“Ah, and now you will act the part of the martyr.”
“I am not a martyr,” she denied, tears burning her eyes. Tears of frustration. Of rage. Of confusion. “I am just a woman who was trying to escape a desperate situation. A woman who was trying to do what was right and protect myself at the same time.”
And Felix had taken her trust and abused it. He had lied to her.
Dear God, he had been in her bed. Had told her he had tender feelings for her. He had offered to make her his wife, had delivered such a pretty speech. He had made her believe him. Had made her believe in him. Had made her love him.
How dare he?
“What you are, Miss McKenna,” said Ravenhurst calmly and coldly, “is a Fenian viper. An excellent actress and seductress. But your games have ended. Give me all the information you possess on your brother, and I will consider reducing the charges which will be laid against you.”
Charges.
She was going to go to prison.
This was it, then. The end. For once she reached prison, surely Drummond’s foot soldiers would find her. She was as good as dead.
She inhaled slowly, trying to decide what her next course of action should be.
But before she could speak, the world exploded around her.
And then, everything went black.
Felix was desperate.
Desperate to find a way to save the woman he loved from being incarcerated for a crime she had not committed. Watching her being taken away by Scotland Yard detectives earlier that day, knowing there was nothing he could do to stop them, had been akin to a dagger in the heart.
After seeing to Verity’s safety and making certain she would be well looked after and guarded, he had gone immediately to Arden. It required every shred of control he possessed to walk calmly behind Arden’s butler as he showed him to the study. Everything within him was crying out and raging to chase after Johanna. To save her.
But he knew he had to proceed with caution. He needed to approach Johanna’s arrest with as clear and untroubled a mind as he could manage. Because she needed him now more than she ever had before.
Guilt skewered him as the butler announced him and he stalked into Arden’s study. If he had procured the license quicker, if he had not bungled his proposal, they would have been wed. As his duchess and a peeress, her standing would have been much greater. His position with the Home Office would have benefited her in a way it could not now.
Arden stood at his entrance. “Winchelsea.”
“Arden,” he greeted in turn. “Scotland Yard detectives forced their way into my home a mere hour ago. They took Johanna and are charging her with conspiracy.”
“Damn Ravenhurst,” Arden swore. “He is overstepping his bounds.”
“Yes,” Felix agreed angrily. “He most certainly is. The Home Office and the Special League have been directing all inquiries into Fenian operations for the past three years. The establishment of this new arm of Scotland Yard does not give them the power to make arrests without our consent.”
“I am afraid he and his cronies believe it does,” Arden said, his tone grim. “I have suspected them of keeping the League and the Home Office out of their circle of information, but this move confirms it.”
The insubordination of Ravenhurst and Scotland Yard’s Criminal Investigation Department was a matter he would be forced to address, but it would have to wait until later. For now, Felix’s chief concern was Johanna and how he could best procure the means to see her freed.
The mere thought of her confined in prison was enough to rob him of breath. It was not to be borne.
“We will pursue that matter as we must,” Felix said. “For now, I am most worried about what we can do for Johanna.”
“Your feelings for her run deeper than you previously suggested,” Arden observed shrewdly.
“I am in love with her,” he said baldly. “There is no point in denying it. If loving her means I must step down from my position in the Home Office, I will. But not before doing everything in my power to see her released and freed of any charges the CID is attempting to lay against her.”
“Damn it all, Winchelsea,” Arden said, releasing a weary-sounding sigh. “I thought no one could muck up matters more than I could, first with the Duke of Strathmore, then with the duchess. A fine pair we make, do we not?”
“I suppose love will do that to a man.” He paused, still acquainting himself to the notion that he had fallen hopelessly in love with Johanna. “I confess, I do not recall being so tied up in knots the first time.”
“Undoubtedly, that is because you did not fall in love with an American actress with ties to the Fenian cause,” Arden observed wryly. “I cannot say I blame you, however, having fallen prey to an American woman myself. Albeit, not one with a violent criminal for a brother. Or one who smuggled lignin dynamite into England.”
“Enough,” Felix bit out. “Johanna is an innocent pawn in her brother’s games.”
“Time will tell,” Arden quipped.
Felix could not blame him, for he had been hard on the duke in the wake of the scandal he had created by nearly having a League agent wrongly incarcerated on charges of treason. By his own admission, Johanna’s story sounded damning indeed. Part of him could not fault anyone for thinking her guilty.
But he knew her.
He knew her heart.
He had been closer to her than anyone. Inside her, for God’s sake.
“Time can sod off,” he told Arden. “I am telling you now. Johanna is innocent of all charges. She did not commit conspiracy and nor did she willingly smuggle the dynamite. She was forced to by McKenna, who has been waging a private campaign of terror upon her for years.”
“We can agree upon one fact, at least,” Arden observed. “McKenna must be stopped.”
But not at the expense of Johanna. Felix would not allow her to become a casualty in the war on Fenians.
He was about to say as much when a quick rap sounded on the study door.
“Enter,” Arden called.
“This just arrived for Your Grace,” said his butler, bearing a missive Felix instantly recognized as being a League communication.
“Thank you,” Arden said, striding forward and accepting the message from his butler. “That will be all.”
He scarcely waited for the door to close before tearing open the missive and hastily scanning the contents. Felix’s stomach was weighed with dread as he watched Arden’s expression change.
“What is it?” he demanded, praying silently that the message was not somehow about Johanna.
“Explosions are being reported,” Arden said grimly. “One in St. James’s Square, another at the home of an MP, another at Scotland Yard.”
“Scotland Yard,” he repeated, everything inside him freezing.
One word, one face filled his desperate thoughts.
Johanna.
Dear God, Johanna.
“Johanna was taken there,” he said. “My God, Arden. Is there word of the damages? Are there injuries?”
Arden’s face was ashen, his mouth drawn tight. “The report only says that severe damage and injuries are confirmed. There is another suspected device which was found in Trafalgar Square, at the base of Nelson’s Column. It did not explode.”
Bloody, bloody hell.
“I have to get to her,” he said, even as the same old panic assailed him.
It was visceral. Like a hand closing on his throat. His chest hurt. He felt hot and dizzy. A cold sweat beaded on his forehead. The signs were undeniable, the fear, the pounding of his heart, as if it were about to burst free of his chest. He was about to suffer one of his fits.
He clenched his fists, denial roaring through him as he attempted to ward it off. He could not afford to be laid low now. But his vision was darkening, and he could not seem to drag in a breath.
The last fit to claim him had been when Verity had been lost after the fire. And Johanna had been there with a calming hand, a reassuring
voice. But she was not here this time.
Indeed, she may never be again…
The explosions. Injuries. Arden’s pallor. Johanna’s tear-stained face as she had been led away. She was alone. Without anyone to protect her. Without anyone to save her. And there had been dynamite.
All the facts swirled together in a sickening sea of dread. If something had happened to her, he did not know how he would make it through such a loss. Especially when he had only just found her.
It was terrifying. He attempted to drag in a breath, but his lungs were burning. The walls around him seemed close. Too close.
“Winchelsea?”
From far away, the concerned voice of Arden reached him, pricking through the haze of panic infecting his mind. Laying him low. Making him weak.
Think of Johanna, he told himself.
You must be strong for her.
You must find her. Make sure she is safe.
At last, he inhaled. The breath was a struggle. But after it followed another, and then another. And Arden was there at his side, pressing a whisky into his hand.
“Drink this to calm yourself,” he ordered. “We will go to Scotland Yard posthaste and find out what has happened.”
With great effort, he unclenched his fist, his hand trembling as he accepted the tumbler from Arden. He blew out another unsteady breath and tilted his head back, downing the contents of the glass in one gulp. It burned a path of fire straight to his gut.
But with it came a return to lucidity. He fought back against the panic. Pushed it back down where it belonged, in the dark recesses of his mind. Decisiveness returned to him, and he was able to think. To breathe.
“Thank you,” he managed to tell Arden, grateful for the man’s calming presence at his side. “Let us go now. We have not a moment to spare or waste.”
Arden nodded. “Time is of the essence, more now than ever.”
Truer words, Felix was sure, had never been uttered.
Chapter Fifteen
Johanna was lost at sea, alone in the darkness. The waves were storm-tossed. Lightning bolts shot across the sky. Ominous thunder boomed, the crack of it so loud, she could feel the reverberation in her chest. Her heart was thumping wildly, her mouth dry.
She was in a boat, but the vessel was taking on water as rain poured from the angry skies overhead. She was cold—colder than she had ever been—and drenched. Her skirts were sodden, her hair matted to her face. That was when she saw the hole in the bottom of the boat. Water was rushing up from the sea beneath her, threatening to fill the boat and sink her.
She scrambled to find something to plug the hole, but the boat was slippery. She fell headlong into the water, and for a moment she feared she would drown then and there. But somehow, she found the power to rise to her knees. Thinking she might use it to cover the hole, she clawed at a piece of wooden trim on the boat until her fingers bled. Until the fleshy pads felt as if they were on fire and the pain of a hundred tiny splinters embedded in her skin left her screaming.
The rain turned to hail, pelting her. Hitting her head, her face. Her head began to ache abominably. There was a white light searing her eyes from seemingly nowhere, and a voice she had never before heard was calling her name…
“Miss McKenna, can you hear me?”
The unfamiliar female voice cut through the nightmare, gradually chasing it from Johanna’s mind. The light was still there, however. Bright and painful. Everything seemed painful, actually. Her body felt as if it had been run over by a team of carriage horses.
“Miss McKenna?”
With great difficulty, Johanna opened her eyes, blinking slowly as her blurred vision settled and became clear. Why were her eyelids so heavy? And why did she feel so strange, almost as if she were removed from her body, aside from the throbbing pain in her head.
A brunette woman, finely dressed in a smart periwinkle blue gown, hovered over her, her expression one of concern. “Miss McKenna?”
“Yes,” she managed to rasp past a tongue that seemed to have gone unbearably dry. Confusion washed over her. “Who are you, and where am I?”
The woman offered her a kind smile. “I am the Duchess of Arden, and you are at my home. But I would be pleased if you would call me Hazel.”
Johanna was more confused than ever. “Forgive me, but how did I come to be at your home?”
She struggled to remember what had happened, but her head hurt with a devilish ferocity. She could recall Felix’s proposal, followed by her arrest. Then, the interview with Ravenhurst. Then nothing more.
“You were at the Scotland Yard offices yesterday, being questioned by Mr. Ravenhurst,” said the woman—Hazel, she supposed, for Johanna had already forgotten what manner of duchess she had called herself.
“I recall,” she said, still searching her mind, desperate for answers. It was as if a great, gaping hole had been blown into her memory…
And then, suddenly, remembrance hit her.
All the discoveries she had made about Felix. Every word Ravenhurst had said, all the revelations. The painful truths she had learned. The slicing pain of his betrayal.
The explosion.
Yes, she remembered it now, all at once. There had been a roaring in her ears, the very world had seemed to shake, and then a driving pain had radiated through her skull. She had fallen, headlong, into oblivion.
“A bomb exploded outside the offices,” Hazel said slowly. “You were injured when the ceiling of the room you were being questioned in collapsed. Fortunately, you were not in a chamber with windows, or the damage could have been far worse.”
Dear God, it had been a bomb. Likely planted by one of her brother’s men.
She hesitated as that devastating information settled into her mind. “How did I come to be at your home?”
“Winchelsea felt the risk of taking you to a hospital was too great,” Hazel told her gently. “Returning you to his home would have also put you in danger.”
Winchelsea.
Felix.
A far greater pain sliced through her then at the thought of him. At the thought of all his lies and betrayals. His manipulation of her. Despite everything, her heart still ached for him. She still loved him. Longing slid through her—the need to see him, to touch him—before she could quell it.
“He is not here now, is he?” she asked, praying the answer would be no.
“Of course he is,” confirmed Hazel. “Do you wish to see him, my dear?”
“No.” The answer left her like the blast of a shotgun: a quick, angry report.
“Forgive me, my dear.” Hazel’s countenance turned troubled. “He has been here by your side since you were brought here last night. I finally forced him to try to get some rest…I assumed you would be eager to see him as his fiancée.”
As his fiancée.
The word left her cold.
Yet another lie in a sea of so many. Perhaps that was what her nightmare had signified—the water she had been adrift in, the water rushing in and filling her boat, threatening to drown her. She felt a myriad of emotions, all of them so much the same, though she was lucid.
“I am not his fiancée,” she denied. “Nor do I have any wish to see the duke.”
Hazel’s brow furrowed. “Winchelsea was quite adamant you are. Your status as his betrothed, along with the fact you are a woman and you suffered a grievous injury, was enough to keep Scotland Yard from formally charging you for now.”
If he expected her to be thankful to him for the lies he had told on her behalf, he would discover soon enough how little gratitude she possessed when it came to him. Her body was still in pain from the aftermath of the explosion, but her heart fared far worse.
“Since His Grace is the reason I was arrested by Scotland Yard in the first place, I can only presume he felt enough guilt to lie to attempt to keep me from prison while I am an invalid,” she said, anger making her voice tremble.
She was weak, she was tired, and her heart was broken.
And
then, quite belatedly, something else occurred to her.
She had trusted this woman because she seemed kind. Because she was at her bedside. Because she was a woman, a duchess.
But she clearly knew Felix well.
“Who are you to Winchelsea?” she asked, suspicion blossoming within her. “And why am I any safer here with you than I would be somewhere else?”
“I am Winchelsea’s friend, you might say,” Hazel told her quietly. “But I am also a detective myself who has aided in the investigations of the Special League alongside my husband, the Duke of Arden. In New York City, I was a Pinkerton agent. I infiltrated the Emerald Club to investigate your brother. Winchelsea hired me to help with investigations into your brother’s men here in London. That is how I met my husband. Now that I am expecting a child, however, I have stepped down from my role, and the Duke of Westmorland will be taking my place.”
Dread enveloped her. Was there no one here she could trust? How prophetic her dream was, for she was alone, in a sinking boat, in the midst of a vast and angry ocean. No one to save her. There was only one way this story could end, and it was with her sinking to the bottom of the sea.
“Perhaps you wish to arrest me then,” she bit out, doing her best to stare down the duchess, even from her sickbed, weak as she felt.
“I wish for no such thing,” Hazel told her softly, giving her hand a gentle pat where it was fisted in the bedclothes. “What I want is for you to get well, my dear, so this mess in which you have found yourself can be sorted out properly.”
Johanna did not dare believe it. She had been manipulated enough. “Thank you for your hospitality, Duchess, but I cannot remain here beneath your roof a moment longer.”
With her left hand, she attempted to flip back the bedclothes, only to cry out in anguish as a sharp pain exploded in her shoulder.
“Remain still, Miss McKenna,” Hazel chastised. “You were quite badly bruised in the explosion. Indeed, you are lucky to be alive. You will be going nowhere until you are healed and until your brother is no longer a threat to your safety.”
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