To Distraction (39 page)

Gervase blinked. “But you just told us he doesn’t. That he has very little income.”

“Indeed.” Montague’s eyes glinted. “Given his lordship’s status, I dug deeper—to make sure I hadn’t missed any other explanation, any other possible source of funds. Instead, I discovered that his lordship has teetered on the brink of a financial abyss for the last year and more. It’s the guns—he’s bought far too many. With neglible income coming in, he had an imperative financial motive for seeking additional funds. Indeed, he’s been tampering with his ward’s accounts as well, although as yet they have suffered only minor depredations.”

“Only because he found a better source,” Tristan said. “Selling maids into slavery.”

Deverell had been juggling Montague’s information. “What you’re saying is that without the money from the slavers, Lowther would be bankrupt.”

Montague nodded. “That’s
precisely
the case.”

All of them knew what bankruptcy would mean to a man of Lowther’s standing. Dalziel put it into words. “The end.
Point nonplus
.” He rose, as did the others.

Grainger and Gasthorpe appeared at the open door.

“Where’s Lowther’s house?” Deverell asked. Even he heard the violence in his tone.

“Wait,” Dalziel countermanded. “We should let Mr. Montague depart, with our sincere thanks. He doesn’t need to hear what we intend to do.”

Briefly, Montague met Dalziel’s eyes; for one instant, Deverell thought he might argue, but then he inclined his head. “Indeed.” He glanced at Deverell. “I’ll leave you gentlemen to do what needs to be done.”

The words had a ring of finality.

Montague left.

At a nod from Deverell, Grainger blurted, “Arlington Street. Number 21.”

With a word of thanks, Deverell dismissed Grainger and Fergus, signaling Grainger to close the door. The instant it was shut, Deverell turned to Dalziel.

None of them had sat down again. Dalziel had picked up his glass of brandy and drained it; he was setting it down when Deverell cocked a brow at him. “Still in command?”

Dalziel met his gaze, then straightened and smiled—beyond dangerous, beyond ruthless, beyond merciless. “With such a quarry?” He left the question hanging for a heartbeat, then answered, “Definitely.”

Deverell hesitated, weighing up what he could see in Dalziel’s eyes, read in his expression—that if anyone was going to bring Lowther down, it had better be Dalziel, who had authority enough to withstand any resultant furor. He nodded. “You’re right. So—how are we going to play this hand?”

She felt almost calm.

Phoebe leaned against the wall beside the door, the heavy chamber pot she’d discovered under the bed cradled in her hands. From where she stood, she would hear the creak of the stairs, would be warned when her captor returned for her answer.

Her answer, she’d decided, would be best delivered in
white porcelain. She’d ransacked the room; the chamber pot was the best weapon—it was heavier than the pitcher.

It would, she hoped, at least slow the man down, enough for her to rush down the stairs and, with any luck, lock the lower door behind her. She knew houses like this; if she could break free for a few minutes, she could reach the front door and safety. That was her plan; the rest would be easy.

She looked up, noting that the light was fading from the sky. Evening was drawing in; her two hours had to be almost up.

Resistance was risky, but she didn’t believe she had any real choice. Despite what he’d said, this man—their procurer—was one no woman should ever trust. Were she to give him a name, she might find herself dispatched to the white slavers without delay—and then how would Deverell find her? He’d admitted they couldn’t locate the warehouse, so rescue would come only when the slavers tried to take her aboard their ship—and how many weeks might pass before that happened?

Quite aside from any other danger, her reputation would be ruined—making it impossible for her to act on Audrey’s excellent advice and seize the life she’d absolutely decided should be hers.

Regardless of any other consideration, she was not about to let their beastly procurer stop her from becoming Deverell’s wife.

She was unquestionably the best wife for him; she was almost certain he would agree.

Her lips lifted wryly; she was honestly amazed at herself—at how completely determination, conviction, and sheer brazen stubbornness ruled her, at how little real purchase fear possessed.

Her present situation was far worse, far more scarifying than the incident in her past; she knew it, yet she was no
longer the naïve seventeen-year-old she’d been. It wasn’t just the years that had passed that had changed her but how she’d spent them; most especially it was the last month and all Deverell had taught her, on so many levels, that left her not just determined never to be any man’s victim but confident she didn’t need to be. That there was every reason to fight and no reason to expect to lose.

Men like their procurer didn’t always win, because there were other men, better men, who would annihilate him. All she had to do was escape and leave them, the right sort of large and dangerous gentlemen, to take care of the rest.

That, to her mind, was as things should be.

Escape was her goal—and as soon as possible thereafter, she would speak to Deverell about marriage. If, in extremis, everyone made a vow to God about what they would do if they were saved, then that was her vow. It was senseless to carry on as they were; theirs was no true liaison. They were living in each other’s pockets, sharing each other’s lives—they might as well marry and have done with the charade.

So she would tell him—

Creak
.

Phoebe sucked in a breath. A key slid into the lock.

Silently she took up her position behind the door. As it swung open, she hoisted the chamber pot high.

Pewter-gray hair—she didn’t wait to see more but brought the pot whistling down.

He glimpsed movement at the last second and ducked. Instead of cracking the pot over his crown, she dealt him a glancing blow. He staggered.

Phoebe gasped as the pot slipped from her hands and crashed on the floor, shattering into dozens of pieces.

His face contorted in a furious snarl, the man turned on her.

He grabbed her wrists.

She remembered, rotated her arms, and broke his grasp.

He was stunned for an instant; she stepped in and brought her knee up hard and fast, but she wobbled on a pot shard—her blow landed, but not precisely in the right spot.

But the snarl evaporated; his face turned purple. He sucked in a furious hissing breath and grabbed her shoulders. He tried to shake her, but they were both off-balance…for a moment they wrestled, pot shards crunching beneath their feet, then Phoebe remembered and butted him in the face.

He was shorter than Deverell and had his head lowered—she hit the side of his forehead with hers. Hard.

He howled—music to her ears!—but his fingers only bit more deeply into her shoulders.

Phoebe cursed and looked down, trying to locate his feet to smash her heel down on his instep—

“My lord—my lord! You must come quickly!”

Breathless and agitated, the butler’s voice came from the bottom of the stairs.

Phoebe lifted her head, glanced at the open door.

“There’s a gentleman arrived. He’s asking for you on some urgent matter. He won’t be denied.”

Phoebe dragged in a breath to scream—

With a massive effort, the man heaved her from her feet, swung her, and slung her across the room.

She hit the floor and slid into the wall, winded, but with her hands she managed to keep her head from cracking against the paneling.

Looking up, breathless, she saw the man—their procurer—standing before the door, dragging in a huge breath.

His color was high, choleric; his cold gray eyes, filled with fury and vindictive hate, pinned her. His hands shook as he tugged down his sleeves. “I’ll deal with you later.” His voice was a low, raspy growl, nothing like his previously deliberate diction. “And then the slavers can have you!”

He spat the last words at her, then went out of the door, slammed it shut, and locked it.

Phoebe struggled to her feet; she raced to the door and pounded on the panels.
“Deverell! I’m here!”

She paused to drag in a breath, listened…and realized that she couldn’t hear the man’s or the butler’s footsteps receding. They’d closed the door at the bottom of the stairs; as she’d suspected, it cut off all sound.

No point screaming.

Lips twisting, then setting, she went back to the bed, circling the pot shards to sit on the side.

She’d assumed the visitor was Deverell, but what if it wasn’t?

If it wasn’t…the beast was going to come back once he’d dealt with the interruption, and now he knew she was loose in the room. What would he do?

Looking down, she kicked at a pot shard. More to the point, what was she going to do?

C
oncealed in the shadows of Lord Lowther’s drawing room, through the partially open door Deverell watched Dalziel, Christian, and Tristan as they waited just inside Lowther’s front hall for his lordship to appear.

The butler had opened the front door to them; given no real choice, he’d reluctantly admitted the three gentlemen he’d seen waiting on the stoop and, rattled by Dalziel’s subtly menacing demand, had rushed off to summon his master. Tristan had silently reopened the front door; like wraiths, Deverell and Gervase had slipped in and taken up their station in the darkened drawing room. Deverell glanced at Gervase, beside him in the shadows; it was their task to search the house, if Phoebe were there to locate and release her while Dalziel and the others kept Lowther engaged.

Over two hours had passed since Phoebe had been strolling in Edith’s garden; their best guess was that she would be held somewhere in this house. Lowther would want to ques
tion her, to learn about her involvement with whisking maids away; given her station, it seemed unlikely—unnecessary—for him to have had her taken elsewhere. Not yet.

That Lowther was at home seemed to confirm their assessment.

They waited; silent in the dark, Deverell thanked heaven the discipline of patience was still his. Cold dread had swamped him at the first word of Phoebe’s kidnapping; everything he’d learned since had only intensified the sensation. Given her past, this was surely the worst terror that could have befallen her. He might have eased her trepidation, blunted her ingrained, now instinctive fear and the panic that arose from that, but he had no way of knowing how she would react to the present situation and its implicit threats, how deeply fear might grip her, how badly it might affect her.

How terrified she might be.

The thought of her terrified shook him to the core, unleashed a torrent of emotions and a compulsion to act unlike any he’d felt before, to rescue her, defend her, protect her. Above all, to keep her safe.

While he waited, focused and alert, all attention locked on doing just that, the detached, usually totally cynical part of his brain pointed out the obvious with breathtaking clarity—he felt like this about Phoebe because she was his life. The center of it, the lynchpin; without her, all the rest would fall apart.

He’d imagined he would be the center of her life; instead, she was the fulcrum about which his life revolved. Without her, he’d be lost.

As soon as this was over, as soon as he had her safe, he vowed he would ask and insist that she marry him. No more delays, no more waiting for her to see the obvious on her
own; if she hadn’t noticed by now, he’d just have to make the matter plain—and show her why, every single reason why, she simply had to marry him.

Heavy footsteps came quickly down the stairs—more than one man. Lips set, Deverell resisted the urge to peek out; he and Gervase faded back into deeper shadow as the footsteps halted before Dalziel.

“Dalziel?” Lowther already sounded rattled. “What’s this?”

A fractional hesitation—fleeting but there, enough to alert both Deverell and Gervase—then Dalziel murmured, “My apologies for disturbing your nap, my lord.” Another brief but meaningful pause. “It seems you’ve taken a knock on the head.”

“What? Oh, that. It’s nothing—bumped my head on a drawer. Clumsy thing to do, but nothing to worry about.” Lowther paused to draw breath. “Now, what brings you to my door?”

“I fear I need to consult with you on a legal matter. I believe you’re acquainted with Dearne and Trentham?”

“Yes, of course.” Lowther hesitated, then coughed and stepped back. “If you’ll come into my study…?”

Deverell glanced at Gervase as they listened to the four men move down the hall.

“Nap?” Gervase mouthed.

Face set like stone, Deverell pointed upward. From Dalziel’s comments, Lowther was disheveled and injured; his lordship had been involved in some fight moments before—and he’d come from upstairs.

Lowther’s voice, pitched between petulance and belligerence, faded; a door toward the back of the hall shut.

Deverell waited a heartbeat, then cautiously looked out. The butler, a tall, severe man, stood listening outside what
was presumably the study door. As Deverell watched, the man grimaced, then walked off through the swinging doors leading to the rear of the house.

A touch on Gervase’s arm and Deverell was moving through the hall. Swift and silent, he reached the stairs; keeping to the edge of the treads, he climbed without a sound. Gervase followed at his heels.

At the top of the stairs, they paused, glancing around, listening, confirming that as expected at this time of day there were no staff abovestairs. Exchanging a nod, they separated; quickly, thoroughly, methodically, all in complete silence, they searched the first floor. Finding nothing, they went up to the second; from there, they progressed to the attics, treading more warily in case any staff were in their rooms.

They found nothing. And no one.

Halting in the narrow attic corridor, Deverell faced Gervase—and saw his frustration mirrored in his friend’s face. “We’ve missed it.”

Gervase nodded. “No sign of a struggle, not even a rumpled bed to account for Lowther’s disarranged state. Dalziel wouldn’t have mentioned it if he didn’t think it pertinent, and Lowther wouldn’t have excused the injury if it wasn’t bad enough to be obvious.”

The cold dread intensified, invading Deverell’s gut; like a fist, it gripped, turning his innards to desolate ice. Hauling in a breath past the constriction banding his chest, he turned, resurveying the doors to the rooms on either side. “So we search again. It’s here, but hidden.”

It had to be.
She
had to be.

This time they worked together, one tapping on a wall, the other in the next room confirming that the wall was indeed shared, that there was no extra space between. They worked as fast as they could; how long Dalziel could spin
out his fabrication of a legal consulation they didn’t know.

They cleared the attics, then the second floor; the only spaces they found were taken up by cupboards. Descending to the first floor, they continued; it didn’t take them long to establish that the larger rooms were all as they should be. Frustrated, in Deverell’s case with a species of icy panic sliding through his veins, they halted in the corridor a little way from the main stairs.

“This is crazy.” Hauling in a tight breath, Deverell raked his hand through his hair. “There has to be something here.”

Gervase grimaced. After a moment he said, “Are we wrong?”

Deverell didn’t want to think it, but in his present state, he wasn’t even sure his earlier deductions were rational. The panic welling inside him was unlike any he’d known. He’d faced death, several times, without such turmoil. Without such desperate, driving, gut-wrenching compulsion to act to fend off the soul-destroying desolation looming.

He
had to
find Phoebe. He was barely aware of clenching his fists with the effort to smother an urge to roar her name. Lips thin, pressed tight, he looked down, then growled, “Somewhere here there’s something to be found.”

Lifting his head, he looked along the corridor to the stairs. “Let’s talk to the butler.”

He took a step and something crunched underfoot. He looked down, then crouched. Lifting a pottery shard, he held it up so Gervase could see.

“Odd.” Gervase looked right and left. “This place has been swept recently.”

Deverell narrowed his eyes. “What if Lowther didn’t hit his head, but someone hit it for him?”

Gervase met his eyes, then looked around. “Where is the question.” Then he pointed to the side of the corridor past
Deverell. “Is that another sliver? There—at the bottom of those doors.”

Deverell swiveled, looked, reached out, and fingered the thin white fragment, then rose, examining the narrow doors in the corridor wall. “Looks like a closet.” He pulled the handle. “It’s locked.”

Gervase ranged beside him. “Why lock a closet?”

“Indeed.” Deverell felt in his pocket. In a few seconds, the doors were unlocked. He tugged them open.

Shelves packed with towels and linens faced them. As one, he and Gervase took a step back, scanning the top, the sides, the floor of the cupboard.

“It’s a hidden door,” Gervase said.

Deverell nodded. “There must be stairs behind it, concealed in the cupboards in the rooms on either side. We need to find the catch.”

Towels and linens flew, then reaching to the back corner of one shelf, Gervase grunted. “Got it.”

Deverell stepped back. A click sounded. Gervase joined him as the two halves of the cupboard swung out from the center, pivoting at the sides to reveal a dark set of very steep, narrow stairs leading upward. They could just make out another door at the top of the stairs, beyond a wide last step.

“Well, well,” Deverell breathed.

Gervase tapped his arm. They communicated by signal; they didn’t know if Phoebe was alone or with a guard.

Seconds later, Deverell crept silently up the stairs, leaving Gervase at their base, guarding his back.

In the room at the top of the stairs, Phoebe had returned to stand against the wall beside the door, but this time on the other side. The beast would expect her to be behind the door; he might well swing it back hard to hit her.

Head back against the wall, she tried not to think about
what she intended to do. The beast had left her no choice; she was not going to be his victim.

Her gaze drifted to the mound of white porcelain fragments on the floor by the chest of drawers. She’d broken both the pitcher and the bowl in her quest for a decent weapon. In her right hand, she clutched the long, thin, daggerlike piece she’d fashioned; she’d lagged half its length with the cord with which she’d been tied so she could grip it tightly. The exposed tip was definitely sharp enough to slice through skin; how much more damage it would do she would soon find out.

The stairs creaked.

She sucked in a breath. Waited.

But he waited, too. More cautious, this time.

She would only get one chance at him—in the instant he came through the door. She couldn’t hesitate, couldn’t fail. Her future and Deverell’s depended on it.

The lock scraped.

She breathed out, sucked in another breath and held it. Clutched the dagger shard and tensed…

The door flung open, shoved forcefully as she’d foreseen. It banged against the wall.

A man stepped in.

Eyes closing, she swung with all her might, driving the daggerpoint hard for his chest.

Deverell saw, grabbed her wrist lightning quick, crushingly in that first instant, but he immediately gentled his hold as he held the point of the wicked-looking makeshift dagger away from his waistcoat. She gasped and fought his strength. “Phoebe.”

Her eyes flew wide, lifted to his face.

For an instant she simply stared at him, then the dagger fell from her fingers, all the fight drained out of her and she flung herself at him. “Oh, thank God—it’s
you!
”

She clutched him, hugged him—then pulled back and
framed his face. “How did you find me? That man, whoever he is—”

She broke off as Gervase poked his head through the doorway. He looked her up and down, grinned, then looked at Deverell. “I’ll tell them.”

Deverell nodded. He couldn’t speak. He could barely stand as relief and so much more poured through him.

Turning, Gervase went quickly down the stairs.

Dragging in a still-too-tight breath, Deverell returned his attention to Phoebe, looked at her for an instant—at her face, her eyes, glowing and alive, undimmed…then he hauled her into his arms and hugged her until she squealed. Even then, eyes closed, battling emotions that were simply too strong, he had to breathe deeply again before he could force himself to ease his hold and set her back enough to examine her properly.

Her afternoon gown of green cambric was rumpled and crumpled, but not torn; numerous heavy dark red locks had come loose from her chignon, but otherwise he could see no damage. No sign she’d been molested.

Most reassuring was the clear, open expression on her face and the martial light gleaming in her violet eyes.

His reaction was so profound it all but rocked his world.

Hands cupping her shoulders, he looked into her face, met those bright eyes, and struggled to behave normally. “Are you all right?”

“Yes.” She nodded. Far from swooning or even wilting, she seemed energized. “I hit him with the chamber pot, but he ducked and it broke. Then he tried to grab my wrists but your maneuver worked—much to his amazement. I tried to knee him but he shifted—I almost got him, though. And then…” She frowned lightly. “I can’t remember what more, but then his butler called him away. He flung me aside but I wasn’t hurt.”

She was babbling but seemed quite chuffed at her resourcefulness.

Then her eyes found his. After a moment, she tilted her head, then said, “I might not have defeated him, but thanks to what you taught me—to
all
you’ve taught me—he didn’t harm me. And now you’ve rescued me, so…”

He expected her to say “all is well”; he would have sworn from her tone that that was what she intended. Instead, her pause lengthened. He waited; buffeted by relief, joy, triumph, pride in her, appreciation of her courage and so much more, he was still battling to find his emotional feet.

Then her expression sobered; her chin set, determination in every line. “As soon as this is over, the first chance we have to speak alone, we must talk.”

He blinked. Talk? While one part of his mind had him nodding in complete agreement, another part was scrambling to fathom her direction. Most especially the source of her sudden serious determination.

She glanced at the door, a frown forming. “Who was Gervase going to tell?”

Mentally shaking his head, somewhat desperately realigning his wits, he refocused on what lay before them. “The others—Dalziel, Christian, and Tristan. They’re speaking with Lowther, distracting him. They weren’t going to come to the point until we had you safe.”

Casting a last glance around the room—it was concealed between other rooms
and
in between two floors, which was why they hadn’t discovered it earlier—he steered her to the door. “Come—we should go downstairs.”