Dangerous (40 page)

She sat up stiffly. Her hands and feet were still bound, but at least the villains had not gagged her. Not that she intended to start screaming now, she thought. The last thing she wanted to do was summon one of her captors.

Chains clanked against stone.

Prudence raised her head swiftly and peered into the shadows. “Sebastian? Are you awake?”

“Bloody hell.”

The surly sound of his voice revived her spirits as nothing else could have done. “They put you in those awful manacles on the wall.”

“I noticed.” Chains scraped lightly on stone again, as if Sebastian was quietly testing them. “Are you all right?”

“Yes.” Prudence managed to sit up on the edge of the bed. “What about you?”

“I feel as if I’ve gone a hundred rounds with Witt himself, but other than that I seem to be in one piece.”

“You’ve been unconscious for a very long time. I was terribly worried about you.”

“I wasn’t unconscious, just dazed.” Sebastian sounded coldly furious now. “I couldn’t seem to move for a while, at least not quickly enough to take that pistol away from the man in the carriage. I decided to bide my time.”

“We’re at Curling Castle,” Prudence offered.

“Believe it or not, I figured that out all by myself.”

Prudence frowned. “There’s no need to get sarcastic. I was just trying to help you orient yourself.”

“I beg your pardon, madam. I am not in the best of moods.” Chains rattled again. “Damnation.”

“What’s wrong?” Prudence asked.

“What isn’t wrong? This entire investigation has been wrong right from the beginning. Bloody hell.”

“I mean what’s wrong right now?” Prudence said patiently. “Why are you swearing?”

“Because I can’t get quite the right angle on the locks of these manacles. I need to be a few inches higher.”

Prudence brightened. “You’re trying to pick the locks?”

“Yes.” Chains rattled softly. “Damn it to hell.”

“Is there anything I can do?”

“See if that chamber pot I saw under the bed last time is still there,” Sebastian said.

“A chamber pot? Don’t you think you can restrain yourself for a little while? We’re in something of a hurry here, Sebastian.”

“I need the damned pot to stand on so that I can get the wire into these locks,” Sebastian said through his teeth. “If you find it, try to kick it over here.”

“Oh. Yes, of course.”

Chagrined, Prudence scooted off the bed. Unable to use her bound hands or legs to control her descent, she landed with a thud on her knees. “Ow.”

“Hurry.”

She bent down and looked beneath the bed. The fuzzy outline of the chamber pot was just barely visible in the deep shadows. “It’s there.”

“Get it over here,” Sebastian ordered.

That was going to be easier said than done, Prudence thought. But there was no point complaining about the difficulty of the task. She had the uneasy feeling that their lives might very well depend on her getting the chamber pot out from under the bed.

She lay on her side and wriggled partway under the iron bed. It took three attempts before she successfully hooked her bound ankles around the pot.

“Got it,” she whispered.

“Push it over here.”

“I’m trying.”

Prudence tried three different positions before she finally rolled onto her back and used her feet to guide the pot.

“I feel like a worm.” She inched the pot along the cold stone floor.

The process seemed to take forever. She was perspiring in spite of the terrible chill. She heard her delicate silk skirts shredding against the stone.

“A little closer, Prue,” Sebastian said softly. “You’re almost here.”

She wriggled forward and pushed the pot ahead a few more inches.

“I have it,” Sebastian said with soft triumph. He caught the chamber pot with the toe of his boot and dragged it closer.

Prudence sat up and watched as Sebastian stood on the overturned pot. She squinted, trying to see what he was doing.

“That’s it, love,” Sebastian crooned softly. “Give me what I want. Open for me, sweet. Let me inside. All the way inside.” There was a small snick of sound. “Yes. Ah, yes. Beautiful.”

“Did you get it open?” Prudence asked.

“One of them. One more to go.”

The second lock went much faster. Sebastian was free a moment later.

He stepped down from the pot and went to work on the ropes that bound Prudence’s hands and feet. She realized she could feel nothing at all in her upper arms.

Then the feeling began to come back.

Prudence bit back a scream as a painful tingling sensation swept through her arms. She stuffed a handful of the cloak into her mouth and bit down hard.

“Christ. I should have realized.” Sebastian began to rub her arms swiftly. “Hold on, Prue. You’ll be all right in a minute. Can you feel my hands?”

She nodded, not yet daring to spit the fabric out of her mouth. She was still hovering on the edge of a scream.

“Good.” Sebastian sounded relieved. “That means they didn’t bind you too tightly. You’ll be fine.”

Prudence was not so certain of that. But after a short while she was no longer afraid she would cry out if she moved her arms. She let Sebastian pull her to her feet.

“My God,” she whispered.

“We’ve got to get out of here,” Sebastian said. “We can’t wait any longer.”

“I know.” Prudence took a deep breath. She looked down at the broken lens of her glass dangling on the end of the fashionable velvet ribbon. It was useless. Her tiny beaded reticule was still attached to her wrist, however. She opened it and discovered her spectacles safe inside. The wire frames were bent, but the glass was undamaged. She pushed them quickly into place on her nose.

“I’m ready,” she announced.

“You are an amazing female, my dear.” Sebastian grabbed her hand and hauled her toward the door.

Prudence heard the footsteps in the hall at the same instant that Sebastian heard them.

“Hell and damnation.” He stopped. “Is nothing going to go right tonight?”

Prudence felt his fingers tighten again around her wrist. He jerked her over to the wall on the far side of the door.

“Don’t move,” he whispered.

She pressed herself against the stones. Sebastian strode swiftly across the room and scooped up the chamber pot. Then he flattened himself to the wall alongside her.

The door opened. A man with his hands tied behind his back stumbled into the chamber. He was given a push from behind that sent him reeling. He lost his footing and fell.

The candlelight flickered on Garrick Sutton’s face. His eyes met Prudence’s in the shadows.

Before she could react, one of the men who had kidnapped her and Sebastian stepped into the room. He was holding his pistol in one band.

“Well, now, that’s that, then,” he announced in tones of satisfaction. “A job well done, if I may say so.”

Then his gaze fell on the empty bed. Prudence saw his eyes start to widen as he glanced at the dangling manacles. “What’s this? They’ve escaped.”

He opened his mouth to yell for assistance.

Sebastian took one step away from the wall and brought the chamber pot crashing down on the villain’s head. The pistol fell and skittered under the bed.

The man sank to the floor with no more than a groan. He did not move.

Sebastian looked down at Garrick. “This certainly complicates matters.”

“Sorry about this,” Garrick said ruefully. “They were waiting for me when I left my club.”

“Untie him,” Sebastian said to Prudence. “I’ll get the pistol. At the rate we’re going, we shall undoubtedly need it.”

But before Prudence could move, the door of the massive black wardrobe swung wide. Lord Curling stood there, a pistol in his hand. Behind him yawned the black opening of a hidden staircase. Prudence belatedly recalled the false back Sebastian had discovered in the wardrobe. Now she knew what had been concealed behind it.

“Pray do not move so much as an inch, Angelstone.” Curling stepped down from the wardrobe. “Or I shall put a bullet into your lady.”

Sebastian froze. “This has gone far enough, Curling.”

“Not quite,” Curling beckoned to Prudence. “Come here, my dear.”

Prudence did not move.

Curling’s eyes narrowed. “I said, come here. If you do
not, I may change my mind and put the first bullet into your precious Fallen Angel.”

Prudence walked forward reluctantly. As soon as she was within reach, Curling put an arm around her throat and pulled her against him to use as a shield.

“There, now,” Curling said. “This is much better.”

ebastian fought for his
self-control. The urge to throw himself at Curling in a mindless rage was almost overpowering. The sight of Prudence being held hostage sent a shock of wild anguish through him. He knew such un-governed emotion would be lethal if he did not master it.

“What do you hope to accomplish, Curling?” Sebastian forced himself to use the bored tone of voice he had perfected so well.

Curling’s smile was thin with menace. “You know what I intend to accomplish. Did you really think I would allow you to banish me from England and destroy my fortune?”

“Your fortune?”

“Do not pretend ignorance. You know very well what I’m talking about.” Curling’s arm tightened around Prudence’s throat. “I’m not a fool. I know what will happen to my business affairs if I leave England. The investors will assume that madman, Bloomfield, is in charge. There will be panic. The company will go bankrupt in no time if I am not here to take command.”

Sebastian shrugged. “A possibility, I suppose.”

“Goddamn it to hell. You know that is exactly what you intended,” Curling snarled. “Did you really think I’d let you
get away with it? I had everything carefully planned and I am not about to let you ruin those plans.”

Garrick stirred on the floor. “This is all my fault, isn’t it?”

Curling did not bother to glance at him. He kept his gaze on Sebastian. “You can take some of the credit, if you like. I needed information on Angelstone, you see. Everyone talked about how much he hated the rest of the Fleetwoods, but I was not so certain how deep his hatred went.”

“You mean you didn’t know if I would use my position to protect my cousin if he were implicated in murder?” Sebastian asked.

“Precisely,” Curling said. “I could never figure out why, if you hated your relatives so much, you had not already used your power to crush them.”

“You did not comprehend,” Prudence said in her most admonishing tones, “because you knew that if you had been in Angelstone’s position, you would have long since crushed the family.”

“Exactly.” Curling’s eyes were still on Sebastian. “I needed to know more about Angelstone’s motives and how he would react if I proceeded to use Jeremy Fleetwood in my scheme.”

“So you got me drunk and pried the information out of me,” Garrick said in a tone of savage self-disgust.

“It was an easy enough task,” Curling said. “And extremely rewarding. You assured me that Angelstone would be quite happy to see any one of his relatives rot and that he would probably find it vastly amusing to see one actually taken up for murder. Then you let slip a most fascinating tidbit.”

Garrick swore in despair. “I told you about his hobby, didn’t I?”

“Yes, you did.” Curling smiled slowly. “You told me all about Angelstone’s very interesting little hobby, including the name of his Bow Street contact.”

“Damnation.” Garrick glanced at Sebastian. “I don’t remember any of it, Angelstone. I swear to God, I don’t. I was drinking so heavily in those days. There’s so much I cannot recall from that time.”

“I know.” Sebastian did not take his attention off Curling. “It makes no matter now.”

“I altered my plans accordingly,” Curling said. “I decided it would be ideal to have Angelstone actually conduct the investigation. He would be certain to recognize the evidence I intended to use to implicate his cousin.”

“An interesting precaution,” Sebastian said softly. “Bow Street might have overlooked the items found at the scenes of the crimes, or failed to properly identify them. I assume you were also the one responsible for leaving the message in my carriage the night of Oxenham’s death?”

“Of course.” Curling frowned. “I wanted you to be the first on the scene so that you could find the evidence against your cousin. I needed young Fleetwood rather badly, you know.”

“Because you knew you could not murder your three partners and assume complete control of the company without drawing attention to yourself as a suspect,” Sebastian said. “One death, perhaps even two, might have been accepted as accidents. But three deaths would have been hard to explain, especially when you so clearly profited from them. You needed to be able to produce someone else who had a motive to kill those three men.”

“Your cousin was perfect,” Curling said. “He had a motive which only I knew about but which he would be unable to deny in a court of law. I had planned to reveal everything about Lillian’s death, you see. After all, I had nothing to hide. The stupid wench jumped out of a window while I and my friends were having a bit of sport with her.”

“You would have testified that my cousin, who was in love with her, discovered the facts surrounding her death
years later, blamed The Princes of Virtue, and set out for revenge,” Sebastian said.