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“I know. I know.”

“He’s heartless. A devil. Put nothing past him.”

“I—”

Noise from the right silenced them. A clanging, a scraping, and then sudden light blinded her and made the pain slice again. Wincing, Deirdre turned her face into the baroness’s shoulder and blinked until the brightness wasn’t so harsh to her eyes.

“Ah, good. We’re all awake.” The door slammed shut, and a lamp came to a rest on a table across the room.

No—an old desk. And the room didn’t have the earthen walls she had expected, but stone ones. There was even a space that must have once been a window, now filled with bricks. Not a cellar, then.

Pratt pulled the chair away from the desk. It, as opposed to everything else in here, looked solid and somewhat new. He sat and hooked an ankle over the opposite knee. The easy pose bore a marked contrast to the gun he kept pointed at them. “Now then. Ready to chat, my lady?”

Her ladyship lifted her chin and somehow managed to look regal even here, on the floor. “Oh, quite. This ought to be
interesting. Do tell me, my lord, why you think
you
have any claim to the Fire Eyes.”

The Fire Eyes—those she had certainly heard the baroness and Whitby discussing, though she hadn’t ever heard they were diamonds.

Pratt’s nasty little smile curved his lips. “I forget how little you know of family history. My father was Henry Rushworth’s dearest friend.”

The baroness’s face shifted, though only slightly. “He is the one who introduced my mother to Aunt Mary.”

“And by extension, your father—for which ol’ Hank never forgave him. Leastways, not until he came home from India in need of help in peddling a few jewels. Then he was all gracious words and generous offers to whomever would help him get rid of the things.” He motioned with the gun. “Even shares, he said. A third to my father, a third to his brother, a third for himself.”

Deirdre rubbed at her wrists. They were chafed and red and had obviously been bound. “But that makes no sense. Why would he promise away so much of his profit, when they were in
his
possession?”

Pratt narrowed his eyes on her. “Desperation, my lovely, can make one do stupid things.”

“And I suppose you have proof of this. Documentation. Evidence of a legal, binding agreement.” The baroness folded her hands in her lap. Mud marred the walking dress Deirdre had chosen for her that morning.

Pratt put his second foot down and leaned forward. “I have my father’s word.”

“Is it worth more than his son’s?”

At the fury that snapped through his eyes, Deirdre tried to squeak out a warning. When he lunged for the baroness, she tried to scrabble before her to provide a barrier. All she achieved for her efforts was another blow to her head that sent her reel
ing. The baroness still ended up trapped between Pratt and an old trunk. Her ladyship was bent backward at an angle that looked painful, his gun pressed to the hollow beneath her jaw.

“My father
died
for those gems! When Henry ran back to India like the coward he was, when he sent them to your mother, when he forced my father to renege on the deal he had struck with his buyer, he was
killed
. Murdered! If anyone has a right to them, it’s me.” He pushed her harder against the trunk. “I tried to do this the friendly way. All you had to do was marry me—then I could have searched for the jewels at Whitby Park at my leisure. So simple. But you’re as stubborn and haughty as the rest of your family.”

The baroness didn’t shake, didn’t quake, didn’t waver. She smiled. “You never would have found them. Not in a million years.”

“Oh, but
you
would have. You with your mother’s face—the major would have told you where he’d hidden them. And he did, didn’t he? He told you how he sent them to her . . . though I suspect he left out the part of how his own greed made him betray his brother and his oldest friend.”

“Greed and betrayal played a crucial role in his tale, actually.”

Deirdre pushed herself back up, cursing the weakness in her limbs, the pain in her skull. She needed to help—but what could she do? If she tried to knock him away, he could very well shoot the baroness.

Indeed, he pressed the gun harder into her throat. “And now he’s given them to
you
. Tried to sign them over to you, ignoring the first deal he’d struck. Forgetting his own brother, his friend, and the legacy
their
children ought to be receiving.”

Now the baroness’s eyes slid shut. “You’re the one. You’re the one who killed him.”

“Blood for blood—his for my father’s.”

Deirdre’s stomach twisted so hard she had to pull her knees
to her chest to try to ease the pain. If she needed any more proof that he’d never let them out of this alive . . .

The baroness strained against him. “They are just diamonds, Pratt! I am sorry your father lost his life over them, but why would you keep the cycle of violence turning?
Why
?”

“Why?” He laughed, and the room seemed to grow darker again. “Have you any
idea
how much those ‘just diamonds’ are worth, you idiot woman? My father didn’t die for the jewels, he died for what they would mean to us. Never again, in my lifetime or my grandchildren’s, would I have to worry about whether the rents will cover the expenses. If I can afford the necessary improvements. If I need to let a footman go. And that was with a
third
of their price. Now that Kitty and I are wed, we’ll have two-thirds between us—even if we give Rush his share.”

“No one in his right mind would spend that much on a couple of pieces of red carbon.”

Red? Deirdre eased her knees back down. Red diamonds? She’d never even heard of such things.

Pratt laughed again and pushed the baroness back harder against the trunk when she tried to twist away. “We can debate their sanity all you want, but I’ve a buyer already waiting, and I don’t intend to share my father’s fate by disappointing him. Your pieces of red carbon are destined to grace the throat of a Russian princess, my darling.”

He gave the baroness another push into the trunk but then stood up.

Perhaps it was the new bit of freedom that allowed her ladyship to breathe a laugh. “No. You’ll never find them unless I tell you where they are, which I will never do. That I promise you.”

“Oh. My darling. I think you will. Because it’s very simple. Talk, and you live. Don’t, and you die.”

“No matter what, I die. How stupid do you think I am, Pratt? You can’t let me go after this.”

His lips turned up into that evil little grin Deirdre so hated. “I didn’t say I’d let you go. I said I’d let you
live
.” He sent his gaze down her in a way that surely made her ladyship’s skin crawl.

“More incentive to keep my lips sealed.”

Deirdre winced. She was all for standing against him—but didn’t her ladyship realize that antagonizing him would only make things harder?

Pratt chuckled. “It’s going to be so pleasant, hearing you sing a different tune by the time we’re through. Deirdre.” He motioned for her to get up. With the gun.

On shaking legs, she obeyed. She tried to promise the baroness with her eyes that she would do nothing to compromise her. Prayed she understood, and that she herself would have the strength to keep that promise.

Pratt closed his fingers around her arm. “Now, as a gesture of good faith, I’m going to take your lovely little maid here for some refreshment for you. I’ll let her bring in a cot, a pillow, a blanket. You’re going to get a good night’s sleep and consider all you have to lose by withholding from me. And then in the morning, my darling lady, you’re going to talk. Are we understood?”

Given the pulsing in her ladyship’s jaw, she was clenching her teeth against whatever response she wanted to make. Deirdre loosed half a relieved exhale before Pratt jerked her toward the door.

Perhaps she could get away somehow. Find help.

He tossed her through the door and pulled it shut as she fell into the wall opposite. Then, before her addled mind could recover from the jarring, he pressed her to the damp stone. “Don’t get any heroic ideas, my lovely, if you even have such things in you.” The barrel of the gun touched her head, directly upon the wound.

She whimpered before she could stop herself, though it only made him chuckle. “This is why I took you along with her. She
will refuse me—I know that. But
you
—you’re in there with her, a fellow victim of my cruelty. Get her to confide. Open up. Tell
you
where the diamonds are.”

Deirdre pressed her lips shut against the
no
that threatened to spew out. Better he think she was still on his side, however reluctantly.

“Do that,” he murmured into her ear, “and I’ll see that your family is set up for all their miserable lives, and you’ll be free to enjoy it with them. Knowing, of course, that if you ever breathe a word of this to anyone, it all disappears.”

She squeezed her eyes shut. He thought her so low . . . and why wouldn’t he? She had proven herself to be little more than a worm, happy to sell her own soul for a few pound notes.

Not anymore—and maybe this was how she could redeem herself. Earn
his
trust, fully, so that she could help the baroness escape with her life. It could very well cost her her own if she were caught in it . . . but it was a risk she had to take. If she were killed, the earl would see her family was cared for. And Hiram—Hiram would be proud, knowing she had done what was right.

She swallowed and bent her mind into a silent prayer. “How much?”

“Hmm?”

“How much will you give me if I help you with this?”

He chuckled and eased off her. “I thought you’d come around. Let’s say . . . ten thousand pounds. That’ll be enough to see your family through, won’t it?”

Undoubtedly. But if he thought greed her sole motive . . . “No. I went ten
percent
. Of whatever it is you get from the Russians. Ten percent.”

“Five.”

“Fifteen.”

Laughing again in his throat, he spun her around and pressed
a kiss to her lips. It took all her willpower not to wipe it away. His eyes looked almost . . . affectionate as he tweaked her chin. “I knew I liked you. Pity you didn’t accept my first offer—we would have suited well.”

She lifted her chin. “Do I have my ten or don’t I?”

“Fine.” He took her hand and tugged her down the dim hallway. “But you’re going to have to make it quick. Whitby and Stafford will be out looking for her by now.”

Please, God, lead them here! Help them
find us
.

He stopped her at the end of the hall and motioned to a room on the right. Its windows were also bricked over, except for the transoms. But through them she could see only sky.

“You come no farther than this. I’ll leave the lamp in there for now, and you can take that tray of food and water. But warn her that this is the last of my generosity. If she doesn’t talk by morning, she’ll have nothing.” He motioned to a folded metal cot that looked as if it belonged in a military barracks. “Drag that back for her, if you want. Or if you’d rather watch her suffer through a night on the floor, tell her I changed my mind.”

Deirdre nodded, kept her face neutral. And prayed she could keep up the deception until Lord Whitby came pounding upon the door.

Twenty-Nine

J
ustin kept his hands in his pockets to hide how they’d fisted. His feet itched, his chest ached. He needed to be
doing
, not standing here in the drawing room with Brook’s mother looking down on him, all but asking with her painted eyes why they weren’t out there tracking down her baby.

They’d come back only to exchange the horses and get some water for themselves. But the constable was waiting for them and insisted on a search of Brook’s room before they went accusing another lord of kidnapping.

Justin paced the library while they went about it. He had wanted to follow them up, but it hadn’t seemed right. He almost wished he had, though, when Whitby returned, his face a thunderhead and eyes flashing lightning. The constable followed, flipping through a stack of what looked like letters.

Justin’s brows lifted. “Did you find something?”

“Lies,” Whitby all but spat.

The constable sent their host a hard look. “Close as you’ve grown, she’s still a young woman, my lord. And they all keep secrets from their fathers.”

Justin watched doubt flicker through Whitby’s eyes—
probably remembering all those things Brook hadn’t told him. But then he straightened his shoulders and lifted his chin. “Not this, though. She would not have hidden a romance from me—especially given that she has been in love with
him
this whole time.” He motioned toward Justin.

Justin’s throat went dry. “Would someone please enlighten me?”

The constable motioned with the stack of folded papers. “Love letters, it seems. Dated from the time she arrived through a couple weeks ago. My French is rusty, but they seem to be from an actor. Someone she knew in Monaco. They speak of running off together.”