by Anne Stuart
“No one’s here, miss. The servants have all been summoned back to the house they came from, the man who stays in the cottage at the back has gone to London with the captain. It would be a waste of time to struggle.”
Personally she couldn’t think of a better way to spend her few remaining minutes or hours. But she was an actress. She might not have been able to convince the denizens of this house that she was a maid, but she could surely convince this hired brute that she was cowed and frightened, particularly because a good part of her truly was terrified. “All right,” she said, though the words were bitter on her tongue and she started down the narrow staircase, the man with the gun directly behind her.
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
BEING ON BOARD THE Maddy Rose should have filled Luca with the same inner peace that always settled over him when he was out at sea, whether it was smooth sailing or fighting a fierce storm. If it weren’t for the cuckoo in his nest he’d be tempted to take his favorite ship out into the open waters, simply disappear for a week as he’d done so many times before.
But life had changed. He had a burgeoning business to deal with—two of Russell’s finest steamships to ferry cargo and passengers around the world, and now this beautiful indulgence. He’d been a fool to spend the money on the Maddy Rose—the age of the clipper ship was over, steam was replacing everything, and he had no quarrel with that. He was in the business of making money, and the profits from steam far outstripped what could be made from the smaller, lighter clipper ships.
Ah, but running with the wind was something he would never tire of. He could keep the Maddy Rose simply because he wanted to. He had more money than Croesus at this point, and he could spend it as he pleased. Besides, there were still certain runs that were best accomplished by the smaller clipper ships.
It had been easy enough to put pressure to bear on Matthew Fulton, simply by confronting him with the truth about the so-called maidservant he’d sent into Luca’s household. Matthew had managed to free up the title to the Maddy Rose, and he wouldn’t dare talk to its namesake or risk losing Luca’s very substantial business.
And now he was returning to Miss Madeleine Rose Russell with every intention of forcing her to admit the truth. He wanted the words from her, and he had every intention of getting them.
He was half tempted to simply throw her over his shoulder and carry her off, as his gypsy ancestors had done. He hadn’t lived within a tribe long enough to have learned the ways of the Travelers, but he remembered a surprising number of things, including the language and philosophy. His gypsy side abhorred the wealth and property he’d accumulated over the years, though it lauded his stint at privateering. His Gadjo side relished it.
Of course, it was the Romany way to carry a young girl off, but it was for respectable reasons. For marriage and children, and God knew he didn’t want to marry anyone. Gwendolyn was hanging on by a string, but he would sever that last bit today. The harbor was already in sight, and even with a smaller crew they’d have no trouble docking.
He still hadn’t decided what he was going to do with Russell’s daughter. Wart had been full of information. She’d been engaged until her father’s disgrace, and there were rumors that she’d lost what little reputation she had left by spending the night with her fiancé before he took off for parts unknown. Luca found the thought annoyed him. When a woman was as beautiful as Maddy it would only make sense that other men would have touched her, tasted her. Virgins tended to be more trouble than they were worth. But for some reason he didn’t like the idea of another man seeing her, touching her. And one night wasn’t going to make much of a difference in her bed skills—it would have simply dispensed with her virginity but left her essentially unmoved, unless her fiancé had taken a lot of time and trouble. And since he’d left her the next day, according to the omniscient Wart, Luca doubted it.
He watched the docks as they approached, Billy handling the wheel. He found he was impatient, eager, when he’d never been eager to get off a ship in his life, particularly one like this one. His maiden voyage as her owner, and all he’d done was rush back to the Plymouth area, rush back to Miss Madeleine Rose Russell.
He’d wasted enough time with her. What he’d do next was a conundrum. What he ought to do was send her away. What he wanted to do was… well, there were so many things he wanted to do to her that he could spend an hour just fantasizing and be in no condition to walk down the streets of Devonport.
He would deal with things as they unfolded. First, he needed the truth from her own mouth. What he’d do next with that mouth was another matter entirely.
He disembarked as Billy went through the paper work. The boat was fully stocked for a longer voyage—Luca had promised Billy a proper sail—but at the last minute he’d changed his mind. Simply abandoning Gwendolyn wouldn’t be enough to make her break the engagement—he needed to do something a little more outrageous. And while he was totally capable of simply breaking it himself, he had enough sympathy for her pride to give her an excuse. She cared so much for appearances and reputations, while he couldn’t give a tinker’s damn. But he’d led her on, and he was a man who believed in fairness if it were at all possible.
The sky was darker than it should be as he strode toward North Water Street, leaving Billy behind, and he felt a foreboding inside him that might or might not have something to do with the weather. That was another curse of his gypsy blood—he sensed things before they happened. It had always aided him in his life—that split second of foreknowledge had saved him any number of times and greatly increased his substantial assets. And right now he was sensing some very bad things.
He sped up, his long legs eating up the distance to the narrow terrace house on Water Street. He was about to bound up the front steps when something stopped him. The house was dark. With the coming of the storm someone should have turned on the gaslight—it was bright in the homes on either side of his. But his was dark and abandoned.
He kept walking, down to the end of the block and around the corner to where the mews lay, the stables and storage for the various town houses. He saw the carriage at once, tethered to the side of a back gate. It was small, black curtains shielding everything, and he knew he’d never seen a carriage like that anywhere near his house or his neighbors. He looked ahead, through the gathering shadows, and saw them on the narrow platform at the top of the back staircase, and he froze.
She was struggling, of course. Maddy would never be forced to do anything without a struggle, and the huge man holding on to her was having a difficult time managing her and the gun in his hand. It was a small pistol, adequately lethal if he put it to the side of her head and pulled the trigger, and yet the stupid girl was squirming, kicking, as he hauled her downstairs. He had the arm with the gun around her waist, lifting her, the other over her mouth to silence her, and he was so busy with the struggle that he didn’t even notice Luca’s stealthy approach.
It was a good thing he hadn’t rushed in—the man had an accomplice waiting at the end of the garden, his hands full of ropes and bonds of various sorts. The idiots should have gone in together and bound her there, he thought with a professional’s eye. Much smarter way to go about it. They could have used chloroform or a knock on the head to make her behave, but these men had made two grave mistakes. They’d underestimated their quarry. His Maddy wouldn’t go quietly with anyone.
And they’d forgotten whose household she resided in, and therefore who she could call on for a protector. Though he couldn’t imagine why anyone would want to abduct her. Well, apart from him.
He was calm, cool, and deadly. It took him the work of a few seconds to break the neck of the furious accomplice, dragging him out of the way so his body wouldn’t alert the bully holding Maddy. He could hear the man now, cursing and threatening.
“Bite me again and I’ll blow your fucking brains out,” the man growled. “I told you I can hurt you real bad if you fight, and you’re heading for the slowest, painfullest death I can think of, the way you’re c
arrying on.”
Maddy didn’t seem to think much of this, because she kept fighting as the man dragged her down the stairs. “Damn if I won’t shoot you in the head and leave you here and to hell with what Parsons said.” He peered into the gathering gloom, but Luca had hidden himself just beyond the gate. “Parsons, where the hell are you? I can’t hold her much longer.”
Apparently Maddy didn’t believe in paying any attention to the fact that the man could easily kill her—she bit down hard again, and he let out a howl, dropping the pistol as he whirled her around and slapped her, so hard her head jerked back. A second later he’d grabbed her again, one burly arm around her neck, and Luca knew the man was about to kill her, was about to snap the slender, beautiful neck with one swift jerk.
He had no weapon but his knife, and it had been a long time since he’d used it on another human being. He stepped into the light. “Let her go,” he called out.
The man froze, looking up and peering into the shadows. “Now you know that’s not going to happen, guv’nor. Even if I weren’t getting paid I’d do this one for free, for all the trouble she’s caused me.”
“I can pay more.” Not that he would—he’d kill the man as soon as he released her.
The man shook his head. “Sorry, Captain Morgan. I know your reputation, but trust me, my employer’s far worse. I wouldn’t go foul of him for love nor money. Now you just step away and Parsons and I will clean up this mess.”
“I’m afraid Parsons is unavailable.”
Silence for a moment, as the big man considered it. Maddy was looking at him, her eyes wide and staring, and he could see both the fear and fury in them. It took a lot to frighten his Maddy, and…
And why the hell was he thinking of her as “his” Maddy? No one had ever been “his” anything.
“Then I think, cap’n, that you’d best just turn around and go back the way you came. Because there’s no way you can stop me, and I’ve been around a time or two, and I’ve seen men in love before. Trust me, you won’t be wanting to see this.” And he positioned his arms, about to snap her neck, when Luca called out.
“Kick him.” The sound of his barked order startled the kidnapper for almost a fraction of a second, but it was enough. For probably the first time in her life Maddy followed an order without questioning. She kicked, and Luca threw the knife, hard and true.
The big man went down immediately, dead before he hit the ground, and he took Maddy with him, so that she was trapped beneath his suffocating body. There wasn’t much blood—Luca had aimed for the man’s eye, the force of the throw would have driven it directly into his brain, and thank God he hadn’t lost his touch. Leaping across the weed-choked garden, he grabbed the man’s arm and dragged the dead weight off her, and she scrambled away from him, from both of them, struggling to catch her breath.
“You killed him,” she said after a long moment, crouching against the railing.
“I did. He was about to snap your neck like a twig.” He was waiting for hysteria. He got none.
“My neck isn’t like a twig,” she said absently in a dazed voice, clearly trying for composure. “I’m accounted to have a beautiful neck.”
He could agree with that accounting, though he could see the marks from the man’s rough fingers color the pale skin of that beautiful neck, not to mention the beginning bruise on her cheekbone where the man had struck her. If Luca had carried a gun he would have shot the man in the face just… just because. “You would have made a lovely corpse,” he managed to say wryly.
She struggled to her feet, and he didn’t make the mistake of going forward to help her. She was shaky but doing her damnedest to hide it, to hide any sign of weakness from him. Her enemy.
“I gather a friend of yours hired him. Did you have anything to do with it?” she asked, brushing off her ugly dress with careful hands. Damn, he hated those dresses of hers. The sooner he got her out of them the better. And he’d made up his mind. Get her out of them he would.
And then her words sank in. “What friend?” he demanded. “And if I had anything to do with it why would I rescue you? Besides, if I ever decide to kill you I’ll do it myself.”
“Lovely,” she said. She looked up at him. “And if you decide to kill me I’ll stop you by any means I can.”
He didn’t bother to tell her that wasn’t humanly possible. If he wanted to kill someone then they were dead. He recognized the man now—a bullyboy who went by the name of Dorrit the Cleaner, and he’d been responsible for a great number of private executions like the one planned for Maddy. The police, as well as some of the best criminals in the country, had tried to defeat Dorrit and failed. The fact that Luca had succeeded was only one of his sudden pleasures at the way things were unfolding.
“What friend?” he said again, impatient.
“Your Mr. Brown. He told me you were lending me to him to work at his family estate, and I told him I didn’t want to go.”
He gave her a dubious look. “That makes no sense on any level. You’re not my property, to lend to other people. And Rufus Brown is a ridiculous, harmless fribble. On top of that, wouldn’t that be rather an extreme reaction to someone refusing a job?”
“I asked the man who was trying to kill me if Mr. Brown sent him. He said yes.”
He still wasn’t convinced. “He might have been lying to you.”
“Why? He told me he was going to kill me—what difference would it make?” she argued.
“I have no idea. That’s Dorrit the Cleaner, one of our most notorious denizens. He probably never told the truth in his short, misbegotten life.”
Maddy looked down at the corpse and shuddered. “None of it makes any sense. Who would want to kill me?”
“Gwendolyn Haviland, for one, though that would be quite a gesture of friendship for Brown to make, considering they only met.”
Her brow furrowed. Her color seemed to be returning, though she still seemed a little unsteady. “Why in God’s name would your fiancée want me dead?”
He didn’t bother informing her he’d sent a note to inform Gwendolyn that she was no longer his affianced. Unspeakably rude, of course, which would make her view her broken engagement with relief. “When you figure it out, let me know.”
Maddy was strongly considering throwing up. She had a stomach of cast iron, Nanny Gruen had always told her, and every time her sisters contracted some kind of stomach ailment she’d always proved resistant, but there was a knife sticking out of the man’s eye, and apparently there was another corpse nearby, and Luca looked completely undisturbed.
It was no surprise she was shaken, but Maddy wasn’t about to let that defeat her. “Did you kill the other man as well?”
“I did,” Luca said, apparently unmoved by that fact. “I could have asked him to go away in my nicest voice but he had a knife as well, and I prefer being alive. What’s your real name?”
Damn the man! Why was he doing this to her, now, while she was clearly vulnerable? There weren’t many times when she needed comfort, but right now she wanted nothing more than Nanny Gruen’s arms around her, a warm blanket, and a hot cup of tea.
She’d get none of those things from the captain, and his arms weren’t made for comfort. She really couldn’t stay here any longer—the masquerade was over, whether she was willing to admit it or not.
She should tell him who she was, she thought, trying to keep from swaying slightly as blood began to pool beneath the dead man at her feet. If Mr. Brown had really sent him to kill her it was more likely that he was the villain, not Luca. He’d saved her life. So why couldn’t she melt in gratitude the way she foolishly wanted to? Why couldn’t he put his arms around her, damn it?
But how could she say, “I’m Madeleine Russell,” and not expect that cool, disdainful rage to turn on her? He killed without hesitation, and he was watching her out of unreadable eyes. No, the man wasn’t going to get anything from her. She was going to run, as soon as she could coerce her shaky muscles into obeying.
“My name is Mary Greaves,” she said stubbornly. He had moved closer, but there was a clear enough path to dart around him once she got her strength back.
For a moment he said nothing. “So be it,” he said flatly. “I’m afraid you can’t stay here. I can’t keep fighting off marauders, and whoever sent these men won’t stop. He’ll send more, or come himself.”
She lifted her chin, determined not to show her fear. In truth, she’d come to the same conclusion. “How do you know that?”
“That’s what I would do.”
“Then I’ll leave,” she said promptly.
“And where will you go, Mary Greaves?” The light mockery in his voice when he said her false name was maddening. She’d go to her grave before she told him the truth, damn it. “Back to Lancashire?” He even mocked her on-again, off-again accent.
“Of course,” she said, not even bothering to sound as if she were anyone but Miss Madeleine Russell, toast of the 1868 season. Last year was so long ago.
“You aren’t going anywhere except with me. And don’t even try to run. It’ll be a waste of time and it’s growing dark.” He turned his back to look up at the night sky.
Arrogant bastard, she thought fiercely, the anger bringing strength back to her limbs. He was so wrong about that! “I don’t think so,” she said sweetly, and before she could think twice she darted to the side, leapt over the corpse with every intention of running down the pathway.
And she would have, if he hadn’t suddenly whirled around and caught her midair, so that she landed hard against his body with an “oomph,” his hands closing around her arms, and she was trapped once more.
Her feet were off the ground, and he was holding her against him, his dark, gypsy eyes level with hers. “You really are too easy. What’s your name?”
“Mary Greaves,” she said between clenched teeth. “Put me down.”
To her surprise he did, slowly, letting her body slide down his, and some weak, inner creature wanted to moan. She glared at him—right now impassivity was beyond her.
