Leslie Lafoy (30 page)

“To keep me from killing her?”

“If it comes to that.… To swear that it was in self-defense.”

“Sir, may I come along? If nothing else, I could catch Lord Noland when he falls over.”

“An excellent idea, Gregory,” he allowed, taking Noland by the arm. “Lock up and let’s go.”

*   *   *

The monkey was in the conservatory. And he was wearing boots. And limping. Poor mangled monkey.

Simone laughed and forced her eyes open. With the fuzzy vision of just waking, she could vaguely see Emmy peering around the edge of the canvas at her. “I’m afraid I fell asleep,” she explained, stretching her shoulders. “And had a very odd dream. There was a limping monkey wearing boots.”

“Where?”

“Here, in the conservatory.”

Emmy stepped behind her painting, saying, “You have very strange dreams.”

Not really,
she silently countered. The past had a way of sneaking back on her while she slept. The more tired she was, the more vivid the dreams. Her mother was sometimes in them. Not very often, though. And as the years went by, her face became less and less distinct.

Still, no matter what was in her dreams and who traipsed through them, she usually knew where they’d come from and what had triggered their appearance. A limping monkey made perfect sense. All right, the fact that he was wearing boots didn’t. Not at the moment anyway. It could be that her shoes were laced too tight. She wiggled her toes. Not altogether successfully. Ah, explanation found.

“Emmy,” she said, pushing herself to her feet. “I have to walk about for a few minutes or my toes will fall off.”

“If you must,” Emmy said from behind her work. “But please don’t take overly long. I’m at a critical point and need to have you sitting very still so that I get it right.”

Simone smiled and shook her head as she walked toward the far wall. She could be dead-for-a-week still and it wouldn’t make the slightest bit of difference; Emmy was the worst painter in the world. It would be a miracle if the portrait of her didn’t have two heads and three hands.

Gravel? Yes. Shifting under boots.
It couldn’t really be a monkey,
she silently chided, turning toward the back of the conservatory.

Her heart jolted up into her throat and fear shot through her veins. In the next heartbeat time staggered and then oddly stretched to a slow eternity of observation and horrible realization. No, not monkeys. Three men. Rough men who came from the darkest edges of the world she had once lived in. Men who would do anything for a pound.

She heard herself gasp. She called herself a ninny for being surprised and turned to run, screaming for Emmy to do the same. But Emmy didn’t; she looked around the edge of the picture and just stood there, watching, her eyes wide and her mouth hanging open.

Simone moved toward her friend, her feet and legs frighteningly leaden, her mind methodically clicking through one crystalline thought after another. This was Lucinda’s doing. She’d hired them. To kill her. To kill Emmy. God, she had to get out, get away. She had to warn Tristan.

The men were closing the distance. There wasn’t much time. If she and Emmy could make the doorway and scream … If they could hold the door closed just long enough for her to get her knife …

Emmy stepped out from behind the painting, her eyes still wide, her jaw still hanging slack.

“Run!”

Emmy started and blinked and then looked around as though she didn’t have the slightest idea of which way to go. Of all the times for her to revert back to the clueless, timid debutante …

“The door to the house!”

Emmy started to turn that way and then there was nothing but a blur in a world wheeling out of control. The impact came from behind, hard and ruthless and instantly driving Simone off her feet. The floor was there in a second, unyielding and rough, a force every bit as cruel as the weight that drove her down into it. Her breath caught, her lungs paralyzed, time crawled on. Her mind numbed, she dully noted the flash of Emmy’s skirt hems.

God, no! Emmy was turning back, coming to help her. Simone tried to gather the breath to scream, to tell her not to, and was soundly crushed back into the floor to prevent it. One man went past her, after Emmy. The third man stopped beside her and the brutish beast who held her. Emmy squeaked.

Fight or die. Do you want to die?

Simone gasped, greedily consuming air, forcing her mind and body to work. She swore and thrashed against the steel bands encircling her upper body, kicking her feet and trying desperately to twist away. The arms around her tightened and a voice, raw and foul, rasped a warning in her ear. She ignored it and struggled harder, pouring all her strength and determination into the struggle to escape.

A second voice scraped across her awareness, a voice commanding that she stop fighting, that she breathe. Even as the command was issued, a hand twisted in her hair and yanked her head back. As she cried out in pain and anger, a wet rag was pressed over her face.

She tried to turn her face away, tried desperately to find air that didn’t come through the cloth. She couldn’t give up, couldn’t die. She had to warn Tristan.

The rag tasted sweet and smelled like fruit. Almost like perfume, but not. Better, actually, in a way. She wasn’t going to suffocate; she could breathe easily enough, but still … Damn, the arms around her were pulling her skin, making it burn. And the gravel of the floor had sharp points that pressed into her all along her body. The rock under her left hip was huge. And under her left knee, too. And the vicious laces of her shoes: she could feel every crisscross they made across her instep. They were cutting her, hurting just as much as the arms around her and the gravel under her.

Emmy wasn’t exactly squeaking anymore. But Simone could hear the frantic pitch in her voice. She was begging them not to hurt her, to take the rag off her face and let her breathe. What a kind and true friend Emmy was. She had … to … to …

Escape. Fight. Emmy needed her. Tristan was going to die if she couldn’t reach him. Warn him. Tristan. He didn’t know that she … loved …

Sweet. But not too sweet. It smelled like a rosy, juicy pink.

Chapter 17

Tristan clenched and unclenched his teeth as Noland went on and on with an excruciatingly detailed account of his conversations with Sarah. Leaving Gregory to play the interested listener, Tristan glared at the traffic out the carriage window and silently railed at himself.

He should have had this confrontation with Lucinda the day he’d returned to England. He should have been straightforward and brutally thorough, should have demanded that she confess her crimes and surrender herself to the Crown for punishment. And when she refused to do that, he should have killed her. Right then. Right there. He should have just put a bullet through her black heart and been done with it.

But no. He’d opted for conducting himself within the requirements of civility and the expectations of the law. He’d taken the high and subtle road thinking that he could outmaneuver her and let the wheels of justice turn to a perfectly orchestrated, well-witnessed end. But the wheels were rusty and too slow moving to take into account the unexpected developments of life that went on outside its control.

Life such as meeting Simone. Beautiful, passionate, wickedly daring Simone. In hindsight he knew that he should have waited to pursue her, that he’d exhibited all the judgment of a sixteen-year-old in letting his desires control his decisions. Despite all his planning, all his rationalizations, he’d placed Simone in Lucinda’s awareness and put her at risk.

And then Sarah had shown up out of the absolute blue. Sarah with her hopes and troubles and complete, utter ignorance about the dangerous pot she was stirring. And stir she had, putting herself into even greater danger than he’d put Simone. And, as it had turned out this morning, more imminent danger.

It was time, he silently declared as the carriage slowed and he reached for the door handle. Time for this to end. The wheels of formal justice be damned. Noland could witness and report whatever he liked. Gregory could do the same. But in the end all that mattered was that Lucinda would no longer be able to plot and scheme and kill. Between now and that end.…

Sarah was likely still alive. If the objective had been to kill her, it would have been done alongside the road and made to look like the consequence of the unfortunate accident. But that she and all of her belongings had been spirited away told him that Lucinda had a larger, more complicated end in mind. And before he wrung her vicious neck, she was going to tell him what it was and where Sarah had been taken.

The carriage stopped and Tristan threw open the door. Vaulting out in front of Lucinda’s town house, he paused to wait for the other two men to join him on the walk. “Just so you know,” he told them. “One way or the other, this is going to end in the next few minutes. Before Lucinda harms one more innocent.”

Gregory frowned in confusion. Noland nodded and pulled his waistcoat down over his paunch, saying, “Seems like the only thing to do, to me. We’re right behind you, Lockwood. Lead on.”

He didn’t bother to knock; he simply climbed the front steps with Noland and Gregory in tow, opened the front door, and walked in.

Baston stopped dead in his tracks beside the foyer reception table. “Lord Lockwood! I apologize most profusely for not hearing your summons to the door.”

Tristan stopped only because he needed information from the man. Allowing a crisp nod in acknowledgment, he said, “It’s not a problem, Baston,” and then went straight to the reason for his presence. “Where is my stepmother?”

The butler was clearly startled by the lack of expected protocol. It took him a few seconds to recover. Finally, though, he replied, “At her sister’s, Your Lordship.”

If he hadn’t been so angry, he’d have staggered back at the news. “What?”

Baston nodded. “Her Ladyship received a message from her sister shortly after breakfast this morning, packed a trunk, and departed saying she would be gone only a day. Two at the most.”

“Her sister,” Tristan repeated dumbly, wracking the closets of his memory, searching for information.

“Yes, Your Lordship. Apparently she has suffered a health decline and the family has been summoned to her bedside.”

At the wedding to his father there had been three women—no, four—who Lucinda had said were her sisters. Which was utterly believable now that he looked back at the occasion with older eyes. There was a family resemblance in their faces, in their general bearing. But he remembered them as being considerably warmer and kinder than Lucinda had ever been.

They’d been older, too. It wasn’t beyond belief that one of them was ill, perhaps dying. They would be of the age for that by now. But the timing of it … Lucinda hadn’t left the house in almost a year, and the very day that Sarah was kidnapped she’d packed a bag and dashed out? An incredible, completely innocent coincidence was possible but not bloody likely.

“Did she say which sister?” Tristan asked the butler.

“No, Lord Lockwood. I’m afraid she didn’t.”

“Did she say where this sister lived?”

“No, sir. She was in a great hurry. I’m sorry. Is there a problem with which I might be of some assistance?”

“Did she happen to leave the note behind?” Noland asked.

Tristan frowned. Damned if he hadn’t forgotten that he and the butler weren’t alone.

“I’m not aware that she did, sir,” the servant supplied. “But then, I have had no reason to enter her rooms since her departure.”

“How long ago was that?” Tristan asked. “And did she go by her own carriage?” Maybe, if they were really lucky, they could dash out the door and see the carriage, could follow it, catch it, and extract both Lucinda and the answers they needed.

Baston calmly removed his pocket watch and flicked up the cover. “Her Ladyship left two hours and thirty-seven minutes ago, sir,” he said, crushing Tristan’s hopeful scenario. Snapping the timepiece closed and putting it back in his pocket, the butler added, “Which, as a point of additional information, was twenty minutes after Lady Simone arrived. And yes, sir, she did take her own carriage.”

Simone? His heart jolted and his pulse raced. “Is Lady Simone still here?”

“Yes, Your Lordship. She and Lady Emmaline are in the conservatory. I believe the plan was for her to pose while Lady Emmaline continued work on the portrait.”

If there was indeed a benevolent God … “Take Lord Noland and Mr. Gregory upstairs,” he instructed the butler, “and help them search Lucinda’s rooms for any evidence of where she might have gone. I’ll check on Em and Lady Simone and then join you upstairs.”

Tristan didn’t wait to see what any of them thought of the assignments but strode off toward the rear of the house, his mind clicking through what he needed to do next. It was anyone’s guess what Lucinda’s plan entailed, but he’d rather err on the side of being too cautious than that of being too cavalier about his ability to find her before she could wreak further havoc. He’d already allowed her far more time and opportunity than he should have.

Of first importance, then, was to be sure that Simone and Emmaline were tucked away someplace where Lucinda couldn’t get to them. And the quickest, surest course to that end was to take them to the Duke of Ryland’s residence, explain the circumstances, and leave them in his care. Haywood would have Tristan’s hide when it was all over, but he couldn’t help but think he deserved to have a chunk removed for a thorough tanning.

Once Simone and Em were safe … How the hell was he going to track down Lucinda? She could be damn near anywhere. Especially with a two-and-a-half-hour head start. While he didn’t believe the story of rushing to the bedside of the ailing sister for a single second, it was, at the moment, the only thread he had to follow. Maybe Emmaline knew where her aunts lived and could point him in their directions.

So that he could waste time on what was in all likelihood going to turn out to be nothing more than a wild-goose chase, he decided, yanking open the conservatory door. He was a good four steps into the greenhouse before his brain processed what his eyes were seeing. He froze, his heart hammering wildly in his chest.