Waking Up With a Rake (37 page)

Dr. Pinkerton stood in the parlor doorway with a pistol leveled at Rhys’s midsection.

“Amanda’s a good girl,” Pinkerton said. “She knows how to follow directions—a quality I suspect your wife is sadly lacking. Otherwise she’d be safe at Warrington House.”

“Father,” Amanda said softly. “Perhaps we should let her go.”

“Don’t be ridiculous,” Pinkerton snapped. “Have you forgotten your mother? Symon’s daughter deserves her fate.” Amanda turned away from them, head bent.

Good
God, what have they done to her?
Rhys’s gut lurched.

“Let her rot down there,” Pinkerton said with vehemence.

Down
there. Surely not in the underbelly of this ancient keep
. The sick feeling in his belly told Rhys that was exactly where Olivia was.

“Don’t worry, Warrington,” Dr. Pinkerton said. “You’ll be joining her before you know it.”

“I think not,
monsieur le doctor
.”

Babette came barreling down the hall and bashed Pinkerton on the back of the head with a very fashionable vase patterned after a Grecian urn. The doctor crumpled to the floor and Rhys dove for his pistol. Amanda leaped upon Rhys’s back to defend her father, but Babette yanked her off.

“Did I not tell you I could help?” Babette said.

Rhys rose with the pistol in his hand. “I’ll never doubt you again.”

“And well you should not. Can you shoot a woman, my lord?”

Rhys glanced at Amanda, whose face went suddenly ashen. “No.”

“I can,” Babette said as she eased the gun from his grip. “Tell Lord Rhys where to find my mistress.”

Words spewed out of Amanda’s mouth so quickly, Rhys could barely follow her garbled directions to the
souterraine
beneath the keep.

“And you, mademoiselle,” Babette pointed the barrel at Miss Pinkerton, “if you would be so kind as to truss up your papa with the drapery ties, I will not need to shoot you,
non
?”

***

When Rhys reached the heavy oak door leading off the kitchen, he heard a sound coming from the
souterraine
beneath him, a keening wail, muffled but unmistakable. Terror-filled, the screams sounded as if they came from a cornered animal instead of a person.

“Olivia!”

Rhys felt as if an anvil had been dropped on his chest. He flew down the stairs two and three at a time, a killing rage roaring in his veins. Pinkerton was going to pay, and pay dearly.

“I’m coming,” he bellowed.

The keening stopped and she began shrieking his name.

A second door at the first landing was locked, but he put a shoulder to it and heaved. It gave a little, but still held. He took a run at it and the door splintered open. He tumbled down a few steps.

The bottom of the stairs disappeared into brown water. “Rhys, I’m here,” she yelped, sounding more human now.

He plunged into the murk calling her name. It was so dim Rhys couldn’t see her at first, but there she was, chained to the wall with water swirling over her breasts.

“Quick! The sluice gate,” she said. “It’s just in that corner.”

Rhys found the lever and heaved against it. “I can’t budge it. The pressure of the water’s too great.”

“Try the other gate.” She flailed her free hand at the submerged portal on the other side of the room. “It’ll drain out.”

The second lever broke off when he tried to force it to move. Panic gripped his heart in an icy hand and squeezed.

He slogged through the water to her, catching her in his arms. Her skin was pebbled with cold, and her teeth chattered near his ear.

“I can’t get free,” she stammered.

He grabbed up a length of the chain and pulled with every ounce of strength in him. He’d hoped the metal had lost its grip on the stone over the years, but it held fast.

“Olivia—” He couldn’t go on. He couldn’t lose her like this.

Calm seemed to descend on her like a shroud and she stopped trembling. “Go, Rhys; there’s nothing you can do. You can’t stop the water.”

“I won’t leave you.”

A tear slid down her cheek. “Only the key will free me and Dr. Pinkerton took it.”

Rhys wanted to tear Pinkerton apart with his bare hands. Every moment, the water inched higher up her body. If he left her, she might be gone by the time he returned. If he didn’t leave, she’d drown before his eyes.

He hugged her fiercely.

“I’ll come back for you. I promise,” he said. “Hold on.”

He knifed his way through the water to the staircase, then ran up it without looking back. If he allowed himself even one more glimpse of her, he knew he wouldn’t be able to leave.

Rhys bolted up the stairs and back to the parlor. Babette had Dr. Pinkerton trussed up like pork loin, and Amanda was sniveling in the corner.

“The key,” he panted. “We need the key now and Pinkerton has it.”

The doctor was still insensible, and a sizeable lump bulged on the back of his skull. Rhys knelt and rifled through the man’s pockets, praying that he still had the key on him. If he’d squirreled it away somewhere, Rhys would never find it in time.

***

The sound of stone grating on stone made Olivia stop tugging at her wrist. On the wall above the gate, tiny fissures appeared, more water spurting through them.

A hard knot at the back of her throat threatened to choke her. Olivia forced herself to breath slowly. Water lapped at her chin.

She grasped the chain with her free hand and pulled herself up it. Panic clawed her insides.

“Don’t fight, Olivia…drowning is quite painless if one doesn’t resist.”
Dr. Pinkerton’s words swirled seductively in her brain.

Eventually the water would meet the mold-darkened ceiling. When the time came, would she stop struggling and let the water take her? The doorway to eternity was a dark portal. Though she trusted her soul to God in the next world, her body wanted to go on living in this one. Rhys promised to come back. She’d do everything she could to still be here when he did. She hitched herself up the chain another half a foot.

Odd sounds, a popping and creaking noise, pricked her ears. Hundreds of tiny pieces of stone spewed out of cracks where more water rushed in. The heavy timber that ran the length of the ceiling bowed and slipped out of its iron casing on one end. It fell drunkenly into the water with a monumental splash.

Olivia’s grip on the wet chain failed, and she slipped beneath the surface. The old tower groaned like a wounded boar, the sound amplified and distorted by the rising flood.

The ancient keep had been designed to allow water to pass in and out, but after standing for centuries, it was not built to withstand being filled with water. Olivia realized with a start that she might not have time to drown. The keep threatened to tumble down on top of her. She clawed her way up the chain again but couldn’t get a firm enough grip to reach the surface.

She thrashed about, fighting against the urge to inhale, tugging frantically at her heavy iron tether. Her chest screamed for air. Just as she was ready to give up, she felt a pair of arms around her.

Rhys!
His lips covered her mouth, forcing a blast of air into her. Then he disappeared, kicking to the surface to catch another breath for both of them.

He was back again in a blink with another gulp of air. Then he went to work on the manacle. She felt a pinch and then the iron fell from her wrist. She flailed upward.

When she broke the surface, she gasped for air. Then she felt herself being borne along by Rhys’s strong arms. The ceiling was so close she could reach up and run her fingertips over the blackened wood. Had other tortured souls died gazing at that soot-covered sky?

Rhys carried her dripping up to the top few stairs that weren’t covered by water. She let her head loll onto his chest, comforted by the hammering of his heart.

“We’ve got to get out of here now,” he shouted as they sped through the ancient keep back to the parlor. As they neared the front door, Babette and Amanda were dragging Dr. Pinkerton through the exit.

“I can walk,” Olivia said, realizing they’d go quicker if Rhys wasn’t forced to carry her. He merely gripped her tighter and began to run. Behind them, she heard the growl of grating stone as water pummeled the keep’s foundation.

They shot into the late afternoon sunshine, putting as much distance between them and the Pinkertons’ home as they could.

Rhys stopped when they reached the edge of the docks, and turned back. He lowered Olivia to stand on her own feet but kept his arms circled round her. As they watched, the tower canted forward. Then with a roar of tumbling stones, the keep crumpled slowly, like an old man falling first to his knees then forward on his face.

“I hope to God no one was in there,” she whispered.

“There wasn’t,” Rhys said. “Thanks to a quick-thinking lady’s maid who definitely needs an elevation of station.”

Babette had already commandeered the man responsible for Wapping security and was ordering him to summon the magistrate for Dr. Pinkerton’s arrest.

Rhys hugged Olivia tighter. “It’s over, love,” he whispered in her ear. “I won’t let anyone harm you ever again.”

“Even you? Mr. Alcock told me you intended to be my ruin.”

“Even me.” He brought her hands to his lips. “My motives were execrable, but instead of me ruining you, you were the making of me. The rake is dead. Only the man is left, if you’ll still have him.”

She joined her hands behind his neck and smiled up at him. “I wouldn’t know how to say no to you.”

“And I don’t intend to give you a chance to start.”

The dock was an upset beehive of men running and shouting and clamoring over the rubble of the tower. But everything around them faded when Rhys bent to claim her mouth with a kiss.

“But I don’t want you to change completely, Rhys. I fell in love with the rake, you know,” she said, hugging him tightly. “And I want to wake up with him every day for the rest of my life.”

“You may live to regret that.”

She grinned up at him. “Want to bet?”

Epilogue

Six
months
later

Rhys wanted Olivia to think he was reading, but actually, he was merely turning pages from time to time. She was so lovely by firelight and the soft glow of his reading lamp, how could he not ignore
Ivanhoe
so he could ogle his very pregnant wife?

When they set up their own household on a quiet but respectable street, Rhys knew they weren’t destined to become the most fashionable couple in London. They only attended parties thrown by people whose good opinion they truly admired. They refused to restrict their guest lists to members of the ton. He and Olivia wouldn’t win any prizes for social correctness, but they were undoubtedly the happiest couple of his acquaintance.

“
Pardonnez-moi.
” Babette breezed into the comfortable parlor. Now that she was Olivia’s companion instead of her maid, Babette was free to wear whatever she liked. Her link to the courtesan in her past showed in the exquisite line of her gown.

“This note, it is just arrived for you, Lord Rhys. Good evening, my lady.”

He accepted the missive and broke the seal as Babette glided from the room. Rhys scanned the bottom of the note and frowned at the name of the sender. His gut churned.

“What is it?” Olivia asked.

“A note from Lieutenant Duffy’s widow.” He refolded it and stuffed it into his pocket.

“Oh. What does it say?”

Nothing he wanted to think about, he was certain. Duffy’s fate hadn’t crossed his mind in months, and he was happy that way. The last thing he needed was a reminder of Maubeuge. In the confusion of rescuing Olivia from Dr. Pinkerton, Rhys had missed the chance to find Sergeant Leatherby and secure the testimony that would have cleared him in the eyes of the world.

The following months were filled with seeing the doctor tried and convicted of murdering Mr. Weinschmidt. Olivia hadn’t wanted to implicate Miss Pinkerton in her abduction and attempted murder, since Amanda didn’t have the whole truth of what had happened to her mother. Instead, Miss Pinkerton retired to Kent to live with her father’s elderly aunt.

Clearing his name in public didn’t seem as important to Rhys now that he was privately reconciled to his family. As long as he had Olivia, he didn’t want for anything else.

But he didn’t need a reminder of the failure at Maubeuge for which Sergeant Leatherby couldn’t exonerate him—Lieutenant Duffy’s lingering death.

“I’m sure the note is of no import,” he lied.

“Of course it is.” Olivia rose from her cushiony wing chair and held out a hand in silent demand.

With a snort, he pulled the letter from his pocket and laid it across her palm. She unfolded the note and read it. Then a hand lifted to her heart, and she sank back into her chair.