19
THREE DAYS INTO the house party, Victor roused to the feel of his wife’s soft hand stroking his hard cock.
Instantly awake, he murmured, “You’ve become inordinately fond of this game.”
A provocative smile curved her lips. “And I suppose you haven’t?”
“I didn’t say that.” He leaned over to kiss her deeply.
He never tired of kissing her, never tired of taking her. Perhaps one day he would, but it had become an unrelenting obsession as he made up for all the years without her.
Rolling her beneath him, he lifted her nightdress to enter her and found her wet, warm, and willing, which only fired his desire more. When she rose to his thrusts with great enthusiasm, it spurred him into madness.
Her new boldness intoxicated him. In his youth, he’d loved her shy blushes, but now that he wasn’t so young anymore, he loved having a lusty bed partner.
Some time later, they’d both found their release and lay there breathing hard, entangled in each other’s arms. He buried his face in her neck to kiss the rapid pulse at her throat. God, who’d have guessed a month ago that he’d be spending his nights in the arms of his wife again? It still seemed like a miracle.
After a few moments, she left the bed to dress. He sat up and leaned back against the bedstead to watch. Strange how he’d forgotten so many little things about her—the way she’d never liked to linger in bed, the way she did her ablutions . . . the way her hips swayed as she walked.
When that made him harden, he swore. He had to curb his randy urges before he wore the poor woman out and drove her away again.
No, he hadn’t driven her away, he reminded himself. He must stop thinking like that. She wanted him, had always wanted him. Hell, if she hadn’t balked at his having a mad kidnapper of a father and a tavern wench mother, nothing was going to drive her off. What a fool he’d been, to keep so many secrets from her when they’d married. Perhaps if he hadn’t, they wouldn’t have lost so much time together.
“Well?” she asked as she shimmied into her corset. “Are you going to get up?”
“I suppose I must, if I’m to play lady’s maid,” he drawled.
She lifted an eyebrow. “I could always call for a servant and let her get a look at you lying there in the altogether.”
Chuckling, he left the bed. That was something the old Isa would never have said. Her lack of modesty around him was another new thing that he enjoyed.
“Remind me—what does Lady Lochlaw have planned for us today?” he asked as he laced her up.
“I suppose, since the day has dawned fair for a change, we’ll finally get to play that Scottish game called ‘golf’ that Rupert loves so much.”
He groaned. “I hate games. They’re pointless.”
“I think it sounds fun. It involves hitting a ball with a club into a series of holes along a lengthy course.” She cast him a teasing glance. “If you really don’t want to play, you can always just walk around holding my club for me.”
“I’d rather you hold my club,” he said, pressing his budding erection against her from behind.
“No more of that, now. Rupert wants us on the lawn by nine. He’s afraid it will rain before we can complete a full game.”
Victor snorted. “What a pity that would be.” But he began to dress. If Lochlaw wanted them on the lawn, then her ladyship would want him on the lawn, and he did owe the woman for not blaming Manton’s Investigations for his subterfuges.
Isa finished dressing before he did, so he told her to go on. He knew she liked a hearty breakfast, whereas he almost never ate it.
He was heading downstairs when a servant met him with a note. Tristan and Dom had arrived in Edinburgh. The servant asked if there was any answer, and Victor wrote a reply asking the two men to come to the estate as soon as possible. Then he charged the servant with getting the note to them in all haste. Isa wasn’t going to be happy to hear this.
When he reached the lawn, he saw the others heading for the course that ranged over a flat portion of the estate bounded by woods. Good. There’d be no chance to speak to Isa alone for a while. She deserved a few hours of fun before she had to start worrying about Jacoba and Gerhart again.
The morning passed more quickly than he’d expected. After a while, he began to enjoy watching as his wife attempted futilely to master the game. Every time she missed, she muttered to herself, then complained about her faulty club. She was a sore loser, his wife, another thing he hadn’t known about her.
She also had quite an arm on her, for she kept striking the little leather ball too hard. Indeed, when she came up to hit it this time, she knocked it so far that it sailed over the green area around the hole and into the nearby woods.
When he laughed and she glared at him, he couldn’t resist teasing, “You’ve confused this game with archery, Mrs. Cale. The object isn’t to hit a tree.”
“I did that on purpose,” she said, tipping up her chin. “It’s more of a challenge to hit it out of the woods.”
He snorted. “If you can even find it in there.”
She planted her hands on her hips. “Care to place a wager on that? If I hit the ball back onto the course from the woods, you have to take my place and show me you can do better at this than I.”
“And if you don’t?” he asked.
“I’ll make you banketstaaf,” she said with a smile.
“Will you lick your fingers when you’re done?”
Color rose in her cheeks. “Victor! Don’t be rude!”
But he saw her smiling as she began the long trek toward the other end of the course.
As she’d watched them banter, Miss Gordon had worn a guarded expression. But when Isa paused to look back, then stuck her tongue out at him, the young woman burst into laughter. It pleased Victor to see Miss Gordon coming out of her shell under Isa’s encouragement. She was even wearing those ridiculous purple walking shoes Lochlaw had bought.
“Can’t you do something about this?” said a female voice at his elbow.
Lady Lochlaw. Damnation.
He shot her a sideways glance. Though her evening gowns were provocatively low-cut, the baroness had the good sense to dress fairly modestly during the day. But she flirted so outrageously with the male guests that several of the wives were beginning to grumble. Even Isa had made a few arch remarks regarding the baroness.
Not that he blamed her. Lady Lochlaw was shameless.
“About what?” he said smoothly, though he had a pretty good idea of the source of her disgruntlement.
“My son. And that . . . that daughter of a tradesman.”
“Ah, you mean Miss Gordon.”
“Of course I mean Miss Gordon. Don’t be impudent.” She glanced over to where Lochlaw was showing Miss Gordon the proper way to hold a golf club, and Miss Gordon was gazing up at him adoringly. “It won’t even do me any good to hire you to find out all her dark secrets. A chit like that is too young to have any.”
“I should hope so.” He watched as Isa disappeared into the woods after her ball. “I understand why you didn’t like your son taking up with an older woman you believed to be a widow. But why don’t you approve of a young, well-bred maiden?”
“Well-bred—hah!”
He decided to give Lochlaw a little help. “You do know that she has quite a substantial dowry, don’t you?”
The baroness blinked. “Isn’t she the granddaughter of your wife’s partner?”
“Great-niece. Her father, Mr. Gordon’s nephew, is Alistair Gordon.”
She gaped at him. “The coffee merchant who owns half of New Town?”
“The very one.” He suppressed a smirk at her astonished expression. “She’s merely very fond of her great-uncle, so she enjoys hanging about his shop.”
“That’s the most ridiculous thing I’ve ever heard,” Lady Lochlaw said with a sniff. “What is the world coming to? Young women ‘hanging about’ in shops, indeed. What is her family thinking?”
“That it’s better for her to make herself useful to her relations than to sit bored at home? I don’t know. You’ll have to ask them.” He cast her a covert glance. “But your son likes her. Shouldn’t that be all that matters?”
She stiffened her shoulders. “I can see that being related to a duke has taught you nothing.”
He chuckled. “Not enough to suit your ladyship, apparently.”
Waving away a midge buzzing around her head, she murmured, “How substantial is this dowry anyway?”
“Somewhere in the vicinity of twenty thousand pounds, I believe.”
She sucked in a sharp breath. “That is a nice dowry.” Gazing over at her son, she frowned. “Still, my boy could have any young lady of rank he wants. Lady Zoe, for example, would be perfect. Her father is the Earl of Olivier. Granted, she can be a bit too opinionated for my tastes, but she’s an even greater heiress than Miss Gordon.”
He glanced over to where the exotic-looking Lady Zoe was arguing about methods of crop planting, of all things, with some poor gentleman. “Ah, but does she know about atomic theory?”
“Pish posh,” the baroness said with a dismissive wave of her hand, “who cares about that?”
“Your son.”
“Nonsense. He will grow out of it. My point is, with so many eligible females about, why must he always fix on the unsuitable ones?”
Lady Lochlaw wouldn’t like hearing that she’d brought it on herself by trying to fit her square peg of a son into a round hole. Any young man would balk at that.
“Think of it this way,” Victor offered. “A quiet and malleable woman like Miss Gordon will be more likely to allow you to ‘guide’ her actions once they marry. If you make an ally of her, you might have a say in your son’s life yet.”
Though he doubted it. Miss Gordon had some experience with avoiding a scheming mother. With Lochlaw to bolster her confidence and him to bolster hers, they might prove more formidable together than they’d been apart.
And if they didn’t, they’d simply remove themselves as far away from their mothers as they could.
Lady Lochlaw was tapping her chin. “He does have to marry; we must have an heir, after all. And I’ve had no luck in coaxing him to marry a lady of my choosing.” As she spotted her son headed toward her, she added in a whisper, “But don’t tell him I am even thinking of allowing it. That will surely make him throw his latest chère amie over for some washerwoman, just to spite me.”
Somehow Victor doubted that. Anyone could see from looking at Lochlaw and Miss Gordon that they had eyes only for each other.
“Cale!” Lochlaw called out as he approached. “We’re going on to the next part of the course. Did you see which way your wife went?”
A sudden unease settled in his gut as he scanned the area. “The last time I saw her, she was heading into the woods after her ball.”
“Well, she hasn’t returned, and we’re ready to move on. Those woods are pretty deep; she’ll never find it in there. I could have told her that.”
And Isa was stubborn enough to look for it until dark, just so she could show him up. “I’ll go fetch her. She can’t have gone far.”
Perhaps it was the arrival of Dom and Tristan that had him on edge, or perhaps it was just that his life felt unsettled. But as he headed for the spot where he’d last seen her, his sense of unease wouldn’t leave him.
♦ ♦ ♦
ISA WANDERED THROUGH the beeches, feeling a bit silly as she peered through the underbrush for her ball. Pray God there were no snakes or ferocious beasts about. She’d lived in cities all her life; she wasn’t comfortable with wild creatures.
She should have just abandoned the stupid ball. What had she been thinking, to wander into the woods after it?
A sigh escaped her. She’d been thinking to win her wager against Victor. He’d been far too quiet until she’d hit the ball into the woods. It was time to jolly him out of whatever memories had thrown him into a pensive mood. She enjoyed her glimpses of the joking Victor; she saw that side of him far too seldom.
The sound of footsteps in the brush made her smile. He had come after her!
But before she could turn to tease him, she was grabbed roughly around the waist from behind and a forearm was shoved up against her throat so hard she could scarcely breathe. “Good morning, Isa,” said a voice that she remembered only too well.
Gerhart!
She fought him and tried to scream, but she couldn’t get a breath to do so.
“Hold still, damn it!” Gerhart growled in Dutch as he increased the pressure on her throat until spots formed before her eyes. “If you want to see your daughter again, you’d best keep still.”
Her heart dropped, and she froze. Then she began to shake.
“That’s better,” he murmured, releasing his hold a fraction. “We don’t have much time. Victor will come looking for you any moment, so listen to me and listen well. Amalie is with Jacoba.”
Terror gripped her. How did he know Amalie’s name?
He’d probably known from the beginning. What a fool she was! Jacoba had spoken of following her to the cottage after Amalie left, and Isa had believed her. But if the Hendrixes had followed Victor into town, there was no reason they couldn’t have then followed Isa to her cottage while Amalie was still there. Or when she took Amalie to school.
“Do you understand?” he growled.
Her throat was on fire, but she managed to rasp, “Yes.”
“So don’t be screaming or trying to summon your husband. Jacoba knows that if I don’t come back by evening, she’s to move the girl elsewhere. And you’ll never see your daughter again.”
The thought made her blood run cold. He relaxed his grip, and she dragged air into her lungs. “How . . . where . . .”
“We took her out of that school in Carlisle.” His low chuckle made her skin crawl. “Or I should say, you took her out. Jacoba can still mimic your handwriting well enough, and all it needed was a letter from you saying that you were sending your sister and brother-in-law to fetch her.”
His voice hardened. “We sent it from Edinburgh the day after you tossed my wife out of your house like you were too good for her. Well, you’re not. You’re the same as us, no matter how fine your friends are now.”
The fact that he knew where her daughter was in school lent credence to his claim, but surely the school would never have given Amalie over to strangers. “I don’t believe you,” she ventured.
“I thought you might say that.” He held something up before her face. It took a second for her to make out what it was in the dim forest light, but as soon as she saw the glitter of the hatpin with its fleur-de-lis, her heart faltered.
“I see that you recognize it. She said that you made it for her, that it’s paste. But you told her you’d give her one with real gold and jewels if she takes good care of this one.”
Lord help her, they really did have Amalie! Her poor baby! What must she be thinking? Was she all right? Surely Jacoba wouldn’t hurt her own niece. How could she?
“It’s just to prove that we have her,” Gerhart went on. “No harm will come to her as long as you do what we say, do you hear?”
She could barely breathe for the hold about her neck, and she couldn’t think at all, but somehow she managed to nod.
“I swear if you do this one thing for us, we’ll never trouble you again.”
When she snorted, he jerked his forearm back into her throat so hard that she reeled.
“It would pay you to be nicer to me just now,” he hissed in her ear. “I can make sure you pass out; I learned that as a wrestler. I can have you unconscious in a heartbeat if I wish. Do you understand?”
Her throat felt seared by an iron, and she nodded. She understood perfectly well that he was a villain, and she’d tell him so if she could just breathe once more.
He relaxed his hold again, and she gulped air.
“Now, listen well,” he ordered. “I want you to bring me the Lochlaw diamonds. I don’t care how you get them—I just want them in my hands by nightfall.”
“Why don’t you just let me give you money? Or jewels from my shop?” she rasped.
“Because the moment we’re away, you’ll have the authorities after us for kidnapping.” He pressed his mouth to her ear, and his beard scratched her cheek. “But not if you’ve stolen the diamonds. Then you’ll have no choice but to keep quiet about it.”
She groaned. That was how he’d always worked—turning her into a thief like him, so he could control her. “I don’t know the first thing about stealing,” she rasped.
“That’s not my concern. You can put a fake in their place if you want. We heard in town that you were the one to clean them, so you must have a good idea of what they look like. Or you can just steal them. I don’t care, though I’m sure you’d rather stay free of the noose.”
“Please, Gerhart, there’s no time to create a copy,” she protested, though she had no intention of making a copy or stealing the real necklace, if she could help it.
“As I said, not my concern. But her ladyship won’t miss them until some ball or other, so after you take the real necklace and bring it to me, you’ll have plenty of time to replace it with an imitation to save your neck. Either way, I want the real diamonds by evening. Then, and only then, will I give you my niece.”
“What if I can’t get to the necklace?” she asked, her heart pounding painfully. “What if it’s in a strongbox or—”
“Then your sister and I will be raising little Amalie.” He taunted her, “I daresay she’ll be a hard little worker in some trade. Of course, she’ll always wonder what happened to her mama, but—”
Isa released a savage growl, and he choked off her air again.
Now his voice held an edge. “And don’t be thinking to pawn off any fake jewels on me. You taught me how to tell paste from real well enough. So, at five o’clock this evening, you will take the Lochlaw diamonds and leave the estate—alone—to ride out along Strathridge Road. At some point along the route, I’ll join you and we’ll make the exchange—my niece for the diamonds.”
Anger had her shaking even as she struggled for breath.
“Oh, and one more thing, sister. I advise you not to mention this little conversation to your husband. We both know he wouldn’t approve of your stealing any diamonds, even to save your brat. And if I see him going off to town to summon the authorities or mount a rescue, if I get even a hint that he’s following you this evening, I will never show myself, and you will never see your daughter again. Do you understand?”
When he lessened the pressure on her throat once more, she rasped, “I understand, you coward.” She fought for breath to vent her rage, but could only manage a low whisper. “I understand very well that if you hurt Amalie in any way, I’ll find you and cut your heart out.”
He chuckled. “How bloodthirsty you’ve become, Mausi. Does Cale have to sleep with one eye open, after the way he abandoned you?”
“You know quite well he didn’t abandon me!” she hissed.
“True. So perhaps it’s you having to sleep with one eye open. I heard that Cale languished in gaol for weeks while the prince’s guards were given free rein to go at him full bore, trying to learn the truth.”
A chill froze her blood. “You know what happened to him after I left?”
“The friends who helped us leave Amsterdam told me.” His voice turned snide. “You must have quite the hold on him. I heard that they starved and humiliated him, day after day, determined to make him break down and admit who committed the crime. And he still wouldn’t point the finger at you, poor sod.”
Oh, Victor, my love. “That ‘poor sod’ will see you dead before this is over,” she warned in a harsh rasp. “And I’ll see you hang for this if it’s the last thing I do.”
He tightened his grip on her throat again. “I wouldn’t be planning on that if I were you, sister. Not if you want Amalie to ever meet her father.” He mused aloud, “Perhaps we’ll pass her off as our daughter. With those blond curls of hers, she certainly looks like Jacoba.”
Impotent tears welled in her eyes.
Suddenly she heard the sounds of rustling brush. “Isa! Where are you?” Victor called. “Forget about that damned golf ball! I concede the wager.”
“I must go,” Gerhart whispered. “But I’ll see you on the road at five o’clock. Don’t forget.”
Then he tightened his hold until everything went black.
When she came to, she was lying on her back on the ground staring up into Victor’s worried face as he knelt beside her, chafing her hands.
“Are you all right?” he said hoarsely. “Did you faint?”
“I’m . . . fine,” she rasped, her throat still too sore to do more than whisper. For half a second, she considered not telling him and just doing what Gerhart wanted, however she could.
But that impulse swiftly fled. Victor had a right to know. And she needed to tell him. “Gerhart was here. You must go after him!”
Shock lit Victor’s face before he leapt to his feet in a fury. “Devil take it, I’ll kill him for hurting you!”
“No!” she hissed, grabbing his leg. “Don’t go near him! He’s kidnapped Amalie, but he wouldn’t say where he’s got her. So just follow him. That’s all!”
Victor paled. After briefly scanning the woods, he headed off at a run.
She lay there a moment, her breath coming in labored gasps. When she could breathe again, she struggled to her feet. Glancing around, she looked for anything Gerhart might have left behind as a clue to Amalie’s whereabouts, but all she found was her bonnet, which had been knocked off in the struggle with Gerhart. As she bent to pick it up, she spotted the fleur-de-lis hatpin nearby, glittering in the leaves.
The tears she’d been holding back during her encounter with Gerhart now streamed down her face. She took the hatpin in her gloved hands and stared blindly into the woods.
“Hold on, dearling,” she whispered. “We’re coming for you. They won’t get away with this.”
Guilt settled in her belly like soured wine. She should have listened to Victor, and gone to get Amalie the second those two appeared in Edinburgh. No, she should never have let her daughter out of her sight in the first place. If only she’d kept her at home. If only—
The sounds of footsteps in the brush made her turn to find Rupert and Mary Grace approaching.
Rupert took in her tears and dirt-smeared skirts and his eyes widened. “What the deuce happened? We’ve been looking and looking for you.” He surveyed her surroundings. “Where’s Victor? He called out that he’d found you.”
She thought fast. “I . . . I startled a vagrant who knocked me down. Victor went after him.”
“A vagrant!” Rupert cried. “On the estate? No doubt it was a poacher. I shall speak to the gamekeeper at once.”
“No, I’m all right,” she said hastily. She had to talk to Victor, figure out what they were going to do before she involved Rupert. “I’m sure he’s gone by now.”
She hoped he was. And that Victor was tracking him.
“Perhaps you should go lie down in the house,” Mary Grace said, hurrying to her side to take hold of her arm. “You look unwell, truly you do. And you’re talking funny.”
“Yes,” she murmured. “I—I probably should go inside.”
The rustling of brush coming from the direction Victor had headed made her heart sink. As soon as he came into view, panic seized her.
“You two go on,” she urged Rupert and Mary Grace, wanting only to get rid of them now. “Victor’s back. He can look after me.”
“Did you find the poacher?” Rupert asked Victor.
“No,” Victor said, his heart in his eyes as he looked at her. “He had a horse waiting; I heard it whinny and then hoofbeats as he rode away. By the time I got to the road, he was long gone. It’s been so dry, I couldn’t even tell which way he went. And he may not have taken the road at all.”
“A poacher with a horse,” Rupert mused aloud. “That’s peculiar.”
“Lochlaw,” Victor said in a tight voice. “Could you hurry ahead to the house and make sure there’s some wine waiting for Isa?”
“Oh! Of course! Come, Miss Gordon, let’s go.”
As soon as they were out of earshot, she grabbed Victor’s arms. “He’s gone? Disappeared?”
The howling in Victor’s eyes mirrored that in her heart. “Yes,” he snapped. “But he’s a dead man. This time, nothing you say will keep me from murdering that bastard.”
“I would rather see him hang.” She cupped his cheeks in her hands. “But first, we must get Amalie back.”
“And how are we to do that?”
Through a throat still raw from Gerhart’s abuse, she told him what her evil brother-in-law wanted.