Reckless Rules (Brambridge Novel 4) (29 page)

Pedro pointed his gun at Victoria. “Open the window.”

“What?” Victoria made no move to comply.

“You heard what I said. Open the window.”

Victoria turned slowly to the window. She pulled up the sash, and screamed as an arm descended and forced something into her mouth with a stubby finger. “What the hell are you doing?” She tried to spit, but the hand gripped her mouth tightly and covered her nose.

“You’ll be just right to join my other beauties at the Heracles Club,” Pedro said, with a smug smile.

Victoria’s vision grew fuzzy. “What the—?” she mumbled through the hand, choking at the dissolving pill that kept knocking against her teeth. She fumbled at the window, drawing her finger across the glass in uncoordinated movements. Doctors had tried to force pills down her throat in a similar way before. She pushed the pill up in between her gum and lip and held it there.

“You’ll be easier to carry this way.” Pedro swung Victoria over his shoulder, releasing her mouth. She tried to move her arms and legs but they refused to work.

“Help,” Victoria screamed. But no sound came out of her mouth. Slackly, she opened her jaw and let the half-dissolved pill fall from her mouth. The colors of the sky were so pretty and the sun so bright. The ground seemed so far away. She smiled in delight as they swung through the air.

CHAPTER 28

Bill stopped halfway down the stairs as excited voices filtered up from the hall. He didn’t want anything to do with them. He had his own problems to worry about. Pedro had gone to ground. He hadn’t been seen anywhere near the troupe’s tents and apparently the women had disappeared too.

“Chantelle, calm down, speak more slowly, in French if you like, but just for goodness sake, calm down.” Freddie’s voice, more stressed than Bill had ever heard, floated up the stairs. “Lady Colchester what?”

Bill quickly took a step down. Chantelle was Victoria’s lady’s maid. What was she doing here on her own?

“Lady Colchester has been abducted?”

“No,” Bill roared, clattering down the steps, his large feet tripping over the narrow ledges. He had sent for his men for just this reason. They were meant to be guarding her, without her knowledge. “Where is she, Chantelle?”

“I quite think the question to ask might be, who has taken her?” Freddie admonished. “
Calmez vous,
Chantelle.” Freddie held the hand of the shuddering maid as tears streamed down her face. “Now then, start at the beginning.”

Chantelle started in a babble of French. A man that they had seen before had arrived in Lady Colchester’s bedroom. He looked like someone called Paul Butterworth but Lady Colchester had called him Pedro. Pedro had pointed a gun at them and called Lady Colchester Aunt. She and Lady Colchester’s butler had been told to leave. They had entered five minutes later with their own gun to find one of the sash windows open and the two of them gone.

“
Elle nous a dit a jamais perdre espère
, not to give up hope,” Chantelle finished, looking at Bill. “We knew she was telling us to find Mr. Standish.” She shook off Freddie’s hand and fell to Bill’s feet and clasped his knees. “Sir you must ’elp us. She is a wonderful lady. She is in so much trouble.”

Bill nodded grimly. It was worse than he had thought. Pablo was just a bully, but Pedro was psychotic. He had seen the man with the women in the tent. He knew about the women he hadn’t just killed but also
mauled
. It was as if his moral compass was askew. “Did she tell you anything else?”

Chantelle made a moue with her mouth and got to her feet slowly. She looked into Bill’s eyes.

“What are you not telling us, Chantelle?” Bill frowned. He gripped at her arm as she gasped. “There’s something more, isn’t there?”

“I think Lord Lassiter should leave us,” Chantelle said in a low voice. “You might not want him to hear what I have to say.”

“I disagree, I could be of some use.” Freddie shook his head. “You’ll need every man on this one, Bill.”

Chantelle twisted in Bill’s grip. “It’s not to do with her abduction.
C’est une affair de la coeur.
”

“It’s a matter of the heart?” Freddie repeated. “Good grief. You should have just said. Of course I’ll leave.” Freddie stamped through the hall and into the morning room, slamming the door shut behind him.

“Eef I didn’t know any better I would say he was allergic to love,” Chantelle said softly, prizing at Bill’s fingers. “Get off me, Mr. Standish. You are beginning to hurt.”

Bill looked down at his hand, which still gripped Chantelle’s forearm tightly. He could see her skin turning white at the edges. “Sorry,” he said abruptly and dropped his hand.

Chantelle massaged at the white finger marks left around the redness of her arm.

“Tell me what she had to say.” Bill swallowed. Did Victoria hate him for the way he had pulled down her drapes and told her to pull herself together? “Oh devil take it.” He passed a hand across his sweating brow.

“She said that you would no longer marry her.”

“How does she know? I was the one to ask her—”

“She said that once you knew that she was not Lady Colchester, that you would drop her, you would have no interest in her.”

“Why does she think that, the silly woman? I love her!” Bill stopped; a flush rose from his neck to his ears. He sat down heavily on the last step of the stairs and dropped his head to his knees. Not even the shock of Victoria’s abduction had had such an effect on him. He felt like he had been dragged naked through the streets of London by a team of horses. His head felt like lead as he lifted it up to meet Chantelle’s pitying gaze.

“You ’ave just realized?” Chantelle snorted. “And to think I kept telling you where she was when she was off at those establishments so that you could have time alone together. I even persuaded Oswald to help you. You Eenglish men are all the same. You spend so long thinking with your ’ead you forget your hearts. You haven’t told ’er?”

“No, I, of course not! She offered me a carte blanche and I offered her marriage. There wasn’t much time to discuss love! Then she told me to come up with a list of reasons about why she should marry me.”

“Hmm.
Typiquement
Lady Colchester. She showed you her true colors, Mr. Standish.
Passion
with the carte blanche,
raison
with the list. Not many get to see that. She knew that you were offering for her only for her title and wealth.”

“I was not,” Bill started hotly, but stopped. The seesawing of the past few months’ events came clashing back at him. The multiple rejections as he tried to win her hand. His renewed determination to become her husband when she seemed to have stepped willingly into his trap. His continued mantra as he doubted who he was that she would provide the standing for him that he could not achieve himself. His triumph when she had seemingly considered his marriage proposal. None of it had been linked to love.

Chantelle laughed harshly. “If you wanted her to take you seriously, you should have stopped fooling around with those other women.”

“But I wasn’t fooling around either. I haven’t had a woman since… since…” Since he had first met Victoria, in fact.

Chantelle looked at him with dawning pity on her face. “Oh, what a mess you two are in. It is a wonder that British men ever get married.” She tossed her head. “You
mus
t get her back.”

“Of course I must get her back. But I have no idea where she has gone. Or why she even thinks that she is no longer Lady Colchester.”

“Ze first I cannot help you with, but the second I can.” Chantelle recounted what Victoria had said about Pablo’s visit.

“Pablo has been to visit her too? He thinks that because he is her brother-in-law that he is entitled to some say in her life?”

“
Exactement.
”

Chantelle’s nodding was interrupted by a frantic knocking at the front door. Willson hurried up from below stairs and scurried around Chantelle and Bill without so much as a glance in their direction.

He had hardly opened the door when two massive men pushed their way in. Chantelle screamed, and crammed a hand into her mouth. “
Mon dieu
, not again.”

Bill laid a calming hand on her shoulder and stood up. “These are my men who were supposed to be watching Colchester Mansions.”

“We were, boss,” said Percy, panting. “We saw everything. Some bloke with a large top hat entered the house and reappeared twenty minutes later with Lady Colchester over his shoulder.”

“Why didn’t you stop him?” Bill said, running a hand through his hair in frustration. His men had messed up yet again.

“He didn’t come out through the front door,” George said in more measured tones. He smiled at Chantelle, who fluttered her eyelashes. Bill made a wind up motion with his hands.       “Get on with it, George.”

“He came out of the second floor front window and dropped onto a parapet.”

“Oh poor Lady Colchester!” Chantelle gasped.

“She didn’t scream or anything,” Percy said admiringly. “In fact, she rather seemed to be smiling.”

“That’s not natural.” Chantelle shook her head. “He must have done something to her.”

It had to be a drug of some kind. The women Bill had seen in Pedro’s tent had also had soporific smiles on their faces. He swallowed. “Why didn’t you catch him, then? He must have come down off the building?”

“He dropped into the garden of the next house. We ran around the back of the mansions as he got into a red carriage. There was another man inside. Looked like a frog. We chased the carriage as far as we could but it was too fast for us. The horses were prime ’uns. Not the nags we’re used to.” Percy took a breath. “We lost them in Seven Dials.”

“You two stay here,” Bill commanded. “Chantelle, come with me. I need to see Lady Colchester’s bedroom. She may have left us something.”

Chantelle shook her head. “It’s unlikely…”

“I want to come with you.” Freddie lounged in the door to the morning room. “Anglethorpe would kill me if I didn’t help.”

“Good grief, Anglethorpe. What do we tell him?”

“I wouldn’t tell him anything at the moment, dear boy. He’d gut you from toe to head for involving his sister.”

“From what I understand, his sister was already involved.”

“Not that he’d take it that way.”

“No.”

“We had better get going then.”

In the end they all went. Bill reasoned that more eyes were better than the only two that he had.

“Quite a fight must have occurred,” Freddie observed as they stepped over the broken shard of porcelain in the hallway.

Chantelle shook her head. “That was Lady Colchester. She was a trifle upset this morning.” She glanced knowingly at Bill. “She had received a visit that had brought her some unwelcome news.”

“I say. Bit out of character, isn’t it?”

“I don’t think so,” Bill muttered. It was becoming more and more obvious that his tightly-controlled ice queen had a heart of fire. “Now then, Chantelle, is there anything missing or moved?”

Chantelle twirled, her eyes searching every nook and cranny. “Not that I can see.” She shrugged her shoulders and opened the drawer to the dresser. “All her brass hair pins are still here. She did not have time to do her hair.”

That was no clue. That just indicated that whatever happened must have happened quickly, but they already knew that because George and Percy had watched Pedro enter and exit the house in twenty minutes.

“Someone has shut the window again.” Chantelle moved to the first in the row of the three sashes. “They were dripping with condensation when Pedro burst in on us. They are dry now of course.”

Bill moved to the window and looked out. What had Victoria last seen before Pedro grabbed her? He put his head to the pane of glass and let out a big sigh. “It’s no use,” he said. “I felt so sure that she might be able to leave us something. The Victoria I know is resourceful and clever.”

“You are right,” Freddie said, nodding. “You’ve just proved it.”

Bill frowned. “What are you talking about?”

“Breathe on the window again.”

“You’re mad, Freddie. Have you taken up drinking again?”

Freddie glared at Bill and made an impatient gesture to the others in the room. “Thank you,” he mouthed.

“Forgive me.” Bill sighed.

“You see, there it is,” Freddie said excitedly. He pushed Bill away from the window and breathed in a circular motion at the pane. “No, don’t touch it.” He grabbed at the finger that Bill had reached out. “See the word. H-E I can’t read the rest.”

Bill gazed in amazement at the window. As Freddie had huffed on the pane, two letters had distinctly appeared in the misting that his breath had caused on the cold glass. “George, Percy, come here and breathe on the glass.”

As George and Percy took deep breaths, Bill waited with bated breath. Freddie was indeed right. First an H appeared, followed by an E. Then an R and an A followed by a small curve that dribbled to nothing but a full handprint.

“Hera?” Freddie muttered. “Wife of the god of the underworld?”

“Heracles Club,” Bill said quietly. “He’s taken her to the Heracles Club.”

“Oh. You’ve asked me about that before. I’ve got no idea where that is. Shouldn’t be too hard to find, though.” Freddie strode to the door of the bedroom. “We’ll get her back, old man.”

Bill didn’t follow Freddie. He sat with a thump on Victoria’s bed. “I don’t think you quite understand, Freddie. The Heracles Club isn’t a place. It’s a group of people. And I don’t think they publicize their location. You see, I have a suspicion that they are abducting and selling women. Good looking women.”

“Like Victoria?”

Bill nodded, his heart thumping. “Exactly like Victoria.”

CHAPTER 29

Victoria awoke from a glorious dream of flying to a babble of voices around her.

“Good God, man. Don’t you know who that is? You told me you were going to get another girl to replace that Maisie after her unfortunate… accident. But this is really doing it brown.”