Martha Schroeder (16 page)

“But we do got to,” Eustace said, wiping his forehead. “Have to, I mean. We do have to. I cannot let the good captain live after this.”

“And why might that be?” Blakeley’s voice was as pleasant as ever.

“Because he will tell everyone. And then I will not be accepted. He can do that.” Eustace spoke earnestly, genuinely trying to make Blakeley understand. Gideon felt his blood congeal.

“He truly can,” Eustace continued. “Even though he is only a bastard gypsy brat, he can break me. He has a reputation, you see, for truthfulness and honor.”

“You exaggerate, Doncaster,” Gideon said, carefully giving Eustace his title. “You are a duke. You can go wherever you want. I have no influence with the ton.”

Stubbornly Eustace shook his head. “Yes, you do. So I will have to shoot you.” He raised his pistol. It shook violently, but Gideon knew that did not necessarily mean it would not do a perfectly adequate job of killing him.

“Now, now, Yer Grace.” Blakeley straightened and went to stand directly behind Eustace. “We’ll ‘ave none o’ that.” As calmly as a mother taking a dangerous toy from a child, he plucked the gun from the duke’s shaking hand.

Gideon found himself letting out a breath he didn’t know he had been holding. Quietly he began to ease himself farther back into the room, where the shadows might hide him should either Blakeley or Eustace decide that killing him would be a good idea after all.

“Stand where you are, Cap’n,” Blakeley said, his voice not at all soothing.

Gideon froze. He wanted to keep these men talking as long as he could to give Amelia the greatest chance to escape. Pray God she had found Jupiter and was on her way to the village for help. She should have no difficulty there. Everyone had known her from babyhood. Now all he had to do was stay alive himself. The odds seemed a little better now that Eustace was unarmed but—

“What would ’appen if the lady were to die sudden like?” Blakeley asked, breaking the silence.

“What?” Eustace looked around him blindly, as if he had just been awakened. “What do you mean?”

“ ‘Oo would get ’er money, that’s wot I mean, Yer Grace.” Blakeley spoke as if to a particularly slow-witted child.

“I don’t know,” Eustace said. “What difference does it make? As soon as she marries me, it is mine. That is the law,” he added with great satisfaction.

“But if she was to die now, afore she marries, ‘oo gets the blunt?”

Eustace might not see the point, but Gideon knew instantly what Blakeley was driving at. And he was right! Amelia had not made a will. Everything would pass by operation of law to her nearest relative: Eustace Mannering, the Duke of Doncaster.

“She has left it to her friend, Miss Forrester, for her school,” Gideon said quickly.

Not quite quickly enough.” ’As she now?” Blakeley studied his captive pensively. “’As she indeed? It seems like the sort o’ thing a young lady might not think of—makin’ a will. Could be she left off doing it until some later time. Could be our friend the duke ’ere will take it all without ’aving to marry her. ’Im bein’ ’er cousin and all.”

“Miss Forrester’s school is very important to Amelia. She made the will shortly after her father’s death.” Gideon tried to sound convincing. “Amelia is not the sort of girl to forget a thing like a will. Why, she used to do her lessons every day even when her governess was sick. Her father said she was the most responsible girl in the world.”

He was talking too much. He was so afraid that this casually evil man would kill Amelia that he could not stop talking, trying to prevent it. He was acting as he had seen men do before a battle they were anticipating with too much desire to win. He was afraid that Amelia would die because he would be unable to protect her. This was what he had always dreaded, that his chance to repay Amelia for saving his life would finally come and for some reason he would fail her.

Blakeley’s eyes were flat as stones as they bored into him. “I think you’re lyin’.”

“Are you willing to chance it?” Gideon said. “Once she is dead, there is no going back. Married, the money is her husband’s. Dead before that, it may all go to Miss Forrester’s school.”

“He’s right, damn him,” Eustace said. “I will have to marry the boring little prig.” He sighed, and for an instant Gideon welcomed the idea of Eustace’s marrying Amelia. Anything to keep Blakeley from trying to murder her.

But Blakeley had suddenly changed the subject. “Where is Sidley? ’E should ’ave ’ad ’er back ’ere by now. If we’re going to marry, we’d best be smart about it.” He glared at Eustace. “The man works for you. Go find ’im and find ’er, too, while yer at it.”

Eustace opened his mouth to protest, but one look from Blakeley and he shut it again and went out.

* * * *

Amelia’s feet and legs were numb with cold. She ran as far as she could, hoping to find the horse before the frozen ground gave her frostbite and she fell. It took longer than she planned, but she had no mishaps and encountered no one.

Jupiter was right where Gideon had said he would be, waiting patiently in the copse where Gideon and Amelia had played as children. She knew Jupiter, and he greeted her with a soft whinny.

She mounted him and immediately felt safer, if no warmer. Gideon’s horse could outrun any nag Blakeley might have.

Then she thought of Sidley. He might be her enemy, and he had access to the Doncaster stables. She decided to go through the fields to the main road rather than take the estate drive. It might be treacherous, but she knew the way and Jupiter was a trained cavalry mount. She decided to risk it.

Halfway across the five-acre field where the stubble showed wheat had grown, she heard a man’s voice calf her name. She looked back to see a large figure coming after her, mounted on a bay she recognized as being from the estate’s stables. Terrified of what recapture could mean, she kicked Jupiter into a canter and bent low over his neck.

“Come on, boy. For Gideon. For the captain.”

She might have imagined it, but she felt a surge of power from the animal under her and they easily outdistanced whoever was following them.

As she and Jupiter swung out onto the main road, Amelia spared a thought to her appearance. Barefoot, clad only in a man’s jacket and a torn petticoat, her hair tumbled about her dirty face, she scarcely resembled the Lady Amelia the villagers knew. It did not matter. They would recognize her and her plight, and would help her, she was sure. It remained only to get there, tell her story, organize a rescue, and return to the Abbey.

Too late.
The words beat in her head. By the time all that was done, Gideon would be dead—and would live the rest of her life alone, without love. Desperately she urged Jupiter on when before her on the road, she saw a smart curricle and pair being driven at a spanking pace and heading right toward her. As the equipage drew near, she thought she recognized Sir Richard driving. And was that Jane seated next to him?

Relief made her weak. No need to go to the village or to explain anything. She hailed them, just as the man from the Abbey, whose existence she had forgotten in her anxiety to reach the village, came up behind her.

“Sir Richard!” she called.

“Lady Amelia,” she heard Hugh Sidley say behind her.

“Amelia!” Jane’s voice betrayed her shock and her relief. “Are you all right?”

“Frozen and hungry and angry enough to kill,” Amelia said. “Thank God you came. Gideon is still a prisoner back at the Abbey. Blakeley and Eustace are both holding him at gunpoint.”

“Blakeley?” Jane said blankly.

“The moneylender Eustace owes his soul to. Never mind that now. We have to get back.” She turned to Sidley, who sat on his huge bay gelding saying nothing. “Are you with us or against us, Hugh? Speak now. We have no time for games. If you betray me—” She couldn’t think of anything dire enough to threaten him with. If harm came to Gideon through this man, she would find some way to make him pay.

Something of what she felt must have shown in her face, dirty and strained as it was. “I am with you,” Sidley replied simply. “We’d best be quick about it. The new duke is fair crazed, and I do not know if the London man can keep him bridled.”

“Let’s go.” Sir Richard did not wait to hear more. He urged his team to a canter and headed down the road. Amelia dug her bare heels into Jupiter’s side and took the lead to show him the way to the dower house.

It took only a few minutes, but disaster had taken even less time.

* * * *

“They’ve both gone,” Eustace said when he returned, out of breath, from his search for Amelia and Sidley.

“Gone?” Blakeley’s eyes flashed fury for a moment before his habitual pretense of humor was in place again. “Gone, gone,
all
gone. Well, Cap’n Falconer, sir, now that I think on it, we ’ave very little use for you without the lady. Perhaps ’Is Grace should shoot you after all, just to keep you from making trouble about the nuptials.”

He grinned at Eustace. “You’d like that, now, wouldn’t you, Yer Grace?”

But Eustace’s temper had cooled. He backed away from Blakeley. Gideon took the opportunity to move unobserved toward the broken window. If he had to, he could pull himself up and try to slide through the opening. He was not at all sure it was possible for him to get his shoulders through, but it was that or try to go through both Blakeley and Eustace and make for the door. The window, however difficult, seemed better than facing two armed men.

“I see no reason to kill him. There would be no end of trouble. The man’s a captain in the Hussars, for God’s sake. They can’t turn up dead without raising all kinds of questions.” Eustace tugged at his wilted cravat.

“Footpads,” Blakeley said, shaking his head. “It ’appens to the best of us, Yer Grace. We leave ’m out on the road, and ‘oo’s to say when or ’ow ’e died? A tragedy, but the roads is so unsafe and these things ’appen.”

“No,” Eustace said. “Not here. Not near my home. It would cause gossip.”

“Gossip!” Blakeley all but spat the word. “And ‘oo cares about gossip? You won’t swing for gossip. That’s all that matters, Yer bloody sniveling Grace.”

Gideon had almost reached the window. The ruined cot still stood under it. He figured he had at most five seconds from the moment he began his attempt to make his escape. Not a lot of time but enough, he thought. He’d better try it while they argued about killing him. It wouldn’t be long before Eustace changed his mind again. He tightened his muscles and prepared to leap.

“Now, Yer Grace, look what we’ve done. We’ve bored the good cap’n so much ’e’s thinkin’ of leavin’ us.” Blakeley’s mocking tones reached Gideon just as he jumped for the cot and then in one bound for the window frame.

Just a half a second more,
Gideon thought, before a crack-like thunder resounded in the room and fiery pain stabbed his side.

“Oh, damn, not again,” he said as he fell back into the room and everything went dark.

* * * *

“A shot!” Amelia threw herself off Jupiter and ran toward the back door to the dower house. Sidley followed behind her as fast as he could. She could hear the clatter of the curricle’s wheels on the stones of the courtyard as she ran. “Gideon!” she called. “We are here!”

The sound of boots running directly behind her caused her to speed up. Just as she reached the door, she was swept aside and Sir Richard entered the room, his pistols at the ready.

“Stand right where you are,” he ordered. His voice carried the ring of command, and both Eustace and Blakeley remained unmoving, their pistols still aimed at the spot Gideon had occupied.

Amelia pushed past and ran to the wall where Gideon lay crumpled, blood slowly oozing from the wound in his side.

Chapter Thirteen

The swirl of activity that followed left Amelia untouched. She was focused on nothing but Gideon. Staunching the wound, making sure his earlier head wound had not been reopened, conferring with Jane about treatment for possible fever and weakness—that was all that concerned her.

While she cared for Gideon, Sir Richard took charge. He held Blakeley and Eustace at gunpoint while Hugh Sidley rode to the village for the doctor. He called Jane over and had her guard the
prisoners while he conferred with Amelia over what to do with the duke.

But Amelia was not interested. Instead, in a pain-racked whisper, Gideon insisted the doctor not see Eustace held at gunpoint as Blakeley’s confederate. He also told Amelia to go to the house and change, or she would cause gossip. Reluctantly she agreed and slipped out to go to the Abbey.

Sir Richard waited until he heard Sidley return with the doctor before hitting Eustace smartly over the head. When the round, fussy little man Sidley introduced as Dr. Leverett came into the dower house, his eyes went wide at the signs of mayhem before he pulled himself together and became the complete professional.

Sir Richard explained that Eustace had been injured while trying to protect Gideon. Then Sidley and another worker carried Eustace to the Abbey proper before he awakened. Sir Richard had bound and gagged Blakeley and had him taken to the library in the Abbey.

Amelia dressed in some clothes she had left behind on her last stay at the Abbey. She found the doctor in the drawing room, binding up Gideon’s ribs and giving Jane instructions. Amelia felt much more the thing now that she was warm and dry. She still carried Gideon’s coat and could not be parted from it until she could place it tenderly over him as the doctor supervised his removal to the duke’s bedchamber. Dr. Leverett asked to see Eustace, but Jane insisted that he had gone to rest and that she would see he was taken care of.

Later, as Gideon slept, Amelia sat by the vast, ducal bed staring at him. His face was flushed, and his body was restless. She had been in this chamber when her father had lain on the bed at the beginning of the illness that would take him from her a few months later. She would not lose Gideon as she had lost the duke. She would keep watch and make sure that death did not steal a second loved one away from her. Impatiently she waved away offers of food and drink until Jane came in to see her, ready to do battle.