His Wicked Seduction (28 page)

To the victor of the duel: Congratulations! Your prize awaits you and you alone at the gardener’s cottage.

There was no name signed. The ambiguous wording was much like the note after the carriage incident. A threat veiled in civility. He did not know who had his sister, but knew who had to be pulling that man’s strings. With a curse, Cedric crumpled the note and tossed it to the floor before running out the door. He prayed he could get there in time.

The house was in a buzz as servants flitted through the halls. Cedric tore past them to the stairs and out the back door to the gardens. Lucien’s fate was out of his hands now, but he could still help Horatia.

He had no plan and no weapon. It had to be a trap, he knew, yet somehow it felt like the devil’s due. When at last he reached the cottage his breath was ragged. He practically wrenched the door from its frame as he stormed inside.

The cottage was dark and quiet but he heard a pained whimper down the hall. Cedric immediately regretted the noise he’d made in entering. No doubt his sister’s abductor knew he was here. There was a muffled shriek and Cedric rushed headlong down the hall.

He burst inside and found Horatia crumpled in a heap on the floor next to the bed. Rose petals strewn the floor and bed around her, mixing with the blood on her lip and the slashes on her arms. A man stood with a pistol in one hand and a knife in the other. He raised the pistol at Cedric’s chest.

“So glad that you could join us, Lord Sheridan. Do have a seat. That chair.” The man pointed to a chair by Horatia.

Before him stood one of Rochester’s footmen, Gordon, dressed in the green livery of Rochester Hall. The same servant who had indirectly confirmed to him that Lucien and Horatia had been stealing away together.

“Sit down. Now,” Gordon said, cocking the pistol.

“Cedric, get out of here!” Horatia hissed.

“I’m not leaving you.” Cedric did not sit down, but he made no move to leave.

Gordon calmly swung the pistol towards Horatia.

“The situation is quite simple. You will sit in that chair, Sheridan, or I will splatter the wall with her brains.”

Cedric slowly took a seat and waited. Gordon kicked a coil of rope towards Horatia.

“Bind his hands and feet to the chair. Bind him tight, or else.” Horatia took the rope with shaky hands and got to her feet.

“It’s all right,” Cedric whispered. “Just do as he says.” Cedric remained outwardly calm, but the fury in his eyes warned her that he had not given up yet. Horatia tied the rope around his boots and wrists. Cedric stretched and flexed against his bonds once she was done and the murderous look he gave Gordon made the footman smile.

“To be honest, this is not how I wanted to handle this commission at all. If it was up to me, I’d have killed you your first day here and been off before anyone woke. But I’m afraid my instructions were quite specific on a number of points, such as prolonging your discomfort.”

“Who hired you?” Cedric demanded.

“I believe you know,” Gordon replied simply. “And if you don’t, well, it won’t really matter much longer. Now, Miss Sheridan, be so kind as to lie down on the bed. I wish to enjoy you while your brother watches. It is Christmas, after all.”

Horatia stumbled away from the bed in horror.

“Don’t you touch her!” Cedric shouted, yanking on the ropes. “You have me already, just finish me and be done with it.”

Gordon put on a theatrical performance of confusion. “Oh? I’m sorry. You must have misunderstood. My instructions regarding prolonged discomfort and death were for your sister. I was instructed not to kill you unless absolutely necessary.” Gordon started towards Horatia, a gleam in his cold gray eyes.

“Run! For God’s sake run!” he shouted at his sister.

Horatia made it halfway down the hall before Gordon caught up with her. He grabbed her by the hair and yanked her backward. She shrieked as Gordon pulled the knife back against her throat, drawing a trickle of blood. Horatia ceased fighting him then, and he dragged her back into the bedroom.

“Please. You may do with me what you will…but do not make my brother watch.”

“I believe my employer would prefer it if he did.” Gordon shoved Horatia onto the bed. She grunted in pain and rolled onto her back just as Gordon charged towards her.

“Lucien will kill you,” she promised.

He only laughed. “I very much doubt he will. I’ll be long gone before he comes here, assuming he survives at all. You really mustn’t worry over him much though, it is you that you should be concerned about.”

“How bad was the wound?” Horatia asked Cedric. “How badly did you hurt him?”

“I am not sure. When I left the house he was unconscious and bleeding heavily,” Cedric said, looking away.

Gordon smirked at Horatia. She was silent for a long minute eyeing the dying embers in the fireplace. “It seems the hellcat has lost her hellion ways. How easily defeated you are.”

Then she got to her feet and to both Cedric and Gordon’s confusion she added a few logs to the fire.

“What are you doing?” Gordon asked suspiciously. “Back over here, now.”

Her face was so bleak and dispassionate that Gordon glanced at Cedric as though ascertaining whether there was some plan at work here between the siblings. But Cedric’s face only burned with shame and defeat.

Horatia whirled on him with the poker just as Gordon raised his pistol. The shot went wide as the sharp tip of the poker raked his chest. She struck his arm with the poker before he could pull out his knife. Gordon cried out in pain as his arm bent unnaturally, but before she could land a second blow he wrenched the poker from her with his good arm.

“That was very stupid.” Gordon struck her across the head with the poker. Stars burst across her eyes before everything went dark.

Gordon frowned down at Horatia. He tore off a length of her dress and fashioned himself a hasty sling.

“Well, there’s no point in taking her now. In truth, I have no wish to linger here any longer. But a contract is a contract. But now that we’re alone, I have to ask. Whatever did you do to earn such enmity? What sin earns a man this level of personal attention?”

Cedric said nothing. He didn’t give a damn what the man had in store for him. He focused solely on his sister and the way she laid in a crumpled heap against the wall.

With no answer forthcoming, Gordon strode over to the fireplace. He used the poker to drag a log out of the fireplace and onto the floor. Slowly flames began to lick at the edges of the floor. Then he came over to Cedric and with his good arm cut his bindings. Before Cedric could fight him, Gordon rammed the pistol into his stomach.

“Move. I want you to walk out of this cottage ahead of me. I may need you if others have arrived.”

“I’m not leaving my sister,” Cedric snarled.

“Yes, you are, or I put a bullet through you and you won’t be able to save anyone. You still have one sister left. Are you going to leave her as well?”

Fear exploded through Cedric, but he wouldn’t give up on Horatia. He would
never
give up on her.

“Horatia! Horatia wake up!” he hollered as he was pulled away. The flames from the log began to creep along the floor and up the curtains of the window.

Horatia did not stir. Blood trickled from her forehead. She had to be alive, she had to be! While the small fire danced, the crimson rose petals lit up one by one, flames devouring them in flashes like fireflies. As they exited the house, Gordon stumbled on the bottom step.

Cedric turned and grappled with him over the pistol. Cedric shoved against the footman’s broken arm, causing him to cry out and drop the weapon. Cedric kicked it away and pushed the man back. He had mere seconds to either fight the villain and turn the tables, or to run back into the cottage to save his sister.

The choice was clear.

He dove back into the darkened doorway, rushing headlong towards the fire.

Chapter Thirty

Thoughts drifted through the murky waters of Lucien’s mind, jumbled and hazy. Horatia’s soft smiles and shivery sighs, Cedric’s haunted stare as he raised a pistol at him.

His eyes wouldn’t open and he couldn’t move.

“Lawrence, try this,” a feminine voice said.

Something sharp penetrated Lucien’s nose and shot straight to his brain. His eyes flew open and he surged upright, a pounding headache and pain in his side nearly making him cry out. Smelling salts. One never got used to them.

Lucinda and Lawrence along with Sir John all stood watching him, eyes wide and worried.

“Cedric!” he shouted. Fear for his friend exploded into him as he remembered the duel. He was alive? Where was he now? His bedroom.

“Easy, Lucien, he’s fine.” Lawrence tried to still him with a firm hand but Lucien knocked it away. One thought formed more clearly now. He’d been too damned distracted to pay attention until now.

“Let me up, damn you! Where is Cedric? Where’s Horatia?” He fought to be free of the tangling bed linens and fell to the floor. Pain tore through his head and he felt a large bandage bound around his head where the bullet had struck him. Sir John gripped his good arm and hauled him up onto his feet, angling him back towards the bed.

“You need to rest, Lucien,” Lawrence said.

Lucien cursed and clutched a hand to his head but kept walking towards the door.

Avery and Linus ran into the room from the hallway.

“The gardener’s cottage is on fire!” Avery shouted. “We need to get buckets and water. Everyone come with me to the kitchens.”

“Has anyone see Horatia?” Lucien bellowed as everyone rushed towards the kitchens.

“No…” Audrey came running to him, breathless. “Her room was empty but there was this.” She pressed a scrap of paper in his hands and he hastily scanned it.

“She’s been kidnapped!”

The words on the page confirmed his worst fears. Horatia had been taken as bait to lure either him or Cedric to the cottage.

“Damn, we may be too late! Tell the others!” Lucien took off at a run. He had to get to the cottage! He nearly fell down the stairs in his haste as people were rushing past him to find buckets to fill. When he burst out into the gardens he saw inky black smoke in the distance.

“Please be alive,” he breathed as he raced towards the cottage. The question he couldn’t answer was who had done this? It had to be someone on the staff, he knew it. No stranger had appeared out of nowhere, this was the act of someone who’d waited in the shadows for the right moment.

When Lucien was within twenty feet of the cottage he saw the house’s new footman exiting from the front door, forcing Cedric in front of him with a pistol aimed at him. Gordon tripped and the two men struggled before Cedric fled back into the burning cottage.

The footman stared at Lucien. “I thought you were dead, Rochester. Good for you.” Lucien took a step forward, intending to restrain the fiend, but Gordon raised a finger on his good arm. “Your friend went back inside to rescue your lady love. I didn’t come here to kill him, but the fool will likely die all the same. What do you think?”

Gordon sidestepped Lucien and walked on past, but Lucien didn’t care. Cedric and Horatia were inside the burning cottage. He plunged inside the smoky interior without a second thought, dropping as low as he could, and covering his face with his blood soaked shirt.

“Cedric! Horatia!” he shouted.

“Lucien?” A ragged voice answered from the end of the hall, followed by a hoarse cough.

“Cedric!” Lucien ran down to the open bedroom. He was repelled by the heat of the flames before him. Coughing, he waved his hand in the air, trying to shift the coiling smoke and he glimpsed Cedric, on the floor, barely conscious, and Horatia was much closer to the fire, crumpled on the floor.

“Get her out of here,” Cedric groaned.

“I’m too damn selfish to give up either of you,” Lucien shouted. He first ran to Horatia, dragging her body far away from the sprawling flames, then helped Cedric up. “I should think that as my friend, you should know me better by now.”

“I’ll try to follow,” Cedric coughed, staggering for the door. “Go. Get her out of here.”

Lucien knelt and lifted the unconscious woman in his arms, biting back the pain that still lanced through his head. Horatia’s body was drenched in sweat; the limp feel of her in his arms made him sick with dread.

“Just keep moving,” Lucien said through gritted teeth as he started for the door.

He met Cedric’s gaze across the hazy expanse of the room. They both knew he wouldn’t make it out on his own. Something wrenched in Lucien’s heart as he witnessed the grim resignation in his friend’s eyes.

“Take care of her for me,” Cedric’s voice was barely audible above the groaning of the house around them.

Lucien managed a nod and tightened his grip on Horatia as carried her out. When he reached the door he ran a good distance away from the cottage before falling to his knees. A small crowd of servants and guests were forming a bucket line, throwing pails of water on the far side of the cottage where the blaze was largest.

Horatia rolled out of Lucien’s arms and onto the snowy ground, leaving a sooty trail of black in her wake. He bent over her and cupped her face between his shaking hands and kissed her. She stirred beneath him, then coughed violently.

“Lucien?”

“I love you. Never forget that,” he said, kissing her once more before he ripped himself away and started back into the cottage.

“Lucien!” Horatia cried out.

He paused at the entrance to the cottage, looking back, then plunged into the swirling smoke.

Lucien put his bloody sleeve back up over his face and ducked as low as he could. He was halfway down the hall when the beams overhead shrieked. One of them shifted and crashed down behind him as he crossed the threshold of the bedroom. He found Cedric slumped on the ground before him.

Lucien swatted a few flames that had latched onto his leg. The fire burned him, but he stamped the flames out and crawled over to Cedric.

Another beam crashed down by the fireplace. Sparks shot up around the two men and Lucien shut his eyes and flinched away from the flames until the heat receded. A moment after he’d hoisted Cedric up, a massive chunck of the ceiling fell and struck Cedric from behind, sending Lucien toppling to the ground, the beam on top of them both. Lucien yelped in pain as the beam trapped his legs and pinned Cedric down by his back. Lucien clawed at the wood, even though flaming splinters dug into his raw palms. He glanced up, hoping to find anything that might help him when he saw a shadow at the end of the hallway.

“Leave us!” he screamed in desperation. “The roof is coming down!”

But the shadow drew closer, revealing itself as Horatia wrapped in a wet heavy cloak. She hopped over flaming wood and stones until she was kneeling by Lucien’s legs and using the wet cloak to cover the flames, heaved at the beam with all her might. Lucien dragged himself out and he and Horatia both worked to pull the debris off of Cedric.

They each grabbed one of Cedric’s arms and carried him towards the exit. More than once the flames and smoke almost won, but finally the three stumbled out of the cottage with Cedric just as the entire roof collapsed. Relief and pain swept through Lucien as the last bit of adrenaline in him finally expired.

He collapsed next to Cedric and was lost to the world.