Patricia Rice (40 page)

“Landingham, of course.” The earl shot him a look of
disgust. “Not that any of this is at all likely. If we’re talking about
Constance’s niece, I remember, she is not a small woman. Sebastian
couldn’t force her to go anywhere.”

Mac had forgotten how small a world London society
really was. Of course the earl knew Bea. His estates marched along hers
somewhere to the north. He’d probably gone hunting with her father.
“Your son hired a Runner. Bea has never learned the fine art of
fisticuffs, but I have. You’d better hope
Sebastian
hasn’t hurt her, or the next time you see him, he’ll be in pieces.”

Snatching his hat back from James, Mac strode for
the door, his mind busily ticking off the various means of reaching
Landingham. The earl didn’t deserve to know where his grandchildren
were. He hadn’t even asked. And Mac damned well hadn’t said.

Without asking permission, he caught the reins of
Carstairs’s magnificent mount. The animal reared in protest, but Mac
held the leather until the horse knew who was in charge, then kicked it
into a canter as shouts of outrage followed him into the street.

***

Holding her breath and biting her bottom lip, Bea
worked at the final pin keeping the door hinge in place. No one had
noticed the hinges’ loosened condition when they’d served her a meal a
little after noon, but should anyone attempt to open the locked door
now, it would fall on his head. She’d rather it didn’t fall on hers.

She had a hard time believing she was in this
dreadful position. She lived a quiet, mousy life. Her first real venture
into the world, and she got kidnapped. Quite preposterous, when one
thought about it.

She supposed if one must be kidnapped, it was best
to be taken by a viscount who brought one to a sprawling mansion, with
fine linen sheets and hot baths and all the refinements. But she had no
desire to stay here, particularly if the viscount had some idea of
trading her for the children. She would not let him have them.

The last pin finally slid from its hinge under the
persuasion of a little salad oil she’d demanded with last night’s
greens, accompanied by a judicious amount of butter from her luncheon
roll. Holding the door in place, Bea leaned against it and listened for
sounds from the corridor outside.

As far as she had been able to tell, Landingham was
all but deserted, although she supposed there must be servants in the
kitchens. Her kidnappers thought her safely locked away in an empty wing
of the mansion, where her screams wouldn’t be heard. They didn’t seem
to grasp that she’d spent the better part of her life running a large
household. One did not always move furniture for spring cleaning without
first removing doors.

Hearing nothing, she eased the door off its hinges
and opened it sufficiently to slip through. She wasn’t under any
illusion that they wouldn’t notice if they checked on her. She had to
escape before then.

She had never been inside Landingham. She hadn’t a
notion of how to find her way out. She’d tried watching as the Runner
manhandled her up stairs and down hallways, but she’d lost count of
doors somewhere along the way.

It occurred to her that she didn’t want to be
unarmed should she run into the blackguard again. Peeking into a
bedchamber, she grabbed a walking stick and a brass candleholder. Next
time she’d have more than her fingernails with which to dent him.

She located the main stairway easily enough.
Hesitating at the top, she listened for voices, but the place was much
too immense. She could take her chances and go down, or go back and try
to locate the servants’ stairs. She rather suspected the servants’
stairs would be hidden behind paneling in a place like this.

Well, there was nothing to do but go forward.

Her luck ran out just as she caught sight of the
spacious tiled foyer below. The front door swung open, and Viscount
Simmons strolled in.

It wasn’t as if she were small enough to shrink into
the shadows, even if she didn’t have billowing skirts and petticoats
that spilled over several steps at once. If he looked up, he would see
her. If she so much as moved, she’d draw his attention. And it was
darned hard holding on to her rustling skirts with stick and candle in
hand.

He looked up. She could have sworn she hadn’t moved,
so it must be his guilty conscience at work. Brazenly, Bea swept down
the stairs as if she belonged there. She scarcely had any choice. The
front doors were her best hope of freedom.

Her bold approach caught him by surprise. He didn’t
even start shouting for his hireling until she reached the bottom and
approached him with weapons held high.

“I’m going home now,” she told him calmly, although
the statement was insensible enough to be hysterical, she reflected as
the gentleman leapt into her path.

“Don’t be foolish, woman. You can’t go anywhere.” Rather than lay hands on her, the viscount blocked the double doors.

Bea regarded him through narrowed eyes. She’d
learned men were far stronger than she’d thought, so she wouldn’t
dismiss his padded frame too easily. His cravat lay immaculately crisp
and unwrinkled, and his trousers were the picture of perfection. Not a
hair on his fashionably trimmed head seemed disturbed. A kidnapper
really ought to look more like a rogue.

This one smelled like the bottom of a malt barrel. Bea had seen and heard men in their cups. She knew to be wary.

“This is quite the most foolish thing I’ve ever
heard of, and I’ve tired of the game,” she said. “I am going home
through you or around you. Your choice.”

“Not until I have my children back.” The viscount crossed his arms over his chest.

“You had your chance with those children and you
mistreated and neglected them and now you’ve lost them. Kidnapping me
will not bring them back.” Hearing the sound of lumbering feet
approaching from the rear of the hall, Bea began to panic.

The viscount heard the steps as well, and relaxed.
His mistake. He should never underestimate the power of a woman. Bea
swung the walking stick with all her might, striking his knee with a
satisfying crack. He cursed and danced on one foot. Using his unbalanced
position for leverage, she shoved his shoulder, toppling him
sufficiently so she might jerk open the front doors.

The pounding of heavy feet echoed on the tiles.

It was impossible to fly in acres of petticoats, but
she did her best. Clinging to her weapons, she lifted as much fabric as
she could grasp and ran full-length down the wide front steps, the
viscount stumbling to his feet and cursing behind her, his hireling
huffing and puffing in close pursuit.

If only she could see another person... She knew
everyone in the shire. Surely they would report her presence, run to
town, tell the curate, anything!

She screamed in frustration as she heard the heavy
footsteps of the ex-Runner closing in. She thought Runners were supposed
to uphold the law.
Damn the man.
She halted
abruptly, turned, and whacked the stick as hard as she could across his
jaw, then walloped him hard about the shoulders with the brass
candleholder. The man howled in rage and grabbed for her. She dodged and
ran for the drive.

The viscount raced at her from the side, and she
stopped again to smack him hard enough to send his head spinning. She
couldn’t fight two of them at once. Grabbing her skirts as the viscount
staggered, she ran harder, screaming her lungs out.

***

Mac couldn’t believe his eyes as he raced the
sweating horse up the drive and nearly galloped over a frantic,
screaming Bea. Hauling on the reins, he lunged from the saddle almost
before his mount halted, and enveloped Bea in both arms. She threw
herself into his embrace with tears and muddled cries and grateful
kisses. He couldn’t make sense of anything she said, but he understood
her tears and the sight of the two men falling to a standstill behind
her. Both of them looked as if they’d been through a mill, and he
squeezed Bea tighter.

“My turn at them, love. Stand back.”

Fury pouring through him, Mac set his wife aside.
The Runner approached with fists raised. Murder in mind, Mac disregarded
his opponent’s fists, and swung his boot violently upward instead. He
needed the release of a solid strike more than he cared about the
accuracy of his target or the method of his blow. He set his mouth in
satisfaction as the point of his boot struck a soft muscle.

The Runner howled and bent to protect his valuables,
and Mac countered with a swing of his fist to the side of a thick head.
His opponent toppled like an overturned statue.

“Bea! My precious!” Lady Taubee screamed from the
window as her carriage recklessly rounded the curve, and the driver
attempted to haul the horses to a halt without trampling the combatants.

Mac looked up in time to see Bea swinging the knob
of her walking stick at the viscount. Satisfied she had Simmons under
control, Mac rounded on the Runner, who was trying to rise. It felt good
to plow his fist into solid flesh.

Carstairs leapt from the carriage, leaving Lady
Taubee to scream until someone lowered the steps. The elegant baron
approached, idly dangling his walking stick while looking for a likely
opponent.

Mac ignored Carstairs as the Runner tackled his
knees and toppled him into the dust. A punch to the thief-taker’s kidney
ended that presumption.

The earl’s carriage swerved onto the lawn with the
driver fighting the rearing horses. James leapt from the rumble seat and
raced toward the fray.

Figuring Bea might be tiring of holding back the
viscount, Mac shoved away from the Runner, kicked him hard to keep him
down, then, dodging Bea’s swinging stick, plowed his fist into
Sebastian’s
nose. A satisfying spurt of blood followed as the viscount sank to his knees.

“I’ve got him!” As the fallen Runner tried to rise,
James-Matthew jumped on the man’s chest and bounced up and down,
slapping his jaw every time the man tried to move. “I’ve got him, I’ve
got him!” he crowed in delight, until the Runner began to heave up his
breakfast. James leapt aside and scrambled for safety.

“Someday remind me to teach you to fight like a man,” Mac grumbled, standing belligerently over the viscount’s crumpled form.

“Beatrice, my poor dear, are you all right?” Lady
Taubee raced to take Bea into her comforting arms, nearly losing her
towering hat in the process.

“My son is on the ground with a bloody nose and you’re asking if
she’s
all right?” the earl asked wryly, sauntering toward his groaning heir
and waiting for Mac to back away. “I’m thinking I should have stayed in
France.”

As his son attempted to rise, the earl calmly planted his foot on the viscount’s midsection, shoving him flat.

“Go back to France and your hedonistic pleasures,”
Mac replied coldly, brushing himself off and retreating so the
approaching servants could tend the viscount. “Why concern yourself with
the trivial matters of family and responsibility now?”

The earl scowled. “Why, you young jackanapes—”

Carstairs dug idly at the retching Runner with his
walking stick. “Your son hired a bully to kidnap a lady. You might want
to listen to Mr. MacTavish, my lord.”

“I might wish to hear from my son,” the earl stated firmly.

The viscount glared at all of them from his ignoble position flat on the ground. “If anyone is a kidnapper,
he
is,” he said, indicating Mac. “He stole my children, and I want them back.”

“You gave them away,” Bea corrected, stepping away
from her aunt. “They’d been mistreated so badly that Buddy had a broken
arm and Pamela had nightmares. You’re a pig and a selfish lout and you
don’t deserve those children any more than you deserved the wife you
had.”

“Buddy?” the earl asked in puzzlement as he removed
his foot from his son and stepped away so the butler could help him to
his feet.

Holding a handkerchief to his broken nose, the
viscount turned his glare on Bea. “You know absolutely nothing! I loved
my wife. The children are all I have left of her, and I want them back.”
He hiccuped and reached inside his coat for a flask. “She haunts me,”
he whimpered convincingly. “I cannot let them go.” He wiped a bleary eye
on his coatsleeve.

Mac screwed up his eyes and shook his head to see if
cobwebs were blocking his hearing, but Lady Taubee was already
comforting the elegant, weeping fool, and the earl was looking at Mac as
if he were a murdering pirate. Carstairs had retreated in amusement and
disbelief.

Mac lifted his head and found his wife staring with curiosity at an unwigged James.
Uh-oh.
The footman was looking both sheepish and determined, as if debating
whether to reveal the truth. The last thing Mac wanted right now was to
explain the indelicacies of the wretch’s parentage. Maybe he could sail
away and...

He wouldn’t be another Simmons, dodging responsibility. He was bigger than that.

Far bigger, he decided with a grim smirk. Draping
his arm over Bea’s shoulder, Mac diverted “James” by introducing him to
his other family. “Lord Carstairs, I believe Matthew here needs an
introduction, since his mother...” Mac raised his eyebrows in the
footman’s direction, certain he had the story right. The young man
nodded. “Anyway, it seems his mother is now married to the earl. Paula
Carstairs? Ring any bells?”

He’d be damned if he’d explain the nature of the
boy’s relationship to Bea in this crowd, but the lofty baron needed some
starch taken out of him.

“Paula? My aunt?
His mother
?” The baron gaped in astonishment; then, fully taking in Matthew’s livery, he almost staggered.

“Mac?” Bea whispered questioningly, looking for the entire story.

“Not now. There’s more to be done.” Taking a deep
breath and leading her away from the shouting crowd, he whispered in her
ear, “If I don’t find time to tell you later, I love you. I wanted to
tell you with roses in hand and a bed nearby, but I’m not making the
mistake of letting it go unsaid a moment longer. I love you so much it
tears me up when we’re apart. All right?”