The Amorous Education of Celia Seaton (26 page)

“Very lovely, isn’t she?” The courtly voice made her jump. Lord Hugo Hartley was assisted into the chair next to her by a footman.

“Countess Czerny? Certainly.”

Celia, who had barely exchanged words with him since he discreetly warned her off Tarquin, eyed the old gentleman with apprehension. Whatever he wanted to say to her, she had a notion she wouldn’t like it.

Her efforts to frame a tactful reply were thankfully forestalled by the appearance of a manservant.

“Excuse me, miss. Her Grace requests your presence.”

“Me? The duchess wishes to see me? Why?” Since her arrival, Celia had received no more than the occasional nod from her hostess, the Duchess of Hampton. She looked at her neighbor as though he would have the answer.

“You are a guest in her house. I should think that would be sufficient reason,” Lord Hugo said, reminding her of Tarquin at his most supercilious.

The servant, whom she judged by his lack of livery to be a retainer of some status, helped her pull back her chair. “I am to escort you to Her Grace’s private quarters.”

Mystified, she rose to her feet and prepared to follow. On impulse she turned back. “Lord Hugo. If Mr. Compton should come in, please tell him where I am. We had arranged to meet this morning,” she added, deciding her request needed an explanation.

Lord Hugo nodded. “I’d hoped to further our acquaintance, but the pleasure must be postponed.”

Mandeville was a very large house. Although she knew the route from the guest wing to the public rooms, she had no idea where the family quarters were located and soon lost track as she followed the servant though a maze of passages. The transformation of the decor from polished double doors with gilt plasterwork architraves and marble floors to simpler fittings might have struck her as surprising had she been paying more attention. When her guide opened a door and gestured for her to precede him she obeyed without question.

Instead of a duchess in a sitting room, she found herself in a deserted three-sided courtyard, confronting a familiar sight: Nicholas Constantine, a cart, and a horse.

Chapter 30

Don’t judge a book by its cover, or a lady by her title.

C
onstantine dragged her, gagged and sneezing, from the back of the cart where she’d been rolled up in a dusty blanket and tied like a parcel. Blinded by sunlight, she caught no more than a glimpse of stone pillars before being shoved down a short steep staircase and through a door. While the Yorkshire cottage had been stifling hot, her new prison was freezing and grew chillier still as her captor urged her along a dark narrow corridor. With his lantern at her rear, she could see little. Her feet stumbled over uneven ground, her bare arms brushed against rough walls of stone or masonry, and ahead she could hear the sinister echo of slowly dripping water.

Gooseflesh arose on every exposed inch of skin. What was this place? She envisioned a dreadful dungeon in a Gothic romance. They reached a circular chamber roofed with a brickwork dome on which the lantern cast giant, looming shadows. Celia reminded herself that they were merely those of herself and Constantine, not supernatural beings.

“Now,” he said. “Let’s sit down here and have a little talk.”

He maneuvered her onto some sort of stone or brick wall surrounding a dark pit, her feet dangling free. Damp penetrated her petticoats and cold seeped up from below and pierced the thin leather soles of her slippers. Constantine stood behind her.
Don’t let him push me in
, she prayed. What else but a deep well would emit such a chill?

“Where is it?” he asked.

She shook her head and made furious denying noises.

“The gag’ll have to come off,” he said and rested the lantern beside her on the rim of the pit. “Don’t try anything funny while I untie it.”

As if she would! Her nails dug into the slimy stone surface and her muscles tensed in the effort to keep her balance and avoid pitching forward.

“Now,” he said as she worked her jaw in relief, “talk.”

“I have no idea what you want,” she said, opting for ignorance. “As you well know, you stole everything I owned the last time you kidnapped me.”

“But I heard tell you had some more things delivered from Yorkshire just yesterday.”

Someone in the house had told him about her false report.

Constantine crouched beside her and slung an arm about her shoulders. “Look here, Miss Seaton. You and I are all alone here.” His slightly foreign accent took on a sinister tone. How could she ever have mistaken this criminal for a Yorkshire rustic? “The walls are thick, thick as the Tower of London, and even if they weren’t, we’re a long way from anywhere.”

A long way was probably an exaggeration given the time she’d spent in the cart. But the journey had been long enough to get them well away from the house and the Mandeville Park stretched for miles. The chances that anyone would save her seemed slim. Even if Lord Hugo delivered her message, and she wasn’t sure he would, Tarquin wouldn’t be able to find her.

Dear God,
she prayed.
Don’t let him hurt me. And if he does, give me strength not to tell him about the rattle. And if I
do
tell him, don’t let him hurt the baby.

She sensed Constantine reach into his pocket, heard a soft click, saw a flash of metal, a blade pointed at her throat. His breath, visible in the dim light, warmed her ear. “No one’s going to hear you scream.”

“Oh for heaven’s sake!” The voice, loud, forceful, and female, came from the passage. “Why did the Governor ever entrust an important task to a melodramatic fool?”

W
hen Hugo told him Celia had been summoned by the duchess, Tarquin felt the first twinge of alarm.

“Did you recognize the servant?” he asked, wishing he’d told Hugo about the threat to Celia.

“Why would I? I don’t know the people here.” Hugo gave the matter some thought. “Now I think of it, the man did seem familiar. Perhaps I’ve seen him at Amesbury House. There is more than one duchess in residence, after all.”

Tarquin looked up eagerly as a group of ladies entered the room, including their hostess the Duchess of Hampton. Celia was not among them, neither was the Duchess of Amesbury.

Damnation! If only he hadn’t gone riding this morning, then let curiosity draw him to Wallop Hall. He should have waited for Celia to come down.

If his witch of an aunt was bullying her, he’d strangle the woman. It would be a boon to society and someone should have done it years ago.

He strode over to interrupt his hostess’s conversation. The possibility that Celia was suffering something worse than a verbal pummeling had him sweating with fear.

Good manners be damned.

F
inally Celia was in the presence of the duchess, but not the one she expected. Rescue came in the unlikely form of the Duchess of Amesbury.

Or not so unlikely. Julia Czerny had mentioned that Tarquin’s aunt was also after the ruby. Relieved that the duchess’s methods were less crude than Constantine’s, Celia feared she might be just as ruthless.

“Really, Miss Seaton,” she said, striding to the edge of the pit, “I am most displeased. Had you told me when I saw you in Yorkshire that you had the Mysore ruby, I wouldn’t have had to go to all this trouble.”

“I am so sorry, Duchess, to have discommoded you. But I had no idea you were looking for it and, as I keep telling Mr. Constantine and everyone else who asks me, I don’t have the ruby, I never had the ruby, and I never even heard of the ruby until yesterday. So Mr. Constantine can torture me but I won’t be able to tell you a thing.”

“Torture? Miss Seaton. You’ve been reading too many novels.”

“There’s nothing fictional about the fact that I’ve been kidnapped, bound, and threatened with violence. More than once, I may add.”

“You can blame my nephew for that. He forbade me to speak with you so I had to take measures to get you alone. I’ve been trying to buy this gem for over a year. Since Constantine and his employer have proven utterly inept in obtaining it from you, I shall enter into direct negotiations. I am willing to pay you thirty thousand pounds.”

Constantine emitted a furious growl and tightened his grip on Celia’s shoulders. “You wouldn’t know where the ruby was if it wasn’t for the Governor. I won’t let you cheat him. I’ll kill her first.”

Celia closed her eyes and prepared to die.

“Don’t be silly. If she dies none of us may ever find the jewel. Your Governor will be paid for his information. More than he deserves.”

Celia breathed again.

“Much more than he deserves considering his agent stole it from me.” A new voice entered the discussion. The Countess Czerny stepped into the chamber, a lantern in one hand and a pistol in the other.

If she wasn’t so horribly aware of the gaping abyss beneath her and Constantine’s grip on her shoulder, Celia would have laughed. This chamber—whatever its purpose—was becoming crowded and the duchess was regarding the new arrival as she might a naked footman.

“I don’t know what you are doing here, Countess.”

Julia, on rough ground and with both hands occupied, dropped a curtsey that left Celia breathless with admiration. “I followed you, Duchess, to prevent you obtaining something that belongs to me. Or rather, to my principal in the matter.”

Feeling a little safer in the presence of Julia’s weapon—she couldn’t see any reason for the countess to shoot
her
—Celia tried to shake off Constantine. He removed his arm from her shoulder and instead, still crouched beside her, took her upper arm in a painful grasp.

“Let me get this straight,” she said. “My father was working for the
duchess
when he stole the ruby from the countess?”

“Certainly not,” said the duchess. “I never engage in lawless transactions with unsavory characters.”

“You wouldn’t call the Governor unsavory?” Julia asked. “He’s merely the most successful receiver of stolen jewelry in all London.”

“I don’t concern myself with the petty concerns of those I buy from. I had no reason to believe this gem stolen, merely mislaid when the agent entrusted it to his daughter then had the temerity to die. Once I heard the whole story I had this man”—she nodded at Constantine—“arrange a meeting between me and the young woman in possession of the Mysore ruby so that we may come to terms.”

In a sudden move, Constantine hauled Celia to her feet. She swayed on the rim of the well, desperately clinging to him until she steadied her balance. “Neither of you gentry bitches is getting it,” he said, drawing an indignant gasp from the duchess, who’d probably never heard herself referred to so vulgarly, though many must have thought of her that way. “Missy here is coming with me.”

He pushed Celia forward, twisting her arm behind her back. When Julia raised her pistol, he swung Celia around so she was between him and the gun barrel. “Don’t think of it,” he advised, “because you’ll likely hit her instead.”

Celia’s look of entreaty was answered by a nod from the countess. She kept her gun pointed but she would not, she sent the silent message, endanger her.

Pushed inexorably toward the exit and then who knew where, Celia made a final desperate attempt at reason. “I do not have the ruby and I don’t know where it is!”

“But I do!” This time it was a male voice and an exquisite masculine figure that ducked through the archway. “And if you ever want to see it you’ll let her go. At once.”

Tarquin Compton regarded Constantine as though he were an encroaching mushroom at a London ball, the effect only slightly spoiled by his having to bend to fit beneath the sloping ceiling at the edges of the dome.

“Come and get her, you puny dandy,” Constantine responded. “I knocked you cold once and I’ll do it again.”

Though confident of Tarquin’s ability to defeat the villain in a fair fight on open ground, Celia was terrified he would end up in the pit during a struggle in these confined quarters. With a desperate pull she twisted around and managed to free her arm from Constantine’s distracted grasp.

“Get out of the way,” Tarquin yelled at the same time and, with a grace that looked effortless, launched himself into the air.

“No!” Celia shrieked at she was flung aside and landed on her behind, her back to the brick wall.

The next moment both Tarquin and Constantine tumbled together into the abyss. “Tarquin,” Celia cried, crawling to the edge of the pit with some mad idea of jumping in to save him from drowning.

Instead of bodies flailing in inky water, they were on solid, though uneven ground, apparently beating the blazes out of one another. She snatched up Constantine’s lantern and looked down into the pit. Several feet down, the floor was covered with straw and the fall of their feet caused strange crunching noises. Tarquin rained a succession of punches at Constantine who, though a more worthy opponent than Joe, succumbed to superior power, crashed against the brick walls of the pit and slid onto his rear. She lowered the light below floor level, the better to see that her kidnapper was bloodied and unconscious.

“Are you all right?” she called.

Tarquin put his hands on the rim of the pit and pulled himself up with ridiculous ease. He stood before her, rubbing his hands together. His coat was soiled, his waistcoat had lost its buttons, revealing a tear in his shirt, his neck cloth was in disarray. With a cut on his nose and a half-closed eye, he grinned from ear to ear and never looked better to her.

“I enjoyed that,” he said.

She choked up with tears.

“I thought it was a well!” she managed with a gulp. “I thought I would drown. I thought
you
would drown.”

“Idiot girl,” said the duchess, who along with Julia had moved to the edge of the pit, the better to follow the fight. “Haven’t you ever been in an icehouse before?”

“Icehouse? Is that ice down there?”

“Of course.”

Celia took in the long entrance tunnel, the thick walls, the midsummer chill. “We didn’t have them in India, she said.”

“Of course not,” Tarquin said, and looked at her with tenderness she couldn’t mistake, despite the injured eye. “Did he hurt you?”

“Not much.”

His face darkened and his glance shifted. “I should have killed him.”

“I was mostly worried I’d fall into the pit. I feel foolish.”

“I was afraid I wouldn’t find you in time.”

“How did you know where I was?”

“When Hugo told me you’d been summoned by our hostess, I went to find you. Once I learned you’d disappeared, I asked Blakeney to help. While we were searching, I heard that a cart had gone to the icehouse. Since ice is usually fetched at dawn, I decided to look here first.” A beautifully manicured hand, a little gritty from grasping the edge of the pit, cupped her cheek and her heart melted. “Thank God I was right.”

“Compton!” She’d forgotten about the duchess. “Now you have the ruby we can settle this nonsense. Where is it?”

Tarquin turned to his aunt. “You’ll never find it.” He nodded at Julia. “And that goes for you too. And you.” But Constantine was out cold and unable to hear.