CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
Dev, with Cam on his heels, made it through the warehouse undetected and up to the second floor. He had seen the colors of several men grouped together in a small room downstairs, but had managed to keep away from there. Passing the door that he knew Lilly sat behind, he noted the lock was large and secure and the door made of sturdy wood. He had nothing to break it, and even if he did, it would alert someone that he was there.
Moving past, he did not tell Lilly he was near, but kept walking to a small door at the end of the hallway. Opening it, he found a balcony.
“You stay here,” he whispered to Cam, then motioned that he was going up onto the roof.
Climbing onto the railing, he pulled himself up. If his luck was in, there would be a window in the side of the building or in the roof and he could get her out that way. Walking slowly, he hoped it would hold him. Dropping to his knees when he was above her, he found a window and looked down. Pressing his face to the glass, he tried to find her.
“Lilly, it's Devon,” he said softly, using his fingers to tap on the pane. He kept tapping until he heard her call his name. He had to take a chance and break the glass—hopefully they would not hear him from below.
“I'm going to break the glass, Lilly. Move away from beneath it.”
Standing, he stomped his foot, and the window cracked instantly. Taking off his jacket, he wrapped it around his fist and cleared the glass from the opening.
“Please hurry, Devon!”
He could hear the panic in her voice and remembered her fear of the dark. Add to that everything else she had endured, and he would say she was close to hysteria.
“Soon, Lilly, I will have you out soon. Just a few minutes more.”
“I-i-it’s dark in here.”
“I know, sweetheart. I am going to put a knot in the end of this scarf and then lower it to you. I want you to use both hands and hold on tight while I pull you up.” Lord, he hoped she was strong enough. The distance wasn't great, yet it would be difficult for her.
“I-I can't. My hands are bound at the back.”
Someone would pay for leaving her bound, helpless, and alone in the dark; he would see to it. Once again on his stomach, he looked down at her.
Dirt was smeared over her face, her clothes were torn, and her hair had come unbound. However, it was the look of utter desperation in her eyes that made him curse. He'd never seen that look before.
“Y-you'll have to get help.”
“I won't leave you, Lilly,” Dev said, trying to work out how the hell he was going to get her out of the room. She sniffed but said nothing further.
“Bend at the waist and slip your hands under your bottom. Then sit on it and try and wriggle them under your legs so they are bound in front of you.”
He watched as she wriggled, trying to push her hands beneath her.
“My petticoats and bottom are too large.”
“Your bottom is not too large, it's perfect. Now wriggle harder.”
She did and finally she sat and began a series of maneuvers to try and get her legs through her hands. If she failed he would call Cam, then drop into the room and lift her up to him.
“It-it's hard!”
Her skirts were now up around her waist as she tried to wriggle her hands past her ankles, and if the situation were not so dire, he would take great pleasure in viewing her long, slender limbs.
“Don't you dare look at my—”
“Knickers?” Dev supplied. At least she had some fight back in her voice.
“I did it!”
“Clever girl. Now stand and take the end of the scarf.”
Sitting upright, Dev braced his feet on either side of the window frame and began to pull her up.
“Don't drop me!”
“Untrusting wench!” Dev grunted.
“My h-hands are slipping.”
“No,” Dev wheezed, “they are not.”
“Pull, Dev!”
He answered with a grunt. When his hand clamped on her wrist, she sobbed. Standing, he hauled her through the opening and then she was free.
“I–I have you,” Dev rasped, breathless as he lowered them to the roof. He sat with her on his lap, wrapping his arms around her. He held her tight and dropped his head to her shoulder.
“Thank you,” she whispered, burrowing into him. “I didn't think anyone would come so soon. I-it was dark, and then a man came and I was horrid to him, and he left a-again, taking his lamp.”
He let her babble out her fear as he held her, stroking her hair and assuring her she was with him now, and safe.
“Let me untie you,” he said when his breathing had begun to regulate and she had run out of words.
“Thank you.” She gripped his neck hard. “Thank you for coming to find me.”
Dev kissed her cheek, and then easing her back, he untied her feet and hands, rubbing each when he had finished.
“I have you now, sweetheart; no one will hurt you again,” he said, cupping her face between his hands. “I have been slowly going out of my mind imagining what horrors you were being exposed to.”
“You really mean that, don't you?” she whispered.
“I never say anything I don't mean.”
“I-I did not think anyone would come for me,” she added, and Dev wanted to go and find Nicholas Braithwaite and punch him, only this time harder.
“My family and James are here, plus Toby, and I would love to tell you how many ways you are special to me, Lilly, but right now we need to leave as quietly and quickly as I came, before any of us is detected.”
Lilly nodded. Dev lifted her to her feet. He took her gloved hand and led her to the edge of the roof. Cam was waiting to take her, and Dev lowered Lilly into his arms. He quickly followed. Opening the door, they saw no one in the hallway, and he pulled her through behind him. On tiptoes they walked its length, and then started down the stairs.
“We need to slip past a room where I believe several men are, and as there could be trouble waiting for us out there you must run if I tell you to,” Dev whispered. “My family will be outside, go to them.”
“I will not leave you.”
“You will do as you are told, Lilly. If I say run, you run to where the others await.”
“I—”
“Promise me,” Dev demanded softly.
“I promise.”
Cam snorted at the unenthusiastic tone of her voice. However, she had promised, so at least Dev had her word.
Dev could see clearly; Lilly and Cam, however, could not, so he led them silently through the warehouse. It was as they approached the hole they had entered through that he heard the sound of feet running toward them.
“Run straight ahead, Lilly, there is a hole in the wall. Once you are through, call James!”
She left his side as the first man reached him. Turning, Dev swung out with his leg as James had taught him to. It connected and the man went down. But seconds later, the next was upon him.
Cam had two on him, and the brothers fought with everything they had.
Dev heard Cam's war cry as he took a fist to the chin that made him see stars. He looked and found James entering the fray, Dev’s sisters behind him. He took a right to the jaw and quickly returned the favor with more force.
“Don't touch him, you cad!”
Lilly appeared on his right, wielding a piece of wood like a saber. Dev didn't have time to roar at her, as the man before him was bigger and meaner than the others. He just hoped she stayed healthy so he could kill her for disobeying him when this was over.
“Leave now!” he managed before taking a fist to the stomach that nearly doubled him over.
“Take that!”
Dev watched the man’s eyes open wider and then he simply fell backward, landing hard enough to ensure that if Lilly hadn't cracked his head, the floor would have. James did some sort of swinging kick caught his man unaware and sent him face-first into a wall. Cam, with a well-placed punch, finished off his opponent. Nobody moved for several seconds, all dragging in large lungfuls of salty air.
“You, madam,” Dev wheezed, pointing at Lilly when he could speak, “promised me you would run when I told you to! Yet I turn around to see you wielding that bloody piece of wood like Zenobia!”
“Wasn't she Queen of the Palmyrene Empire in Roman Syria?” Cam said, grinning.
“Yes, she led a famous revolt against the Roman Empire,” Eden added, stepping to Dev's side with a handkerchief, which she pressed to his sorely abused lip.
Ignoring James's snort of laughter, Dev glared at his siblings as best as he could over the white square of linen. He was well aware of what they were doing, but this time it wasn't going to work. Nothing was distracting him from telling Lilly what he thought. He was sure she'd taken years of his life tonight by getting involved in the fighting.
“Shut up, all of you!”
“Now, Dev, you've always lectured us on learning about famous women as well as men in history. Surely Zenobia falls into that category.”
“Cam, I will thrash you if you don't cease!”
“I had my fingers crossed!”
Spinning back from glaring at his siblings, Dev gently pushed his sister and her ministrations aside and looked at Lilly as she spoke. The wood was still clasped firmly in her hands and she looked small and fragile, a façade that no longer fooled him.
“What?”
“I had my fingers crossed when I promised you.”
Dev stared at her for several seconds—maybe the events of today were catching up with her, because she was making no sense. “What?” he said again.
“Oh, well then, that makes perfect sense,” Essie said, rushing forward to take the wood from Lilly and drop it to the ground.
“Yes, it's a code we Sinclairs have always lived by,” Eden said, moving to Lilly's other side.
“Eden,” James warned in that tone that told Dev he wanted her to shut up and stop interfering. As he was in full agreement, he followed it up with a glare.
“You crossed your fingers when you promised me you would leave?” Dev said as it finally dawned on him what the hell she was talking about. She didn't speak, just nodded. His sisters moved closer, pinning her between them.
“Excellent. Well, I'm glad that's sorted,” Cam said loudly.
“Nothing is sorted! For Christ's sake, when we cross our fingers on a promise it is over something trivial like raiding each other’s rooms and stealing belongings, not... not”—Dev had never been the type to fly into a rage, but it seemed tonight it was his destiny—”when your life is at stake!”
“I don't know, when Cam took Miss Pound Cake, I was devastated,” Eden said.
“She was a doll!”
Lilly's giggle sucked the anger right out of Dev. It was such a sweet, unrestrained sound, and all the sweeter because it came from a woman who had had very few reasons to giggle in her life.
“We need to get out of here,” Dev snapped, pointing to the hole in the wall and scowling. “Now!” he roared, which had his siblings scurrying forward, dragging Lilly with them. James, however, strolled. The Duke never scurried.
“Toby, you are coming with us too,” Dev said, looking to where the boy sat.
“I-I c-can't.”
Dev heard the pain and quickly crouched before him. He had one hand clutched to his side and when Dev pulled it away, he saw blood. “Why didn't you say something?” he said, picking him up and running to the opening.
“It hurts.”
It must have been bad if he said that because this stoic little boy was not one to make a fuss. Dev found his siblings in the carriage that had been outside the warehouse. James was driving, with Cam seated beside him. He hoped that between them they could get them home safely.
He climbed in with Toby in his arms and settled him on Lilly.
“What has happened?” Lilly cried.
Dev picked her up and held them both on his lap. “He's hurt. I don't know how badly, but we need to get to the Raven residence now.”
Dev heard Lilly's whisper as she talked to Toby on the journey to the Raven town house. Essie was kneeling on the floor before the boy, inspecting the injury as best she could given the circumstances.
No one spoke. All eyes were focused on the boy, and he could feel the fear in Lilly as she held him close. Toby lay against her, quiet and still.
“Cam, take Toby,” Dev said as the carriage stopped. He lifted Lilly to her feet and followed.
The house was well lit as they walked into the front entrance, yet like Dev, Lilly did not see her brother standing beside the butler until he stepped before her.
“Are you well, Lilliana?”
“What are you doing here?”
“I came to find you.”
“Why?” she asked, and Dev could hear the confusion in her voice. Placing a hand on her back, he reassured her she was safe and he was there at her side.
“I am sorry.”
“For what?”
“I—everything.”
“I don't know what game you are playing, Nicholas,” she said, “and why you look as you do, but I assure you I want you to leave here now and never return.”
Dev let her leave then, to follow Cam, who was carrying Toby up the stairs.
“She was hardly going to run into your arms, Nicholas.”
Dev stood silently beside James as he spoke, watching Lilly run up the stairs. He would follow soon, but had a few words to say to her brother first.
“At least she is safe, and for that I thank you.”
“I almost believe you mean that, cousin.”
“Surprisingly, I do,” Nicholas said quietly, looking from Dev to James. “She will not wed Danderfield. I will see to it in the morning.”
“Dare one ask about this transformation you seem to have undergone in the space of one evening?” James said, the skepticism clearly evident in this tone.
Nicholas didn't answer instantly, and Dev watched as he thought about his next words.
“I loved her once, you know, but things changed with my father's death.”
“The fact she was your sister never changed, Braithwaite,” Dev said. “And there is much you don't know about your sister, or what she does.”
“What?”
“The story is hers to tell, not mine.”
“Very well, I will speak with her tomorrow. And I would thank you for your harsh words; they have made me see just what I have become, Lord Sinclair.”
“Words will cost you nothing, Braithwaite,” Dev said, brushing past him. “Actions, however, now they are worth a great deal more.”
Dev helped Essie and Lilly clean Toby's wound. He seemed to drift in and out of consciousness, and the tension in the room grew with each breath he struggled to draw into his small body.
“There is so much blood,” Lilly whispered as she once again rinsed the cloth in the bowl, the water now red.
“Dev says the damage inside him is bad and that he is bleeding. Therefore, I must be honest, Lilly, it does not look good.”
Lilly's hands stilled as Essex spoke. “Please tell me he will live.”
“Essie will do everything she can and James has called for a doctor,” Dev reassured her.
Lilly looked up at him, her eyes wide and pleading. “He can't die, Devon.”
“We won't know anything until he has been treated, Lilly, but for now, we have to stop the bleeding,” Essie soothed.
Dev let himself slide into his other vision. The boy was bleeding from the inside, and he could see his color was weaker, the yellow now almost cream. Unless they stopped that bleeding, Toby would die; he knew it, Essie knew it. Lilly, however, did not.
The doctor came, a ridiculously young-looking man who, as far as Lilly was concerned, did not have enough experience to make an accurate diagnosis. She looked over his shoulder as he checked Toby, and Dev could see the young man was intimidated.
“He has internal injuries I am afraid, and is losing too much blood. I fear the prognosis is not promising.”
“Well, then do something!”
Dev intervened as Lilly glared at the doctor, and he quickly pushed him from the room into James's hands outside.
After applying a paste to the wound and forcing several sips of herbal tea down Toby's throat, Essie left, muttering about needing a medical book she had in her room. Toby's breath had grown weak and his face was as white as the sheet he lay upon. Dev took the cup of warm tea and buttered crumpet off the tray, both of which Lilly had refused, and moved to her side.
“Eat this.”
“I couldn't,” she said, her eyes still on Toby, and Dev wondered where she got her strength. He was wilting and he hadn't been abducted, bound, and left in a small room with no nourishment for hours on end.
“You will eat this, Lilly, because you will need your strength to care for Toby. If you faint, then it will be me he sees when he opens his eyes, not you.”
She took the tea and gulped it down, then nibbled the crumpet. He wiped the corner of her mouth when she ate the last bite. The sob came from nowhere, and when she launched into his arms he caught her.