Taken by the Duke (26 page)

“I recall that night, and I was told by several parties that Edwin was injured accidentally,” Sander said with a cold glare at the valet.

Kingsley refused to look at the butler. “I’m sorry, sir. We didn’t want there to be trouble for Laura or Edwin or anyone else.”

“Did the two of them have a history?” Christian pressed, less interested in matters of the household and more in the state of mind of his apparently violently mad servant.

“Edwin and Laura?” Kingsley asked. “Not that I knew of. They had talked perhaps three times. He only said something about Lady Matilda, something benign, if I recall, and Laura exploded.”

Christian scrubbed a hand over his face as an increasing sense of dread and fear began to rise in him.

“She did that to someone she didn’t have a problem with,” he murmured. “And you say she seeks more violence than that against Ava. I must go to London. I must warn them and stop Laura.”

He moved for the door when it flew open and the housekeeper, Mrs. Banbury, rushed it. “Sanders, Your Grace, Marshall has been found in the stable, shot! We have him in the parlor and the doctor has been sent for! Please come.”

All three men exchanged a glance and then followed the weeping housekeeper from the room. As Christian rushed downstairs as swiftly as his injuries would allow him, his stomach churned. They burst into the parlor and Christian recoiled. The older man lay on the couch, his shoulder bloodied.

“Great God, man!” Christian said, kneeling beside the servant even though it tore pain through his body to do so. “What happened? Who did this?”

“Laura,” he moaned. “I heard someone in the stables last night just after midnight and came out of my quarters there to see who. She was letting Chester out of his stall.”

“Matilda’s horse,” Christian breathed.

“I tried to stop her, sir, but she pulled the gun and fired without even a warning.” The man groaned in pain as a footman applied pressure to the wound. “I passed out, I’m sorry sir.”

“It’s not your fault.” Christian jumped to his feet and spun on Kingsley. “Get Burns from his stable,” he said, trying not to think of the pain that had accompanied his last ride. “Chester is fast, and if Laura has ten hours’ start on me, she’ll reach London too quickly to use the carriage.”

Kingsley ran from the room without so much as a question or reminder that this wasn’t his job.

Christian turned on Sanders. “Send for the magistrate so he can alert the authorities as to Laura’s intentions.”

“Sir, the danger—” Sanders began.

But Christian had already turned away to get the pistol from his office. He called out over his shoulder. “I will not abandon the woman I love to a madwoman bent on murdering her.”

And as he ran as fast as his injury would allow down the hallway, he realized what he had just said. And also how true it was. He could only pray now that he wouldn’t arrive in London too late.

Ava fought the urge to rub her throbbing temples as the carriage pulled around a corner toward home. Only a short while longer. She knew it was true even if it felt like an eternity in prison stretched out before her.

Her Aunt Clarinda’s voice rang in her head as she continued to screech.

“You should thank your brother for arranging this marriage in the first place. Had he done so three years ago, none of this would have happened,” Clarinda said, wrapping her knuckles with a fan hard enough that Ava jumped.

“Yes, Aunt,” she murmured.

“You hardly spoke to Mr. Warren during tea,” Clarinda continued.

“I could scarcely get a word in around you,” Ava muttered. Clarinda shot her a glare and she shrugged. “I doubt the man cares about my skills in discourse, Aunt Clarinda. I am meant to breed him a son and a spare, nothing more.”

She fought a shudder at the thought. Her meeting with her brother’s arranged husband had not exactly been horrible. He seemed to be a nice enough gentleman. The problem was he was thirty years older than she, he smelled of some kind of medicinal rub and he was not the man she loved. The idea of him touching her made her stomach turn. The idea of being connected to him for the remainder of their days—well,
his
days—was even worse.

But her alternative—exile—was hardly better.

The carriage pulled to a stop before her brother’s home.
His
home, for she had stopped thinking of it as her home from the moment she heard his plan to foist her upon the first man who would accept her.

“You pull such a scowl, but you are lucky he would accept you, sullied as you are,” her aunt railed, her fat face getting red and spittle flying from her lips.

Ava pushed the door open and didn’t wait for assistance to climb out. “Thank you, Aunt. Good day.”

She turned and trudged up the steps, her aunt’s piercing voice following after her with words like “ungrateful” and “disgrace”. As she reached the door, it opened and Hornby welcomed her inside.

“My lady,” he said, looking out after her aunt’s departing carriage with unbridled disdain. With a sniff, he slammed the door to block out her aunt’s screeching.

She could have hugged him for it.

“Hornby, you are a saint,” she murmured. “I would ask after cards or callers, but I assume there are none.”

He shook his head. “There is a caller, actually, my lady.”

As she tugged off her gloves, she looked at him with wide eyes. “Someone has dared to visit this house of a fallen woman? It must be Portia, then.”

“No, it is someone named Laura. She said you would know her and insisted upon waiting for you.”

“Laura,” Ava breathed, and her heart leapt at the thought of seeing anyone connected to Christian. Could he have sent the maid? “Where is she?”

“In the green parlor, my lady,” Hornby said. “There are refreshments there, as well.”

“Thank you,” she said, squeezing his arm. “I do so appreciate you, Hornby.”

He smiled and left her to go to the green parlor and the friend she had never expected to see again.

Chapter Twenty-Three

Christian pulled his horse up short behind a carriage on the drive at the Windbury estate in London. He swung off the animal, ignoring the screaming pain that accosted him all over the left side of his injured body. If he was in time, the pain was well worth it.

He raced up the stairs and stopped as he saw the door was already open and Windbury stood in the hall with a butler helping him with his coat. Both men looked at him, and Windbury’s eyes went wide.

“What the hell are you doing here?” he snarled.

Without an invitation, Christian stepped into the foyer. “Where is Ava?”

“You bastard!” Windbury shouted and moved forward on him, gripping his lapel with his one good hand and shaking him. “Stay away from my sister. You have destroyed her life more than enough.”

“You hate me and I understand it,” Christian said, trying to tamp down his instincts, which were to slam Windbury to the floor. “But please, you must listen, your sister in is great danger. As are you.”

“From you, you mean?” Windbury laughed. “No, you’ve done your damage, but you can’t put her in more danger. I have found a man willing to overlook how you dirtied her, and he will marry her by mid-July.”

Christian stopped struggling, his words dying on his lips at this announcement.

“A marriage,” he repeated when he could find his voice, though his tone was dull and pained at the thought of the woman he loved as another man’s wife.

Windbury’s eyes lit up with pleasure at his agony. “Yes. She will receive some of her respectability back, though you can take joy in the fact that she will never be held as high as she once was.”

Christian shook his head. “I take no amusement in that. But I am not here to sully her. I’m not even here to stop any marriage you have arranged for her.”

Windbury shook him again. “Try it, and we will have pistols at dawn. Now get out. Get out!”

He shoved Christian toward the door and began to shut it on him. Without thinking, Christian shoved his leg into the space and somehow kept from howling in pain as Windbury began to lean on it.

“A woman is coming here, her name is Laura, and she wants to murder your sister.”

“Laura?” said the butler who had been observing their exchange in horror. “But—but that is the woman your sister left with just an hour ago.”

Both men froze. Windbury released the door and spun toward his servant. “Left? Ava is not here as she has been instructed?”

“Locking her in the house as punishment, are you?” Christian asked as he limped into the foyer.

Windbury ignored him. “What the hell is going on, Hornby? Tell me at once.”

The butler swallowed. “A woman arrived here at mid-morning. She claimed to be a friend of Lady Ava’s come to call on her. She was very kind, and since Lady Ava has been abandoned by nearly everyone she once called friend, I saw no harm in allowing the young woman in. She waited very patiently for over an hour because your sister was out with her fiancé and your Aunt Clarinda.”

At the word
fiancé
, Christian couldn’t help but flinch, and Windbury gave a small smile at the reaction. “Go on,” he encouraged.

“When she returned, I could hear your aunt haranguing her, calling her all manner of names as she departed the carriage. But Lady Ava was strong as ever, holding her head up high.”

Now it was Windbury’s smile that fell at this news, and Christian glared at him. “This is who you turn her over to? Someone who rubs her nose in her decisions and mistakes? What a kind brother you truly are, just as she always said.”

“Fuck you,” Windbury growled out.

The servant continued, raising his voice over the two of them as his frustration became clear. “I was pleased, in truth, to give her news she might be happy to hear. And she was, when I told her the young woman’s name.”

“Who is this woman you have sent to harm my sister?” Windbury asked, pivoting on him.

Christian wanted to scream in frustration. “I haven’t sent anyone. Laura was once my sister’s lady’s maid, and she helped Ava while she was staying at my home.”

Windbury shook his head. “And if she had spent more than five minutes with my sister, how could she possibly want to hurt her?”

Christian shivered. “I don’t know how she could justify bringing any pain to Ava. What she really wants is to drive a knife into your heart.”

Windbury staggered back, and his face began to reflect understanding. “Because of Matilda.”

Christian tried to control his lingering anger at the sound of his sister’s name coming from Windbury’s mouth, especially with such love and intimacy. “Laura is mad, she wrote horrible things she wished to do to exact revenge for my sister’s sake. And now she has come here and she has your sister in her clutches.”

“Because of you,” Windbury growled.

“Because of
us
,” he corrected. “Our war.
We
did this, Windbury. We did this by allowing this foolish hate to be the only thing that drove our actions. We encouraged that hate to fester in others, and in my case it touched a mad girl with her own disappointments to avenge. You can hate me. You can put a bullet in my head when this is over if it pleases you, but I beg you, help me find your sister. We have already lost one woman we both loved to this war. Let us not lose another.”

Windbury drew back in surprise and disgust at the confession hidden in his plea. For a moment, the earl was silent, then he shook his head.

“If this Laura didn’t hurt Ava while she had her in my home, where would she take my sister?”

Christian nodded. “I have been thinking of that during my entire ride from my estate. She is doing this as a twisted revenge for the loss of my sister. I think she would take Ava to my sister’s favorite place in London.”

“Hyde Park,” Windbury whispered, his face pale. “That copse of trees just before the Serpentine. She said it was—”

“—the only private place in London,” Christian finished with a grim shake of his head. “You did know her.”

“I did,” Windbury whispered, his grief slashing across his face. For the first time, this man’s pain caused Christian no joy. “I loved her.”

“And I love your sister,” Christian said, hating that he was admitting that out loud to Windbury before he said it to Ava herself. “We must save her.”

“Then we should go, now,” Windbury said. He turned to the butler. “Send for the guard. Tell them to meet us in the park where we have described. And fetch me my pistol.”

As the butler ran off to do as he had been told, Windbury glared at him. “You are in pain. Are you well enough to ride?”

Christian shook his head. “No. But a carriage will slow us down too much. I would rather lose my leg than her, so I will bear it.”

The butler returned, pistol in hand. “Jones is already running for the guard and Warner is bringing your horse around. Be careful, my lord.”

Windbury waved in acknowledgement, and the two men bolted out the door toward the waiting horses. The hardest part, convincing Windbury to help him, was over. Now Christian could only hope they wouldn’t be too late.