Seducing the Rake (Mad, Bad and Dangerous Heroes) (53 page)

They were nearly at the edge of the lawn now. Before them the woods stretched upward, dense and brooding. Behind her Chessy heard her father shout, heard the muffled tread of the groom, running fast.

Swiftly she studied the rise to her left, the stand of willows bowing low and thick to her right.

Yes, here was as good a place as any.

She was focusing her breath in preparation to strike when the man beside her laughed harshly. “Don’t try it, my dear. Don’t even think it. For Elspeth and Jeremy
are
up there in that shepherd’s hut. They would follow dear
Tony
anywhere, you see. But one word from me, and they—” He shrugged. “Well, let’s just say it won’t be a pretty sight.”

“You—you animal! You fiend! They are your own children!”

“Perhaps. Of course, with a wife such as I had, one could never be quite certain.” And then his voice hardened. “Hurry up, damn you!”

Suddenly Chessy realized why he was rushing. “You’re afraid, aren’t you—afraid that he’ll find us?” She tensed and tried to pull away. “Where is he? What have you done?”

“Your concern for Anthony is touching,” her captor said coldly. “But at this moment my dear brother is combing the streets of Dedham in search of the two men who nearly murdered you yesterday as you rode to Sevenoaks.” He laughed harshly. “Such a pity that he will not find them. Not in Dedham nor anywhere else. They were of no more use to me after they failed, you see.”

Chessy felt cold fingers of fear tighten about her heart. What horror would such a monster plan next?

She fought to stay calm, to envision what this madman’s next move would be.

She tried not to think of the two children held frightened and helpless somewhere up there in the hills.

Center, Midnight.
The old teachings whispered in her head. Once more she saw Abbot Tang’s round, wise face.

Sink deep. Hold all, and oppose nothing. Bend. Yield. In this yielding you will conquer all.

She did as her teacher had told her all those years before, casting her attention low, down to her navel, and then lower, past her knees into the very earth itself.

And as she did so, she felt the strength build.

By the time they reached the hut, Chessy knew she would be ready.

~ ~ ~

They came across James Cameron’s inert body a few yards beyond the woods. His brow was streaked with blood, spilled recently enough that it was bright and flowing still.

“Oh, no.” Morland slid from Storm and felt for a pulse.

Ravenhurst leaped down beside him. “Is he—?”

“Alive. But just barely.” Morland cradled Cameron’s bloodstained head and bent close. “Can you hear me, Jamie? What happened here?”

The white-haired man stirred and gave a low groan. A moment later, his eyes opened. “You. Are you really—” His eyes sought out Ravenhurst. Satisfied by that sight, he swallowed and tried again.
“He
came—soon after you left. Must have tricked her.”

Morland’s heart lurched. He felt the fury rising within him. “Chessy?”

Cameron nodded. “I saw them—tried to call out—then that blasted groom took me from behind. He’s got the others tied up in the house.”

“Where was he taking her?” Morland’s voice was as hard as the native Suffolk flint glinting dark on the hillside.

“Somewhere—up there.” Cameron waved weakly to the north. “Couldn’t see…”

Morland eased the man’s head back against the grass. “Help him back to the house, will you, Dane? I’m going after them.”

“After
whom
? Forgive me, Tony, but I’m all adrift. Exactly whom are you going after?”

“My brother. My bloody twin
brother.
Andrew is the one who has Chessy.” He shoved to his feet just as Cameron’s voice rose in anxious protest.

“What is it, Jamie?”

“Be—be careful, my boy. He’s—” The old man swallowed.

“He’s what?”

“Them.
Not just Chessy. He’s—he’s got the children up there too.”

They climbed ever upward through the woods, keeping to the hills where no paths ran. The pain in Chessy’s ankle was constant now, sharp and stabbing, but she struggled to ignore it, her whole attention focused on the confrontation to come.

The forest thinned and then disappeared. Finally green gave way to red.

To a field of red, rising in every glorious shade—scarlet, pink, vermilion, and gleaming copper. Suddenly Chessy was surrounded by the tulip fields Morland had mentioned yesterday as they rode to Sevenoaks. Only his casual description hadn’t given Chessy any sense of their vast size.

Row on row the flowers spread, like tiny dancers with their gaudy bonnets unfurled to sun and wind.

Beside her Andrew Morland stiffened. “Another of my dear brother’s ideas. There were tulips in this area, already brought by Flemish settlers in the seventeenth century. It had been a hobby of our mother’s, but Tony made it something more. It was his idea to expand the yield, improve the bulbs, and sell the flowers in London. Now Sevenoaks is the second-largest supplier outside Lincolnshire. Like everything else he touches, this, too, turned to gold.”

Grimly, Andrew crushed a crimson bloom beneath the toe of his polished boot. “
These
will be the first things to go when he dies.”

Chessy fought a wave of panic at that flat, cold-blooded vow. “But why? Why do you want to kill him? What has he done to you?”

“Done?” Her captor jerked her to a halt and glared down at her.
“Done?
He’s ruined my life, that’s what he’s done. Have you any idea what it’s like to grow up with a mirror image, to know that you can never do or say anything that
he
won’t also do or say sometime in his life? That he’ll outdo you in anything he attempts?”

A vein began to pound beneath Andrew’s right eye. “To know that he’ll always be there, dogging your every step, casting your every success into shadow by his own performance. Horses, gaming, and women—it was always the same. How I
hate
him for that!”

He shook his head sharply. His gaze refocused and came to rest on Chessy. “And you,”
he
said mockingly. “How does it feel for you to know I touched you? And that you responded? Oh, yes, I felt it, my dear. And I mean to show my dear brother that this blade cuts both ways, that
he
can never be rid of
me
either.”

Chessy was chilled by the fury in the man’s voice. She had the sudden sense that he was perched on the knife-edge of reason, and that anything at all might send him plunging down into madness.

And right now, there were two children up the hill, two innocent children. At any moment they might fall victim to his wrath.

“So the coaching accident was a fake?”

Andrew’s eyes narrowed. “He told you about that too? Really, I am flattered that my dear brother considers me so important.”

Keep him talking, Chessy thought. Keep his mind off what he’s doing. That might just give Tony the time he needs.

If he comes.

If he knows where to find us.

Andrew jerked her forward, through the waving field of flowers. “Yes, it was entirely a fake. I’d been draining funds from Sevenoaks for years, you see, and I had a tidy sum set by in Jamaica. So it was time to disappear, time to cut myself free of my mocking little shadow at last. And so it was that Andrew Morland had to die. A coaching accident seemed the best choice, as I—or at least the person dressed in
my
clothes—would be rendered utterly unrecognizable from the violence of the impact when the carriage plunged over the cliffs to the beach below.”

As he tugged her forward, Chessy hazarded a surreptitious glance behind her into the valley. There was no sign of horses or pursuers, but surely Tony would try to keep his pursuit a secret.

“But how did ‘dying’ free you from your brother?
You
were the duke, after all, not he. With your death the holdings in Somerset and Sevenoaks became
his,
until Jeremy grows up at least. You were left with nothing but crumbs from the table.” She was trying to provoke him, to goad him. Anything to throw him off balance and disrupt his carefully laid plans.

“Crumbs?” Andrew shook his fist in her face. “Do you call twenty thousand pounds
crumbs
?”

Chessy blinked. “But how—”

“By careful work, that’s how. By selling off the paintings and the silver, then the jewelry. By letting go of a parcel of land here and a field or two there. All done slowly, so it would not be obvious. My father was clever, you see. He knew my vices well. Before he died, he put legal limits on how much property or art could be sold from the estate. He wanted Sevenoaks to pass intact to his grandson.” Andrew sneered. “And then my brother came back from the Peninsula. I had hoped he would die there, but he has led a charmed life, curse him! And I knew I would have to disappear, before he discovered the losses.”

They were almost at the top of the tulip field now. Before them stood a weathered windmill with wide white sails that stretched silent and unmoving in the rising sun.

So little time…

“Why did you come back? Surely you haven’t run through twenty thousand pounds already.”

He turned then, jerking Chessy to a halt against him. “Your little scheme is really quite pathetic, my dear. All these delays and distractions can change nothing. But I will be magnanimous and answer your question.” His eyes blazed. “I came back for one reason and one reason only: to destroy my annoying little shadow once and for all.”

“But Sevenoaks will never
be
yours. You’re dead! If you come back, you’ll have to explain how and why—”

“Oh, but
I
won’t come back, my dear Francesca. Coming back was never part of my plan.” He ran a finger across the pale skin that rose and fell above her lace-trimmed bodice. “No, I have a far better idea. I will simply take my brother’s place. I will become Anthony Morland. The perfect revenge, is it not?”

“You’ll never get away with it!”

“No?
I rather think I shall, my beauty.” His hands curved lower, cupping her full breasts. “In a week I’ll have everything of his, right down to his passionate little wife, panting in my bed.”

“Never.”

“Oh, yes, my dear Francesca. You’ll place your slender hand on mine, and you’ll smile tremulously when the parson pronounces us man and wife. And then you’ll follow me upstairs dutifully and bare yourself before me, offering me every pleasure of your naked body.” He jerked her face upward and stared down at her. “Because if you don’t, if you resist me in
any
way, then those two sweet little children that you like so much will fare very, very badly indeed.”

Chessy swayed, choked by horror. Staring into those flat, soulless eyes, she realized what Andrew said was true. Unless she was very careful, he would do everything he threatened.

“Impossible. You—you wouldn’t!”

“Oh, but I would.” He smiled coldly. “There is one more reason you will do everything I ask. One more thing that will keep you in line, my dear. Have you forgotten it so soon? It is the only thing that will placate your father’s quite nasty friends.”

Chessy’s eyes widened. “The book? The pillow book?
You
have it?”

Andrew Langford threw back his head and laughed. “Of course. It took a great deal of planning, but I finally managed it. The book was the final piece in my plan. As soon as I learned that my brother needed it, I set about to find it first. An art dealer in Macao located it for me. I paid him very well for his assistance, of course, but it seems the man had a lamentable penchant for drink. Afterward he fell from his roof to his death, I’m sorry to say. That left no witnesses, which is so much safer, don’t you agree?”

They were almost at the top of the valley. Chessy blinked back tears of pain as her captor shoved her up the slope toward the old windmill.

The door opened. A woman appeared, her face faintly familiar.

“Ah, there you are, Louisa. Are the children behaving?” Andrew asked lazily.