The Duke of Darkness

by Cora Lee

  Chapter Eight

  Rhuddlan climbed out of the carriage, shutting the door firmly behind him. Perhaps if he gave himself up, Nick would allow the women to continue on unharmed.

  “Here I am, Nicu.” Rhuddlan raised his arms over his head. “And I’m unarmed.”

  Three men with pistols stood in a triangle around the carriage—two at the back and one near the front—pointing their weapons at him, but none of the men was Nick.

  Rhuddlan’s brother came into view around the front of the carriage, carrying their grandfather’s ornate flintlock pistol loosely in his hand. “We meet again at last.”

  “We could have met plenty of times before this, Nicu, without involving weapons and innocent people.”

  “You had a chance to stop this before it ever got this far,” Nick said, putting his free hand over his heart with false innocence. “You could have stopped it all at any time.”

  “Don’t make this out to be my fault,” Rhuddlan countered. “It was you and your men running around setting fires, committing assault, destroying people’s lives.”

  Nick smiled broadly. “I believe I learned that last one from my big brother.” Rhuddlan scoffed, but Nick continued, “Isn’t that what you did to George Grayson?”

  No one but Teverton and Olivia knew about Rhuddlan’s set-to with Grayson, and only Olivia and Lewis knew about the plan to ruin him financially. How did Nick find out about any of it? “He was getting violent with some of my tenants. All I did was warn him off.”

  “With your fists.” Nick walked slowly up to Rhuddlan and punched him in the stomach without warning. “Like that?”

  Rhuddlan doubled over, tears streaming down his face as he gasped for air. His knees buckled and he folded onto the road, his forehead crashing into a rock that was embedded in the dirt. Before he could get his breath back or check his head for blood, hands grabbed both his arms and hoisted him to his feet.

  “Or maybe like this.”

  Another blow delivered, this time to his face. Fortunately, Nick’s boxing days were long past and the punch didn’t break any bones. But it hurt like the devil and Rhuddlan sucked in a breath.

  He was momentarily distracted by a scuffle approaching the carriage door, and the barking of a dog. Rhuddlan forced his eyes to focus, watching two of Nick’s men dragging John Coachman between them and force him into the carriage.

  “If you hurt him…” But kneeling on the road with blood coursing down his face, Rhuddlan knew he wasn’t much of a threat.

  “Load him up,” Nick ordered, flashing his brother a smile, and the two men restraining Rhuddlan hauled him to a second carriage that was turned ninety degrees from the direction of travel, blocking the road. Nick followed behind and hopped into the carriage after his men had thrown Rhuddlan onto the floor.

  “Take whatever valuables they have in the carriage,” Nick told them. “Do what you want with the occupants.”

  “Leave them alone,” Rhuddlan commanded hoarsely. “Those women have done nothing to you.”

  Nick leaned down, grinning. “But they’re something to you, aren’t they?”

  Rhuddlan’s feet were shoved inside the carriage and the door was slammed shut. A moment later they were in motion and Rhuddlan scrambled on to the seat, praying Nick was only toying with him, that Olivia and her neighbors would be left alone.

  Rhuddlan reached for the curtain covering the carriage window, but Nick raised the barrel of the pistol.

  “No you don’t. You’ll see where we’re going when we get there.”

  They rode along in silence after that, Nick with that stupid grin on his face and Rhuddlan with his arms crossed over his chest. He wasn’t sure how much time had passed—Nick wouldn’t allow him to check his pocket watch, either—but the carriage finally came to a halt and the door was once again opened.

  “Out,” Nick commanded.

  Rhuddlan, lacking a better option, obeyed, and was hustled into a squat cabin surrounded by dense woods. His guards forced him down onto a rough chair and tied his arms and legs to it, then disappeared from the room.

  “Are you going to say something trite like, ‘I’ve got you now’?” Rhuddlan asked in a conversational tone. “Or are we going to skip right to the ransom demand?”

  “You’ve got it all wrong, brother dear,” Nick said, coming to stand before Rhuddlan. “There won’t be any ransom. You can either turn over control of the dukedom to me voluntarily, or I’ll take it from you as your heir.”

  Rhuddlan hoped he didn’t visibly react to that statement. He’d always known it was Nick’s goal, but hearing your own brother say directly to you that he wanted you dead was still a blow.

  “You’ll never have the title as long as I’m alive,” Rhuddlan reminded him. “No matter what you control.”

  “True,” Nick conceded. “I suppose that’s another reason to kill you, then.”

  “You sound like the villain in a gothic novel,” Rhuddlan said, shaking his head.

  Nick laughed. “You would know.”

  Rhuddlan supposed that was a slur against his reading habits, but he had bigger things to worry about. Like the butt of his grandfather’s pistol that was fast approaching his face.

  The blow landed with a crunch that told Rhuddlan his nose had broken this time, if the pain hadn’t already relayed that message. He let out a yell as warm blood began to ooze down his face, then fought a rising tide of panic when he realized he could no longer breathe properly.

  Breathe through your mouth, Lucas, you idiot. It was the voice of his older brother when they were adolescents, when Hadley had accidentally dunked him in the pond one summer. Rhuddlan’s nose had filled with water that took a minute to find its way out once he’d been pulled onto the bank.

  Hadley’s voice calmed him enough to take stock of his condition, and to begin breathing though his mouth.

  Nick didn’t react at all.

  “I’m not going to give over all those people’s lives to you, Nick,” he said, spitting blood onto the planked floor. He focused on the face of his baby brother, still only five-and-twenty with his whole life ahead of him.

  “Why not? Perhaps I’d be a better duke than you,” he said matter-of-factly. “It’s a shame birth order determines who controls such a vast empire, or I might not have had to resort to this.”

  The next blow came not from Nick’s fist, but from a sharp object being plunged into Rhuddlan’s thigh. He threw back his head, but clenched his teeth against the scream trying to tear from his throat. He dearly didn’t want to give his tormentor the satisfaction of watching him writhe in pain.

  “Those sound like Cumberland’s words,” Rhuddlan muttered when he could trust his voice again. Cumberland had, in fact, expressed a similar opinion when his new niece, who preceded him in the succession to the throne, was born earlier this year. Would Cumberland resort to plotting the little princess’s death to become King of England? Probably not.

  But Nick was willing to kill to become the Duke of Rhuddlan.

  “Oh, he might have mentioned it once or twice. It was my idea to do something about it,” Nick said, disappearing through an interior doorway for a moment. He returned with an old, battered fowling piece. “You’re about to have a hunting accident.”

  Rhuddlan must have given Nick an incredulous look, because Nick continued, “It can’t look like I did it, or I’ll hang for murder.”

  “Why are you doing this, Nicu?” Rhuddlan asked weakly. The physical punishment had been bad enough, but looking into the face of his own brother every time it was delivered had taken a greater toll on him. “What did I ever do to you to deserve this?”

  “What did you do?” The question seemed to freeze Nick in his tracks. “Nothing, Lucas. When Mama died, you did nothing. When Hadley died, then Father, you did nothing for me. I was left in the care of nurses and tutors while my closest living relative spent his days elsewhere.” His eyes shifted to a space behind Rhuddlan, then re-focused. “If Cumberland hadn’t taken
an interest in me, I’d probably still be buried under my books wondering where you were.”

  Tears came to Rhuddlan’s eyes again, and this time he couldn’t hold them back. “Oh, Nicu, I’m so sorry. I was only sixteen when Mama died, and didn’t know what to do with my own grief.”

  “I was seven!” Nick bellowed, gesturing with the fowling piece.

  “I know. I should have done better for you, especially after Father. I was just—”

  “Just too busy being Rhuddlan to pay your little brother any heed,” Nick finished, his face turning red with anger. “You were the one person in my life that I was supposed to be able to trust, and you chose the dukedom over me.” He took aim with the fowling piece. “Now you’ll have neither. And you won’t have to worry about your duchess-to-be, either. If she’s carrying your heir, she won’t be for long.”

  Rhuddlan strained at the ropes that bound him to the chair. “What have you done to Olivia?”

  The next thing he knew, Nick was face down on the floor and the fowling piece was skittering across the room.

  “He did nothing to me,” his rescuer said through gritted teeth, digging her knee into Nicks back and pressing the barrel of a pistol to his head. “Do you feel that? Move and I’ll pull the trigger.”

  ~~~

  “You had a chance to stop this before it ever got this far.”

  Olivia huddled with Mrs. D. and Miss H. in the carriage, trying to quell the trembling that seemed to have pervaded every one of her limbs. This was what Rhuddlan had feared—his brother finally catching up with them.

  It was like being cornered by Sir George all over again.

  “With your fists.”

  The subsequent groans had her peeking out the window, stifling a cry when she saw Rhuddlan in a heap on the road. Artie was barking, ears laid back, hackles up, as if to let the men outside know the carriage was off limits. Olivia tried to quiet him—the last thing they needed was more attention from the men with guns.

  The door opened then and John Coachman was shoved inside, bleeding from his temple. He was alive, though, and still mostly of sound mind. “I’m sorry I couldn’t hold ’em off, ladies. I did the best that I could, but when a man has a gun pointed at you, you don’t argue.”

  “You did the right thing,” Olivia assured him. “If you had resisted or angered those men, they might well have killed you.”

  “They’re taking His Grace away!” Mrs. D. interrupted, pointing at the carriage blocking their path.

  “Someone needs to be in that carriage,” Miss Hatch said, “and leave a trail so we can find it again. The rest of us will have to overpower the men Lord Nicholas left behind and go for help.”

  Olivia straightened, glancing at the handful of brass buttons in her lap. She hadn’t started sewing them onto their intended coat yet, and they were large and shiny.

  “I’ll do it,” she said quickly, holding up one of the buttons. “These should make good markers.”

  Mrs. D. and Miss H. made a bit of a fuss, but Olivia swiftly subdued it with a raised hand. “We don’t have time to argue. Let me do this.”

  The two older women exchanged a look, and Mrs. D. nodded. “Go quickly, then. And don’t let them see you.”

  Olivia hurriedly dumped the buttons back inside the pouch they’d come in and glanced out the carriage windows. One of the men was dragging Rhuddlan to the other carriage, while the other two were watching.

  “Can you distract them?” she asked, gesturing to the two behind the carriage.

  “Oh, yes ma’am,” John Coachman said, perking up. “You just be careful.”

  “You, too,” she said, squeezing his shoulder. “All of you. Artie,” she whispered into the dog’s ear, despite his continued barking, “take care of them for me.”

  John changed places with Olivia, then opened the door on the right-hand side of the carriage, moaning loudly. As she’d hoped, both of Lord Nicholas’s men rushed to him, and she slipped out the other door. She paused for the tiniest fraction of a second then took off running as fast as she could, clutching the pouch of buttons in one hand.

  Lord Nicholas’s carriage was already in motion by the time she reached it, and there was no time to secret herself on it. She jumped onto the back, grasping the handle meant for a footman who would often be stationed there during travel, then held her breath. The curtains were closed over all the windows, and the coachman did not seem to notice an extra passenger. Had she escaped detection?

  When she was convinced she’d been unseen, she shifted her body into a more secure position, stowing the pouch of buttons inside the neckline of her dress and holding on to the handle with both hands. Every so often, she would reach into the pouch and toss out a button, fervently praying they wouldn’t be disturbed before her friends could return with help.

  If they had managed to overpower the two men Lord Nicholas had left behind.

  Her hands and arms ached with a force she hadn’t felt since the first time she’d gathered her own firewood. She’d only had a small hatchet borrowed from a neighbor, and she’d only managed to take down a couple of half-dead saplings, but the effort had required the use of muscles that had never been asked to do more than run a needle through fabric.

  I managed that. I can manage this, too.

  By the time the carriage came to a halt, Olivia’s arms were dead weight. She had just enough strength left to get herself off the carriage and crouch down as Rhuddlan and his brother got out. She heard scuffling, but didn’t dare try to get a look. Once the sounds had faded, though, she peeked around the corner. They had driven to a small, squat shelter in a wooded area and the footprints in the dirt indicated multiple people had gone inside.

  Just as she was about to make a break across the open drive to the exterior wall of the structure, two men came out of the front door. One was dressed like a coachman, and made for the horses. The other was dressed like a laborer and walked a little way into the woods. When the carriage started to move Olivia had to make a quick decision, and dashed behind a large tree trunk. The coachman led the horses around the structure and began to unhitch them, while the other man… Apparently he needed to take care of some personal business.

  And he’d left his pistol on a stump a couple of feet away.

  Wishing desperately for breeches or trousers, she made her way toward the laborer as quietly, yet swiftly, as she could. He stood with his back to her, humming to himself, and she ran the last few feet without breathing. A twig snapped under her foot and he turned, his eyes wide when he saw who had made the noise. As he frantically tried to stuff himself in and button the falls of his trousers, she darted the last few feet and snatched the pistol from the stump, training it on the main with her exhausted arms.

  He raised his hands halfway into the air, but his tone was smug. “You’re not going to shoot me.”

  No, Olivia likely wouldn’t shoot unless he came at her. But she had something much better than that in her bag of tricks. “What is your employer going to say when he finds out a woman took your pistol from you? That you were caught unawares during an important job by a seamstress?”

  The man paled visibly. He could try to take the pistol away from her, but the instant he moved toward her he risked being shot. He could call for help from the coachman, but then there would be a witness to his folly. And if Lord Nicholas was the kind of man who would beat and kidnap his own brother, she could only imagine what he would do to an employee who’d been bested by a scared female.

  “Keep it,” the man finally said. “Just let me have a head start before you go in there.”

  She nodded and he took off through the woods, leaving Olivia dangling her arms and silently, slightly hysterically, laughing.

  Then she gathered herself—Rhuddlan was injured and at the mercy of his fratricidal brother, and there was still a coachman somewhere on the property who could give her presence away at any moment.

  Olivia hid herself behind a tree once more and took stock of her situat
ion. The coachman was nowhere in sight, nor were her friends. She was exhausted, in pain, carrying a loaded pistol, and all on her own. Tears welled in her eyes at the hopelessness of it all and she sank down to the ground.

  “What can I even do?”

  A man’s bellowing voice rang out from inside the shelter and she instinctively jumped to her feet, reassessing. “I’m all he has right now...”

  She took a deep breath and ran to the little building, pausing just long enough to hear two voices, then flung open the door. There before her stood Lord Nicholas aiming a long barreled gun at Rhuddlan.

  “What have you done to her?” Rhuddlan was yelling.

  Olivia was in motion before she’d consciously made the decision to run, launching herself at Lord Nicholas and knocking him to the ground.

  “He did nothing to me.” She recovered her awareness before Lord Nicholas and scrambled to pin him down, kneeing him in the back. Then she realized she was still holding the laborer’s pistol, and she pressed the tip of the barrel to the back of his head. “Do you feel that? Move and I’ll pull the trigger.”

  She was shaking and sweaty and terrified, but the gun Lord Nicholas had been holding was several feet away and he was not struggling beneath her.

  And Rhuddlan—

  Rhuddlan was alive.

  She bowed her head and squeezed her eyes shut, her face hidden by a curtain of hair that had come loose during her mad dash. Rhuddlan was tied to a chair and looked as though he’d been beaten, but he was breathing and blinking and speaking.

  “Olivia?”

  She lifted her head and pushed her hair from her face. “Yes, Your Grace?”

  He laughed a little at that, and a great wave of relief swept through her body.

  “Are you hurt?” he asked.

  He was tied to a chair with blood on his face and clothes, but he was inquiring about her welfare? She started giggling. “I may sleep for a few days when we are finally safe again, but for now I’ll do. You, I suspect, could do with the services of a physician.”

  He nodded slowly. “I daresay you’re right. You don’t, by any chance, have one on the way do you?”