Gareth: Lord of Rakes (33 page)

“I’m here, Crabbie. Take me to Tolliver, and fetch the medicinals, please.” Years of dealing with Astrid’s scraped knees and the stableboys’ mashed toes had taught Felicity the necessity of calm in medical emergencies, and then Crabbie’s words sank in: Young Tolliver is come back
without
Miss
Astrid
.

When they got to the kitchen, Tolliver ceased bellowing at Mr. Crabble and tried to stand. He was a strapping young fellow, one of the extra staff Gareth had insisted on, but the back of his livery was streaked with blood. Felicity put a hand on his shoulder and pushed him into his seat.

“You are injured, Tolliver,” she said. “You must sit so we may tend to you.” Crabbie appeared with the medicinal stores, then busied herself with heating water to clean the wound, while Felicity gently parted the hair at the back of Tolliver’s head. The man had nigh split his skull. The skin was broken and bleeding sluggishly, and a considerable goose egg was fast rising.

“Mr. Crabble, if we have ice, we’ll be needing some crushed in a towel. If not, have one of the footmen fetch it from the tavern. Tolliver, you have quite a bump on your head, but I don’t think you’ll need more than a few tiny stitches. Now, how is it my sister did not accompany you home?”

Tolliver, apparently not knowing how to interrupt his betters, almost yelled, so relieved was he to have the floor.

“That’s what I was trying to tell Crabble, here! They done took Miss Astrid, Miss Worthington. Two fellows came up behind me and conked me noggin, whilst two other fellows came aside Miss Astrid, each took her by an arm, and they hustled her into a coach in no time a’tall. You must summon the watch, Miss Worthington, and pray God do it now or the marquess will plant me for sure.”

Felicity backed away from the table, the bloody rag dangling from her hand.

“She’s going t’ faint,” Tolliver intoned ominously.

“I am not going to faint,” Felicity said, even as she felt light-headed and sick to think Astrid had been abducted.

Oh, God… This was exactly what Gareth had feared might happen.

“Miss, you must summon the authorities,” Crabble insisted, laying a steadying hand on Felicity’s arm. “The sooner we get help, the sooner we’re likely to find Miss Astrid, safe and sound.”

Crabble was right, of course… they needed help. They needed every bit of help she could raise on both sides of heaven.

“Hitch up the pony cart,” she told Crabble. “Send another footman to raise the watch. Have him meet me at Heathgate’s house. Tolliver, I hate to ask it of you, but you will have to follow as well when Crabbie has you sewn up. I’ll need a groom to accompany me to that same destination. I’m going to fetch the marquess.”

That brought a collective sigh of relief from the staff, but Felicity couldn’t share their optimism. What if the marquess were not at home? What if he were not at home
to
her
? What if he received her only to pat her on the hand and tell her to summon the watch, for Astrid’s mischief was no concern of his?

A thousand fears flitted through Felicity’s mind, each worse than the last, before she found herself pacing Gareth’s elegant yellow parlor. Hughes was not on duty, for the butler who showed her in had simply bowed and gone to see if the marquess were at home.

“Tell him…” She couldn’t find the words, could hardly find a steady breath. “Tell him to come, please.”

The man bowed again. He didn’t have Hughes’s intimidating formality, or Hughes’s great age to commend him, but he looked at Felicity with polite sympathy before going to fetch his master—if his master deigned to be fetched.

***

The day had been so pretty, as benevolent a summer day as London offered, and on the strength of that omen, Gareth had saddled up his horse and ridden off toward the Worthington residence.

He’d missed Felicity, missed her until his heart was crowded with it, his mind preoccupied with it, and his soul overflowing with it.

With the passage of time, he’d hoped to become more secure in his conclusion that letting Felicity go had been the honorable thing, the best thing to do for her. He’d made that decision with the conviction that he’d never have been a faithful husband, never have been able to offer her a whole heart. Most of all, he would never have wanted her to change, to become a tolerant wife, willing to look the other way and busy herself with their children.

As her own mother likely had.

As the weeks had gone by, he’d tried, more than once, to take himself out prowling, and he’d had offers aplenty.

None of which had the least appeal. It was as if, having refused to take Felicity as a lover for anything other than love itself, he was now incapable of trading in lesser coin.

He’d rather sit with a bottle of brandy of an evening, twiddling a white quill pen, holding a lavender sachet to his nose, and losing himself in memories as heartbreaking as they were comforting.

And such a state of affairs was pathetic, sufficiently pathetic that he’d saddled a horse and turned the beast in the direction of the Worthington town house. What he meant to say to Felicity, he had not known, and it hardly mattered.

He had to see her, to see she was faring well, to see she wanted for nothing.

As he’d rounded the corner to turn his gelding down the quiet street where the Worthingtons bided, Felicity had come out of the house on David Holbrook’s arm and climbed into the man’s curricle. She’d been comfortable with her escort, relaxed, smiling, and when the damned man had leaned closer to offer some aside, she’d laughed.

She had a beautiful laugh.

Gareth had watched the curricle roll away in the direction of the park, and turned his horse for home. A man, even a man determined on martyrdom, could choose to hear a lady’s rejections in private.

“A Young Person to see you, your lordship.”

Gareth looked up from the column of figures he’d been staring at for twenty minutes. Felicity could have added them in a thrice, but Felicity was busy laughing and smiling with Mr. Holbrook.

“Parker, I realize you are only the underbutler, but did you not retrieve a card from this Young Person?” The last thing Gareth wanted to do with his afternoon was be sociable.

“
She
was distraught, your lordship, and appeared to be greatly in need of your assistance,” Parker rebuked him right back, though in chilly enough tones Hughes would have been proud.

Gareth got to his feet, puzzled. Cecelia, perhaps, come to seek consolation, if her new love had thrown her over as new loves were inclined to do.

He really did not have the patience for that now, though he supposed he owed her a polite hearing. But when he let himself into the parlor, he was astonished to see a lady with cinnamon hair standing with her back to him, her face bowed into her hands. Without conscious thought, he walked up behind her, put his hands on her shoulders, and spun her to face him.

He opened his arms, and she flew home to his embrace.

“Oh, Gareth…” Felicity murmured. “Gareth…”

He couldn’t say anything, couldn’t do anything, save hold her against him and breathe in the lavender-scented reality of her.

She
came
to
me.
If Holbrook had offended her, hurt her, upset her, or merely bothered her, he’d see the man drawn and quartered.

Felicity was trying to tell him something, but she couldn’t catch her breath, so he rubbed her back in slow circles. She was near hysterics, something he hadn’t seen in weeks and weeks of difficult circumstances with her.

“Felicity, whatever it is, it will be all right,” he said as he held her to him. “I promise it will be all right, but you have to tell me what distresses you so. Easy, love… take a breath, then slowly let it out. That’s my lady.”

For she was his lady. His, and no other’s.

“Gareth,” Felicity whispered, “somebody has taken Astrid. She was feeding the ducks, and Tolliver said two men struck him from behind, and two others grabbed Astrid by the arms and forced her into a coach. She’s gone, Gareth, my little sister is gone, and I am so
upset
… What if she’s murdered, raped, or worse? She’s just a girl, and so sweet…”

Gareth stepped back, keeping his hands on her shoulders. “Have you summoned the authorities?”

“I have, and I asked Tolliver to meet us here when Crabbie had him stitched up. I should not impose on you, but I could not think who else would help us. What if we don’t find her in time?”

He pulled her against his chest, even as he bellowed for Parker, Brenner, and Andrew. The first two came at a run; the third was nowhere to be found.

Gareth stood in the center of the room, his arms wrapped around Felicity, her face tucked against his throat, while he barked orders and questions in all directions. Brenner mustered the household such that half-a-dozen footmen were dispatched to the park to question passersby regarding the abduction itself.

When Tolliver joined them, a half-dozen grooms and stableboys were given a description of the coach that had driven off with Astrid, and told not to return until they had tracked down its direction. The watch received a report of the kidnapping, complete with a sketch of the victim and Tolliver’s statement.

Gareth would have paced with frustration, except Felicity was still burrowed against his chest, upset and shaky.

“Brenner, where in this city would somebody hide a girl of Astrid’s description?”

Brenner was about to open his mouth on some, no doubt, painfully honest, inadequate reply, when he was saved by a voice from the doorway.

“I know where she is,” Andrew panted. “He’s got her at the docks. Holbrook—”

“Holbrook has her?” Gareth roared at the same time Felicity murmured, “That’s not possible.”

Andrew shook his head. “Holbrook is the one who flagged me down. I was at the piers, seeing about passage to Italy next month, when I saw him skulking around one of the warehouses. He was on his way home from driving in the park when he saw Astrid bundled into a coach that took off posthaste for the docks. He followed as discreetly as he could, and he remains there, watching from what I hope is a safe distance while I’m summoning help.”

“Sweet fluttering angels,” Gareth muttered. “Brenner, do we have any men left?”

“What’s in this room, your lordship, and a few of the older stable lads.”

Stableboys were, by occupation, a slight bunch, but strong and tough as hell.

“It will have to do,” Gareth said, knowing sunset approached. “Arm those who can use a weapon, bring the plain town coach, and make sure there’s some brandy in the boot. We’ll need whatever assistance the authorities can render as well. Brenner, please get a note to my mother, asking her to attend me at her earliest convenience, for we’ll be bringing Miss Astrid back here before dark. I want us moving in fifteen minutes. Andrew, can you draw us a map of the location and sketch the surroundings for us?”

As Andrew bent to comply and Brenner scurried off, Gareth held the woman in his arms the same way he had the night her house had almost gone up in flames. Around them, he commanded activity and created a controlled chaos of preparations, but some part of him, too, was focused on her.

Pandemonium whirled about them, and a corner of Gareth’s soul was grateful for it, because Astrid’s abduction had restored Felicity to his embrace.

“I’m coming,” Felicity said during a pause in the mayhem. “She will need a woman about if she’s been… hurt.” Then, more desperately, “Gareth, I can’t wait here talking about the weather with your mother. You cannot ask it of me.”

“I wouldn’t, but you will wait with Parker in the coach. Can you shoot a gun if you have to?” She nodded, earning a kiss on her forehead.

And soon they were rolling out of the fashionable neighborhoods and toward the docks. Andrew, Felicity, Brenner, and Gareth inside, a half-dozen armed men on the roof, Parker beside the coachy. They arrived to a seedy dockside neighborhood, scattered quietly to reconnoiter, then gathered again at the coach to confer.

“I seen ’em through a window on the alley,” one wizened old fellow said. “Miss Astrid is tied to a chair facing the street-side door, your lordship, and I count six men, one of ’em in fancy dress. The other five is muscle.”

“Did Miss Astrid look distraught?” Gareth asked.

“Nah,” he said, grinning. “She looked barkin’, spittin’, hoppin’ mad. But sound enough.”

“Thank God for that. Still no sign of Holbrook, though.”

“He might be inside, me lord,” another fellow offered. “There’s a back door, all locked up, rusty and dusty, but the lock has been popped.”

Andrew was the last one to join them, scowling mightily.

“It’s a damned fortress,” he bit out. “The windows are all too high to climb in, and too small for me to fit through. I count three doors, but Astrid is seated and tied, for God’s sake. The first moment those men suspect we’re out here, Astrid could be hurt, or worse. I say we negotiate with them.”

“Gentlemen?” Gareth canvassed the rest of the group, most of whom agreed with Andrew that too many advantages lay with the kidnappers.

He wanted to tell the lot of them they were fired, except they were sensible fellows, brave enough, and dear to their families. Astrid was bound, unable to protect herself, and negotiation was not a bad plan.

Also not one he could endorse.

“Felicity, do we negotiate?”

All heads turned, and some caps were quickly doffed, suggesting the men hadn’t realized she was listening. Gareth held out an arm to her, bringing her into the circle of men.

“You’re asking me?”

“I will walk in there this instant if you’ll allow it,” he said. “Unarmed and prepared to barter my kingdom for your sister.” To barter his life for her sister.

Andrew broke the ensuing silence. “Heathgate, you’re daft if you expect criminals—”

Felicity held up a hand. “What Andrew is about to point out is that if you walk in there unarmed, they’ll have two hostages, and we’ll be short a man we cannot afford to lose. People who would prey on an innocent girl will have no qualms about doing you an injury or worse.”