by Rebecca King
“We thought you had gone,” Alice blustered bravely.
“We haven’t,” Angus replied.
“So I see,” Alice whispered, her bravado gone in an instant.
“You are interfering with an official investigation,” he warned.
“Care to tell us what you are doing out here at this time of night?” The man beside him asked casually. He glanced about at the small yard they were in. “It is hardly the time or place for a meeting of the tapestry group, is it?”
“We are just going home,” Augusta replied casually.
“Y-yes, that’s right,” Alice gushed, her head bobbing frantically up and down. “In a bit.”
“No, ladies. Now,” Aaron ordered. “We will escort you. It is time for you to go home.”
“Oh, but-” Augusta refused to budge.
She dug her heels in when Aaron grabbed her elbow and tried to propel her out of the yard. Augusta glanced worriedly over her shoulder at the back door of the Horvat’s residence but without confessing to the men what she and her friends were up to, and getting them all put behind bars, she was helpless to do anything but succumb to their demands. All she could do was play for time.
“I demand you unhand me this instant, you brigand,” she commanded in her most matronly voice. When the young man in question refused to relinquish his hold, she swatted at his hand over and over.
“Come on, time to go home,” he bit out as he dodged her flailing hands.
Alice, for her part, was no match for the might of the tall, muscle-bound man named Justin and was practically carried bodily out of the yard and down the street toward home. Once there, she was promptly relieved of her purse, and shoved through the front door of her home. She barely had the time to glance over the angry man’s shoulder, at a still blustering Augusta, before she had a rude finger poked in her face.
“Step out of this house before dawn and I swear you are going to gaol,” the man thundered, his voice dark and raspy.
Alice, who was not so bold now she was all alone, nodded rapidly but had the door slammed in her face. Her mouth opened in dismay when she heard her own front door being locked from the outside. She tried the knob and tugged on the door to open it, but it was locked, and the man still had the key. Alice rattled the knob frantically to try to get out, but to no avail.
“Well, really,” she huffed.
A smirk was already on her lips when she hurried through her house to her back door. It swiftly died, though, when she saw that the key to the back door, which usually rested on the hook beside the door, was no longer there. In its place was a note that had been forced onto the hook: Step outside and you are under arrest for interfering, by order of the War Office.
Deeply worried, and suitably chastised, Alice quietly made her way up to bed.
Charity followed Monika through the house. Her heart pounded. She felt like a criminal as she wandered through the darkness in Mr Horvat’s home.
“This feels so wrong,” she gulped.
“It is but nobody else is going to do it,” Monika replied. “Did you ever come into the house when Mrs Browning was here?”
“Once or twice,” Charity replied. “It is difficult to tell for definite, but I think this is her furniture. The pictures and things have gone.”
“It is all rather sparse, isn’t it?” Monika sighed.
Charity made her way into the kitchen. She slid the dresser open and rummaged through it.
“Where has all the food gone?” she asked moments later when they had finished a very thorough search of the downstairs rooms.
“He must be either very hungry or be giving the food to someone,” Monika sighed.
“I think we have to go,” Charity murmured miserably.
“Do you know something?” Monika interrupted. “I think we have to search the Lawrence house as well. We aren’t likely to come out to do this again. Well I, for one, certainly won’t. At least if we check next door we can be definite that Mr Lawrence has had nothing to do with the disappearances either.”
“What are we looking for?” Charity asked, unsure if she could bring herself to check a second house, even though she knew the owners were miles away.
“Anything untoward. A person tied up. Mrs Vernon, maybe? How should I know? Anything unusual, I suspect,” Monika replied, her voice rife with impatience.
“I am not going to do it. I am not going to go through next door as well. I will go upstairs and check up there, but I am not going into Mr Lawrence’s house,” Charity warned, her tone adamant.
“Fine, I will do it then,” Monika retorted. “The key has to be beside the back door, doesn’t it?”
“Wait! You can’t leave me in here all alone,” Charity cried when Monika began to make her way to the door.
“Mr Horvat is miles away now as well. Just hurry up. When you are done, come next door. Don’t forget the basket.” With that, Monika disappeared out of the back door.
Charity stared after her for a moment. She had never been so scared in her life. She studied the darkened void of the space at the top of the stairs. The last thing she wanted was to go up to explore it. Unfortunately, she knew she wouldn’t settle her own inquisitiveness if she didn’t.
With a sigh, she placed her basket on the floor beside the stairs and began to climb.
Angus was livid. He was so furious he could have punched the wall beside him, especially when he saw Monika leave the house alone, and venture into the Lawrence’s property minutes later. He waited until the kitchen door had closed behind Monika, then hurried over to the Horvat residence.
He had barely closed the back door before he heard a long, low, and awfully familiar whistle.
“Damn it,” Angus breathed. He began to curse virulently about the foolishness of wayward females. With all sorts of epithets flowing through his mind, none of which he spoke, Angus made his way deeper into the house.
Charity took refuge in the silence. She was scared, but with each room she checked, and found to be normal, neat and tidy, with nothing untoward inside, the more she began to relax. She was, however, conscious of time being short. It was difficult to tell how long she had been in the property. It might have been an age, but it also might only have been a few minutes. Either way, she was conscious of needing to get outside and into the fresh air and freedom. It was impossible not to feel trapped in the house that was unfamiliar to her and belonged to someone like Mr Horvat.
When she couldn’t stand the tension a moment longer, and had finished searching the back room, Charity turned to the stairs. It was in that moment she heard the tell-tale rattle of the back door.
“Oh God, no,” she gulped.
Her heart practically burst out of her chest such was the deluge of fear that cascaded over her. Charity daren’t move. She couldn’t breathe and was unable to think. Her eyes, wide in the moonlight, refused to focus on anything but the blinding fear that threatened to overwhelm her. The suffocating feeling of being trapped she thought she couldn’t bear any longer, suddenly grew stronger. To the point that she struggled to get her breath.
Suddenly, a hard hand slammed over her mouth. It was so swift, and yanked her off her feet so absolutely, that Charity was left hanging in mid-air.
“Shut up, it is me,” Angus growled as he swung her off her feet. “Do not utter a word or we are both going to be stuck.”
Charity slumped with relief - until she looked down, and her gaze fell on the basket of blackberries resting at the bottom of the stairs. Worriedly, she tugged at Angus’s hand and pointed to the basket he hadn’t seen.
“Damn you,” he growled as he glared at her.
There was so much he wanted to say that it was a bonus, to her at least, that Mr Horvat was in the house. It stopped Angus from giving Charity another blistering piece of his mind. Instead, he pointed one long finger at her, and wagged it warningly.
Charity watched as, with a silence and agility that was startling, Angus crept down the stairs, picked up the basket a
nd retraced his steps. The harshness of his glare as he shoved the basket at her was enough to make her step away from his fury. But despite his anger, Charity felt infinitely safer now that he was with her.
“Back up,” Angus mouthed into her ear.
While he contemplated their options, he backed Charity into the smaller of the two bedrooms and motioned for her to stay quiet. His eyes scanned the room they were in. Seconds later, he looked at Charity and silently poked a finger into the air.
Charity frowned at him. When he did it again she looked up at the ceiling and saw the small hatch he was pointing at. Her brows lifted. She glanced down at her skirt. Angus glared at her and poked at the hatch once more. Her eyes widened as he stood on tip-toe and nudged the hatch cover out of the way. With an eye-popping strength that was astonishing to see, Angus hauled himself bodily into the dark void of the loft space. Once there, he lay down, leaned out of the hole and held his arms out to her. Charity shook her head. There was no way she had the strength to do what he did. He shook his hands out to her once more, insistent that this was the only way they were going to remain unhidden.
It was only the sound of the booted footsteps on the stairs that warned Charity that she had to do something or face discovery. With a panic that made her movements furtive, Charity handed Angus the basket and held her arms up. Shockingly, she was instantly hauled bodily into the air and up through the loft hatch.
Once she was in the loft, Angus slid the hatch cover back into place, but not before he saw the door of the room they had just been in silently open. He realised then that they had been seconds from discovery. Mr Horvat suspected someone had been in his house.
It was all Angus could do for a moment to catch his breath. When he sensed Charity moving beside him, he placed a hand on her thigh to keep her still. With one eye trained on the loft hatch, Angus remained perfectly still and waited.
Minutes ticked by, one slowly after another. Charity placed her hand over Angus’s because she needed some form of human contact in the claustrophobic darkness. Tears gathered on her lashes but this time it had nothing to do with the way she felt about Angus. It was purely because she knew her shame was absolute. He had told her, shouted at her, warned her that she was in danger. She had stubbornly refused to listen, and as a result, had put not only herself but Angus in a stupidly difficult situation. Charity had no idea what she would do if Angus was hurt because of her. It was a distinct possibility, especially if Mr Horvat found them in his house.
Eventually, after what felt like several days, they heard footsteps descend the stairs. Angus still refused to allow her to move.
“He is going to be aware of every movement in a house this quiet. This is the worst time of day to do anything like this,” he whispered. “Noise travels at night. Do not speak unless you absolutely have to and don’t move unless it is to follow my steps, do you understand?”
“How do we get out of here?” Charity whispered. “I cannot see anything.”
“We have to assume that there is no way out of this loft. We cannot wait for him to go to sleep because if he is a light sleeper we are going to get caught anyway. The men know we are in here and will be aware that Horvat has come back. Leave it to them. They will find a way to get us out of here. Just sit with me and wait.”
“I am scared, Angus,” Charity whispered.
Angus sighed and forced himself to ignore his temper. The last thing he needed was for Charity to become hysterical because she was trapped in the darkness. He needed her to feel reassured by his presence and learn to trust him. He suspected that had been the true nature of her problem all alone. She didn’t trust him.
She doesn’t know enough about me, he thought ruefully. A few kisses aren’t going to gain her trust.
Since he had arrived on her doorstep, he had taken over her house, done his level best to try to tell her how to live her life, taken advantage of her by stealing a few kisses, and then had upped sticks and left. It was only to be expected that she wouldn’t believe he was a trustworthy gentleman.
Without saying a word, he hauled her against him and wrapped her securely in his arms. With one leg on either side of her, he tugged her closer until she practically lay against him. The embrace was warm, intimate, and infinitely reassuring, and he refused to relinquish it, not even when she settled against him with a heady sigh and appeared to relax.
“Don’t get too comfortable,” he breathed into her ear. “We still have to get out of here, you know.”
“Do you think he has gone to bed yet?” Charity whispered back. As she turned her head her lips brushed his.
“I don’t care,” Angus replied, and in that moment he didn’t.
Without giving a second thought to Horvat, his colleagues who were struggling to find a way to get to him, or the woman who was trying to find her way around the Lawrence house, Angus claimed Charity for his own.
Charity sighed with supreme pleasure when Angus began to kiss her. There was nothing she could deny him. Nothing else mattered but this moment in the darkness – just the two of them. Whether emboldened by the fact they both knew they wouldn’t be interrupted, or the absolute blackness that encased them and forced them to rely upon their senses, they both surrendered to the feelings surging through them.
Hands sought out flesh beneath clothing, lips mated with a ferocity that burned. Neither of them could find the strength to pull away, not even when Angus leaned backward and tugged her with him. It was only the discomfort of the joists cutting into his back that made him wince and lift his head.
“This isn’t really the time for this,” he murmured regretfully.
He longed for nothing more than a nice soft bed to share with her again. If he hadn’t been so ill he would have claimed her as his own last night such was the temptation she put before him. As it was, he would have to wait – at least until they were at Charity’s own home.
For the first time since he had met her, Angus was able to admit and accept that his future lay with Charity. It didn’t worry him as it once had. In fact, he quite relished the challenge of finding out how they were going to entwine their lives in a way that they would both be happy with.
“We have to talk,” he whispered when he was sitting upright again.
Charity nodded but then realised he wouldn’t be able to see her in the gloom.
Angus placed a soothing kiss on her lips and held her close. He knew he had been forgiven for his draconian behaviour when she lay her head against his chest and sighed. He felt certain he could feel her smile through the soft folds of his shirt and couldn’t resist the urge to place another gentle kiss upon her brow.
He had no idea how long they sat cuddled together. Eventually, his attention was drawn to a heavy pounding noise. He knew instantly that one of his colleagues was knocking on Horvat’s back door. Angus stiffened and tipped his head. He eased away from Charity who watched him move closer to the hatch and lift the board, so he could listen to what was going on downstairs.
Angus sighed with relief when he heard Justin ask Horvat loudly if he had been at home all evening.
“Come on,” Angus whispered to Charity. He couldn’t see her but held his hand out. Somehow, she found it and clung on tightly for a moment.
“Let’s go home.” Angus grinned over his shoulder at her.
Charity smiled at him. She was intensely relieved that he didn’t seem to be angry with her anymore but had no idea what had happened to bring about such a change in him. He should be furious at the predicament she had drawn him into. Instead, he was behaving as though clambering out of a suspect’s loft space was an everyday occurrence; something fun to do.
She watched nervously as he slowly and silently lowered himself into the room beneath them. When he lifted his arms up to her, she dangled her feet into the room and slowly lowered herself down. Her cheeks burned fiery red when his head pressed into her abdomen. It was almost sensual as he crossed arm over arm to lower her gently to the floor. The way her body
slithered over his made her shiver but with a delicious warmth rather than fear. She wanted to feel that heady sensation some more, but it was over far too quickly. Instead of being held by him for a little longer, Charity watched Angus lower the board over the hatch and motion toward the door. She hated to have to leave the confines of the room but disliked the thought that Horvat would come upstairs and find them even more.
“Follow me,” Angus whispered.
In silence, Charity followed him down the stairs and out of the front door. All the while, her ears were tuned to the conversation going on in the kitchen.
“Well, where were you? What were you doing at this time of night out in the woods? Poaching is a crime in this country, you know,” Justin said, his tone authoritative.
“I walk,” Horvat declared with definite belligerence.
“Where? Why the woods?” Aaron demanded. “Who are you meeting?”
“I just walk. I go to woods. I walk,” Horvat replied. “I meet nobody.”
“What do you know about Mrs Vernon across the road?”
Horvat frowned theatrically but his shrewd eyes flickered furtively around the room as though in search of an inventive denial. Eventually, he shrugged.
“Where are you from?”
“London?” Mr Horvat replied.
Justin sighed because the man quite clearly wasn’t a Londoner. He contemplated whether to keep pushing but suspected they had worried him enough for one evening. Now that Angus had had enough time to get out of the house, and he had heard the quite click of the front door, Justin knew it was time to go. The men were on watch. If Horvat was guilty of anything untoward going on in the village, he would be worried into doing something rash – like leaving. When he did, the men from the Star Elite would be right behind him. Horvat just didn’t know that yet.
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
By the time Charity and Angus reached Charity’s house there was a new kind of tension between them. At first, Charity struggled to understand it. It wasn’t tension, or the kind of sensual attraction she experienced whenever he intended to kiss her and had that certain special look in his eye. Instead, the strange atmosphere between them was calm, yet entwined them in a cocoon of desire that simply refused to abate. She had no idea what it meant but was painfully aware that they were all alone when he closed the back door to her house.
