Say You Love Me (29 page)

After a moment, Artie came to the carriage window to speak with them. “That’s the ’ouse up yonder, Cap’n, the one I told ye about, that Ashford visited a couple times. This is the only other place I know of that ’e might’ve come to with the girl, but I guess not.”

“Why not?”

“’Cause there ain’t no sign of ’Enry ’ere. ’Enry would be ’ere if this is where Ashford brung the girl. Besides, that place looks as deserted as ever. I’d say there ain’t no one around here for miles.”

James stepped outside to view the house and grounds. Derek and Anthony followed him.

“Bloody place looks haunted,” Anthony said. “Someone actually lives here?”

Artie shrugged. “We never saw no one when we was ’ere before.”

“We still have to search the house,” Derek
said. “If this is our last hope, I’m not leaving until every corner has been turned.”

“Agreed,” James replied, and began giving orders. “Artie, cover the grounds and stable if there is one. Tony, to save time, try to find a back entrance that’s open, or open one if it’s not. Derek and I will take the normal approach and try the front door.”

“Why do you get normal, while I get sneaky?” Anthony wanted to know.

“Put a lid on it, dear boy,” James said. “No time for arguing just now.”

Anthony took one look at Derek and coughed, saying, “Quite right.”

“And let’s be very quick about this,” James added. “It’s doubtful the bastard is here, since Henry’s not. But this isn’t our last hope. Henry will send word eventually where he’s gone, just as soon as he can manage it. We will want to be there when he does.”

He had said the last for Derek’s benefit, but it didn’t help. “Eventually,” they all knew, would be too late where the girl was concerned.

“Well, looks like
someone
is here,” Anthony said, staring at the house. “Or am I mistaken in seeing a light flickering in the attic?”

Indeed. It was very vague, barely noticeable, but there was a light up there. And that assured them that the place wasn’t completely deserted.

They split up to approach the house separately. Derek sent his driver straight to the front door and bounded out of the carriage to
try it. Finding it locked, he had to resort to pounding on it.

James followed a bit more slowly. He was worried about his nephew. He’d never quite seen him so bristling with fury and restless energy. Derek couldn’t stand still. He rocked on his heels. He raked his hands through his hair. He pounded on the door again.

“Henry is a good man, Derek,” James offered as they waited for the door to open—or not. “If he can safely get Kelsey away from Ashford, he will. He may already have her, for all we know.”

“Do you really think so?”

The hope that came into Derek’s eyes was difficult to look at. Bloody hell. A man did
not
invest that much emotion in his mistress. That James had planned to make his wife, Georgina, his mistress was a moot point. He hadn’t, he’d married her instead. But this Langton girl wasn’t the marrying sort. Not that it made any difference to James. It didn’t. He’d always done what he bloody well pleased and always would. But the future heir of the Marquis of Haverston didn’t have that luxury.

He was going to have to have a serious talk with the lad when this was over. Or better yet, with Derek’s father. Yes, let Jason do his duty and pound the unpleasant facts into his son.

James wasn’t given a chance to answer. The door opened and they were confronted with a very irate—what?

James had seen a lot of things in his well-traveled life, but even he was taken aback at
the deformities on the creature standing in the doorway. But it did speak. It
was
a man, rather than a freak of nature.

“What’s all the racket for, eh? You ain’t got no business here—”

“I beg to differ,” James interrupted. “So be a good chap and step aside. We need to speak with Lord David Ashford—immediately.”

The name elicited some surprise in the fellow.

“He ain’t here” was all he said.

“I happen to know otherwise,” James replied, a bluff to be sure, but useful under the circumstances. “So take us to him or we will be forced to find him ourselves.”

“Now, I can’t let you do that, gents. I gots orders that no one comes in here—ever.”

“You will have to make an exception—”

“I don’t think so,” the man said confidently, and the hand that he’d held behind him came around to show that it gripped a pistol.

He had come to the door prepared to back up his “no admittance” orders. And at such close range, they were indeed at a standoff—at least until James could reach inside his coat for the pistol he’d brought along. But he hesitated to attempt that with Derek there and the man’s weapon wavering between them. He took risks with his own life, but not with the lives of other members of his family.

“There was no call for weapons,” James pointed out reasonably.

“Wasn’t there?” The man smirked and then threw James’s words back at him. “I begs to
differ. And since ya ignored all them signs posted at the front drive to the property, that clearly warned ya to keep out, maybe I oughts to shoot ya both for trespassing.”

But Anthony’s voice suddenly came from behind the man at the door in a deadly calm tone. “This chap isn’t actually threatening to shoot you, old boy, is he?” Anthony said.

The man turned, of course, to face the new threat at his back. Anthony had found another way into the house and had snuck up behind him down the hall.

“Excellent timing, old chap,” James said as he knocked the pistol out of the man’s hand and grabbed a fistful of his shirt to keep him there.

“You can thank me later,” Anthony replied, grinning now that the fellow had been disarmed.

“Must I?” James shot back. But then, glancing at the fellow he held, and just before he landed his meaty fist in the center of the man’s face, he added, “Bloody hell, how d’you break a man’s nose when he ain’t got one?”

James let the fellow go then. He was quite unconscious, slumped into a pile on the floor.

“Was that necessary?” Anthony asked, coming forward. “He
could
have told us where Ashford is.”

“He wouldn’t have,” James replied. “At least, not unless we beat it out of him, and we’ve no time for such pleasantries. Derek, you search this floor. I’ll take upstairs. Tony, find out if there’s a cellar.”

Anthony knew as well as James that Ashford wasn’t likely to be on the main floor of the house that he’d assigned Derek to search. He’d either be in an upstairs bedroom, which was the most logical place for his purpose, or tucked into a room down in the cellar, where screams wouldn’t carry very far. Obviously, James didn’t want Derek finding him or the girl first if they were there.

“I get the dirty job again?” he grumbled as he turned back the way he’d come, but called over his shoulder, “Just make sure you save a piece of him for me, brother.”

James was already halfway up the stairs, so he didn’t bother to answer. And since most of the rooms were empty, it didn’t take long at all to search the entire house. James arrived back downstairs just as Anthony came down the hall again.

“Anything?” James asked.

“There’s a long cellar beneath us, but nothing but empty shelves and crates in it, and a few kegs of ale. What about you?”

“The attic was completely empty, just a lamp set on the floor up there, which don’t make too much sense.”

“Nothing else?” Derek asked as he came down the hall to join them.

“There was one locked door up there. Bloody hell, really thought I had him when I found it.”

“You managed to get in?” Anthony asked.

“Certainly.” James snorted. “No one was there, though. It was fully furnished, unlike
the others, but doesn’t look like anyone’s lived in that room for years, more’n ten or twenty years by the look of the old-fashioned dresses in the wardrobe. The walls were covered with portraits of the same woman, some with her and a child. Looks like a bloody shrine, if you ask me.”

“Told you this place was haunted,” Anthony said.

“Well, it ain’t haunted by Ashford. Not even another servant—”

James was cut off as the front door flew open and Artie rushed in. “I found ’Enry! ’E was tied up in the stable, ’im and another bloke, and they been ’urt bad. Someone nigh bashed their ’eads in.”

“But they’re alive?”

“Aye, ’Enry come around a bit, said some pig attacked ’em. The other man don’t look too good, might not make it. They both need a doctor real quick.”

“Take them back to town, Artie, and fetch a doctor,” James ordered. “We will follow shortly.”

“Thought he looked a bit like a pig myself,” Anthony remarked as Artie left. He was looking down at the unconscious man, still sprawled on the floor.

“Whatever he is, it looks like he’s in the bloody habit of killing anyone who wanders onto the property,” James said in disgust. “I’ve a feeling that’s what he had in mind for me and Derek as well.”

“Ah, but at whose orders?”

“Ashford was here, damnit, or Henry wouldn’t be,” Derek put in.

“Yes, but he ain’t here now. He must have taken the girl somewhere else after Henry showed up.”

Anthony nudged the caretaker with his boot. “I’d wager he knows where.”

“I’m inclined to agree,” James said. “If any of Ashford’s servants would be in his confidence, it’d be this one. Shall we wake him?”

“I’ll fetch some water,” Anthony replied, and took off down the hall again.

Derek was too impatient to wait. He hauled the man halfway off the floor and started shaking him and slapping his face.

“Easy, lad,” James cautioned. “We’ll have him talking in a few minutes.”

Derek let the man drop back to the floor, but looked at James bleakly. “It’s killing me, Uncle James, that he’s had Kelsey long enough now to—to—”

“Don’t think about it. We won’t know till we find her, and I promise you, we
will
find her.”

Anthony returned and dumped a bucket of water on the caretaker. The man came up sputtering and coughing, and quite cognizant, because he paused very warily when he noticed James standing by his feet.

James gave him a particularly nasty smile. “Ah, we meet again. Now, pay attention, dear boy, because I am only going to explain this once. I am going to ask you where Lord Ashford is, and if I don’t like your answer, I’m
going to put a bullet in your ankle. The bones will quite shatter there, of course, delicate as they are, but what matters a limp to someone used to deformity, as you most certainly are? Ah, but then, you see, I shall ask the question again. And if I again don’t like your answer, I will put a bullet in your kneecap. The limp you will get from that will be much more pronounced. And then we will move on to your hands and other parts of your anatomy that I am sure you won’t miss. Have I made myself quite clear? Nothing that you need explained further?”

The man nodded and shook his head at nearly the same time. James squatted down by his feet and put the nozzle of the pistol he held right against the man’s ankle.

“Now, where is Lord Ashford?”

“He’s downstairs.”

“Here?”

Anthony tsked. “Damn me, didn’t think he’d lie, really didn’t.”

“I ain’t!” the man burst out.

“I’ve been downstairs. The only thing there is a cellar,” Anthony said. “And there’s only one exit from it, the same stairs used to get into it.”

“No, there’s another stairs, I tells ya. When the door’s open, it looks like any stairs. When it’s closed, ya only see shelves on the cellar side. The door’s closed. It’s always closed when he’s down there.”

“Show us,” James said abruptly, and
yanked the man to his feet to shove him down the hall.

What happened then occurred too quickly to prevent. The caretaker tried to dash ahead of them down the cellar stairs, perhaps to get behind that other door and lock it. But he had been sitting in a wide puddle of water in the entryway, from the bucket of water thrown on him. His boots were still too wet to take those stairs that quickly. He slipped and tumbled down them.

Anthony raced to the bottom of the stairs and checked the man’s pulse, then glanced up at his brother. “’Pears to have broken his neck.”

“Bloody hell,” James said. “We’ll have to find the door ourselves now. Spread out. Check for hidden catches, obvious cracks, or strips of wood that could be used to hide the door seams. If we can’t find it quickly—hell, start breaking down the walls.”

42

Kelsey had tried everything she could think of, keeping
in mind that Ashford had slipped far beyond reality. She took on the role of his mother, admonishing, apologizing, making up plausible explanations for what he was accusing her of, but it was set so deeply in his mind that his mother was evil that nothing worked. He wouldn’t agree that his father was the one who had wronged him.

From some of the things he said, though, she gathered that the mother had deserted her husband and son, but it was possible that she had merely been trying to save her own life, running from a vengeful husband—at least until her demented son found her, years later.

He’d killed his own mother. He’d condemned her because his father had condemned her. He’d killed her because that was what his father had wanted to do. And at one point, he became his father. He spoke of his mother as his wife. His thoughts were his father’s thoughts. And Kelsey had to wonder if he hadn’t been in his father’s mind when he’d
killed her. The punishment, then the sex. Something his father would have done. And Ashford was reliving it again and again with each woman down there, with each tavern prostitute he’d paid to use.

He was a truly sick man. But she couldn’t find any pity for him. He had killed people. Two deaths at his hands were all he had mentioned, but she was certain there were more. He had made too many people suffer with his sickness, and she was going to be one of them.

In speaking to him as his mother, she had merely delayed her punishment. She was frantic to continue putting it off. Not that she expected some miracle to occur to stop it altogether.

It was the terror of that beating that she couldn’t face, had tried to postpone. She’d never been beaten before, in any way. She had no idea what she could withstand. And what came after? Death, if he still thought she was his mother? Or if he was partly rational by then, rape while she was still screaming from the pain already inflicted? Or both? She honestly couldn’t say which she would prefer.