pinching together. “If ye are so bloody rich why canna you pay for it yerself?”
Emily’s grip on the quilt tightened. She did not like Dora’s brash demeanor, but at the moment there was hardly anything she could do about it. “As I told you,” she began evenly, “I have been kidnapped. I do not have any currency on my person, but when I return home my father will more than compensate whoever is able to help me. If you are unable to help me secure travel back to London, then perhaps you would be able to direct me to someone who can.”
“I did not say that, did I?” Dora exclaimed, acting as though she’d just been delivered a grave personal insult. “Stay here. I’ll be back in a pinch.”
“Do you think I might have a candle?” Emily asked as Dora turned to the door.
Her expression incredulous, the maid looked back over her shoulder. “A hackney and a candle? Stars. Ye really are a duke’s daughter, aren’t you?” With that she flounced from the room, closing the door firmly behind her. Emily bit back a sigh and stood up, stretching her arms high above her head.
Dora certainly would not have been her first choice for a rescuer, but she supposed the sharp-tongued maid was better than no one. She wondered if West had returned to their room and found her missing yet. Was he tearing the inn apart even now? She shuddered to think of what would happen if he found her. He would be furious, and she would no doubt find herself bound and gagged for the remainder of their journey to Southampton. If that was even their true destination.
The man lied as easily as he breathed. After all, this was no more Guildford than it was London. They could be traveling towards Essex for all she knew, heading north instead of south. Emily had never possessed much of a head for direction, and after being jostled about in a carriage for most of the day she hadn’t the vaguest notion of where she was. A day’s ride, that is all she knew. Which meant if she was able to find a coachman that would take her without payment to London in the next few hours she could be home before dinner tomorrow.
“I am coming home soon, Father,” she vowed, her gaze lifting to the silvery light cascading in through the window. “I promise.”
The stupid, brainless twit.
Faced with an open door and a cold plate of food resting beside it, it didn’t take West more than a few seconds to put two and two together. Emily had escaped, and in doing so had put herself in more danger than she could ever possibly imagine.
Curling his hand into a fist he pounded his knuckles against the door, slamming it shut and sending something metal clattering to the floor. Bending, West picked the hairpin up and spun it between his thumb and forefinger, a reluctant smile capturing one side of his mouth despite his mounting anger. For a stupid, brainless twit Lady Emily was quite ingenious when she needed to be.
“Bloody woman,” he muttered, raking a hand through his hair. He shouldn’t have taken so long below, but he’d run into an old acquaintance. Now he and Emily would pay the price for his dallying over a pint. The chit didn’t know what she’d gotten herself into. The Three Pigs was filled to the brim with liars, thieves, and cutthroats… and that was only the staff, the sorriest lot of servants West had ever laid eyes on.
At least he knew she was still inside the inn. The only way out was through the front door – all the other exits had been boarded up after countless people kept sneaking out in the dead of night to avoid leaving payment – and as was his habit he’d watched the entrance like a hawk even as his friend was telling a rather intriguing tale about a one-legged whore he’d discovered in East End, the only other rookery in London that rivaled St. Giles in its viciousness.
Following the death of its unofficial leader, a tyrant of a man who’d finally met his end over a bad deal gone awry, East End was in the midst of a bloody civil war West wanted absolutely no part of. Unlike the nobility, who calmly decided inheritance through the most direct bloodline, the people of the rookery had their own code. The strongest and the ruthless took control and if they had to step over the bodies of their competition to do it then all the better. West had done as much himself when he’d come to power in St. Giles; only those closest to him recognized something had begun to shift in the past few months.
If you wanted to rule the hell bound you needed to make certain you were destined for hell yourself, and West wasn’t certain he wanted to be, at least not anymore. He was not the same reckless boy he’d once been, drunk on power and able to slit a throat without blinking an eye. As a result he’d killed twice in his life. The two men he murdered had been the worst of the worst – rapists and killers both – but that didn’t change the fact that murder was murder, and it weighed heavily on his soul.
It was time he made a decision before St. Giles made it for him. This entire kidnapping debacle proved his growing ineptitude. If anyone were to learn he’d let a woman slip through his fingers, and a wealthy nabob at that… Scowling at the hairpin he still had pinched between his thumb and forefinger he shoved it in the inside of his coat and stalked down the hall, now more angry with himself than with Emily.
He should have
tied her up to begin with. It’s what would have been expected of the Duke of St. Giles. But for some reason he could not readily identify, the idea of wrapping rope around her delicate wrists had sat ill with him and so he’d left her loose, a costly mistake they would both pay the price for.
When he got his hands on her… West gritted his teeth. If Emily had thought her kidnapping unpleasant thus far, she had no idea what laid in store for her now.
But how to find her? The hour was growing late, the pub growing increasingly rowdy. Even now he could hear raised voices carrying up through the thin floorboards; the shouts of drunken men and the high-pitched squeals of loose women drowning out everything else. No doubt Emily was tucked away somewhere in one of the inn’s many rooms, but he could hardly go kicking down every door, at least not without inviting a few punches.
Grabbing the arm of a servant as he hurried past, West swung the terrified boy around and pinned him up against the wall. “Who delivers food to this floor?”
The boy’s mouth opened and closed, rather like a fish gasping for air. His face was smooth and bare. He couldn’t have been more than twelve or thirteen. “Dora,” he gasped. “Dora is in charge of bringing food to the all the rooms on this floor, sir.”
“And where can I find Dora?”
“I… I dunno.”
West bared his teeth.
“Down below serving drinks in the pub!” he squeaked, his brown eyes wide and rolling in fear. “She… she’s down below, I swear it!”
West relaxed his grip and the boy sagged, like a puppet whose strings had been cut. “What’s your name?”
“T-Thomas.”
“You speak well, Thomas.”
The boy blinked as his narrow shoulders straightened with pride. “Thank you for noticing, sir. My Mum paid for a bit of schooling.”
West stepped back and crossed his arms. He shouldn’t have cared. He should have moved on. But something about the boy reminded him of himself at that age. Mayhap it was the determination that glinted beneath the fear in Thomas’ eyes. Or maybe it was because he truly was going soft. Either way, he was prompted to ask, “Where is your mother now?”
Thomas’ face fell. “She caught ill and died six months ago. Pa ran off, and the landlord kicked me and my two sisters out. I was lucky to get work here.”
It was the same story West had heard a thousand times before. Poor bred poor, and it was rare for someone to break the cycle. His own life was the exception, not the rule. “How much does Bering pay you?” he said, referring to the eldest of the brothers who owned The Three Pigs.
“Pay me?” Thomas’ forehead wrinkled beneath his low-slung brown cap. “He pays for my board, if that’s what you mean. And he said when my sisters come of age they can work here as well.”
As serving wenches, no doubt, which was only one step shy of whoring. Bering certainly knew what he was about, and again West knew he shouldn’t have cared, but he felt a vague stirring of pity for the boy and his unnamed sisters. They hadn’t asked for their sorry lot in life, no more than he’d asked to be born to a pair of drunkards.
Before he could come to his senses West dug inside the pocket of his trousers and held out a fistful of coins. “Take them,” he said, nodding his head, “and tuck them away where they won’t be stolen. In a month’s time buy passage to London for you and your sisters. You’ll find me there, and I’ll find you a job where you get paid.”
Thomas’ eyes widened to the size of saucers and his jaw went slack, but he took the coins and, with shaking fingers, slipped them into an inside pocket of his vest. “Th-thank you kindly, sir. But how will I find you?”
West’s smile was sleek and sharp as a shark’s. “Ask for the Duke of St. Giles.” He brushed past and walked swiftly down the hall, leaving the boy gaping after him in open-mouthed astonishment.
CHAPTER FIVE
Emily was beginning to think she’d been forgotten. It was difficult to judge the passage of time in the dark, tiny room but she estimated she’d been pacing the length of it for more than an hour. Where in heaven’s name had Dora gone? Fretting, she went to the door and turned the knob, only to recoil in shock when she realized the door was locked… from the outside.
“No, no, no.” She spoke the denial out loud, unable to believe that instead of helping further her escape she’d merely exchanged one jailor for another. Grasping the round brass knob with both hands she gave it a hard shake, but the door remained firmly closed.
Of all the rotten luck.
Letting her forehead fall against the door with a dull thud Emily closed her eyes and struggled to compose herself. She just wanted to go home. She wanted to go home more than she’d ever wanted anything else in her entire life; even more than the pretty bay pony she’d begged her father to buy for her seventh birthday.
If only West had never laid eyes on her… For the first time Emily felt a surge of anger towards the handsome rake. It was a belated response, hidden beneath the excitement and the nervousness and the fear.
What right did he have to kidnap her? To take her away from her home and her family, all for a bit of coin? What right did he have to ruin her life in order to make his a little bit better?
Well, the joke was most certainly going to be on him when he realized her father was too far gone in debt to ever pay such a high ransom. Thirty thousand pounds. Her nose wrinkled. It was a grotesque amount of money, even for a duke.
Emily stiffened when she heard the scratch of a key in the lock and jumped back just in time to prevent herself from being hit by the door. Red faced and out of breath, Dora tumbled into the room, a candlestick bobbing in her right hand. Her hair was mussed and the collar of her dress was pulled to one side as though she’d been in some sort of tussle. Kicking the door shut behind her, she leaned heavily against it, her chest rising and falling with every breath.
“Where have you been?” Emily cried before the maid could utter a single word. “And why did you lock the door? I have been waiting forever!”
Dora blew a curl out of her eyes. “Ye never said who kidnapped ye,” she snapped, her tone accusatory. Brandishing the candlestick like a weapon, she took a step forward while Emily jolted back, wary of the candle’s flickering flame. “I never would’ve helped ye if I had known!”
“Why would that matter? You never asked, and I thought—”
“Well, ye thought wrong!” Dora swung her arm in emphasis and Emily ducked to the side, narrowly avoiding catching her hair on fire.
“Careful with that,” she warned with a frown.
“Careful? Ye want me to be careful? Och, that’s a fix now, isn’t it? Do you ken how much danger you’ve put us in? No?” Dora all but shouted when Emily could do little more than stare at her in bewildered silence. “Ye could have mentioned you’d been kidnapped by the Duke of St. Giles! Jesus, Mary, and Joseph,” she muttered, shaking her head. “We’re in for it now, aren’t we?”
“Who is ‘we’?” Emily asked cautiously. She’d put as much distance as she possibly could between herself and the irate maid, but she feared it wasn’t enough. She had always heard that Scots possessed a fierce temper, however this was the first time she’d witnessed it firsthand. It was mildly terrifying, to say the least.
“My husband-to-be, Aaron.”
“You are engaged?” She managed a weak smile. “How delightful.”
“Aye.” Dora glared at Emily resentfully. “And we were going tae make a pretty penny off of ye, were Aaron and I. At least until he found out ye belong to the duke, and now he wants nothing to do with ye.”
Perhaps she shouldn’t have been so naïve, but Emily liked to think everyone was inherently good and, if given the choice, they would make the right decision. Dora had certainly ruined that theory, although she couldn’t say she was completely surprised. From the very beginning there had been something a bit offsetting about the outspoken maid. Something hard and bit too rough around the edges. Something that warned everything was not as it seemed.
r /> She tried to take another step back and came up against the wall. There was nowhere else to go and with Dora between her and the door there was nowhere she could run. West had been right, much as she was loathe to admit. She really should have stayed in their room.
“To which duke are you referring?” If she could keep Dora talking maybe the maid would come to her senses. And maybe pigs will begin to fly. “My father or Mr. Green?”
Dora’s mouth twisted into an ugly sneer. “The Duke of St. Giles, of course. Who did ye think I was talking about? No one but no one takes what belongs tae him.”
“I am not a chair or a horse or – or a carriage,” Emily sputtered, her slender shoulders stiffening. “I do not belong to anyone, least of all Mr. Green. Kidnapping does not given one person ownership over another. Nothing does, for that matter. Dora, I know in your heart you mean well.” She took a deep breath. “And I know you do not want me to come to any harm. If you will simply let me go, I shall find other means of returning home. You need not involve yourself further. If you are worried about compensation, I will make certain you are paid for your time and efforts.” Such as they were, she added silently.
“Let ye go? I canna do that. Not now.” For a moment regret and a touch of uncertainty flickered across the young maid’s face before her lips thinned and she lifted her chin. “We’ve come too far for that.”
“Come too far?” Emily repeated. Her brow furrowed. “But—”
The door opened suddenly and a man stepped into the room. He was tall and wiry, with pale features and blond hair. His eyes were blue and cold as a frozen lake in the middle of winter. In his right hand he held a hank of rope. In the left he held a knife.
The Duke of St. Giles Page 4