Duke Herheart Final (29 page)

“You must not continue to say that out loud. She will think I am assuming too much.”

“You are assuming too much. You should ask her again,” Cassandra declared.

The blue velvet ring box he slipped from his jacket and handed Cassandra contained a brilliant emerald cut emerald. The tiny diamonds gracing the delicate band winked in the light of his study. “Oh Michael, it is stunning. Where did you get this and when are you going to do it?”

“I had it made for her, nothing else would do. It seems I was determined for her to have an emerald. Soon. Soon, Cassie.”

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Duke of Her Dreams – Olivia Ritch

Chapter Twenty

She was not running this time, just going for a walk alone in her breeches so no one would bother her. She needed to think, to plan, to gather her flimsy courage when it came time to tell Michael she was leaving and to scrape the bottom of the barrel by asking him for the money for the passage. That would be a regret - that she had never repaid him - but in her heart, she knew he wouldn’t let her anyway.

Suddenly, the feeling of not being alone crept up her neck. Too late, before she could react, everything went black.

* * * *

Michael woke with thoughts of his dreamy duchess. Her muscled thighs that rode him like he rode his prized Fury. Never again would he want alabaster skin, bronze was his preference. At the thought of Kathryn astride his thighs, Michael’s staff rose to attention.

Michael fondly imagined his fiery Kathryn running through his fields. While he knew a proper Duchess would never be able to run in London, at Hawthorne…she would run and race him until her belly was swollen with their child. Then after her confinements, she would run again and regain all of her fluid muscles. The thought of his Duchess huge with the children they would have together warmed him.

This was his first full day as the Duke of Asterleigh and also the day Michael would make Kathryn his Duchess in truth. He was certain of it, but the empty dining room this morning gave Michael the most frightening sense of
déjà vous
.

When Hallthorpe reported what Michael had feared, that Kathryn was indeed gone, his anger was quickly dispelled by the dawning horror that she was in danger. Michael had never really believed Kathryn’s tale of time travel. He had not only treated her condescendingly, but actively fought any of her efforts to explain how she had been from another time or place. He could have so easily just trusted her; he had not.

But she had promised,
promised
not to leave him again like before and Michael wondered if Kathryn had lied or not. Maybe she had tried to tell him and he had not listened. So she had left, gone home, where he could not follow. Those fateful thoughts told him the truth he had always denied. She was
not
from his time. She was going forward, away from him where his wealth and power held no sway. Blackness threatened.

“Your Grace?”

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“Yes, Thorpe?”

“Thrasher has something to report.”

“Send him in.” Michael said resignedly. He did not think that he could just head down to the docks and ask every ship’s captain if they had a stowaway. Thinking of this outlandish idea…he did have enough staff…

“Come, Thrasher. What is it?”

“Well, your grace, it’s…well Miss Primble told me as how Miss Ragland never called for her last night and she was puzzled. We were talking about it and it reminded me I had thought I had seen her walking in the garden. She didn’t have a bag with her and she was dressed in her lad clothes. She was just walking but then she never came back in. It made me think hard this morning when Ellie…uhh…Miss Primble said she hadn’t come in.”

“What are you suggesting?” Michael was beginning to experience another fear altogether, one he had not considered in all of the agony of her running away. “That she was just walking and not running away?”

“Yes, that maybe she didn’t go off on her own.”

Oh God, Kathryn!

* * * *

“I heard them blokes say they ‘as looking for a lad…a lost stable lad.” The tough Harold had hired reported that the Asterleigh household no knew their precious little faux Duchess was missing.

“Motley, you’re a genius.”
Flatter the fool.
They are obviously looking for a lady dressed as a stable lad and as we have her that means they will be coming for her,” Harold gloated to his henchman.

Kathryn woke with her head groggy. It did not feel or smell like home or like any place of Michael’s either. This place smelled dank and stale like an old bar after a long weekend and she gagged at the putrid odor that wafted in through the broken window above her head.

“Well, sleepy faux Duchess...” He looked like Michael but his voice was weaker, slurrier…and when her eyes adjusted to the slip of light streaming in she saw he was not anything like Michael. Where Michael’s face was angular with that broad forehead and slightly chiseled jaw, this one had saggy jowls. Too much brandy each night. His legs were long but not lean. Instead of ripples, there were bulges and his stomach not flat and hard but slightly flopped over his waistband. Thanks to the bands holding her wrists, she knew he was certainly not a welcoming party sent by Michael.

“You’re awake, Duchess?”

“Who are you and why are you calling me Duchess?” The strangely 176

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familiar man jeered at her.

“Ah yes, I am also Stafford…Harold. Because you are to be the Duchess...oh, excuse me…
were
to be the Duchess. When Michael comes to save you, he will die and thus you will not become a Duchess. We will have no use for you but those slavers in the harbor will…you will fetch them a pretty penny and they will pay me well for you. Even if you are ruined. Your odd looks and sassy tongue will make you a favorite in some foreigner’s boudoir.”

Though she felt a cold, chilling fear, Kathryn forced herself to act calm. “I am not a Duchess. I’m an American and am leaving here.

Neither you nor anyone named Michael will have any use for me.”

“Michael has every use for you. He is right now hunting all over London for you.

You must be a feisty little whore to bring him to heel...or maybe you are with child and his demmed honor is forcing him. For some reason, he wants you back.” Harold licked his lips and she forced herself not to react to the suggestion.

“I know no one here, certainly no one who would be seeking me, and I ask you nicely to release me so I can go home,” Kathryn declared in her most authoritative voice. It had not even quavered.

“No. You are my bait. You see, Michael has something I want. If you had not been so demmed difficult I would have had you dead days ago and he would not have become the Duke. I would be Duke of Asterleigh but today, when he finds you, he will also meet his fate and I will become the Duke.”

The full weight of his words and who this man was sunk in on Kathryn. Kathryn’s vast romance novel collection boasted many stories of jealous heirs trying to kill or trick rightful Dukes and Earls out of their fortunes and titles. But actually hearing Harold Stafford talk so callously about killing her and then Michael and thinking he could then just step into the Dukedom…

“You’ll be wanting some bread. You’ve got a long day.” Stafford released her wrists so that she could eat. As he continued pontificating, he did not think to re-bind her. “We’re setting the trap for Michael and you’ll be needing all your strength to play along.” Kathryn had not read all those novels for nothing. Thankfully, she knew that there was always an escape route in these waterfront dives and all she had to do was find it and get away from this man and the other gnarly one called Motley. How appropriate!

“Lord Stafford, may I call you that?”

“Yes,
Kitten
. May I call you that?” he slurred more, spittle rising on 177

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his lips.

“If you wish.” She gagged, the bile coming fast to her throat.

Kathryn swallowed and closed her eyes.

“I will call you Kitten because that is what you are…the kitten that lures Tom, then I will be the dog that devours you both. In the meantime, you will be
my
Kitten.”

She smelled the stale brandy on his breath and hoped he was not as lucid as she was. If Kathryn could keep Harold talking, learn his plan, then she had a chance to foil it. But, she was no novel heroine. She was regular Kathryn Ragland from Birmingham, Alabama 2010, woman’s counselor, part-time road racer, all around nice girl. She did have
one
skill. She knew how to talk to people. That might be just the thing for her in this situation. “So what are your plans for me?”

“So eager—I like that,” he purred grossly.

“You see, Michael will hunt you down wherever you are. I just have to put you in a place where he will meet with a most unfortunate accident. Here in this warehouse…”

“My Lord, Stafford. I am still unsure about whom you are speaking.

Your plan is based on someone named Michael rescuing me. I don’t…”

“Don’t think I didn’t see you together. You, wearing men’s breeches, the two of you running like children, and you riding astride.

You, my dear are a veritable hoyden. I know why he found you so irresistible. Even though he spent all those years in the army, women all over the continent, no one was ever good enough for him. No one. You however did something no woman had ever done, held his interest. Now he plans to make you his Duchess and we can’t have that. No heirs. That unfortunate problem with the first Catherine
my Catherine
and his Father’s death brought me closer than I expected. Then…” Volume increasing as he spat more and more vilely at her, his eyes wild, then he whirled on her and regained his composure, just like that.

“But he will follow you here and he will die trying to save you. I allowed enough of the dock hands and others about see us drag you into the building so that when he comes asking, someone will tell him. You’ll be long gone but the building will be burning and he will come in to save you. He will hunt for you until he is overcome and die in the inferno. A brilliant plan if I may say so myself.”

Kathryn couldn’t breathe. She needed to think and the only thing she knew for absolute certain what that she had to get away and warn Michael away from this building. Stafford was droning on extolling the virtues of his evil and he seemed distracted. Kathryn thought for a fleeting moment that she might even be able to take him but then what of 178

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Motley? And were there others?

No, this was one time when she would outrun them. She knew she could run past them long enough to seek shelter with someone in the outside world. No matter how squalid the buildings, there would be someone to whom she could turn. Kathryn knew she could not run in her slippers but was loathe leaving them behind. The ones Michael had given her…one of the gifts from him that she truly felt entitled to keep when she left him. The other, her guinea she would never part with tucked safely into the slit pocket of her skirt.

“Well my dear, you can see how ingenuously I’ve constructed my plot. There is no use for you to waste either my time or yours with a flimsy escape attempt.” The moment Harold tugged his ill-fitting waistcoat at his middle, Harold took his eyes from Kathryn and she knew it was time. Having removed her left shoe in preparation of fleeing, she sucked in a deep breath and kicked her right foot as hard as she could into Stafford’s groin. He crumpled in a hysterical fit of coughing and writhing. She pushed past him and discarded her remaining slipper.

No one was at the top of the short staircase and she flew down using the element of surprise to breeze past a dozing Motley. By the time he stirred, the door had banged behind her. Out on the cobbled street, Kathryn chose a path taking her away from the water. Based on Harold Stafford’s prediction that she would be sold to slavers, she thought to avoid handing herself over to them just after gaining her freedom. The water was not the direction to turn so she chose the closest lane and put on the speed she would need to keep them far behind. Running at breakneck pace up narrow streets, ignoring the growing soreness of her heels and the disgusting stickiness and grime clinging to her, Kathryn detected a faint smell of stale ale and food signaling a tavern of sorts in the distance. Setting her senses in the lead and her legs and lungs on autopilot, she ploughed through the dingy streets.

The almost dark night was not pierced by streetlight, as was the case she had observed in the fashionable areas. Everywhere the shadows played and teased her frazzled nerves. As the tavern came in to view, she took one glance behind her to see if anyone had followed her and ran straight into a…man.

* * * *

Michael stepped from the shadows in front of Kathryn as she turned her head and she plunged headlong into his arms. Michael wrapped his arms around her back pressing her face to his cravat. Her chest heaving from exertion, her breath choking as she registered the shock.

His face in her disheveled hair, Michael thought it had only traces of 179

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the glorious smell he remembered. Instead, her clothes and hair smelled of mildew and sweat and dirty man.
If that bastard had hurt her
. Her breathing slowed and he eased his hold on her just enough for Kathryn to look up into his face. He watched the numbing fear in her eyes begin to subside and he smiled down at her. Tears formed and began flowing freely down her face filling his heart, and then he heard his name in her muffled sobs. He melted at her outpouring of emotion.

She was in his arms again and he would never let her go.

“Kathryn, my love, you are safe. Please stop crying. Minton is going to be sore at you for ruining my cravat.” He held her loosely as she gathered her wits. She found the handkerchief he had slipped into her hand some time earlier and she began cleaning her face. When she took a step back, he released her.

“Michael, I am so relieved…you are not finding me… in an abandoned building.” Her breathing was labored. “A man… helped Harold Stafford kidnap me… and they held me for you to find me. He planned to trick you…and catch you… in the burning building.” He thought it had been a challenge for her to get that entire speech out with her heart racing and not yet having caught her breath.