Tempting Fate (33 page)

The shuffle of heavy feet in the hall had him striding out of the room again.

“Something’s wrong,” Lindberg said, panting a bit from his quick climb up the steps. “Study’s a wreck. Eppersly’s sporting a bloody nose and wouldn’t let me past the door. Where’s our girl?” he added on a shout as Whit sprinted past him.

“Missing! Fetch the others!”

Whit barreled into the study, throwing the doors open with a crash. He took in the contents of the room in one sweep of his gaze. Furniture turned over, papers and items from the desk scattered, the baron holding a bloody handkerchief to his nose, and—most terrifying of all—a pistol lying in the corner.

Eppersly hastily shoved the handkerchief in his pocket. “Thurston, my boy—”

“Where is she?” Whit demanded, crossing the room in a few long strides. He fought the urge to wrap his hands around Eppersly’s neck and squeeze the information out. Unfortunately, the man couldn’t answer if he couldn’t breathe.

Eppersly made a sad attempt to straighten his cravat. “Where is who?”

“Mirabelle,” Whit ground out, curling his hands into fists. “Where is she?”

“Mirabelle? I don’t know what you’re talking about.” Eppersly blinked rapidly, the very picture of a dim-witted man attempting to play stupid.

Which was twice the idiocy Whit had the patience for. His fist shot out, connected, and Eppersly went down like a felled oak.

It may not have been as satisfying as strangling the bastard, but then, Whit wasn’t entirely confident his hands could have found a neck under all those rolls of fat. And it was
immensely
satisfying to plant his boot on the man’s chest and hold him down.

“Where is she, you miserable—”

“You don’t understand!” Cowed, Eppersly shook on the floor. “She’s mad! She went mad! Attacked me!”

Whit was almost glad for the excuse to lean in until the baron garbled and choked.

“Where?”

“Hartsinger,” Eppersly gasped when Whit let up again. “Hartsinger took her.”

The confession hit Whit like a shot to the chest, robbing him of breath and leaving him reeling.

She’s mad.

Hartsinger took her.

“You sent her to St. Brigit’s?” he hissed.

“Smuggled her out in a trunk,” Lindberg’s voice informed him from the doorway. Whit glanced over to see him enter the room with McAlistair and Christian. “The staff here will do anything for a coin. And admit to it for a little more.”

Shoving aside panic, Whit stepped off the baron and turned to Christian. “Can you fight?”

“I’ve a brace of loaded pistols in the stable,” Christian answered with a nod.

“Good. Saddle the horses. Lindberg,” Whit continued as Christian left, “take the carriage to Haldon, tell William what’s happened.”

“Of course.”

“McAlistair, there’s a pistol in the corner—”

“Now see here!” Eppersly interrupted, struggling to a sitting position. “You’ve no right interfering! No right! You don’t even like the chit!”

Whit didn’t bother responding. He simply pulled the printing plate and bank notes from his pocket and handed them to McAlistair. “Find out what he knows. If he gives you any trouble,” he said clearly, “kill him…Have you ever killed a baron?”

McAlistair considered it briefly before shaking his head. “Duke once. Two counts. A Russian prince.”

“Well then, a baron wouldn’t be much of a feather in your cap, would it?”

He left the room to the sound of Eppersly’s whimpering.

Twenty-five

M
irabelle woke in stages, fighting her way through a fog of pain and confusion. She was vaguely aware of being curled on her side in a small space, and of a bumping and rocking sensation. But nausea and exhaustion dragged her back to oblivion before she could work through what that might mean.

When next she woke, her world was still, stale, and absolutely black. She blinked her eyes experimentally to be sure they were open. When the darkness around her didn’t alter, she reached out and discovered a hard surface mere inches from her face. Not blind then, she reasoned, shoving at the barrier, but trapped. With panic creeping steadily through her blood, she searched the meager space around her with her hands and feet, and found only that she was boxed in on all sides. A trunk? She shifted and squirmed, trying to find or force a way out.

And there
was
a way out. There had to be.

It was like being buried alive.

The possibility of such a horror sent the panic racing. She cried out, kicked, and clawed at her confinement.

An answer came in the form of a loud creak, a rush of fresh air, and a great burst of light in her eyes.

“Now, now. There’s no need for all that,” a familiar voice admonished.

“Let me out,” she demanded even as she scrambled up. “Let me—”

“I hardly intended to keep you strapped to the top of the carriage for the whole trip.”

A set of bony fingers gripped her arm and helped her climb out of the trunk. Shaking them off, she stumbled across a few feet of dirt road toward a carriage, then simply bent at the waist and let the cool night air fill her lungs.

“That’s it, my dear. Take a few more deep breaths,” the voice advised. “A strike to the head can be a bit off-putting to the system. The man’s a brute. You’re well rid of him.”

A strike to the head, she thought dully. A road and carriage. A high-pitched voice and bony fingers. Memories came trickling back.

Oh, Lord. She’d been kidnapped—struck over the head, stuffed in a trunk, and taken away. It was beyond comprehension, surreal enough that she had trouble wrapping her mind around it. Young ladies being hauled off against their will was the sort of thing Kate’s novels were rife with—a clear indicator of how far removed the scenario was from reality.

She straightened slowly and held her hand up against the blinding light. “Where are we?”

“On the road home, my dear,” Mr. Hartsinger said, lowering the lantern.

“Home?” What was the man talking about? What sort of abductor brought his captive home? “You’re taking me to Haldon?”

Hartsinger giggled. “Of course not, silly girl. I’m taking you to your new home, St. Brigit’s.”

St. Brigit’s.

Suddenly, her circumstances didn’t seem surreal at all. Kate’s stories of damsels in distress might have been fiction, but the tales Evie told of sane but inconvenient women being sent to asylums were terrifyingly real.

Her eyes jumped from one side of the darkened road to the other. She couldn’t outrun a carriage, particularly feeling as dizzy and sick as she did, but if she could dart off the side into the trees, perhaps she could hide….

“Ah, ah, ah. None of that,” Hartsinger sang, lifting the
pistol she’d forgotten he had. “And I shouldn’t bother looking to my driver for help, if I were you.” He jerked his chin toward the shadowy figure pushing the trunk off the side of the road. “I pay him handsomely. Now, into the carriage with you.”

She considered disobeying. If it was a choice of being shot on the side of the road or spending the rest of her life locked in an asylum with the likes of Mr. Hartsinger, she’d take the bullet.

Fortunately, that choice wasn’t required of her. She need only bide her time until she had the opportunity to escape. Or until Whit came for her.

Feeling determined about the first, and absolutely certain of the second, she climbed into the carriage.

Whit had known fear before. He’d felt it the day Mirabelle had fallen down the hill. And the night she’d insisted on participating in the mission.

As a soldier, he’d experienced that sick dread that proceeds every battle, and the weighted horror that comes as men die in the blood and gore of combat.

But nothing, absolutely nothing, compared to the marrow-deep terror he felt now.

He spurred his horse on, knowing it was dangerous to ride hell-for-leather with only the shadowed moonlight to show the way. He had no choice.

How much of an advantage did Hartsinger have? Five minutes? A quarter hour? Even more? How long had they been in the stable, standing about, while Mirabelle was being dragged away?

In a trunk.

Was she still in there? Trapped and frightened?

He almost preferred that idea over the alternative—that Hartsinger had taken her out and was now alone with her in the carriage.

A man could do a great deal of harm to a woman when he had a carriage and a quarter-hour’s time at his disposal.

He signaled to Christian to take the next turn left. It was another risk, using the narrow trail, but it was their best chance to pull ahead of Hartsinger and ambush him where the trail met the road. With any luck, they could take out the driver from the cover of the trees, avoiding an out-and-out chase that would further endanger Mirabelle.

“There now, isn’t this cozy?” Hartsinger sighed as he settled on the bench opposite Mirabelle. Keeping the gun trained on her, he lifted a hand to knock on the roof, starting the carriage off. “Would you care for a blanket? There is a bit of chill to night.”

If she could have risked opening her mouth without losing her supper, she would have gaped at him.

Was the man being solicitous?

“Oh my, you do look surprised,” he tittered. “And I suppose you have reason. Pity, though, this isn’t at all how I would have chosen things to begin. I’d envisioned a slightly less dramatic homecoming for you. But, well, needs must.”

“St. Brigit’s is not my home,” she bit out between clenched teeth.

“Certainly it is. The contract your uncle signed is legal in every way. You’ll be very happy there,” he assured her, growing excited. “I intend to give you your own room, you know, complete with window and fireplace. And a soft bed, as well…although, I’ll admit,” he added with another giggle, “when it comes to that, I’m thinking of my own comfort as much as yours.”

Seeped in pain, her head pounding mercilessly, the meaning of that statement didn’t immediately register with Mirabelle. But eventually understanding dawned, and with it came revulsion—thick greasy waves of it. Her stomach spasmed painfully, until she feared that just keeping her mouth closed
wouldn’t be enough. She pressed herself into the corner, taking shallow breaths until the worst of it passed.

“But business before pleasure, I’m afraid,” Hartsinger continued, as if nothing were amiss. “Tell me what you know of this counterfeiting business.”

Though the movement cost her, she shook her head.

“You don’t mean to pretend ignorance, do you, because it will never work. I was eavesdropping on you and your uncle, you see.” He grinned broadly. “I cannot tell you how much I enjoyed watching you pelt the baron with his own effects. And I would have left you to it, if you hadn’t referred to him as…” He glanced at the ceiling, remembering. “A…despicable counterfeiting…and then you broke off, I believe. So tell me, my dear, whyever would you call him such a thing?”

She had no intention of cooperating with the man. But she was in no condition to fight him either. She tried for distraction. “You’re an accomplice,” she accused.

He frowned thoughtfully. “I don’t think I care for that word. It has a sort of secondary ring to it. Let’s just call me the architect. Our little operation was my doing. Which still leaves the question of how you discovered it.”

“Does it matter?”

“Indulge me,” he suggested.

“No.”

“Tell me,” he repeated, raising the gun. “Or you go back in the trunk.”

“I was snooping in the baron’s room,” she snapped. “I found the bills and plate.”

His face went blank. Then cold and hard.

“What plate?”

Mirabelle wasn’t given the chance to answer. Seemingly out of nowhere, the sharp report of a pistol cut through the night air.

The carriage lurched, taking on a sudden burst of speed, and the force of it threw Hartsinger into her. She shoved at him instinctively, using her hands and feet to knock him back…and knock the pistol from his hand. It bounced off the bench to land on the floor.

There was a mad scramble as they both dove for the weapon. By virtue of being closest, she got there first, but the benefits of that were limited, as it gave him the opportunity to land on top of her.

Even hurt and frightened as she was, the notion occurred to her that she had never experienced anything so repulsive as Mr. Hartsinger’s full weight squirming against her back. She threw an elbow out and caught him in the ribs, but that earned her little more than a grunt, and provided him room to sneak a hand under her to claw at the gun.

Certain she wouldn’t be able to throw him off and knowing she hadn’t the space to aim the gun without hurting herself, she did the only other thing she could think of—she curled around the weapon, squeezed her eyes shut, and closed her mind against the feel of his grasping hands.

The carriage was slowing. Wasn’t it slowing? Wasn’t the rattle of the wheels easing? Her heart leapt at the sound of hoof-beats at the side of the carriage, and the distant sound of Whit calling her name. If she could just hold on long enough…

Hartsinger’s hand gripped the gun, slid off when she jerked, and then gripped again.

Her heart sank as quickly as it had leapt. She wouldn’t be able to hold on. She wasn’t strong enough. Hartsinger would have the gun in a matter of seconds. And he wouldn’t use it to shoot his only bargaining chip. He’d aim for Whit.

Without further thought, she twisted the gun, instinctively aiming to the side, away from her face, and with her last ounce of strength pushed herself back as far as Hartsinger’s weight allowed.

Then she pulled the trigger.

The sound was deafening, a painful blast that left her ears ringing. And the heat that seared along her rib cage had her crying out.

But even over the noise and pain she could hear Mr. Hartsinger screeching. Had she shot him? Her purpose in discharging the gun had been to render it useless, but if she’d managed to wound him in the process, all the better.

“Mirabelle!”

She heard Whit call for her again and the unmistakable bang of a carriage door being flung open. Then came the blessed relief of Mr. Hartsinger being flung away. But she didn’t open her eyes until Whit’s strong, familiar hands lifted her up to a sitting position.