CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
HENRY FOUGHT TO KEEP from spilling from the tipped gig. The horse stomped and whinnied. Barnabas’s arm around her waist went slack. She whipped around to see what had happened to him.
A limp Barnabas was being pulled from the seat. His head rolled back. The man removing him wore a hat pulled low. She couldn’t see his face. Her heart somersaulted in her chest. A second scream bubbled in her throat.
The driver clamped his hands on her arms. “Are you all right, Miss? Broken a wheel, we have.”
Right, and some man had appeared from nowhere to drag Barnabas out of the seat. Whatever was happening wasn’t good. She elbowed the driver in the sternum and scrambled for her bag and the Colt revolver.
His “oof” told her she’d hit him right. His thick arms wrapped around her and pulled her back. The other man lunged forward, pressing a cloth to her face. She held her breath, kicking and thrashing.
The cloth burned and she cried out only to have the sickening sweet cloth pressed harder against her nose. Both men clamped down on her. The second man had a cloth tied over his face like a highwayman. She couldn’t see his eyes and that terrified her. She fought to get free, to push the cloth from her face. For a second she had her face free and gulped a breath before he pushed the rag back in place.
The smell was oddly chemical. Chloroform. It had to be chloroform or ether. Holding her breath, she scrabbled to catch something, anything she could use to get free. Tickling in her throat made her eyes water.
The masked man said something she didn’t understand and Mr. Inverness took over holding the rag. She elbowed him again and twisted, but he was prepared this time and restricted her movements. The other man bent over and she couldn’t see what was happening. She fought harder.
“Easy now,” Mr. Inverness said like she was some kind of horse.
The other man said some more words that made no sense and then Mr. Inverness responded in kind. Her lungs screamed and the gasp she’d been fighting erupted. The sickly sweet syrup invaded her throat with an unnatural cold. She was inhaling death.
Her head spun and her legs didn’t respond to her commands to kick.
The driver unbuttoned her dress.
Bloody hell, what were they going to do to her?
*~*~*
Barnabas fought to swim out of the darkness. He felt as if he were floating, although there was pressure on his wrists and knees.
There was the rub of a body against his inner legs. He was being carried, and judging from the angle, carried upward. His legs didn’t respond to his command to jerk away. At first nothing responded, but then use of his muscles slowly returned as he tensed his shoulders to keep his arms from being pulled out of their sockets. He tried to tuck his chin but his head was filled with lead and continued to loll backwards.
“Heavy, he is,” said one familiar voice.
He agreed if the weight of his head was any indication.
“Just get him inside before he wakes up,” said another familiar voice. “I’d have to let him down to dose him again.”
Where was Henry? He wouldn’t do Henry any good if he was unconscious. Barnabas deliberately made his body stay limp. The men grunted as they continued hauling him up stairs. He was dumped on frigid floorboards, and he barely suppressed a groan. He opened his eyes a slit and saw dim light, as if from a single candle.
His spine knotted. Some policeman he was, getting ambushed. And failing to protect Henry. Where the hell was she? A faint snuffling snore came from behind him. Henry?
“Certain, you are, he won’t be ired at this crack?”
“He’ll laugh about it later.”
Not bloody likely, whatever crack meant. His body was sluggish as he tried to turn. He should take out the men before they got away. He should make certain Henry was all right.
In the end, he managed to open his eyes just as the door closed, metal clanged, and a padlock snapped. Damn.
He finally managed to roll to his feet and realized they were bare. Looking down, he stared at his underclothes. It took a minute before his brain could make sense of why he was missing his clothes. They’d removed his pants and coat, vest and shirt. He was down to his smalls and undershirt. Henry lay crumpled on a mattress, her dress gone, her hair messy. His throat went dry. Had the men assaulted her?
He swallowed hard.
Her snore receded into the heavy breathing of sleep. She would likely wake soon. He quickly checked her over, but didn’t find anything alarming.
He shivered as he made his way to a shuttered window. While he shoved at the reluctant shutters, he searched the room. A single candle burned on a stone hearth. Behind the thin halo of light was a steepled pile of long dark bricks of a sort. Peat?
A stack of the irregular bricks was to the side of the stone fireplace. A wicker basket rested against a wall.
He wrenched the shutters open with a screech of unused hinges. A cool breeze wound into the room and his teeth chattered. If glass had been in the window at one time, it wasn’t any longer. In the darkness, he couldn’t see the men in either direction. Nor, as he listened, could he hear the creak of the harness or the horse. His sense of time was not altogether steady, and more time must have passed than he realized. He reached to put a leg over the sill only to realize he was at least twenty feet in the air. He might be able to jump down without injury, but then he’d have no way to get back inside to Henry.
She let out a soft moan and curled into a tighter ball. Gooseflesh pebbled her bare arms. Her creamy curvy bare arms.
His mouth watered in spite of the dire situation. How dire was it? A prank or something worse? Would the second man come back and kill them?
Rubbing his arms, he tried to take stock. A folded blanket lay near Henry’s head. He shuttered the glassless window and unfurled the blanket over her. Still, it was too cold in the room for them in their underwear.
First, he’d get a fire started, move Henry and the mattress as close to it as he dared, then he’d look for a way to get them out of here. He looked around for a spill or a match, but found nothing other than the candle.
He tilted it under the center of the stack to light the peat. A bit of straw under the steepled bricks flared right away. He held his breath, hoping the peat would catch. Never having built a fire with the fuel, he didn’t know how difficult it would be to light.
Once the fire burned in earnest, he took the candle and finished his assessment of their place. Other than the mattress, not a single stick of furniture broke the empty stretch of floorboards. Nor was there a tool he could use to pry open the door.
He turned to Henry. He pulled the mattress with her on it closer to the fireplace, but not so close a stray spark might catch the bedding on fire. He blew out the candle to save for when they needed it and sat down on the mattress next to Henry.
The room was chilly and it didn’t help that he tensed every time the fire hissed or popped. Henry still slept. Was she all right or had she been given too much of the drug? What if she couldn’t wake? His throat went dry. On the other hand, she’d had so little sleep in the past day, he didn’t want to disturb her slumber.
Still. If it wasn’t natural sleep... He shook her shoulder. “Henry, are you all right?”
She made a disgruntled sound.
He shook her shoulder again.
Her eyelids flickered, but then she lowered her dark lashes to rest against her pale cheeks. “I don’t want to get up, Mum. It’s still dark.”
He didn’t think he’d ever been mistaken for anyone’s mother ever before. Underneath his concern, a growing awareness of her as a woman was building in his blood. They were locked together in the top floor of a house with nothing to do and nearly naked.
Her eyes flicked wide, but the blue was sleep clouded. She blinked a couple of times, her lashes hanging lower each time. Then they jerked wide. “Barnabas?”
Her tone packed more than his name in her question. It smacked of what are you doing here?
She sounded sensible, if not altogether awake. He exhaled loudly and could breathe again. “It’s all right. Go back to sleep.”
“Cold.” She curled against him. Obviously her senses hadn’t completely returned or he doubted she would be snuggling against his leg.
“I have the fire started. You’ll be warm in a bit.”
She pulled an arm out and put it under her head, then a few seconds later pulled it back under the covers. The sight of that bare arm fired his blood. But clearly she was uncomfortable. He caught her under the arm and lifted until her head rested on his thigh and he pulled the blanket over her shoulders.
She wiggled, snuggling in and then went limp. At least she wasn’t berating him for getting them in this fix.
He smoothed her hair, partly to keep her head from inching up into his hardening problem. Her hair was incredibly soft, like down on a duckling. He knew he shouldn’t but he plucked out hairpins, uncoiling the messy bun of her hair and letting it flow over the blanket. Her hair was much longer than he expected. He’d have to see her standing to know its exact length. He threaded his fingers through the silky strands, loving the way they slid over his hand. He encountered a tangle and disengaged his hand before he pulled it.
She was awake. He could feel it in the change in tension of her body.
“Sorry, I didn’t mean to wake you,” he whispered.
“You were just dying to get my head in your lap.”
He couldn’t help it, an image of her with her head turned toward him burst into his mind’s eye. Absolutely, he’d like her head in his lap a whole lot more if that were the reason for it. “I was trying to make you comfortable.”
She jerked away and leaned up on one arm. “Where are we?”
The blanket fell down and his gaze dipped in spite of himself. With no corset to mold her, her generous breasts jutted forward and the shadow between them was right there in front of him, inviting, urging him to touch her. Also the thin material of her shift allowed him to pinpoint exactly where her nipples were. His mouth watered and he gripped the ticking of the mattress to keep from reaching out.
His cock strained to be free of his drawers.
She gasped and grabbed the blanket, wrapping it around her shoulders. “Where are my clothes?”
“I presume with mine.” He swallowed. “As for where we are, I believe we are within a mile or two of the earl’s estate, perhaps on it, in one of the crofter’s houses.”
She backed away and her eyes and mouth rounded. “Oh God.” Her hand went over her mouth. “Those men. One of them was undoing my dress as the other was holding the cloth over my face. Did they...” Her eyes filmed over with moisture. “Did they...?”
“I don’t believe so.” He focused on her face. To look elsewhere would only compound his problem, which was disgusting given she feared having been raped. A slight reddish mark to the side of her mouth caught his attention. He hadn’t noticed it earlier. He reached out a finger to it.
She flinched and ducked her head. Curling her knees to her chest, she turned away from him. Probably for the better given his erection would be visible if she looked at his lap.
He put a hand on her shoulder. “Henry, there aren’t any signs you were abused. You don’t have any grass stains on your shift. Nor are there any wet spots,” blood or otherwise. Not on her shift or the mattress. “Nor do you smell as if you’ve had sexual intercourse.”
She whipped her head and shoulders around. “Smell?”
The innocence, doubt, and horror on her face tugged at his heart.
“Did you smell me?” Her cheeks fired.
“I checked for signs of a crime.” Sadly, he could tell his words weren’t reassuring her. “Externally. If you want to actually examine your person, I can go in the other room.” He gestured toward the open doorway. “Wait until you call me back.”
She looked left and right, locating the two doorways he’d explored earlier. Under her breath she whispered, “Smell.”
“I’d be happy to give you firsthand knowledge of what sex smells like.” He should just pound his head against the hearth. That wasn’t the kind of thing he should say to a woman who feared she might have been raped.
She stared at him, her eyes bugging out. “I’m not certain that is something I need to know.”
“I’m sorry, Henry. I shouldn’t have said that. I should have trusted my instincts and hired a horse and gig. I should have protected you better.”
“It wasn’t your fault I took off my pocket holding my Colt on the sea crossing. I tried to sleep, but I felt so horrible I didn’t even want to tie it back on when it was time to disembark.”
She’d probably relied on him to offer the protection he’d insisted she needed. He swallowed the bitter taste of self-recrimination.
She paused, then in a concerned voice she asked, “Are you hurt?”
Just his pride. Her question surprised him. “I’m fine. I was groggy for a bit, but I’ve been awake a while now.”
“What are they going to do to us?” she whispered.
“If they intended to harm us, it would have been easy to do while we were knocked out. I think this is a prank.”
“You have to be kidding.” She swung around and went to her knees, her eyes full of fervor. “A prank, not bloody likely.”
He closed his eyes for a second. “They left us food, fuel, and there is a working pump in a stone sink in what appears to be the larder.” He gestured toward the open doorway to the West. “There is a bedroom—no furniture—and an indoor privy on the far side. It seems a strange layout for an upper floor. But in any case, we have everything we need to be comfortable.”
She stared at him as if he were insane.
“Although only one blanket and the mattress, of course.” Her reputation would be destroyed. Likely more than her reputation because they tended to ignite when they were alone together. He’d have to make amends and marry her now. That he no longer had a choice in the matter was a relief. He had to do the right thing. His stomach tickled with anticipation.
She bit her lip. “As long as nothing happens...”
Her words were like kerosene thrown on a fire. His blood pounded in his temples and his cock reminded him of its existence—as if he’d forgotten. “Something will happen. You’re beautiful. You’re wearing next to nothing. And you kiss like a goddess.”
She blinked at him several times, as if she didn’t know what to make of his words.
“It isn’t as though we haven’t ever been intimate,” he said. “Don’t worry. I’ll marry you.”
Her jaw fell.
He hadn’t expected shock on her part. His thoughts were chasing their tails, and he wanted to lean in and kiss her, except he was fairly certain he was incapable of restraint at this moment. He swallowed hard. “Of course, you’ll have to give up reporting.”
Her mouth snapped shut. Then she glared at him. “I’m not going to marry you so you can stop me from reporting.”
She rocked to her feet and shot off across the room to the doorway to the other room. “There has to be a way out of here.”
Well, he’d made a hash out of that. What was worse, her dismissal of his intentions of marriage stung much more than it should. Especially since he should be relieved, not feeling as if his chest had been ripped open.