Her Secret Fantasy (34 page)

This was civilized London, and all the world was not a war, a battle. Only in his head.

Nevertheless, his hand passed in a habitual caress across the hilt of his sword. Pistol at the ready, on the other hip. He glanced at his horse, consulting the animal’s keener senses; the black stallion’s ears swiveled and his nostrils flared.

With measured paces, he walked his horse forward. The slow clopping of the tall black’s hoofs over the uneven cobbles of the narrow lane reverberated off the brick walls of the stables and carriage houses crowding in on both sides.

The alleyway was thick with shadows, but the sky above was silken black, an invisible cloud cover casting a filmy veil over the crescent moon and blocking out the stars.

Gleaming green eyes in the gloom heralded the presence of a cat. A gray tabby went gliding by in furtive fashion, low to the ground and hugging the wall as it prowled for mice.

Ahead, a single rusty lantern, feebly beaming, hung from the corner of the carriage house. Lily suddenly stepped into view, her blond hair shining in its pool of light, a dark woolen cloak wrapped around her.

Derek’s pulse climbed. In spite of himself, a smile broke across his face at the sight of her.

Thank God.

“There you are,” he called softly in greeting, leaving his horse at the hitching post. But he looped the reins only loosely around it—just in case they had to ride out of here in a hurry. “I’ve been thinking just now about wringing your neck. You had me worried, girl.”

She did not smile at his jest. Her expression was somber, her elegant face stark and pale beneath the lantern’s golden orb. She glanced around uneasily, clutching the cloak around her shoulders.

“Are you all right?” he asked in concern, drawing off his riding gauntlets as he walked toward her.

“Derek!”
she screamed a split-second before blinding pain exploded through his skull.

He pitched forward, caught himself hard on his hands and knees. Dark battle-honed instincts roared to life. Still stunned by the blow to the back of his head, he reached for his sword, but three men were piling on him, shoving him down onto the ground on his stomach and wrenching his arms up behind his back.

He thrashed ferociously.

“Greetings from India, Major,” some rough voice mocked him. He heard a puff of breath as a powdery dust of ground chili peppers was blown into his eyes.

Blinded, his eyes on fire, he yelled her name in agony, but couldn’t see the next punch coming. A fist from the darkness slammed into his jaw, wrenching his head to the side. He felt around for his weapon until somebody stepped on his hand. He belted out a curse as the boot heel ground down on his knuckles.

“Lily! Answer me!” he shouted.

“Derek!”

“Take my horse and go!”

“Oh, she’ll be stayin’ with me, mate.”

“Lundy?” His chest heaved. He shook his head, struggling to see.

In the background, he could hear Lily screaming. “Leave him alone! You said you wouldn’t hurt him!”

“Lily!” he called, thrashing again.

“Don’t fight them, Derek! Please don’t fight!”

Her words seemed strange. They brought his situation into focus. An ambush. Lundy. He’d been lured by the perfect bait into a trap.

He had just one question. “Why?”

“As if you need to ask, you two-faced bastard.”

“I don’t understand,” Derek ground out.

“Don’t you? You never should’ve involved her in our business, Knight. Did you think I wouldn’t find out?”

“So, it was you who took the money all along.”

“Let me tell you something, you cocky bastard,” Lundy growled. Derek could not see him. His eyes were two fiery holes in his head. But the nabob’s voice was very near and low, and his next words stunned Derek nearly as much as the blow to the head. “Lord Sinclair told me it was all right to borrow against the fund. Just to borrow!” Lundy vowed. “It’s not like I was stealin’! I’ve already got the means to put the money back. It’s just a matter o’ waitin’ now, but you couldn’t be patient, could you? Not you! Typical hotheaded cavalry officer! You think you’re so much better than me. Well, you go back and you fight your little war, and you remember all the while that Lily’s going to be with me. In my bed. Taking everything I give her.”

“If you hurt her, Lundy, so help me God”

“Don’t you threaten me.”

Derek wrenched out a low cry, curling around the blow when Lundy kicked him in the stomach.

Again, he was unable to see any of it coming.
God damn it.
“Lily!” he screamed out, maddened by the need to hear her voice and know she was safe.

“Shut him up!”

“Derek, please, don’t fight them!” Her call fell like soft cool water on his burning face.

“You listen to the little lady, Major.” Bates had hold of him now, judging by the voice. “She’s got good advice for ye there.”

Still struggling, he was gagged with a foul cloth while two others held him down and clapped his wrists in irons.

“Get ’im in the coach,” Lundy grunted. “Maguire, bring his ’orse.”

Bates and Jones hauled Derek roughly to his feet. He tried to resist with sharp and angry movements, nailing one of them in the stomach with his elbow, but all it got him was a hearty punch in the gut from Bates.

Lundy’s ex-prizefighter coachman nearly knocked the breath out of him. “Hard or easy, Major,” Bates said evenly. “It’s up to you.”

The gag across his mouth muffled the obscenity with which he responded. The next thing he knew, he was thrown into a vehicle. At once, it started away.

Back at Edward’s castle-house, Lily was locked in a Gothic bedchamber on the third floor to await her fate.

Meanwhile, they had imprisoned Derek in the large metal cage normally reserved for Edward’s vicious fight dog. After chaining Brutus to a tree below Lily’s window, Edward had ordered his men to drag the cage into the stable, the better to conceal its new occupant, their prisoner. Lily could see the stable from her bedroom window, but she had not caught another glimpse of Derek since they had arrived an hour ago.

For a while, she had paced back and forth across the eerie, dark-paneled room, pounding on the heavy wooden door for them to let her out, but nobody came. Below her window, Brutus barked incessantly, perhaps spooked by the wind, which had picked up. Gusts rattled the window panes now and then as Lily curled herself into the window seat and stared out anxiously into the pitch-black night.

She could not stop thinking about Derek. Indeed, she was half frantic with concern over his welfare. How badly was he hurt? They had hit him so many times. That first blow to the head had looked awful, but the spice powder in his eyes was their cheap way of rendering him a more manageable foe. That had to have been extremely painful.

She hoped it had worn off by now.

For as long as she lived, she would never forget those excruciating moments in that alley. She could still recall in detail the cautious way he had approached, like he had sensed something was wrong. But he had come anyway. Why? Out of concern for her?

The thought of what he had just gone through and being unable to go and check on him was driving her mad! If only there were some way to make him understand she was trying to save him, not destroy him. She had done what she’d had to do to save his life.

The ghostly reflection of her face in the window pane wore an expression of despair as she stared out toward the stable. She touched the glass, wishing there were some way she could get to him.

The flickering flames from the candelabra were superimposed over her image in the glass like golden tears, but when the window’s mirrorlike reflection also showed her the huge canopied bed behind her, a frightening fortress-mound of sharp carven spires, Lily looked away.

Her skin felt ice-cold, but her heart was still numb to her fate. She had agreed to this devil’s bargain because there was no other way. She had to save Derek. What other choice had she had? At her wits’ end, she dragged her hand slowly through her hair. Perhaps it was best if Derek never knew…

The sound of shuffling movement in the hallway outside the locked door of her chamber broke into Lily’s thoughts just then. She whirled around and stared at the door, her heart suddenly pounding in dread.

Edward.

The blood drained from her face. Oh, God, had the time come already to fulfill her end of the bargain?

She knew that Edward had been holed up in his office in a late-night meeting with the corrupt East India Company sea captain whom he was bribing to smuggle Derek out of England. They must have arrived at some agreement. It sounded as if their meeting was done.

Holding her torn riding habit together, Lily moved away from the window and prowled toward the center of the dimly lit chamber, prepared to meet her fate with her head held high. She was not going to hide by the wall, cringing. She was a Balfour, by God. She would not give this low brute the pleasure of seeing her cower.

Perhaps Derek’s brash courage in the midst of being beaten by several men had inspired her to go down fighting. Hearing the jangle of metal as the big, awkward key plundered the lock, she did her best to force away an unnerving flash of terror over what would soon befall her.

But when the heavy door swung open with a ponderous creak, it was not Edward who appeared on the threshold.

One of his surly underlings came slouching in with a tray of horrid-looking food for her very late supper. Lightheaded with the sudden relief, Lily kept her gaze down and her arms folded tightly across her chest as she waited for her acting jailor to leave again. It occurred to her to rush past him and escape out the open door, but she didn’t dare try it. If she caused trouble, they would take it out on Derek.

Even if, by some miracle, she could find a way to escape, she and Edward had a deal. She didn’t dare go back on her word while Derek was still in their grasp.

So she held her ground in chilly silence, barely breathing until the burly servant was out of the room and locking her door once again from the hallway side.

She closed her eyes with a shaky exhalation. Good Lord, that was close. Well, her fate had not been averted, only postponed.

Knowing that Edward was bound to come soon, she had no appetite for the food that had been brought to her, even less so when she lifted the tray’s lid. Underneath it she found a disgusting bowl of cold, congealing pea soup with a gnarled hambone sticking out of it, a hunk of hard bread, and some watered-down wine. Curling her lip, she replaced the lid without interest and returned to the window.

Beneath the swathe of heavy velvet curtains, she sat down on the built-in window seat and stared out again toward the stable. But when her gaze moved beyond it to the sculpted grounds of Edward’s estate, her thoughts drifted back to the night of the masked ball, meeting Derek for the first time at the garden folly. Under its silly pineapple roof, she had thought at first that she had wished him into being.

And now look at them.

Oh, if only I could do it all over again,
she mused in a rising wave of sorrow,
I’d have gone out on the lake with him in that gondola.

If she had known she would fall in love with him, she would have let him ruin her then and there.

Derek’s makeshift jail cell was not tall enough to allow him to stand up straight, so Lundy’s henchmen had provided him with an empty crate to sit on.

Once he was in the cage, they had freed his hands long enough to let him flush his eyes with water, warning him that if he misbehaved it was Lily who would pay for it, but he had no sooner blotted his face than he was manacled again.

Well aware of the threat to her, he had he stood obediently and let them do it.

Now he sat on the wooden box, leaning back against the metal slats of his cage, his legs stretched out before him, his wrists still bound behind his back.

His head was throbbing from the blow to the back of his skull, but his outward stillness concealed a brooding rage.

If anyone had hurt her, they would pay.

Derek wasn’t even sure how this turn had come about. What had happened while his back was turned? Something must have set Lundy off.

He hated to think that Lily might have used the information he had confided in her last night to do something she ought not to have attempted. Something rash.

All he knew was that he had to get her out of here.

How?

Well, he’d just have to figure something out.

He had heard he was being shipped off to India, to be smuggled out of England in the cargo hold of one of the Company’s many merchant ships. But these lads didn’t know him very well. He was not about to go back and tell Colonel Montrose he had failed. He still had his orders: to find out what had happened to those army funds and get that damned river of gold flowing to the troops so they could beat the Maratha Empire for once and for all.

He was not about to let the likes of Ed Lundy stop him from carrying out his duty.

One step at a time.
First, he would have to get rid of the shackles. This might require a bit of finesse. Lundy’s three main henchmen had been ordered to guard him.

An ugly trio. He studied them through bloodshot and aching eyes. Bates was the leader; Jones was naught but a mean-eyed thug; Maguire was the youngest, about five-and-twenty. He was missing a finger, courtesy of Brutus the dog, if Derek recalled correctly from a prior—and friendlier—visit to Lundy’s stable.

Having secured their prisoner, it was barely an hour before the three resorted to warding off boredom with a game of cards. They huddled around the light of the lantern that Maguire had placed in the center of their makeshift gaming table, a warped board resting atop a crate like the one they had given Derek.

From his shadowed cage, Derek studied them for a long moment, his raw stare unnoticed. The men were soon caught up in idle argument over their game.

The three of them and the cage with its keen metal lock were all that stood between Derek and his freedom, but he reflected that he had never killed an Englishman before. He had never anticipated having to use his warrior training on his fellow countrymen.