Vice (53 page)

George ate up the distance between them. His breath raged in his heaving chest, his great belly jounced, his massive hands were in fists, but he was gaining on her. She was slowing, her feet troubling her. He reached out, seized the hem of her shift, hauled her backward as she fought, kicked, scratched, hair swinging wildly.

Somehow she wrenched herself free, hearing the thin material of her shift rip as she hurled herself forward, toward the gate to the lane … so close … three more steps …

George’s breath was on the back of her neck, his hands reaching for her. The sound of iron wheels on the lane, jouncing over the rough pebbled surface … With the last gasp of breath Juliana leaped into the lane, in front of a hay wagon.

The driver pulled back on the reins, staring in disbelief at the frantic figure in the path of his shire horses.

“Please …” Juliana struggled for sufficient breath to speak. “Please … help me … I—”

She got no further. George had seized her from behind, clamping his hand over her mouth, twisting her hair around his other hand, holding her head still. His voice was calm, sensible. Not his voice at all as he explained to the astounded farm laborer that she was deranged, was kept confined for her own safety. That she’d escaped from her chamber by attacking the servant who’d brought her food. That she was violent and dangerous.

The laborer looked at the half-naked, wild-haired, frantic figure struggling in the hands of a man who was clearly in full possession of his senses, who spoke so rationally,
with such assurance. The girl gazed at him with desperate, almost feral, eyes, and he shuddered, muttering a prayer, averting his eyes from the danger of a lunatic’s stare. He shook the reins urgently as George pulled the madwoman aside, and drove off, urging the horses to greater speed.

Juliana bit deep into George’s palm. He bellowed and slammed his flat palm against the side of her head, dazing her. Then he hoisted her over his shoulder before the ringing in her ears had subsided and carried her back to the house.

Lucien stumbled out of the drawing room, glass in hand, as the front door shivered behind George’s kick. “Good God,” he slurred. “Now what?”

“Thought she could escape … tricky bitch,” George declared. He pushed past Lucien into the drawing room and threw Juliana into a chair.

She lay still, slumped into the cushioned depths, her head numb with shock and the stinging pain of the blow. For the moment she was defeated.

George poured himself a measure of cognac, downed it, and poured another. “The sooner she’s locked up in Winchester jail, the better.” He drained the second glass. “Let’s go”

“Go where?” Lucien lounged against the door frame. His eyes burned with fever, tremors racked his body, and he clutched the cognac glass as if it were his only connection with life.

“To the Forsetts,” George said, throwing his glass down. “They’ll identify this whore before a magistrate, and you’ll identify her as your wife and say how and when she became so. They’ll arraign her and lock her up. And then …” He wiped his mouth slowly, lasciviously, with the back of his hand. “And then … my dear stepmother … I shall pay you some visits in your cell.”

Juliana still said nothing. She was drained of physical strength and knew she couldn’t get away from George again. Not here … not now. Maybe the Forsetts would offer her protection. But she knew that was a fond hope.
They wouldn’t want to be touched by any scandal created by the ward they’d thoroughly disliked and resented. They’d repudiate her as soon as look at her.

“Come, Edgecombe,” George said brusquely. “We’ll ride. I’ll take the whore up with me.”

Lucien shook his head, opened his mouth to speak, and was promptly engulfed in a coughing spasm worse than any Juliana had witnessed. When he could speak, he gasped, “Can’t possibly, dear boy. Couldn’t sit a horse like this. Stay here … rest a bit … you go about your business.” He gulped at the cognac.

“Oh, no,” George said with soft fervor. “You’re coming, Edgecombe. I need you. You won’t see a penny of that money until you’ve done what I need you to do.”

Lucien stared at him, the realization in his eyes that he couldn’t withstand this man … this oaf whom he’d despised and thought he was using for his own revenge. Lucien wasn’t using Ridge, Lucien was being used, and George now carried himself with all the cold, calculating assertion of a man possessed.

George took a menacing step toward him, his great hands bunched into fists. Lucien shrank back, all the strength of his own malice dissolved in the face of this threat, leaving him as weak and timid as any coward facing a bully.

“All right,” he croaked, pressing the bloodstained kerchief to his mouth. “All right, I’ll come.”

George nodded brusquely and turned back to Juliana’s slumped figure. She’d closed her eyes as the easiest way to absent herself from what was happening. He hauled her to her feet and grasped her chin, his other hand again twisting in her hair. “You don’t want to be hurt, do you, my dear?”

She shook her head, still keeping her eyes closed.

“Then you’ll do as I bid you, won’t you?”

She nodded, then felt his mouth on hers, hard, bruising, vile, pressing her lips against her teeth. He forced his tongue into her mouth so she could taste the stale sourness of his brandy breath. She gagged and went suddenly limp.

George drew back and looked down into the white, closed face. He was holding her up by her hair as she sagged against him. He smiled. “Not quite so full of yourself now, Lady Edgecombe?” he taunted. “And when you’ve spent a week or so in a jail cell …” He chuckled and spun her to face the door. “Let’s go.”

In the hall he paused to pull a heavy riding cloak from a hook on the wall and swathed Juliana in its thick and musty folds. She walked as if in a trance as he pushed her ahead of him out of the house and to the stables, Lucien stumbling behind. The wind still blew cold and damp from the sea, and Juliana was pathetically grateful for the cloak, even though she knew it had been provided not to lessen her miseries but to avoid drawing attention to her. Lucien shivered and shook, and it seemed he had no strength left even to cough.

A groom brought two horses from the stables, saddled them, looking curiously at the trio but knowing better than to say anything in front of his master. He assisted Lucien to mount. Lucien slumped in the saddle like a sack of potatoes, feebly grasping the reins, his head drooping.

George lifted Juliana onto his horse and mounted behind her, holding her securely against him as he gathered up the reins. Juliana tried to hold herself away from the hot, sweaty, triumphant maleness of his body, but he jerked her closer and she yielded before he did anything worse.

They trotted out of the yard and took the road to Forsett Towers.

Tarquin drew up in the yard of the Rose and Crown in Winchester. Quentin stepped out of the phaeton, stretching his cramped, chilled limbs in the damp morning air. “Where to now?”

Tarquin turned from giving the ostler instructions to change the hones. “I’m not certain. Let’s break our fast and make some inquiries.”

Quentin followed him into the inn. In a few minutes
they were ensconced in a private parlor, a maid setting light to the kindling in the hearth.

“A drop of porter for the cold, my lord?” the innkeeper suggested, casting a critical eye around the wainscoted room, checking for tarnished copper, smudged window-panes, a smear of dust.

“If you please.” Tarquin peeled off his gloves. “And coffee, sirloin, and eggs.” He strode to the window, peering down into the street. “Where is the nearest magistrate?”

“On Castle Street, my lord.”

“Send a lad to me. I need someone to run an errand.”

The landlord bowed himself out.

“So?” Quentin leaned over the new flame, rubbing his hands. Rain dripped off his sodden cloak.

“So we discover if Ridge took her straightway to the magistrate,” Tarquin said succinctly, discarding his own dripping cloak. “Ah, thank you.” He nodded at the girl who placed two pewter tankards of porter on the table.

“Ye be wantin’ an errand run, sir?” A cheerful voice spoke from the doorway, where stood a rosy-cheeked lad in a leather apron, spiky hair resisting the discipline of water and brush.

Tarquin gave him brisk instructions. He was to go to the magistrate and discover if a woman had been brought before him in the last few hours.

“And if not?” Quentin took a grateful draft of porter.

“Then we assume he took her to his own house.”

“And if not?” Quentin tossed his own cloak onto a settle, where it steamed gently in the fire’s heat.

“Forsett Towers.” Tarquin drank from his own tankard. His voice was flat. “If I’m wrong, then … I don’t know.” He shrugged, but the careless gesture did nothing to conceal his bone-deep anxiety.

Breakfast arrived and they ate in silence, each distracted with his own thoughts. The lad returned. The magistrate had not yet left his bed and had spent an undisturbed night.

Tarquin nodded, gave him a coin, and summoned the landlord. “D’ye know the Ridge estate?”

“Aye, sir. Ten miles south as the crow flies.” The man gave precise directions. “Big stone gateposts … crumblin’ like, m’lord. Ye can’t miss it.”

“Ready, Quentin?”

“On your heels, brother.” Quentin put down his tankard and followed Tarquin downstairs and out into the yard. The incessant drizzle had stopped, and there was the faintest lightning in the sky. Tarquin paid their shot as flesh horses were harnessed to the phaeton.

They turned through the crumbling stone gateposts just as a feeble ray of sun poked through the clouds. The horses splashed through puddles along the driveway where Juliana had run with such desperation an hour earlier.

The housekeeper answered the furious tolling of the bell, her expression startled, her gray hair escaping from beneath her cap. She curtsied, her eyes like those of a scared rabbit. The morning had brought too many alarums and excursions into her normally peaceful routine.

“Sir George … is he at home?”

Dolly gazed up at the splendid figure in the caped driving cloak. His voice was cold and haughty, but his eyes were colder and carried a fearful menace.

“No, sir … no…. ’E left … a short while ago. ’E and ’is visitors.”

“Visitors?” Tarquin raised an inquiring eyebrow.

“Yes … yes, indeed, sir. A gentleman … mortal sick ’e was. Coughin’ fit to raise the dead … an’ a girl … a young woman … sick, too. Sir George carried ’er upstairs. Then they all left.” Her scared eyes flitted sideways, found Quentin’s reassuring gaze. She seemed to take courage, and her fingers loosed her apron where they’d been anxiously pleating and tucking.

“Do you know where they went?” Quentin asked gently.

She shook her head. “No, sir. But they went on ’orseback. The three of ’em on two. So they can’t ’ave gone far.”

“What road do we take to Forsett Towers?” Tarquin’s
voice still betrayed none of his agitation. He knew now that he was within a hand’s grasp of Juliana, and his rage was cold and deadly. George and Lucien would have had to hurt her to compel her thus far. And they would pay. He drowned the images of what they might have done to her in the icy certainty of their punishment.

Lucien fell just as they turned onto the gravel driveway leading to the gray stone mansion of Forsett Towers. He had been barely conscious throughout the ride, slumped over the horse’s neck, the reins loose in his ringers. Every few minutes his body would be convulsed with violent spasms as he shivered and coughed into the now scarlet handkerchief. When his horse stumbled into a pothole on the drive, Lucien slipped sideways. The horse, startled, broke into a sudden trot, and his rider tumbled off the saddle.

Juliana watched in horror as the confused horse quickened his pace and Lucien, still with one foot in the stirrup, was bumped along the gravel. He was making no attempt to free his foot, just dangled inert until George managed to seize the animal’s bridle and pull him to a halt.

George dismounted, hauling Juliana down with him. Still maintaining a tight grip on her wrist, he released Lucien’s foot and then stared down at the still figure on the ground. Lucien had struck his head on something sharp, and blood pulsed from a gash on his forehead. His eyes were closed and he was barely breathing.

“Damn him to hell!” George declared, the calm, controlled facade cracking for the first time since he’d caught Juliana on the lane. He dragged Juliana back to his horse and pushed her up into the saddle, mounting behind her again.

“You can’t just leave him.” Juliana at last found her voice again. She wished Lucien to the devil, but the thought of abandoning him unconscious and bleeding was appalling.

“He’s no good to me in that condition.” George picked
up the reins of Lucien’s horse, roughly kicked his own mount’s flanks, and started off again to the house, leading the riderless animal.

Juliana twisted round to look at the figure still lying on the drive. “We should carry him into the house.”

“Someone else can do it. Now, hold your tongue!” He pulled on her hair in vicious emphasis, and she fell silent again. She’d always known George was a brute and an oaf, but she hadn’t understood quite how brutal he was.

At the house George sprang down, dragging Juliana with him. He held her by the hair and the nape of the neck, shoving her up the steps to the front door, where he banged the knocker as if to sound the last trump. A footman opened it, looking both outraged and alarmed at such an uncivilized summons. He stared at Juliana as if he couldn’t believe his eyes. “Why, Miss Juliana …”

George pushed past him, thrusting Juliana ahead of him. “Where’s your master?”

“In the library … but …”

George ignored him, pushing Juliana toward the library door. Before he reached it, however, it opened. Sir Brian looked at them with an expression of acute distaste.

“I see you found her.” His voice expressed only annoyance.

“Yes … and I’ll see her burn outside Winchester jail,” George stated, shoving Juliana into the library. He held her by the neck and glared in triumph at Sir Brian. “And you, sir, and your lady wife will identify her before a magistrate this very day.”