Shameless (11 page)

“Florimond, no!”

The edge of the pond was now close; it was a matter of seconds only until the dog reached it. He was flying, his little paws barely touching the ground. The ducks, ignoring Florimond’s high-pitched threats, swam placidly toward the far bank. Florimond launched himself triumphantly toward the water . . .

And Beth’s foot came down solidly on the end of the leash.

“Florimond! Stop!”

This time he did stop, brought down in midleap by the sudden restraint of the leash. His high-pitched yelps cut off abruptly as he landed with transparent surprise on all fours, then fought to be free. Beth snatched the leash from beneath her foot, hanging on tightly to the leather strap until she reached the miscreant himself. He was practically hopping up and down with displeasure as she scooped him up with a sigh of relief.

“Thank goodness,” she said, holding him tight in her arms while Florimond yearned after the ducks and squirmed to be free. “What were you
thinking
? Do you
want
another bath?”

Florimond paid no attention. He was still busily engaged in hurling threats and abuse at the ducks when a man spoke behind her.

“Be you Lady Elizabeth Banning?”

“Yes,” Beth replied automatically, and was just turning to see who had so addressed her when something slammed hard into the side of her head. For the briefest of moments she saw stars. Then the world went black, and she crumpled soundlessly toward the ground.

I
T WAS THE MAID
who first alerted Neil to the fact that his plan had gone awry. Clutching Lady Elizabeth’s hat, which she had finally managed to retrieve, the woman had hurried past the willows and down the slope and thus out of his sight in pursuit of her mistress. Now that the dog had been blessedly silenced, the morning’s peace had been restored. Neil strolled into the middle of the path—the better for Lady Elizabeth to spot him when she resumed her morning’s exercise—folded his arms over his chest, and waited with less tension than he had felt in days.

That is, until the maid’s raised voice reached his ears.

“Miss Beth! Miss Beth!” The distress in the woman’s voice was impossible to mistake. “Lawks, Miss Beth, where be you? Miss Beth!”

Neil frowned. His arms dropped to his sides. He moved, walking toward the pond, where the maid still called.

“Miss Beth! Miss Beth!”

Emerging on the other side of the willow stand, looking down the slope toward the pond, he saw the maid, her mistress’s hat still
clutched to her breast, running around like a madwoman, charting a rough zigzag course from the edge of the pond to every tree, bush, and tuft of ornamental grass in the vicinity that was large enough to possibly serve as concealment for a person.

What the hell. . . ?

“Are you hiding, Miss Beth? ’Tis not a funny game, if that’s what you would be at. Miss Beth!”

In general, Neil was loath to let himself be seen, but in this particular case he realized it did not particularly matter: Richmond would know who he was dealing with as soon as he received Neil’s message advising him of his sister-in-law’s abduction.

Which should have been taking place just about now. Except he couldn’t see the girl.

Anywhere.

“What’s to do?” he asked, putting himself in the maid’s path. He was unshaven—his razor was with his other belongings in the rented rooms he had been forced to abandon in Paris, and he had not cared to waste the few coins it would have cost him to acquire another—and his clothing was not in the best of conditions, which was not surprising considering that he had only a single change of apparel, acquired in a theft from a whorehouse floor while its owner was happily otherwise occupied, which had alternated with his own clothes since the eventful night a fortnight previously when an assassin had first tried to do away with him in his bed. But he had been the recipient of enough female attention over the years to know that he was generally accounted a very well-looking man indeed, and despite his current state the maid proved no exception. She stopped—she had no choice as he placed himself directly in front of her—and her eyes widened a little on his face. Then she gave him a lightning-fast once-over. Fortunately, there still remained enough of the gentleman in his speech and manner that her instinctive alarm at being addressed by a male stranger in a public place was almost instantly allayed.

“Oh, sir, ’tis my mistress,” she gasped in obvious distress. She was flushed and sweating, and her eyes darted frantically around in search
of the girl even as she spoke. “She has—she has disappeared, like. It was the dog, see, and . . . and her hat, and . . . and then she ran toward the pond and . . . Oh, sir, what am I to do? She is gone!”

As a result of this disjointed speech, Neil realized that he had been in the right of it. Except for himself and the maid, there was not a soul in sight. No flame-haired chit. No annoyingly loud dog. Only an oblivious cow grazing in its ornamental pasture and, bowling away toward the gate, a closed black carriage.

“Be silent,” he said sharply to the maid, who was beginning to wail. As the woman, apparently scared into obedience, swallowed the sound with a gulp, he turned and walked swiftly toward the pond. A cold prickle of unease raced down his spine. Could Lady Elizabeth have fallen in? Was she even now drowning? Without so much as a ripple on the surface of the water, or a sound?

If not, where else could she be?

“Miss Beth swims like a fish.” The maid, sniveling now, had followed him and appeared to have divined his thoughts as he stood scanning the murky surface. “Oh, sir, wherever can she be?”

He glanced back at her to find that she was gazing up at him as if she expected him to take charge and find her mistress for her. Again he looked around, taking in every detail of the verdant landscape, with no more success than before. To all appearances, Lady Elizabeth was indeed gone without a trace, and the dog with her.

Impossible
.

“Lady Elizabeth!” His voice was far louder than the maid’s, much deeper and far more authoritative. It was, in fact, the voice of a man who was accustomed to being instantly obeyed. In this case, it also had the virtue of being known to the one for whose ears it was intended. He had no doubt of an answer—if she was in any condition to make one.

Which she almost certainly had to be. What harm could she have come to in the few minutes she was out of his sight?

The only response came from the ducks: with a great flapping of wings, they took to the sky again, careening over the treetops and out of sight.

After that, silence reigned. Charged silence that was disturbed only
by the pant of the maid’s breathing and the rustling of the soft spring breeze through the treetops.

“Lady Elizabeth! Can you hear me?”

It occurred to him, too late, that by calling out to “Lady Elizabeth” he revealed to the maid that he knew exactly who her mistress was. Not that it mattered, given what he intended, or rather had intended, but caution was as much a part of his nature now as distrust, and he felt the breach of his customary anonymity like a physical pang. However, the maid didn’t appear to notice anything amiss. Her face was red as a cock’s comb now, and her mouth trembled as her head swung from side to side in a futile visual sweep of the little bowl of ground in which they stood.

“Could she have started for home without you?” Neil asked, without any real expectation that the lady had done so. If that had been the case, she would still be within sight, which she emphatically was not. In any case, to head for home without her maid, or her hat, for that matter, seemed senseless, and whatever else she might be, Lady Elizabeth had certainly struck him as a young woman of sense. Still, he frowned down the road that led past the pond toward the gate—and was just in time to watch as the door of the rapidly retreating carriage swung open. A bundle of some sort hit the ground. Inside the carriage, he caught a blur of rapid movement, a flash of vivid red and soft yellow, before the door was once again firmly closed.

For a brace of seconds he simply stared as his mind processed what he had seen. In the meantime, the carriage bowled through the tall stone gates and turned left onto the busy street beyond.

The red had been the same shade as Lady Elizabeth’s hair. The yellow had been the bright hue of her dress. And the bundle—even as he looked after the carriage, the bundle moved, shook and shed its mantle of gray to reveal a small tan animal—had been the dog.

“Florimond,” the maid breathed, sealing the animal’s identity for him.

Ye Gods, there was no mistake: for some unknown reason, Lady Elizabeth was inside the carriage.

Even as realization crystallized, he broke into a run, heading for his horse, cursing himself for having left it so far away.

“Sir!” the maid screeched piteously after him. “Sir, please, what shall I do?”

He had forgotten all about her. The dog, hearing her voice, turned its head in her direction, then started trotting their way, apparently none the worse for its experience.

“Wait here,” he yelled over his shoulder, it being no part of his plan to have a rescue launched before he could secure the lady for himself. “She will undoubtedly return.”

If the maid replied, Neil didn’t hear it. He was already topping the slight rise that constituted the horizon at that particular spot and felt no need to respond. His thoughts were in turmoil even as his boots tore up the sod.

The more he replayed the scene in his mind, the more convinced he became that Lady Elizabeth was in that closed carriage, which presented him with two possibilities: either she had entered the conveyance of her own free will, or she had been forced inside. He really knew very little of the lady, of course, but just three days before she had been breaking off an engagement in the most final of manners. It seemed unlikely, therefore, that what he had just witnessed had been a clandestine elopement. The flash of movement he had glimpsed in the carriage had suggested to him there had been some sort of struggle going on inside. And the dog had been wrapped in something, thrown out, and abandoned. Given those facts, then, the most likely explanation for her presence in that carriage was an abduction.

But abducting her was
his
plan, and he had not been involved in any way, shape, or form.

Clearly, someone else had beaten him to the punch. His gut burned at the thought.

The question was, who? And why?

Pondering the possibilities was a waste of time. He knew too little about her life to even begin to speculate. All he knew was that his best hope of survival had just been rudely snatched out of his reach, and he meant to do his possible to get her back again.

W
ITH A PALE CRESCENT MOON
floating high above the tallest of its many turrets, Trelawney Castle looked as starkly forbidding as any medieval fortress. Made of age-darkened stone, built perhaps three centuries previously, it was more visible than usual on this clear night because of the faint light glowing through its dozens of narrow, slitted windows. Isolated on a rocky island about a half mile off Tynemouth in the North Sea, the castle was a relic of an earlier time when landowners held on to their properties by might of arms. Besides the protection afforded by the expanse of water separating it from the mainland, it was surrounded on all sides by an immense stone wall complete with ramparts. Its location alone should have meant that visitors were few and far between. On this night, however, a ferry of sorts had been set up and the oarsmen had clearly been busy. Carriages climbed the winding road from the ferry landing up to the castle’s massive gates, which were open, and inside the walls the courtyard teemed with activity as the carriages stopped, disgorged their passengers, and
returned to the ferry for more. To a man—and they were all men—the guests who clambered down from the carriages hastened inside as soon as they arrived so as not to miss a moment of the promised entertainment. By this time—shortly before eleven p.m.—new arrivals had slowed to a trickle. Only a few passengers were gathered on the mainland dock to await the return of the ferry. A solitary horse and rider trotted along the narrow, rutted road, silvered now by moonlight, that led down to the ferry: a latecomer intent on joining the festivities, Neil had little doubt. In fact, unless he was much mistaken, he had seen the fellow before. The well-padded shape of him, plus the awkward way he bobbed in the saddle, were well-nigh unmistakable.