*
Like a silent warning, the tawny hues of early morning streaked across the narrow hall at the back of Chiles’ house. Jack tucked the file, filled with condemning parchment, into the small, leather satchel slung over his shoulder.
Any moment, a servant would stride down this hall. If he was caught, he might as well be fleeing for Australia. Jack paused at a corner and glanced round. The hall was clear. Jack hurried down it, but a door, just slightly ajar, caught his eye. Reason told him to head out, but instinct was urging him to stay for a few more moments.
He advanced on the door, listening for the sound of voices. But the house was still. Slipping his fingers into the crack of the open door, he peered in. Empty.
Letting out a slow breath, Jack edged the panel open and he stepped inside. Bright colors were painted all over the walls. Ships and rainbows decorated the ceiling and children’s toys were placed in perfect order all over the floor.
A nursery?
Jack took another step inside. To his knowledge, there hadn’t been children in this house in almost forty years. The fire was lit, gently crackling and he had the eerie sensation that this room had been kept exactly the same for a very long time. He approached the fire and placed his hand along the mantel. It was almost impossible for him to think of the duke as human, not after what the bastard had done.
But the sight of this place? Regan’s father had grown up here and the duke had obviously loved his children to keep the nursery so perfectly. Jack shook his head and slid his hand over the mantel. His finger hit a rough spot and Jack frowned. He leaned in and looked at the circular knot in the otherwise perfect wood. He pressed down.
A click echoed through the room accompanied by a slight whooshing of air. The side of the mantel swung open, exposing a gap about as wide and long as Jack’s hand.
Jack’s heart slammed in his ribs. What the hell had he found?
As if a serpent might be inside, Jack reached carefully into the opening and his fingers brushed rough parchment. Gently, he pulled the bundle out. He shouldered his satchel higher and grasped the letters bound with green ribbon in both his hands. He glanced quickly over his shoulder. The servants would be about in a moment and he had to get back to Regan.
Still, he couldn’t stop himself. He pulled out the first letter and unfolded it.
Dear Father,
I have told you time and time again that I will not change my views regarding the reformation of government policy and will not be swayed with fear mongering tactics.
Jack blinked, barely believing his eyes. My God, this was Regan’s father. He paged through the next letters. They were all similar, though some weren’t addressed to the duke at all, but other political activists calling for action. Jack reached the last few and hesitated. He should go. Right now. But his fingers brushed the face of the next letter and he spotted the address. Lord Liverpool.
Lord Liverpool,
It has recently come to my attention that I am in grave danger. While that is of serious import to myself, I have found that the circumstances surrounding the attacks on my life are much more serious than they would seem. My father and I have never been in accord as to our viewpoints, but I have evidence to support that he and young Lord Brookhurst are, indeed, plotting my death. Recently, I have discovered that my father is involved in a group of Lords bent on preventing democratic reform in their fear of a Republic. It would seem that they are willing to do whatever is necessary to achieve their aims. Please meet with me in the privacy of my home as soon as may be. I have information which would b—”
The last word slid down off the page in a streak of ink. Jack stared at the letter and read it again quickly. He pressed it shut and turned. He had to get out of here and get straight to Regan. If James Chance had believed his own father would murder him for his reformations, what would Chiles do to Regan?
He might try to kill her… Maybe that’s exactly what he had been trying to do. It would certainly explain Lumley’s attempt on Regan’s life. The young lord might have been serving under Chiles’ group.
Jack headed out of the nursery and into the hall. He strode down to the window at the end, twisted the clasp, pushed it open and jumped the short distance to the ground. He snapped his attention right then left.
No one.
Though every fiber in him cried out to run towards Regan, Jack slowly stood then, as if he walked this bit of alley every day, strode toward the main street.
The coolness of the morning wrapped around his body as he turned down Park Lane. The immaculate houses towered over the street separating them from Hyde Park. In the distance, he could make out Wellington’s house.
Without thinking he picked up the pace, clutching the letters in his grip.
He hadn’t even needed to wear a disguise to walk the short distance between his house in Kensington to the duke’s house just off Regent Street. After all, he was just another wealthy young man coming home from a night of debauchery at an early hour.
Each stride Jack took lengthened. He needed to be home. For the first time, it felt like it would truly be a home. There was a peace being with her he’d never known. A peace he would never let go of. And he damned well was going to protect it.
If the duke had, indeed, arranged his son’s death, Regan was in the worst danger. And he had never even considered the possibility that it might be the duke. It was too obvious, too convenient, and in the end, he had never thought that the duke was capable of this ultimate evil.
He crossed the street at the corner of Hyde Park and Park Lane and passed the former gallows green.
A carriage rumbled down the narrow cobbled street on his right. Away from his street. Jack narrowed his eyes. The horses tossed their heads as the driver flicked his whip and moved the carriage on. The carriage had come from his house.
What the bloody hell?
The vehicle raced past him and turned out onto the street. Jack whipped himself round and watched the carriage head up Park Lane. His heart thundered in his chest.
It was his carriage.
Damnation.
Jack ran the last feet to his house and vaulted up the stairs of his townhouse. The door flew open on well-greased hinges as he shoved it.
Jack stopped in the entry hall and yelled, “Brent!”
His voice echoed and boomed through the wide room and up the stairs.
She was here. She had to be. Perhaps, she was still upstairs.
His butler came into the hall, his silver hair disheveled, and faded blue eyes wide in alarm. “Captain Hazard?”
“My wife? Is she upstairs?”
“Lady Regan? She went out with Mr. Brent.”
Jack’s blood slammed in his ears and he forced himself to take a deep breath. “She took Brent with her?”
“Indeed, sir, yes. She left in quite a hurry.”
“A hurry?” he repeated blankly.
“Yes.” The butler winced. “As soon as His Grace departed, she called for Mr. Brent.”
Jack’s hand’s curled into fists, fighting the temptation to shake his ancient butler to attain information. “Chiles was here?”
“Yes, sir. He called on Lady Regan in the morning room.”
Jack left his butler without a word and strode into the morning room just to his right. He flung the door open. It smashed against the wall. A painting fell to the floor. He didn’t give a bleedin’ damn.
Regan had left. Why? She’d promised to wait for him. What had Chiles done or said to make her leave the safety of this house. He quickly glanced over the room. Cream-colored parchment scattered across the colorful Indian rug jumped out at him.
Slowly, Jack stalked towards the letters and crouched. Every ounce of him willed the letters to be anything else than what he knew them to be. Slowly, he picked up a single letter, but didn’t open it. His monogram, printed in green wax, clung to the outside of the white parchment.
A bitter laugh tore from his throat. While he had been at the duke’s procurin
g information to ruin the man’s life, the man had been doing his own bit of destruction.
Jack crumpled the letter in his fist and rested his forehead against it. For the first time in his life, he did not know what to do. If he told Regan the truth, she would think he had married her merely to wreak vengeance on her grandfather.
And didn’t you?
“No,” he growled, not wanting it to be true. But in part, he had married her out of the need for vengeance. It just so happened that he couldn’t face losing her as well.
Pain clawed at his chest. He’d finally gotten what he had wanted. The duke would be ripped from his place of power, accused of treason.
He’d promised Dev that every Chance would fall, one by one, but how could he have known that he would care about Chiles’ granddaughter? Jack threw the crumpled letter down. Everyone he loved had been ripped from him. But this time, it would be different. Nothing would stop him from keeping Regan.
Chapter Twenty-Eight
The gleaming granite and whitewashed wood of the hospital stood like a monument of hope in the dark, dank East End. Regan tilted her head up, searching for a few rays of sun through the dirty London air.
None. She squinted at the sky. Clouds. Dark clouds. Regan climbed the wide steps of the hospital and entered the large lobby with its immense fireplace and shining admittance desks. Voices hummed and echoed through the large space as workers and nurses added finishing touches to the rooms. It was miraculous the progress that had been made.
This was, without any doubt, her father’s crowning glory.
A nurse pushed a cart heaped in folded bed linens through the entryway, towards a hall leading to the upper wings. “Good day, my lady.”
Regan forced a smile and nodded.
So much had happened since she’d last been here. She turned down the hallway to her right and headed for her office. What was she going to do? She was married to Jack. Last night, she’d ensured that there was no turning back.
Still, how could she understand what he’d done?
Despite her reason, which told her there had to be some sort of explanation, she felt as if she might have never known him.
Regan rushed down the empty hall desperate to lock herself away in a room. She opened her serviceable door and slammed it shut.
Every bit of her urged her to run, to be free of the emotions in her body. Light, grayed by the clouds outside, tinted the room in dull tones of London’s drabness. In this light, her office looked sterile. Cold.
Exhaustion seeped into her veins. Each step towards her desk was like walking through waist deep water.
The feet of her chair raked against the wood floor as she pulled it back from her desk. Regan lowered herself into the chair.
The papers on her desk blurred. Water filled her eyes and slipped down her cheeks, landing in splotches on the parchment.
When Jack had asked her personal questions, had it been so he could report her answers? A sob racked her body. Regan placed her head in her hands. Too much pain. Pain from her father’s murder. Of being pursued. Of Jack’s betrayal. It all pooled inside her and overflowed.
She didn’t know what was real. Or who to trust.
Regan took a shuddering breath and forced herself to lift her head from her hands. Her eyes burned and her lungs protested as if they were singed. Regan blinked and rubbed at her eyes.
Smoke, dark and grainy, billowed from the doorframe snaking into the room. Regan shoved her chair back. Smoke? She strode towards the door. Heat pulsed from behind the wood panel.
She grabbed a fistful of her skirts and lifted them to the handle. Even through the fabric, the metal was hot.
Shaking her head, Regan backed away. If the door was that hot, there was a fire on the other side. What should she do? Regan raised her fistful of skirts to her mouth and glanced about the smoky room. With each breath, her lungs burned. She had to get out.
The window was across the room. It was four stories up. But she couldn’t go out into the hall. She had no idea where the fire was the strongest. She could walk straight into it if she tried to go into the hall.
The only possibility she had was to break a section of the window and flag for help.
Fear and determination pumped through Regan’s blood. She did not want to die.
Kneeling down towards the fresher air, Regan edged towards the window. Sweat trickled down her back. She reached the window and pulled herself up. Regan stared across the narrow alleyway at the brick building no more than four feet away from her own window. She sucked in a sharp breath. Her body convulsed as she coughed.
No one would ever see her from this window. She’d chosen this office so she would not be distracted by the sights of the city. What had seemed like such a good use of her time, before now, seemed like utter stupidity.
She had no choice but the hall.
Blinking against the smoke, Regan crawled back across the floor. She grasped the fabric of her skirt tightly and draped it over the handle then twisted.
The door swung open and the air sucked from behind her, out into the hall.
Panic seized her and she stumbled back from the doorway. Flames burst into the room along the ceiling like long, furious fingers punching a man senseless. The force of the flame knocked Regan to the ground. Her elbows drove into the wood floor and she saw white.
Heat penetrated her legs. She screamed. Red and yellow flames danced in her black skirts. Frantically, she rolled onto her front. Her fingers clawed at the buttons of her dress. Finally, she seized her collar and yanked. The fabric tore and she wriggled out from the dress, leaving it in a smoking pile.
She crawled forward a few paces then looked back over her shoulder. The flames lapped at the edges of the door, climbing; a slithering beast across the ceiling.
She could not panic. She would die if she panicked. Regan turned around and stared at the flames licking at her door.
Whether she’d have to live with Jack and his betrayal was no longer a concern. Unless she acted now, she was going to die here. In her father’s dream.
*
The hackney carriage lurched over the ruts in the mud road and came to a halt. Screams and shouts filled the air. Jack gripped the window and stuck his head out. They were less than a minutes’ walk from the hospital.
People ran past the carriage, slipping and sliding in the mud. The air was thick and dark, distorting their bodies. Jack pushed the window further down and leaned out.
Smoke billowed across the sky.
Deep in his gut, he knew exactly where it was coming from. The hospital. He threw open the door of the hackney and jumped down. His boots squelched down into the slime. Hackneys, carts and people cluttered the alley, struggling to get away from the inferno.
Jack reached in his pocket and slapped a schilling into his cabby’s grizzled hand. He sprinted down the street, pushing people aside. His mind pounded ReganReganReganRegan.
Jack came around the corner of one of the slum houses and slid to a stop. Vomit lurched in the back of his throat. He swallowed before he could throw up in the street.
The entire left side of the hospital roared in flames. His body surged with fear. Blinded to all around him, Jack tore through the crowd, straight to the entrance. He could not lose her. He’d lost everyone he’d loved. There was no way in hell he’d let that happen again.
Jack shoved bodies, not seeing the faces they belonged to. “Hey!” a harsh cockney voice shouted. Hands reached out and grabbed him from behind, pulling him back. Jack whirled around and punched. His fist smacked against flesh and the hands relaxed their grip.
He catapulted himself against the throng of bodies rushing away from the hospital. He tore at arms and kicked out with the toes of his boots against the wall of humanity. Nothing was going to stop him from getting to her. Nothing.
At last, Jack reached the edge of the wall of bodies rushing out and raced up the steps. Smoke and heat instantly burned his lungs.
Jack yanked off his
coat and shirt. He draped the linen over his head and hunched over, running into the left wing. Towards the fire.
Towards Regan.
*
Regan stared at the charred doorway through the thickening smoke. She huddled against the corner, pulling her knees to her chest. Pressing the skirts of her chemise to her mouth, she tried to breath. Her chest tightened and she felt her lungs choking around the smoke. Her skin baked with heat.
Flames lapped all around, dancing overhead and on the walls.
Frantically, she looked at the floor, looking for stepping places. The boards were relatively untouched. She rushed further and further from her office, heading towards the wing’s stairs. As she neared the landing, the floorboards crackled and groaned beneath her booted feet. She forced herself to swallow back her fear and she whipped down another hall. The ceiling moaned. A large piece of charred wood collapsed and Regan jumped to the side just as it crashed to the floor.
Her vision faltered and she blinked wildly. She wouldn’t give up.
If she could just get downstairs. To the clean air.
She reached the staircase and ran down it. The fire chased her, eating up the walls as she ran. She couldn’t breathe. She was choking. Her chest rattled and she opened her mouth, trying to suck in air.
For a second, air rushed against her body and then hardness smacked her front side. Her cheek pressed against the warm wood floor. She braced her hands on the ground and tried to push herself up, but she couldn’t breathe.
Her vision threatened to go black.
Get up.
With her last strength, Regan pushed herself onto her hands and knees and crawled.
Even though she had no idea what lay ahead or how long she could keep moving, she was going to survive.
Lords of the Isles Page 206
