Maybe the title of her next book would be The Vicar Is a Villain, by The Lady Whose Life He Really Did Ruin and Without Even Touching Her.
Willard leaned forward. “Did you hear me, Cecily? Do not compel me to have the menservants bodily remove you from this conveyance.”
Cecily still did not budge. The rain continued to hammer so hard on the roof of the carriage, she vaguely wondered why it hadn’t drilled holes already.
Willard banged on the ceiling. The carriage juddered as the coachman climbed down from his box, and a moment later the door swung open. A drizzly, chilly gust blew into the carriage, sprinkling the occupants and prompting shrieks of dismay from Thea and Rebecca.
“Close the door!” Rebecca wailed.
“It’s coming down too hard!” Thea cried. “Oh, I can’t step out in this. I just can’t!”
“Very well,” Willard said testily. “You two may remain out here until the rain abates. I’ll just summon two servants to stand as witnesses.” He glanced at the coachman. “Take Miss Logan into the house. She’s not likely to melt in this.”
Cecily would not be manhandled again. She took a deep breath and sprang out of the carriage into the downpour. She would have to use what little wits she hadn’t already lost to plot her way out of this.
Because she was not about to marry Cousin Harry.
She picked up her sodden skirts and dashed up the front steps of the house. She didn’t bother waiting for someone to open the door. She threw it open herself and stumbled into the front hall, dripping almost as much water as was falling from the sky.
Not being in an overly courteous mood, she slammed the door shut behind her and slid the bolt into place. That might buy her a few moments of time.
Maybe she could hide somewhere until the rain subsided, then try to make her escape. Only where could she hide in this house that was no bigger than the Bradbury ballroom?
“Miss Logan?” Startled, she whirled around to see Vicar Eastman standing in the drawing room doorway.
“None other, Mr. Eastman. I suppose my bedraggled aspect and unladylike ways made me easy to recognize.”
“That, and you are expected,” he conceded ruefully. “Where are the others? Where is Rebecca?”
“Rebecca is fine. She’s still out in the carriage with her mother, waiting for the rain to stop. They’re afraid of melting.” She stalked up to the vicar, taking a small modicum of satisfaction in seeing him flinch. “So you mean to perform a marriage ceremony between me and my cousin, utterly against all of my wishes, desires, dreams, ethics, and beliefs, in exchange for my uncle’s blessing on your marriage to Rebecca?”
He blinked and pushed his drooping spectacles up to the bridge of his nose. “No, Miss Logan, that is not so. I fear you have it all wrong. You see—”
“My uncle has just informed me that I am to marry Mr. Harcourt Armstrong, and that you are here to perform the ceremony.” Cecily waved her hand at the bolted front door, a sufficiently suitable stand-in for her uncle. Vaguely she wondered what was keeping him. Was it too much to hope he’d melted and washed away into the Thames?
Mr. Eastman’s spectacles, meanwhile, slid down his nose again. He pushed them back up. “Yes, he did state his intentions in that direction, Miss Logan. But—” Loud banging finally echoed from the front door.
“Let me in!” her uncle bellowed. “Damn it, who locked me out? Where is everyone?”
“Don’t you think we should let them in?” Mr. Eastman asked. “Are you certain Rebecca isn’t getting soaked and catching her death of cold?”
“You mean like I am? Yes, I’m quite certain.”
Mr. Eastman started toward the door. Cecily grabbed him as easily as if he were a broom and yanked him back. “I will not go through with this marriage. I’ve been abducted. I’m being forced. And I will be forced to marry no one, Mr. Eastman. I love only the Duke of Bradbury! I’ve loved him for as long as I can remember.”
Mr. Eastman blinked owlishly behind his spectacles that for once stayed in place on the bridge of his nose. “You will catch your death of cold, Miss Logan, and I would urge you to step into the drawing room to warm yourself. You’ll be pleased to find a magnificent blaze roaring in there.” He smiled and stepped to one side of the drawing room doorway with a sweep of his hands that meant either Be my guest or Right this way to your doom!
Dripping and shivering, Cecily longed to believe the former, but suspected the latter. Willard continued banging on the door and demanding immediate entry. The butler finally appeared from beyond the staircase, heading for the front door. She only had seconds.
“Where is Mr. Armstrong, Vicar? He’s in the drawing room, isn’t he? That’s where all the brandy is.”
Eastman cast a wild, helpless glance into the drawing room that told Cecily everything she wanted to know. Without another word, she raced up the staircase, thinking she might take the backstairs down to the kitchen and from there—well, maybe it would stop raining by then.
And maybe Dane would show up out of nowhere, swinging through a conveniently open window, and rescue her from this nightmare.
But no. Surely he was still back at Bradbury House, having concluded that she must have jilted him.
Upstairs all was dark. Cecily felt her way to the far end of the hallway. If she recalled correctly, there was a hidden door to the servants’ staircase near the master bedchamber. She had only to figure out its exact location and how to open it, for it didn’t come with a doorknob like all the other chambers up here.
She froze as she heard what sounded like a groan somewhere. Or maybe it was just the wind. Then she heard it again. No, it wasn’t the wind. It was definitely a human groan, as if someone had just been coshed over the head with a candlestick and was only now regaining consciousness. Or as if they’d had too much to drink and now suffered a raging headache and a queasy stomach—something Cecily now had some experience with from the night spent at Tyndall Abbey.
It couldn’t be Harry, if he was downstairs in the drawing room, though Cecily didn’t doubt he’d gotten himself foxed to get through the horror of the marriage ceremony. She almost wished she could do the same thing—but not as much as she wished to escape this house and somehow find her way back to Bradbury House, even if she ended up catching her death of cold in the torrential rain.
“Cecily!” It was Willard, of course. Already she could see the faint glow of a candelabrum growing brighter as he thundered up the stairs. “Don’t even think of trying to escape down the backstairs! It’s already guarded with servants under orders to stop you. I know you! You’re as predictable as this bloody rain.”
Just ask Dane.
She’d have to do something he wouldn’t expect before he reached the top of the staircase. She grabbed the nearest doorknob and turned it. It opened easily and she lurched right in. There was light in here, so she swiftly closed the door and leaned against it, panting for breath as she heard Willard down the hallway, shouting her name.
A brace of candles flickered on the dressing table. The curtains were drawn around the bed, where two people muttered and mumbled.
“It’s your father!” hissed a woman’s voice that was vaguely familiar to Cecily. “And he must think Cecily is in here with you.” Whereupon she giggled nervously. Then Harry wasn’t in the drawing room, after all.
“He only wishes Cecily was in here with me,” said Harry. “Oh, that would be a dream come true for the old man, for him to come in here and actually find me in bed with her so he could make us marry. Sometimes I think I should never have toyed with her when we were adolescents. All it did was give him ideas.”
Oh, was that what Harry called it? Toying with Cecily? And it gave Uncle Willard—who called Cecily a liar for accusing his son of such things—ideas?
If only Dane would magically appear, not only to rescue her, but to kick Harry’s man-bits again. Alas, she would have to take matters into her own hands. She wasn’t sure who was in that bed with him—that voice! Familiar and irritating, thou
gh not due to tone or pitch. No, it was irritating because Cecily found its owner irritating. That could be a dozen people. Who?
Someone who said, “Oh, let’s not talk about her right now. Is there any possibility your father will come in here looking for you?”
“Not a chance,” Harry said. “This isn’t my bedchamber. It belongs to Marianne’s sister-in-law, Pippa. That’s why there’s no lock on the door. The dowager Lady Pilkington insists on keeping the key. She keeps hoping I or some other fool will sneak in some night and compromise her daughter.”
“No lock?”
“Don’t worry. My father won’t come in here. Now come on, ride me again—ohh yes! That’s it! Yes! That’s—it!”
It suddenly occurred to Cecily how she might escape. It was a huge gamble, but it was her only card. She silently slipped out of the room and back into the hallway, leaving the door slightly ajar.
Uncle Willard, blazing candelabrum in hand, stood at the far end of the hallway, fiddling with some ornamentation carved into the dado rail. Apparently that was the hidden door to the servants’ staircase, and he was having a devil of a time with it.
Cecily bounded down the hallway on squelching, squirting feet, halting only a few feet behind him. “Looking for me, Uncle?”
He jumped and whirled around, nearly setting himself on fire with that candelabrum. “Oh, there you are! I thought you might have escaped down these blasted stairs, and maybe you tried to do so, but couldn’t find the hidden spring or whatever the bloody thing is. I certainly can’t find it.” He flicked his gaze from the top of her limp, dripping hair to her mud-splattered hem. “I notice you’re not running away from me.”
“Of course not. I came into the house, did I not?”
“That doesn’t necessarily mean you’re still amenable to marrying my son. For all I know, you came into the house just to get out of the rain.”
She shrugged. “But here I am. We need only find the bridegroom.”
“He should already be downstairs in the drawing room. Probably drinking the last of Pilkington’s brandy, blast his hide.”
“As a matter of fact, he isn’t in the drawing room. He’s in Pippa’s bedchamber.”
Willard scowled. “What the devil is he doing in there?”
“You should see for yourself.” Cecily beckoned him with her hand, and led the way back to Pippa’s bedchamber, where she pushed the door wide open. She stood to one side as her uncle entered with the candelabrum, stopping short at the sound of creaking and moaning behind the filmy curtains surrounding the bed. In the candlelight, Cecily discerned the silhouette of a buxom woman on her knees as she moved back and forth, huge breasts flapping and flopping.
No. It couldn’t be!
“What the bloody hell?” Willard tore the curtains aside to reveal a naked Lady Cordelia, also known as the dowager Countess of Tyndall, rocking away on Harry. She shrieked and sprang right off of him before tumbling over the opposite side of the bed, landing on the floor with a thud.
Harry howled. “Oh God, no, not again!” He clutched his member with both hands, and then only one. It shriveled that fast.
“Who is she?” Willard slammed down the candelabrum before he could set fire to something or even someone. “By God, she’d better not be some hired harlot. Better you should have compromised an heiress with a fortune greater than Cecily’s.”
“I have no fortune,” Cecily bit out. “And I will not marry your son right after finding him in bed with another woman, be she heiress or harlot or even a widow of the ton who fancies only men young enough to be her son.”
Harry leaped out of bed and spraddled behind the screen in the corner, clutching whatever remained of his beleaguered nether parts. Cordelia, meanwhile, had already managed to squeeze beneath the bed itself.
“Who is she, Harry?” demanded Willard, as he got down on his hands and knees to peer under the bed. “Who are you? Show yourself! Now!”
“You can’t talk to her that way!” Harry shouted. “Cordelia, stay where you are!”
“If she won’t come out on her own, then by God I’ll have the menservants drag her out, and I care not if she’s stark naked!” his father roared.
That seemed to be his standard solution to dealing with recalcitrant females. This might be a very good time for Cecily to make an escape—and she wouldn’t even have to fumble her way down the backstairs, only to be apprehended by the servants.
So back down the hallway she hastened, while Harry and Willard continued barking and snarling at each other like a pair of dogs over a meaty bone.
Cecily would have to find her way back to Bradbury House on foot. In the dark. And in the rain. But she had no choice. She only hoped that Dane hadn’t given up on her. Oh, if only she hadn’t made such a fuss about That Book! So what if it wasn’t her best work? With any luck, no one would buy it. As much as she loved to write, she’d never quite believed she could ever be good enough for publication.
Yet she’d also never quite believed that she could ever be good enough for Dane. She loved him as much as she loved writing, but even more so. He believed in her more than she’d ever believed in herself. A man like that was a prize, regardless of whether he was a duke or a devil or both.
He was worth a long, wet trek halfway across London. In the dark. And in the rain.
But just as she reached the end of the hallway at the top of the staircase, the silhouette of a large man—her uncle’s coachman?—stepped in front of her, blocking her path.
Cecily smacked right into the brute as if he were another suit of armor and screamed as he swiftly wrapped his arms around her, locking her in a tight embrace from which there could be no escape.
Chapter Twenty-One
As Dane slumped in the chair behind his desk, his foot slid under the kneehole and came into instant contact with a large object.
One of his dogs? The dogs were supposed to be kept downstairs this evening. They certainly hadn’t been in the library earlier, when he gave Cecily the necklace and she boldly, wonderfully confronted him with his perfidy. But even if one of the dogs managed to slip into the library since, it surely would have barked at the infiltration of strangers.
He bent down to look. “What the—?” He almost blurted bloody hell, but just in time recalled the presence of ladies and bolted to his feet. “Who’s hiding under there? Please tell me your name is Cecily. And show yourself, before I drag you out!”
Evie and Tabitha gasped, glanced at each other, and stepped back as if a bomb were about to explode under the desk.
“It’s only me,” came a woman’s voice that was not Cecily’s. As she crawled out, Dane glimpsed blonde hair peeking out from a purple turban, and a purple gown with such a low décolletage he wondered if her breasts were going to drop out of it before she got up from her hands and knees.
He thrust a hand under her nose. “May I, Mrs. Frey?”
This time Evie and Tabitha cried out, split up, and scurried around either side of the desk to behold this great sight for themselves.
Cassandra Frey slipped her elegantly gloved hand into Dane’s and allowed herself to be pulled to her feet. She brushed herself off and met his piercing gaze with tearful blue eyes. “I’m sorry, Your Grace. I should have said something the moment you came into the library searching for Miss Logan. I suppose I was still rattled by what I heard. And by what drove me into your library in the first place.”
“I’m sure you weren’t looking for a book to read,” Dane said crisply. “What happened?”
“After you received me, I entered your ballroom, and who should be the first person I saw but the Dowager Countess of Whidbey?”
Dane sighed and rolled his eyes. After his father’s death, Cassandra had pleaded with Dane to release her from their betrothal so she could marry the man she really loved—the Earl of Whidbey. Dane had been only too happy to grant her wish. Unfortunately, the marriage never took place, and she’d been mistreated by Whidbey’s mother and various members of s
o-called Polite Society ever since.
“Cassandra.” He made sure to say her name with a full-stop. “What is past is past. Now, you may have noticed the rain is coming down in such torrents that in the ballroom I’ll wager they’re pairing up not to dance but to board an ark. If you’re not going to tell me what happened to Cecily, then be good enough to pass through these French doors here...” He yanked the curtains aside, exposing a wet, stygian portal, the floodgates of hell, “...and douse, once and for all, that flaming torch you’ve been carrying for Whidbey since you were a schoolgirl. You. Deserve. Better. Now, what do you know of Cecily’s whereabouts?”
“Very well. And I know you’re right about everything you’ve just said. But his mother drove me out of the ballroom, and I needed a quiet, dark place to cry. I knew things would be just as bad upstairs in the retiring room, so I slipped in here. But no sooner did I do so than these windows you call French doors flew open.”
Dane swiftly closed the glass doors. “Go on.”
Cassandra whipped out her handkerchief and blew her nose. “I heard a man’s voice from the windows shouting, ‘In here!’ And in he came. The first thing I did was duck behind that sofa near the fireplace. The man said something about his wife and daughter bringing Miss Logan downstairs any moment. He also said she wasn’t likely to be willing. I stole a peek and recognized Lord Willard Armstrong and another man, quite beefy, who had to be one of his servants. Moments later, Miss Logan came in with Lady Althea and Miss Rebecca Armstrong. And the first thing Miss Logan asked was, ‘Where’s Bradbury?’”
Bewildered, Dane said, “But she knew where I was.”
Clutching her handkerchief, Cassandra lifted her hand, index finger pointing upward. “Lord Willard said, ‘Not here.’ Then she said, ‘Obviously. But Aunt Thea and Cousin Rebecca assured me that he was in here now to give his blessing on Rebecca’s marriage to Vicar Eastman. Yet I don’t see Mr. Eastman here, either.’ To which Lord Willard replied that Mr. Eastman was waiting just outside—in the pouring rain, mind you—and before Miss Logan could remark on how absurd that was, because I don’t doubt she would have done so, the manservant seized her, picking her up as if she were a sack of grain, and carted her out these French doors. Lady Althea stayed behind with her daughter because neither of them wished to get wet. Her daughter asked why she couldn’t marry Mr. Eastman without getting Miss Logan involved, and her mother said—not before reminding her daughter that she was saying it for the hundred and fifth time—that Mr. Eastman would be allowed to marry Rebecca on the condition that he perform the marriage ceremony uniting her son Harry with Miss Logan.”
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