Tempting Her Reluctant Viscount (25 page)

Then he heard the door opening and the man rose to his feet and pulled out a pistol.

Michael heard some muffled voices raised in anger and watched as the man with the gun lowered his weapon and rushed over to help the new arrivals. The door was out of Michael’s line of sight, so for a few anxious moments, all he could do was wait until they moved back into the open.

Then with a sigh of relief, Michael saw the men return into view, and with them was Hope. She was clearly unconscious, but otherwise appeared unharmed. The same could not be said for one of the men. Even from where Michael was, he could see the bruise starting around ruffian’s eye.

Then he saw the men moving Hope upstairs. Aside from the fingernail cleaner, Michael was still none the wiser about the number of men he would be facing during this rescue. Four men would be a challenge, but it was not an impossible task; however, Michael was hoping not to face any of the men. Rather, he planned to sneak Hope out from wherever they locked her away.

The second floor made the rescue a bit more risky—especially considering Hope’s fear of heights—but failure was not an option. Michael had spent his entire career infiltrating circumstances such as these, and never before was the prize so dear or the reward so great.

Knowing what needed to be done, Michael left his post outside the darkened parlor and began exploring the outside of the large house. He kept a careful eye on the second floor windows, hoping to see a flicker of light to indicate occupation. Once he determined the best way to get to the second floor, it would be helpful to know where Hope was being held captive.

Helpful, but not necessary.

Michael would break into every room of the house searching for his betrothed if it came to that; and God help whomever he ran into during his search.

Chapter Twenty-five

Courage is not the absence of fear, but the ability to rise above it.

~The Duke of Lancaster

Hope woke up in a dirty, dingy room with a blistering headache and a strange, unpleasant taste in her mouth. Sitting up slowly, she was hit with bout of severe nausea. Only by force of sheer willpower, was Hope able to keep from casting up her accounts.

Groaning, Hope held her stomach and looked around. Seeing a window nearby, she staggered to her feet—only barely registering that she was not tied up—and lunged over to the dirt-encrusted panes. Jerking up the bottom sash, she stuck her head out and took a deep, cleansing breath of fresh air. Immediately, her head felt better and her stomach settled some.

With a sigh of relief, Hope set about ascertaining her predicament. The first thing she realized was that she was on the second floor. Ignoring the flash of fear at being so high up, Hope looked out across the property. She could see they had brought her to what appeared to be an abandoned country estate. There were tall trees in the distance and scrubby bushes along the base of the house, but other than that, Hope could see no signs of life.

Shuddering at the state of her prison, Hope finally wondered at her relative freedom in the space. Weren’t her captors concerned that she had access to a functioning window, an escape route? Granted, she hadn’t seen anything to indicate a way to the ground from the window, but if not for her fear of heights, she would have been looking for one. In fact, anyone other than Hope would have been out of that auspicious exit at once, looking for a way down to safety.

“Anyone other than me,” Hope repeated in a whisper, the unthinkable, most repugnant idea running rampant in her head.

Her father was behind this kidnapping…

Hope was sure of it. He knew better than most about her utter fear of heights. She could be in a room
full
of windows, even a window right up against a tall, strong tree, and still she would not leave through it.

That is simply
not
fair!
Hope screamed silently. Having one’s father plotting against you was an unfair disadvantage.

Sinking down into the only chair in the room, Hope wondered why she didn’t see this coming. Hadn’t she warned Michael of her father’s unstable nature just hours earlier? And yet she allowed herself to wander, completely unsuspecting, around a darkened yard just ripe for hiding and sneaking cutthroats.

“I am such a fool,” she berated herself softly.

Hope was in trouble…big, big trouble.

As fear began to engulf her, Hope suddenly heard mumbling voices from just outside the room. A flicker of candlelight showed through the crack at the bottom of the door, and she waited anxiously to see if they would enter the room.

When moments passed and the men outside seemed content to stay where they were, Hope swallowed her panic and tiptoed over to the thick wooden door. Pressing her ear against the rough and dirty surface, she listened.

“Did you have any problems with the capture?” a man’s voice said, and Hope immediately recognized the speaker as her father. Trembling with anger and horror, she forced herself to pay attention. Hopefully, the men would give her some clue as to where she was and what they planned to do with her.

“Nay,” another man replied. “Simple as pie, it were.”

“Easy for ye to say, Bucky. She didn’t give ye a black eye,” a third man grumbled.

“Ye should ‘ave been a might more forceful there, Stanley and you wouldn’t ‘ave been ‘it.”

Hope heard a gasp, and her father said, “You didn’t hurt her, did you?”

“Didn’t ‘arm ‘er none at all, don’t you worry, sir. Once she was out, she didn’t put up nary a fight.”

“Good, good,” Mr. Stuckeley replied, clearly relieved.

“What do ye want us to do with ‘er now?”

There was a pause and then, “I’m not sure. Cochrane-Johnstone will be here soon. He and I will decide what to do with her then.”

Hope slunk back to her chair and sat down with a plop. That was the last thing she had wanted to hear; that her fate lay in Mr. Cochrane-Johnstone’s hands. By all accounts, he was the ringleader of the entire Stock Exchange scandal and therefore, completely unscrupulous, in her opinion. There was no telling what he would want to do with her.

She may end up dead, after all.

“Oh, Michael… I am so sorry,” Hope whimpered as tears began rolling down her face for the first time since she had been spirited away by the hired thugs.

…

Hope awoke with a start. Apparently, she had dozed off in her misery for a few minutes, but was awakened by something. Glancing around, she could see no changes to her environment that could have caused the startle, so she stood and walked slowly back to the door, and once again she listened.

“No,” her father was saying insistently, “I do not agree that killing her is the only way.”

Hope gasped and took an involuntary step back. Clearly Mr. Cochrane-Johnstone had arrived and, as she feared, he wanted her dead. She very much doubted he wanted to kill her for what she knew—he had already been incriminated, after all—but rather, his murderous intent was based on the fact that
she
was the one that had incriminated him.

Then she heard his voice and leaned in once again to hear his rationale behind her forthcoming demise.

“There is nowhere you could send her where she could not cause trouble, Stuckeley. What do you plan to do, watch her every minute of the day to ensure she does not post a letter, or befriend someone into sending a message for her, or any other manner of ways she could contact someone with the power to see us all hanged?”

“But with the right husband in an appropriately isolated land. Perhaps a country where she does not speak the language…? Surely she does not have to, ah, die.”

“Stuckeley, you knew going into this that this was a dangerous business. Have I not just handed you an obscene amount of money? You said you needed the money for your family. Your
new
family. What difference will it make to your plans if your eldest daughter is dead rather than simply out of sight and mind? It would, in fact, save you her dowry expense.”

Hope held her breath as she waited for her father to answer.

“That’s sick,” Mr. Stuckeley replied forcefully. “As you said, I wanted this for my family…
all
my family. I love Hope more than anything. She is the only reminder I have left of her dear mother. Now, I agreed to a far-off marriage, but killing her? I will not stand for it!”

“Yes, of course,” Cochrane-Johnstone agreed immediately. “I don’t know what I was thinking. She is your daughter, after all. I acted in poor form.”

Hope could practically feel her father’s relief. So he really
did
love her. She could almost forgive his actions in the face of that much needed revelation.

“Very well, then. You will continue with our plan to find her a suitable husband?” she heard her father ask.

“Of course, of course,” Cochrane-Johnstone assured Mr. Stuckeley. “Now then, you go on and wait downstairs while I consult with my men on the best…er…way to deal with this situation.”

Hope didn’t hear any response, but she guessed her father gave his assent before he turned to leave. She could hear his footsteps fading away as he left her in the hands of a madman.

“Ah, sir?” one of the other men asked. “I’ll marry the chit, if you’re looking.” He laughed raucously with another man.

“Oh, do shut up,” Cochrane-Johnstone replied sharply. “Go after Stuckeley and kill him. The plans with the girl have not changed. Tonight, father and daughter will both find their maker.”
Father
, Hope thought for one desperate moment before whirling around and looking determinedly at the window. Now she had no choice…it was time to face her fear.

Moving quickly, Hope ran to the window and opened it as high as it would go. Leaning out, she quickly assessed her escape route options. As she remembered, there were no trees nearby. Taking a deep breath, she looked down at the bushes below her. They grew densely together and could probably cushion a fall, if she were desperate, but they were also of the prickly variety and she could just imagine getting so caught up in them that she would have to strip off all of her clothes just to get out in one piece.

No, there had to be a better way…and that’s when she saw it. A ledge, about eight inches wide, running down the whole length of the house.

The mansion was Georgian in style, which meant it was basically a great big, very symmetrical, square box. This worked in Hope’s favor, because that probably meant the ledge ran around the entire second floor. And, God willing, there would be at least one tree growing close enough the house for her to climb down somewhere on the other side of the house.

Knowing time was of the essence, Hope closed her eyes and said a quick prayer. Then, as if she weren’t deathly afraid of what she was about to do, she swung her legs over the sill of the window.

…

Michael had circled the large house at least a half a dozen times gathering information about possible ways to get to the second floor unseen. There weren’t many options, and to make matters worse, on his last trip around, he saw Cochrane-Johnstone arrive. Throwing that man into the mix would only bode ill for Hope.

Luckily, the man’s arrival allowed Michael a better chance to follow the candlelit path to wherever they were keeping Hope. None of the rooms upstairs showed any light, and Michael had not yet been able to discern her location.

Watching the windows light up as the new arrival passed up the stairs, Michael could see that he turned to the west side of the house. That meant that Hope was probably in one of the rooms on that side of the mansion.

That cut down his options considerably.

Also, there were no trees on that side of the building. As far as he could tell, there was only one way up to the second floor from outside, and that was to scale the only tree growing near the house—at the back of the mansion, near the servants entrance—and make his way around to the west side of the building on the narrow ledge he could just make out from the ground.

That didn’t pose much of a problem for him, but getting Hope from her room to the tree was a bit more of a process than just dropping her a foot or two out a window. Still, Michael didn’t see as he had much choice.

Walking around to the side of house where he believed Hope was being held, he tried to judge the distance they would have to traverse to reach the tree. And that was when he saw Hope, clinging for dear life to the rough-hewn stones making up the outer walls of the mansion.

She was sobbing with every step and appeared to be making her way along the narrow ledge with her eyes…shut. The silly girl was
feeling
her way across the face of the building.

“She’s going to get herself killed,” Michael muttered, but at the same time, he was bursting with pride that she had taken it upon herself to escape by a means almost worse than death to her. She had to be the bravest person he had ever met.
And she was going to be his wife
, he thought fondly.

Assuming they both survived this farce of a getaway.

Running as quickly and quietly as he could, Michael reached the tree and scaled it in record time. Stepping with ease onto the ledge, he could now see that it was nearly as wide as his foot was long. It made for a very steady perch, and the coarse stones of the wall in front of him provided ample traction for his fingers. If he didn’t know about the paralyzing terror gripping Hope, he would have laughed at the ease of the task before them.

As it was, he wanted to approach her calmly and with anticipation of her alarm at seeing him so suddenly, so that he could prevent any unexpected accidents or stumbles.

Michael quickly reached the corner of the building and when he looked around the edge, he could see that Hope was just a foot away from him.

Reaching out to steady her should she need it, Michael said softly, “Hope, I’m here.”

…

Hope opened her eyes in shock and practically jumped out of her skin when she found herself looking into eyes that could only belong to Michael, her love. Eyes that should not have been there…on a ledge…two stories up…in the middle of nowhere.