by Norma Darcy
He kissed her long and hard, his lips almost bruising in their intensity, his arms so tightly around her that she could scarcely breathe. He kissed her until she was fairly drunk with it, intoxicated with his nearness and the pressure of his mouth on hers. He kissed her until only the need for air forced them apart.
She threw him a mocking smile as she forced her eyes to meet his and said archly, “La, as I said, my lord, men like you are easily duped. For all your famed experience with women, it seems that you cannot tell an actress from the real thing.”
He stared at her, his eyes ablaze. “You were not acting,” he said savagely.
“I’m sorry, but I was,” she replied.
He released her suddenly and almost flung himself away from her.
“How clever you thought you were. How superior. You thought I would just fall at your feet, did you not, my lord? The great rake seducer merely clicks his fingers and the plain little spinster is expected to jump into his arms.”
He laughed, a harsh, abrasive sound. “Plain, innocent spinster? Hardly! You are the same as all the rest, beauty and avarice and treachery in equal measure. And I thought you were different. I came here to convince you to stay, although why I put myself to the trouble, I know not.”
“Did you indeed? With rough kisses and promises of fidelity? Do you think that your suit is in any way attractive to me, my lord?”
A muscle pulsed angrily in his jaw.
“You have me all worked out, do you not?” he asked bitterly.
“I know you,” she countered.
“No,” he answered. “It seems that you don’t know me at all.”
There was a silence.
“Well then,” she said at last. “Perhaps our parting is for the best.”
“I begin to think that it is,” he agreed moodily.
“We wouldn’t suit, you know.”
“So it seems. I count myself fortunate to have escaped from an alliance that can only have made both of us profoundly unhappy.”
She flinched as if he had slapped her. “You had much better leave. It is late and your absence will be remarked upon.”
“Where has my Georgie gone?” he whispered, almost to himself. “I want her back.”
“She never existed, my lord,” she answered. “She was a fabrication.”
“She did exist,” he insisted. “I held her in my arms and I kissed her.”
She tossed her head. “The woman you speak of was a creature of my imagining. All I did was play a part.” She moved toward the bed, flinging a book into her bag. “Will you unfasten my gown, my lord?” she asked, turning her back to him and lifting her hair aside. “My maid has the evening off. And as you are here, you may as well do the one thing you do so well.”
Mechanically he lifted his fingers to do her bidding, but he struggled to do one of the very things he had anticipated doing with great pleasure on their wedding night. His fingers were clumsy, and the buttons seemed to develop a mind of their own.
“You’d make a terrible lady’s maid,” she commented with a mocking smile as she moved away from him and shrugged the gown forward off her shoulders. “It is a wonder to me that you managed to seduce any women at all if it took you that long to disrobe them.”
“Will you stop?” he thundered.
She swallowed hard, flinching at the tone in his voice and the expression on his face, but she had come too far to give up now. “Are you going to watch me disrobe?” she asked with a shaky smile, her act slipping a notch. “Stay long enough and you will witness my use of the chamber pot too. Only imagine how that would contribute to your edification.”
His lordship could take no more. He strode out of the room, slamming the door behind him.
And with him departed Miss Blakelow’s act.
Her resolve crumbled, and she sank onto the bed in her undergarments and stared at the floor.
From the shadows of the room a movement flickered in the darkness. Candlelight gleamed along the barrel of a pistol.
“You have done well,” said a low male voice.
“I’ve done what you asked,” Miss Blakelow said coldly to the shadowy figure.
“So you have,” agreed the man.
“And you’ll let him go, unhurt?” she asked, raising her fearful eyes to his.
The man smiled, and Miss Blakelow felt a shudder ricochet along her spine. “If he does not interfere.”
“He knows nothing,” she said.
“I only have your word for that.”
“He knows nothing, I swear it.”
“Very well, my dear. Then I suggest that you make haste changing your clothes. Mr. Boyd, would you please ensure that she does not take too long? And if she tries to escape, hit her over the head. After last time, I am taking no chances.”
Miss Blakelow was allowed ten minutes grace to change her clothes and was then escorted downstairs to the library, where she saw her nemesis seated behind her father’s desk. She stiffened as the man came out of his chair.
He walked forward, a lazy, self-satisfied smile upon his face. She felt her knees threaten to give way beneath her; her hands were cold and clammy, her heart thudding hard. She stared at him, disbelieving what her eyes told her even though she had known for the last ten years that this time would come. He’d found her. And she knew now that the face that she’d seen at the assembly rooms but a week before was his. It was not a face from a nightmare, but a real living and breathing man.
“You have what you want,” she said. “Let John and the servants go.”
The man smiled. “Ah, but I don’t have what I want, do I?” he replied softly.
She swallowed hard and lowered her gaze. “I don’t know what you mean.”
“Don’t take me for a fool, Sophie.”
Sophie. She had been so many different names, living off her wits since her ruin at the hands of Hal Holkham, that she could not remember who Sophie Clayton was anymore.
“What are you doing here?” she demanded, looking about her for a weapon.
He gave a soundless laugh. “I think you know the answer to that. Forgive me, my dear, but remembering our last encounter, I have taken the liberty of moving the paper knife and the fire poker out of reach. You may sit down.”
She lifted her chin defiantly. “I will stand, thank you.”
“Still so haughty,” he marveled, coming forward to stand before her.
“Let me see to John. Where is he?” she demanded.
He smiled. “He is . . . er . . . sleeping and will do well enough without your ministrations. I hope you pay him well, my dear. The poor man has had a good deal of trouble on your behalf over the years.”
“Leave him out of this. He did nothing but follow my orders. It is me you want. Let him and the others go.”
“Do you know that I nearly caught you once?” he asked, ignoring her request with a smile.
She raised a brow in silent inquiry.
“You were going under the name of Mrs. Cork and living on the last of the funds that your uncle had given you. John was posing as your husband, and it was barely a year after your fall from grace. But you did not have your story straight, did you? You slipped up. And I broke down the front door barely five minutes after you had left; your sheets were still warm. I nearly had you then, but the trail went cold. You vanished into thin air. Now I realize that you had already begun to transform yourself into your aunt, or something very much akin to her. I applaud you for that, my dear.”
She had to look up a long way into his face. He towered over her, and as her eyes met his, she tried to repress the shudder that went through her. He reached out a hand and cupped her chin, tilting her head from one side to the other. “Well, well,” he said, “still a beauty, aren’t we?”
She stood her ground, staring doggedly up at him. “And you are still a snake.”
He smiled. “Have you any idea how long I have spent looking for you?” he whispered, his breath on her face.
“As long as I ha
ve spent avoiding you,” she retorted.
“Your Aunt Thorpe sent word to me of where you were. She really doesn’t like you very much, does she? She informed me that you had been here all the time, when I had begun to think you’d gone back to the West Indies. After all, that was the rumor.”
“I considered it. America too.”
“I congratulate you, my dear. Georgiana Blakelow was the perfect disguise. The deliberate use of your aunt’s name caused us much confusion, I must confess. Two ladies named Georgiana, living together and yet each denying the existence of the other. Your family closed ranks around you. William did admirably well. He denied all knowledge of you as a sister or even living in this house—and I would know, for I was there. You should be proud of him. But I am not a man who gives up easily, my dear. And this scar that you gave me at that inn on a hot summer’s night long ago aches to be with you.” He took her hand and forced it to cup his face, forced her fingers to splay across the smoothness of the scar. “Does it repulse you, my love? Do you know what it is like to be stared at by children? Do you know how many women have turned away from me in disgust because of this mark that you gave me?”
“If women turn away from you in disgust, it is because they see what kind of man you are,” she said, yanking her hand out of his.
He nodded slowly. “You will pay for that remark, my dear. Boyd?”
“Yes, master,” said the man, who had returned to the room. “The carriage is ready.”
Miss Blakelow looked with deep foreboding from Mr. Boyd to the face of her tormentor. “What are you going to do?”
“Firstly, I want to see if you are as pretty under that gown as I imagined,” he said.
The skin on her neck began to crawl. “No.”
He grabbed her hand and pulled her across the room to the door.
“No,” she said again, more firmly.
He halted them and pulled a blade from his pocket and laid the cold steel against her cheek. “If you scream, I will mark you the way you have marked me. Do you understand?”
She nodded, her eyes wide with fear.
“And then, my dear, you will tell me where he is.”
CHAPTER 27
SOMETHING, A NAGGING FEELING that all was not well, assailed Lord Marcham. Thorncote had been utterly quiet: no servants, no fires lit, no John.
And Miss Blakelow never went anywhere without John.
His lordship swore under his breath as he swung himself back off his horse and looped the reins once more around the balustrade. He strode to the rear of the house and across the stable yard. The gravel crunched underfoot as he walked over to a horse that had been hitched to an old gig. For lack of anyone to guide her, the horse had wandered toward a green verge of grass where she was happily munching away, towing the gig with her. The horse eyed him warily as he approached, her eyes wide and bulging like cue balls on a billiard table. He murmured soothing words to the animal and called softly, “John?”
A path led under a brick archway. He followed it and found that it gave onto a small kitchen garden from where he could make his way into the back of the house. The kitchen, pantry, and other rooms were all quiet and still. Now very worried, he picked up a knife from the wooden table in the kitchen and gripped it in his hand as he moved into the servants’ dining hall. It was empty. There was no sign of life. He turned—
A sound. A muffled moan came to his ears. He whirled around in the direction of the noise and moved cautiously toward the stairs, his heart pounding hard. Another moan led him through the doors and into a room where the silver was once kept and polished. The shelves were empty now, the silver sold long ago to pay off Sir William’s debts.
He called John’s name again. There was a pause and then a muffled but frantic attempt to answer him. Lord Marcham ran to the back of the room. There, trussed up like Christmas geese and covered in strands of straw, were John Maynard and four frightened servants all bound and gagged and looking up at him with pleading eyes. His lordship crouched down beside John and untied the gag around his mouth. The butler’s head was bleeding, and the side of his face was sticky and warm with blood.
John gratefully sucked in great lungfuls of air. “He’s got her,” he gasped.
“Who’s got her?”
“We stayed here too long and now he’s found us. It’s my fault, my lord. I should have listened to her when she said that it was time for us to move on. But we were so happy here and neither of us wanted to leave and now it is too late—”
His lordship held up his hand to stem the flow of garbled speech as he tried to make sense of it. “Whoa, gently, my friend. You mean Georgiana?”
“Aye, my lord. He’s taken her, and the Lord only knows what he’ll do now he’s found her again—I have to go after them. Untie me, quickly, if you please. I have a fair notion of where he’s headed.”
“I will come with you,” replied the earl, using the knife to attack the rope, which bound the man’s hands and feet together.
“No, my lord.”
“Who is this man?”
John looked at him with something akin to pity in his eyes. “Her brother-in-law. She hoodwinked him, and he has never forgiven her for it.”
“There, you are free. Can you stand?”
“With your lordship’s help.”
The earl helped him to his feet and then set about untying the other servants.
“You need a doctor,” said Lord Marcham, frowning at the fall of blood on John’s face.
“No time for that. I must go after them.”
“You are in no fit state to go anywhere. Tell me where they have gone.”
“He’s obsessed with her, my lord.”
“John,” the earl demanded. “Tell me.”
Miss Blakelow stood by the curtains, shivering in the draft from an ill-fitting window. She folded her arms across her chest, wondering if she would survive the jump to the ground below without breaking a limb. She drew back from the window, deciding that it ought not to be attempted. She looked about her for a weapon but found the room to be utterly devoid of clutter. It possessed a bed, a dressing table, a mirror, and a table, and there wasn’t so much as a hairbrush on any of the surfaces, nor a candle by which to see her way around.
Her head throbbed. They had forced some vile substance down her throat, which had knocked her semiconscious. Then, as she struggled, someone had hit her over the head. She reached up a hand and felt the bump of a bruise and a rough patch of congealed blood at her temple. She had been unconscious for several hours, long enough for her to be secreted away and locked in this room.
She heard footsteps in the hallway. A key rattled in the door and it opened. The tall figure of a man stood silhouetted against the light from the hallway.
“Come,” he said, beckoning with one hand.
Warily she followed him. He led her along the hallway and down a flight of stairs that curved in a beautiful arc to the grand hall below. Light shone from a doorway, and she was pushed toward the room.
It was a dining room, and at one end of the long table sat her nemesis, watching her over the rim of his wineglass as he drank. He smiled a cold smile of triumph and indicated that she should be seated at the other end of the table.
“Eat,” he invited. “You must be hungry.”
“What time is it?” she asked, her voice dry and croaky.
“Seven or thereabouts.”
“Where am I?”
He smiled again. “Sit, Sophie. Eat.”
She pulled out a chair and sat down. A pewter plate was on the table before her; no knife, no fork, not so much as a spoon was given for her convenience. He clearly didn’t trust her not to use even the simplest object as a weapon.
“Am I expected to eat using my fingers?” she demanded.
“You’ve done a lot worse. Try the bread. It’s good.”
“What are you going to do with me?” she asked, cautiously putting a wedge of bread in her mouth.
“Well, that depends.�
��
“On what?”
“On how reasonable you are willing to be.”
The bread was indeed good. She pulled off another piece and ate it greedily.
“Where is he, Sophie?” he asked in a voice as quiet as death.
Miss Blakelow felt a shudder echo along her spine. “Who?” she replied, stalling for time to think.
“I advise you to think carefully before you decide to play me for a fool.”
She swallowed her mouthful and washed it down with a gulp of wine. “I told you before. He died at sea. As did my mother. There was a storm and the ship sank. A lot of people died that day.”
“How then did you survive?”
“I nearly didn’t,” she replied calmly. “The water was cold; I was practically unconscious when they picked me up.”
He brought his open hand down upon the table, and the pewter plates jumped as if frightened of the sound. “Don’t lie to me!”
“I am not lying.”
“Then how do you explain the fact that the ship you departed on was a day ahead of the storm? I have it here. See this?” he demanded, pulling a creased sheet of paper from his pocket and waving it at her. “This is a list of the ship’s passengers on the day you left. A woman, a baby, and a girl with the surname Crane. The ship, the King’s Glory, arrived safely in Liverpool, precisely when it was due and with no loss of life.”
“Then it is incorrect. I have told you before, and I will tell you again, he died at sea. And it doesn’t matter what you do to me, it won’t alter the truth.”
“The truth!” he repeated angrily, flinging the piece of paper to the floor. “You wouldn’t know the truth if it landed on you. I know he’s alive. I know it.”
“Then you will spend the rest of your life searching for someone who does not exist.”
“He’s my son!”
“A fact that only seems to concern you now that he’s dead,” she retorted with spirit. “You were too busy chasing women to notice that your wife was dying and that your newborn son was set to follow her to the grave.”
“You had no right to take him away from me. You stole him.”
