Reckless Viscount (13 page)

Once out of sight from her hosts, Abbigael made her way to her room on heavy feet, allowing the despair to spread from her heart and fill her limbs. She had been resisting the full acknowledgment of failure for days, but she could no longer hold it back.

She was exhausted and heartsick.

Reaching the privacy of her bedroom, Abbigael fell across her bed and closed her eyes, indulging for a brief moment in the anguish that threatened to overtake her. The dark weight of grief was overwhelming and encompassing, but it was its familiarity that frightened her most, and she quickly reined in her emotions. She could not afford to lose herself in the hopelessness she felt. Such feelings only led her to more misery.

She rose from the bed and changed from her evening gown into a nightgown and robe. She pulled the pins and ribbons from her hair and untwisted its length, running a brush through it to loosen the tangles.

Then she set to work gathering up her things that had become scattered throughout the room during the days of her stay. The distraction of the busy work was a welcome respite.

She tucked her jewelry and hair ribbons into boxes, taking a long moment to run her fingertips over her mother’s broach. Then she moved on to her books and personal linens, pausing only when a maid knocked at the door with the sleeping aid the countess had promised. Abbigael set the drink on her writing desk and took a look around. The larger items would have to wait until morning when she could call for her luggage. That would be soon enough to announce her intention to return to Ireland.

She imagined the news would be a disappointment to Lady Blackbourne.

And her father.

Abbigael sank down onto the small desk chair and lifted her hands to cover her face. Her shoulders slumped as she thought about having to tell her father that she had failed yet again. His disappointment would be keen. Not that she thought he wanted to be rid of her exactly, but he did wish to see her settled. Until she had a family of her own, she would remain his responsibility and he had never really understood what to make of that.

Abbigael took a deep, steadying breath, squared her shoulders and tried to imagine returning to her mother’s family in the north. She could live her life there as the odd relation. The sad motherless girl with only half a soul. In spite of their trepidation, she believed they had come to accept her. She could find fulfillment under such circumstances if she tried hard enough.

Or maybe she could stay at her father’s country estate in Wexford. Though she would not like to be there when it came time for him to entertain his political contacts in the summer months.

Either way, she didn’t need a husband. She would be fine without someone to talk with over dinner, someone to walk with on sunny days. And she didn’t need children to be happy. Small hands tugging at her skirts, chubby arms lifting for a hug.

No, she didn’t need those things…she simply yearned for them with every breath she took and every pulse of blood through her heart.

Abbigael clenched her teeth against the darkening angle of her thoughts. She didn’t want to dwell on the pain of what this failure would bring. She didn’t want to imagine the babes she wouldn’t have or the endless lonely nights that stretched ahead of her. Right now, she wanted to escape from it all to the sweet oblivion of sleep.

She lifted her chin, pushed the hair from her face and turned in the chair toward the desk. The countess’s sleeping draught waited patiently and Abbigael lifted the glass and drank the syrupy concoction. A deep and dreamless sleep would be a welcome change from the restless nights she had endured since Lord Atwood had arrived in town.

Crawling into bed and pulling the soft cotton bed linens up to her chin, Abbigael settled back against the pillows and closed her eyes.

Immediately, the image of a handsome grinning face and wickedly flashing eyes came to mind and she felt a pulling twinge of regret in her belly. She chased the image away.

It did not take long before Abbigael slid gently into the dark oblivion she had craved. She fell into such a deep and steady sleep that she didn’t even stir when her bedroom door opened and a gentlemen staggered in, silent in spite of his drunken lack of grace.

When he found her discarded stockings and clumsily tied her ankles and then her wrists, Abbigael murmured softly, but she did not waken. And when the gentleman lifted her in his arms and carried her triumphantly through the sleeping house to the carriage waiting in the street, she actually turned to rest her cheek against his shoulder and sighed.

Chapter Twelve

Abbigael didn’t want to wake up yet. The sleeping draught had worked wonders and she felt as if she had slept for days and could sleep a few more. But the morning light was insistent against her closed eyelids. A new day had come. She nearly groaned out loud. A new day to face the mess her plans had become. She would be leaving today. There was a lot to do and no point in putting it off.

She flexed her toes and started to stretch the muscles of her limbs to reenergize them. Only to find they couldn’t move. At least not in the way she wanted them to. She shifted first one leg and then the other.

They were bound together.

Tightly.

Her breath caught in a rush of flashing alarm. She opened her eyes wide and found herself staring at a ceiling she didn’t recognize. She tried to sit but couldn’t get her elbows beneath her to push herself up. Her wrists were bound as well. Panic and confusion warred for dominance as she struggled to shake off the last of her befuddled sleepiness.

Was this a nightmare? Her throat felt raw and swollen with the need to scream or burst into tears, and her lips felt tight and stiff. A choked mewl of despair caught in her throat, most of the weak sound absorbed by the gag tied around her mouth.

She had been abducted.

Unbelievable. Impossible. It had to be a nightmare.

Abbigael closed her eyes and in a silent but stern voice told herself it was time to wake up.

Now.

She opened her eyes again but still saw only the plain plastered ceiling with a long crack that ran from one corner nearly to the center of the perfectly square plane.

Her heart raced with terror. This couldn’t be happening.

She stretched her mind back into the night before, but it was all black and heavy nothingness. The potion she had taken had caused her to sleep straight through her own abduction.

Tight-squeezing panic assaulted her chest and her mind struggled to grasp the reality of what was happening. She strained her ears for any recognizable sound but could discern nothing specific. Her gaze darted around, trying to seek out answers in her peripheral vision. She saw no one and heard nothing but the rush of her own breath through her flaring nostrils. She must be alone. If anyone were in the room with her they would have noticed her movements and would have addressed her. Wouldn’t they? Her guard must be outside her room, or more likely than not, she was securely locked in.

Tears pricked behind her eyelids and she forced away her steadily rising fear by taking long, slow breaths through her nose.

She must have been taken for ransom. She had heard of such things happening. And a ransom meant they wouldn’t hurt her. At least, not gravely. She focused on breathing deeply, and as she did so a faintly familiar scent invaded her awareness.

Cedar and tobacco.

Lord Riley. Or wait, Lord Neville now, wasn’t he? She remembered hearing the earl and countess discussing the death of the old viscount just the previous day. Or was that two days ago? She couldn’t be sure. The sleeping draught had severely muddled her mind. She gave herself a mental shake. She couldn’t allow herself to be distracted. She had to find a way to free herself.

Taking the chance that she was alone in the room, she carefully rolled to her side in the bed and then stopped abruptly as she met the gaze of the very same man she had just chased from her thoughts.

Leif sat slouched in a small wooden chair set squarely to face her less than a foot away from the bed. His legs were bent and braced wide apart and his elbows rested on the narrow armrests. His hands hung lax over his thighs and his eyes were trained on her face.

Abbigael’s already frantic heart jolted against her ribs as a very different degree of awareness raced across her nerves.

He watched her from beneath lowered eyelids and a rough growth of beard shadowed his unsmiling mouth. His hair was tousled, his clothes were a wrinkled mess and he was without a cravat.

He looked frightfully appealing even in his mussed state.

Abbigael’s first fleeting thought at seeing him was relief that she had been saved. But it was followed immediately by a swift invasion of clarity as she realized he had been watching her for some time, silently witnessing her return to consciousness and the dawning realization of her situation. He had seen her fear and panic rising and had done nothing to stop it.

If Lord Neville wasn’t her hero in this scenario, then he was the villain.

And obviously insane.

Fear and panic flipped instantly into hot burning fury. The muscles of her limbs stiffened painfully and her lungs felt near to bursting with a sudden desire to release a font of scathing reprimands.

He watched her so intently he couldn’t have missed the shift in her emotion. The flat expression on his face tensed until his lips curved into a semblance of a smile. But the result was hollow.

“Good morning, Irish,” he said in a low and rough-textured voice.

Her reply was not nearly so pleasant. But the words that flowed from her throat in a wave of righteous indignation were effectively muffled by the gag still stretched between her teeth. She ended her short rant with a growl of frustration and a fiercely narrowed gaze at the man who had the power to release her.

And why hadn’t he? He was a nobleman, a close friend of the Blackbournes. What possible reason could he have to keep her thus?

Her confusion was almost as great as her frustrated anger, and to avoid the fear and uncertainty that crowded at the edges of her mind, she focused on the anger. That, at least, gave her a sense of strength in her powerless position.

She waited for him to say or do something, glaring in fierce silence.

After a few long moments, he mumbled a sharp expletive under his breath and pulled himself out of the slouch to lean forward in the chair and brace his elbows on his spread knees. His handsome face came close enough that she could feel the rushing breath of his sigh as it stirred the loose tendrils of hair at her temple.

Abbigael felt distinctly vulnerable in her bound position on the narrow bed. She couldn’t quite believe he would harm her, but as she met his gaze there was a darkness present she hadn’t noticed before. He looked worn and tired, as if he’d held a grin for so long that he simply hadn’t the strength to do it anymore.

He cleared his throat and lifted a hand to rub his knuckles back and forth along the dark stubble on his jaw. His eyes left hers to travel the length of her body as she lay half curled up on her side. Her full length nightgown covered nearly every inch of bare skin, but it was a thin material and provided only the faintest barrier between her naked body and his intent gaze.

Now was not a time to be missish, she told herself, and she remained still under his perusal until his eyes met hers again.

“I seem to have put us both into a rather difficult predicament.”

Abbigael raised her eyebrows sharply and the corner of his mouth lifted just a fraction.

“Yes, I can see you realized that already.”

Then he slid forward in his chair until his knees bumped against the side of the bed. His expression was hard to read, but Abbigael sensed a new determination that she hadn’t noticed in their prior interactions. Something in him had changed. It made her nervous. And when he leaned over her, his shoulders blocking the dim light from the small window behind him, his warm breath bathed the skin at her throat and the masculine essence of cedar filled her nostrils. His eyes held hers and her stomach tightened. A soft mewling sound rose involuntarily from her throat.

“Don’t worry, Irish,” he murmured quietly in response. “I’m just going to sit you up.”

He reached for her and gently lifted her shoulders then hooked his hand at the side of her knees and swung her legs down over the edge of the bed. In a swift and easy move, he had her upright and facing him. Her legs fell between his spread knees and her bound hands settled into her lap.

She wasn’t afraid. She wasn’t even furious any more. She had gotten the sense from what he said so far that he was somehow going to make things right. He had to.

She sat there in her nightgown, her feet bare, her hair a mess down her back, and he across from her looking recklessly tousled and ridiculously appealing. She had never been in such a vulnerable and intimate situation with a man. With this man it was practically devastating to her senses. Not to mention what it did to cohesive thought.

No, she wasn’t afraid. She was very nearly terrified. But in a wildly wicked way that she couldn’t bring herself to analyze. So she waited for him. Waited to see what he would do with her, breath tight and shallow, her heart thudding heavily against her ribs and her muscles stiff with anticipation.