Chapter 17
Anthony sprinted to the house. How much more entranced could he be? He had begun to imagine the magic that he could feel, and if he feared of anything, it was that he might never come to a place in his life again when he could know such sweet and soaring pleasure. Night cloaked the firmament and an amethyst strip lay across the sky, studded with stars. Despite her ridiculous protestations, Rachel would be his wife, sleeping next to him, and they would watch the sun come up over the horizon and spread across the estate. As duke, he could marry anyone he desired. To hell with tradition.
She was his, destined from the beginning of time, and there lay a certain male pride in that fact. He couldn’t wait for the vows, but deep down, she was already his in every word and deed. All their barriers had faded away, and for the first time in his life, he was filled with a tenderness so deep he ached inside.
He could love.
That Rachel could teach him to love was without a doubt the enchantment she spun and he was caught forever in her web. He even looked forward to the ball this evening, hosted by the Duke of Banfield. No doubt Rachel was ready and waiting for him. He ducked his head in the library. Not there. Caught Sebastian in the hall. “Is Rachel ready?”
“I did not see her come back from the laboratory.”
Perfect reasoning suggested she was dressing. Anthony sprinted up the stairs, cornered Mrs. Noot carrying mending from Rachel’s room. “Have you see Miss Thorne?
Mrs. Noot shrugged. “I haven’t seen her since morn. I’ve been waiting for her.”
The hackles raised on his neck. He raced down the stairs. Broke into a run. His father shouted. Outside, his foot slipped on an iced flagstone, and righted himself. The pause allowed him to hear a whimper in the rear of the bushes. Two guards lay bound. A lump the size of a hen’s egg bulged on the side of one of the guard’s head. An envelope was pinned to his coat.
“Where is she?”
“Got hit from behind.”
His heart dropped to the pit of his stomach. The great danger Rachel found herself in was a result of his negligence. No chance the scoundrel was still around. He would have left as soon as he had her. Was she still alive? Of course. His unseen enemy wanted the Rutland heir. Hands shaking, Anthony tore open the envelope. A muscle jumped in his jaw.
He tore inside the house. His father stepped from the bottom of the stairs. Ten staff members assembled. Sebastian raised a brow. More guards came in from behind him. Anthony waved the letter. “I must trade myself for Rachel.”
Anthony’s stallion whickered in the woods where he tied him several yards back from Captain Elijah Johnson’s house. Nose down, the dog prowled beside him, growling. Right place. Casey smelled Rachel. “Stay.” The dog froze on the spot, whining. Not at all happy of being left behind.
“I’ll get her back.”
Anthony had told his father and the guards to come ten minutes later. To hold back, so he could arbitrate and get Rachel out alive.
He pressed an ear to the crack of the door to the old sea captain’s house. No sound. Not good. They were waiting for him. How many? He eased open the door and slipped inside, moving across planked floors that moaned with age. A half-moon cast long eerie shadows across water stained walls, illuminating the interior as bright as day. Clutter and debris stacked everywhere, the peculiar trait of a hoarder. An ongoing battle between rat feces and mold rioted the air. Broken furniture had been used for firewood. Rinds of smoky bacon greased the floor. He nudged the ashes in the fireplace with the toe of his boot, the embers still warm…someone lived here of late.
He heard the click of a flint-lock pistol before a massive blow slammed against the side of his skull, making him see stars.
Groggy, Anthony moved his head sending a jolt of pain through his skull. He flexed his hand to locate the source, but he couldn’t move. It was as if he was paralyzed. But, as his vision cleared, he saw, he sat in a chair with numerous coils wrapped tightly around him. He closed his eyes, trying to remember. Nothing. A total blank. Think. Still nothing. Only darkness.
“Are you awake, Anthony?”
Rachel. His heart soared.
“I’m tied on a chair right behind you.”
He groaned. “Where we are?
The scrape of boots on a stairway and a lantern held high, scattered light, diminishing the shadows. “Greetings, Lord Anthony. Welcome to your final resting place, the attic of the late Captain Johnson.”
He shook his head to clear the haze. “Cuthbert Noot?”
“Of course.”
“I see you are hale and healthy, back from the dead.” Gone was the former well-groomed estate manager. Filthy, missing teeth, ragged clothing, that coal-dust speech. “Except for your exceptional wart, you’ve changed your appearance, Cuthbert.”
Cuthbert grinned like a Gargoyle. Unhinged. “No thanks to you, Lord Anthony. I survived the prison. A friend helped me. I’m going to kill the both of you, then the rest of your family.”
“My assistant, George? The flowerpot? The axle on the carriage? I assume your maneuverings?” Anthony spat out, his words spiked with venom. He hated the bastard for catching him unaware. “The deal was to trade Miss Thorne for me.”
“No deal.”
Anthony cursed his own stupidity in not keeping more of a vigilant eye and the prey of such a beast as Cuthbert Noot. Wished he had made his father’s timeline to five minutes. To keep Cuthbert talking was imperative. “Who helped you? Had to be someone with influence?”
Cuthbert laughed so hard, he choked on his saliva. “I’ll take that secret to my grave. He’s rich and powerful. Got me out of Newgate, staged a fight where another inmate was killed to take my place. All’s I had to do was agree to kill you. Like getting ten Christmases wrapped in one neat package.”
Rachel’s dog howled outside.
“Who else is helping you? You must have had help, getting my assistant’s body to Lord Chelmsford’s.”
“I have four of my men downstairs. Newgate recruits eager for a coin.”
Blood dripped from Anthony’s head wound, down his forearm and pooled on the floor as he strained against the the ropes. Cuthbert was good at knots. “Four? You’ll need more than that.”
“Brave words, Lord Anthony. You’ll never get free.” Cuthbert’s lips pulled back. “Percy Devol may have failed and your sister lucked out—for the time being. Heard she had a brat. He’ll die with her husband.”
Rachel seethed behind him. “Jacob will kill anyone who comes close to his wife and child.”
“What do you plan to do with us?” Anthony asked the inevitable, listening to the dog ratchet up its barking. He felt Rachel’s fingers, trying to undo the knots. An exercise in futility.
Cuthbert fixed him with a disquieting intense stare. “I plan a slow death. Fire. My men are moving wood into the living room, building a roaring fire. A drawn-out death for you and Miss Thorne, Lord Anthony, like you planned for me in Newgate.”
His heart sank. The house was a pile of tinder. Once the inferno started there would be no escape. “Let Miss Thorne go.”
“You think I’m mad? There will be no witnesses.”
“You won’t get away with it. There will be investigations.”
“And like the other investigations your father has started, nothing will come of it. That rich lordship will make sure of it like he did the others.”
Cuthbert’s eyes were dead, devoid of any humanity, the opaque grey darting over Rachel exhibited an unnatural pagan gleam. “Your wife cuckolded you. Had an affair with Lord Ward, planning to meet him the day she died.”
“You’re lying.” Cuthbert’s revelation hit him like a sucker punch.
“I startled her horse…it reared…she fell…knocked the breath out of her. I had my time with her. Spread her legs like the whore she was, begging and screaming.”
“You, son of a bitch.” Anthony’s ears pounded. Celeste did not die from a random fall. She’d been murdered.
“Didn’t breathe her last right away. No, I took my time. Made her do all sorts of things. His Lordship got bored, so I snapped her neck. Easy.”
“You sick bastard.” Despite Celeste’s selfishness and infidelity, she didn’t deserve to die that way. “Who is his Lordship?”
Cuthbert leaned into Anthony’s face, his breath tainted with rancid bacon. “You’ll never know who he is. I’m going to get that traitorous wife of mine and strangle her…and take great delight doing so. Make her pay. Maybe I’ll take a time or too with the Colonial. Let you watch.”
“Keep your hands off her.” Anthony fought against the ropes, every muscle and sinew pushed beyond endurance. The thought of Cuthbert touching Rachel brought out his sinister impulses. Bonneville. The highwaymen. He had barely stopped himself from snapping their neck’s in front of her.
Smoke spiraled up the stairs. Cuthbert cackled. “My men have a nice fire started. Sorry, Miss Thorne to deprive you of the pleasure of my company. I’ll bid you adieu.” He hung the lantern on a beam and clunked down the stairs.
“You should not feel responsible for your wife, Anthony,” Rachel said. “I know the guilt you carried, not protecting her—”
What a fool he’d been. No wonder Celeste hadn’t wanted him to accompany her. Brick by brick, the wall he’d spent so many years erecting and fortifying, splintered and shattered.
“Celeste had culpability cheating on you with Lord Ward. Cuthbert killed her. None of what occurred with Celeste was your fault. It was evil.”
How he had distanced himself for protection, wallowing in the delusion of being unable to love. Celeste did not love him. Love went both ways.
“A wise man once told me, ‘The experiences of our past are the architects of our present and to not let the bad overwhelm what is good’.”
Rachel lashed him with his own words. For the first time in eons, the gnawing ache inside him faded away.
“We’ve got to get free.”
Rachel stated the obvious.
Anthony worked at the knots, scanning the contents of the attic. The reclusive sea captain had a collection of oddities that would have rivaled Montagu House Museum in Bloomsbury. Outside, Casey’s barking echoed through the countryside. Cuthbert and his men slammed the door. Would they gloat at the fireworks?
“See that bottle on the table labeled, sulfuric acid? Do you think it’s really sulfuric acid? Casey! Here Casey!” She called to the dog.
The woman was made for bedlam. “No matter how faithful you think that mutt is, she will never hurl herself into fire. And what can she do, untie knots with her teeth?”
“Casey! Here Casey!”
Nothing. Then through the snap and crackle of fire rushed the patter of paws. Hair singed, the dog jumped on Anthony, licking his face.”
“You were saying?”
Anthony scoffed. “Impress me with your next feat. The mutt will sprout wings and fly?”
She cooed to the dog. “Get the bottle.”
The dog ran and retrieved the bottle.
Rachel stretched her fingers, grasped the bottom of the flask.
“Unbelievable. If we get out of this alive, the mutt can have all the bottles she wants. Oceans of them. Next is the tricky part.” Anthony jumped his chair closer to Rachel’s, stretched his fingers, pulled the stopper out. “Pour it on the ropes, not my hands. There is rapid destruction of skin tissue if it comes in contact, goes right to the bone.”
“You don’t have to remind me, but you try performing the task tied to a chair.”
Anthony spread his hands away, leaned forward. He smelled acid burning through jute.
“How long do you estimate?”
He heard the worry in her voice, grunted, using his weight to tug against the rope so it would snap. “Couldn’t even guess?”
“That’s unusual. You always have a formula.”
“Did think once about how long it would take Lord Ward to dissolve in a vat of acid.”
“How long?”
“Three hours to make a nice brown soup of him. That’s if I added three-hundred-degree heat.”
Fire crackled and exploded beneath the floorboards. “We don’t have three hours. And did you have to remind me of the heat?”
All he wanted to do was take her in his arms and comfort her. The rope snapped. They both crashed to the floor. He rubbed his wrists. The dog nuzzled Anthony’s face. “Good Casey.” He stood, his muscles, sluggish, each of his movements like a delayed reaction. He scratched the dog behind the ears.
“Do you realize you called the dog by her real name?”
Anthony looked upon Rachel with veneration, followed her to the window. The murky silhouettes of treetops emerged in the predawn light. Too far to the ground. Cuthbert leaned against a tree, glorying. No trace of his men. Anthony ground his teeth. They would get away.
“It’s our only escape route,” Anthony said.
Like kindling on fire, the ancient wood frame house snapped, popped and spit…a matter of time before it leapt through the floorboards. Smoke filled the room. A block and tackle beckoned, rope, yards of it…a crossbow and quiver of arrows. His mind sped with possibilities.
Move! He staggered to the block and tackle, so weak from where Cuthbert bashed him in the head. He stumbled…fell. Rachel rushed to his side, propped her arm under him and helped him lean against a post. He closed and opened his eyes to clear his vision. How would they get out of here without his help?
“I know what you’re thinking.” She uncoiled the ropes, helping him thread it through the block and tackle. She fashioned a looped chair to sit in, securing it with sailor’s knots, slanting him a smile. “Working in a shipyard has its advantages. The sailors make these chairs to work on the side of the ship when out at sea.”
On tiptoe, she stood on a chair and secured the rope to the ceiling. On a support beam a crossbow hung. She retrieved it.
“I’m thinning the rope. It is too heavy for the arrow.” He tied the end of the rope with an arrow. Fire heated the floor. Anthony sweated, rose and shook his head. Better now.
She looked out the window. “Must shoot high to carry the weight.”
“I estimate a forty-degree arc, considering the weight of rope, force and velocity and gravity,” Anthony said.
Rachel nodded. “How good are you with a crossbow?”
“Never tried.”
“I suppose that elects me to the position. Different than a bow, but I think I can manage. There are only three arrows. What I’m worried about is the arrow getting caught in the tree branches.”
Locking the nut into place, she placed the nose stirrup on the floor and pulled back on both sides of the string with all her might. She picked up the crossbow, leveled it on the windowsill, loaded the arrow against the string, checked over her shoulder to make sure the rope had plenty of slack, sighted, and pulled the trigger. The arrow sailed, past the tree.
Anthony wiped the dampness from his brow with his coat sleeve and helped her retrieve the rope. “Can’t give up now, my love. The trajectory is off on the crossbow. Aim more to the left.”
She pushed another arrow into the crossbow and eyed down the center. “How many degrees to the left would you estimate?”
“Twenty degrees. You’ll do fine,” he assured her.
“Now who sounds like the optimist? Seems strange talking in navigational terms when we are navigating a crossbow and our lives depend on my aim. Forty-degrees high, twenty left. Like following a duck.”
Up and to the side, she aimed and fired. An explosion from below created a wind, hurled the arrow off its trajectory and into the branches of the trees. Damn.
Anthony pulled and pulled on the rope, the arrow fell off.
He went rigid. A searing hot pain tore into his right forearm. A burning ember had settled on his sleeve and burned through the material. Anthony brushed the cinder off.
Rachel shook, panic and instinct now overruling her body.
“Keep focused,” he commanded.
She swore like a sailor, retrieved the last precious arrow, licking the end feathers for accuracy. After pushing the arrow into the cradle and anchoring it, she took aim and fired. The arrow sailed. The velocity and propulsion prompted by the crossbow buried the point into the tree trunk. Clunk. Rachel tested the rope. “It will hold our weight.”
He boosted her up onto a high ledge and clambered up next to her, standing, unsteady on the precipice. From the windows below, smoke billowed. Tongues of fire pitched skyward.
She coughed. Her eyes watered. Beneath them, far beneath them, the lawns spread out to the forest, beckoning like a tranquil oasis. To have more time. But they were out of time.
Through the waving smoke he peered. Cuthbert was nowhere. Must have been satisfied his mission was accomplished, and he decided to leave before the townspeople saw the fire.
“This will work,” he affirmed.
She closed her eyes…and swayed.
“Do you have a fear of heights?”
“A little. Can’t think about that now.”
Anthony slid the block out. Energy shot through him. She called to the dog. Casey leapt in her arms. Anthony sat on the roped chair, held Rachel, and she held the dog.
One. Two. Three.
The next seconds blurred, whooshing through the air, Rachel’s hair flying in his face, and the rope bowing with their weight. Would the arrow hold? Anthony stretched his long legs forward…slammed into the tree, grabbed a branch and steadied their rocking.
“How good are you at climbing down trees?” Anthony asked.
Rachel scrambled onto the branch, the dog gave a little bark and Anthony joined them.
“I’m a Colonial. But don’t tell me Colonials are born in trees. Difficult with the dog and this dress.” She handed the dog to Anthony and bent over to tear her skirt off.
“Now there’s a thought.”
“Don’t get any ideas.” She tied her skirts into a pouch. Anthony put the dog in, slung the sack over his shoulder. The dog whined. “Don’t look down. One branch at a time.”
The next seconds improved, descending the tree, testing each limb to see if it held his weight and making sure Rachel followed the correct footholds. On the ground, he released the dog, and then reached up and caught Rachel in his arms. “I’m never letting you go.”
“Well, Well.”
Anthony put her down and spun around. Cuthbert and his four henchmen, their faces like grinning demons in the firelight. A gun leveled at Anthony’s chest. A callous, predatory enjoyment fired inside Anthony. “You’re going to require more than that.”
Cuthbert sneered. “I have the gun.”
A vein pulsed in Anthony’s forehead. “You better make it count because none of you are going to last.”
The thugs tittered.
“Wrist,” Rachel commanded. The dog leaped, grinding her teeth into Cuthbert’s arm, and dangled from his sleeve. The gun went off, landed somewhere in the leaves. Twigs and splinters showered on their heads. Anthony sprang into action. The thugs fell on him and he roared out an awful challenge. He punched one in the nose, making a popping sound, and dousing him in a shower of blood. With lightening quick ease, Anthony broke free and swung his elbow into a man’s windpipe. The thug emitted a shuddering breath and pitched backward. They backed off. Not surprising. These were not seasoned fighters. Two down, three to go. He’d been looking for a fight. His eyes fixed on his prey.
One huge thug grew brave, plowed at Anthony like the prow of a ship, slamming him in the jaw. Stunned, Anthony grasped one of the huge wrists and broke it in two. He stopped and hit the next man with a colossal right. All the way up from his planted feet, as hard as he could and felt his fist drive right through it and beyond it. His falling body weight whipped his head out from under his moving hand. The momentum allowed him to carry onward, shoulder first into the thug who got hit in the windpipe.
He faced Cuthbert. “Come on, you coward,” Anthony taunted, springing sinuously to one side and then to another. He wanted to finish this.
Cuthbert’s lips pulled back from his teeth. He charged Anthony, aiming a savage blow at the head, which if it had landed, would have crushed Anthony’s skull. He danced to the side, dropping beneath it, delivered with a clenched fist, a mighty blow himself into the pit of the rogue’s stomach. He kicked Cuthbert between the legs, and the man’s head jerked downward at the same time Anthony’s elbow jerked upward, doubling the power of the blow. Cuthbert face-flopped into the moldy leaves.
Anthony wiped his bloody knuckles on Cuthbert’s dirty shirt. “I told you, you needed more men.”
Rachel flew into his arms. Shouts echoed from the woods behind them. “My father’s coming with his guards. You didn’t think I’d come here alone, did you?” He scratched his head. “Why they have come so late is a mystery.”
She spread her petticoats to show her indecent attire. “Oh, dear. Your father is coming, and I’m clad like this?”
Anthony laughed, took his coat off and draped it over her shoulders. “You endured a burning house, flying fifty feet above the ground, and you’re worried about your state of dress?”
The duke arrived with several armed groomsmen, guards, Captain Johnson and curious townspeople.
Anthony stroked his jaw where he’d been hit and looked at his father. “What took you so long?”
“Went to the wrong sea captain’s house. You didn’t specify.” At the Duke’s nod, they tied up the villains, yanked a groggy Cuthbert up on his feet. “You will be facing a hanging,” said the Duke.
Cuthbert spat. “You think so? There are more of us and you’ll never see them coming. We may have missed getting Lady Abigail but we did get Lord Nicolas. Too bad his ship went down.” Cuthbert started coughing with that coal dust laugh. The crowd buzzed.
The Duke held up his hand to silence everyone. “Who?” demanded the Duke.
The sea captain’s house exploded, and then collapsed, shooting flames to the sky as the last of the wood structure was consumed by flames. A shot rang out from the west side of the inferno. Anthony covered Rachel with his body, hitting the ground hard. Who the hell was shooting? Everyone scrambled.
“Guards, search the woods,” the duke demanded.
Cuthbert slumped. Blood poured from his chest, shot in the heart. Anthony felt Cuthbert’s pulse, his split lip curled with disgust. There were no more shots. Anthony rose, pulled Rachel up. The duke came up beside him. “Dead. Obviously who did this, did not want Cuthbert to reveal the scoundrel. Now we’ll never know.”