Taken by the Wicked Rake. Christine Merrill

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СКАЧАТЬ And more malleable of opinion, if her reaction to the people around her was any indication. She seemed to follow more than she led, and she did it with so little complaint that he wondered if she was perhaps a bit slow of wit.

      A deficiency of that sort would explain her tepid reaction to the gentlemen who courted her. When the men she had spurned were away from female company and felt ungentlemanly enough to comment on her, they shook their heads in disgust and announced that, although her pedigree was excellent, the girl was not quite right. Though their suits had met with approval from her father, Earl of Narborough, and her brother, Viscount Stanegate, they had been received by the lady with blank disinterest and a polite ‘No, thank you.’ It was almost as if the girl did not understand the need to marry, or the obligation to marry well.

      When he had planned her abduction, Stephano had expected to have little trouble with her. Either she would go willingly into the garden because she lacked the sense not to, or she would retreat to the retiring room and he would take her in the back hall.

      But he had imagined her frightened to passivity, not fighting him each step of the way. He had not expected her to work free of her bonds, nor thought her capable of tearing her virginal white ball gown to shreds in her attempt to escape.

      Nor had he expected the lusciousness of the body that the dress had hidden. Or how her eyes had turned from green to golden brown as he’d held her. Or the way those changeable eyes had watched him undress. When he had planned the abduction, he had not expected to want her.

      He looked again at his sober reflection in the mirror, and put aside his thoughts of sins of the flesh. While the lust that she inspired in him might have been a pleasant surprise, he did not have the time or inclination to act on it. It was an unnecessary complication if the plan was to hold her honour hostage to gain her family’s cooperation.

      When he arrived at Lord Keddinton’s London home a short time later, he pushed his way past the butler, assuring the poor man that an appointment was unnecessary: Robert Veryan was always at home to him.

      Keddinton sat at the desk in his office, a look of alarm on his pasty face. ‘Hebden. Is it wise to visit in daylight?’

      Stephano stared down at the cowardly little man. ‘Was it wise to run back to London so soon after the disappearance of your guest? You should have taken the time to look for the girl, before declaring her irretrievable.’

      ‘I—I—I felt that the family must be told, in person, of what had occurred.’ The man’s eyes shifted nervously along with his story.

      ‘You thought to outrun me, more like. By coming here, you deviated from the instructions I set out for you. You were to await my message to you, and then you were to deliver it. It was most inconvenient for me to have to follow you here. Inconvenient, but by no means difficult.’

      When Keddinton offered no further explanation, Stephano dropped the package he had brought onto the desk in front of him. ‘You will take this to Carlow.’

      The man ignored his order and said, ‘The girl. Is she still safe? Because you took her from my house.’

      ‘Exactly as you knew I would,’ Stephano reminded him calmly. ‘We agreed on the method and location, before I took any action.’

      Keddinton’s breathing was shallow, as though now that the deed was done, he was a scant inch from panic. ‘She was supposed to be in my care. And if the Carlows realize that it was I who recommended Lord Salterton to my wife …’

      ‘You will tell them you had no idea that the man was a problem, and that you are not even sure he was the one who took her. Her absence was not discovered until late in the evening, was it? And others had departed by that time, as well. I took care that no one saw me leaving. The corridor and the grounds were empty, as you’d promised they would be.’

      ‘But still …’ Keddinton seemed to be searching for a problem where none existed.

      ‘Thinking of your own skin, are you?’ Stephen wondered who the bigger villain might be, George Carlow, or Veryan for his easy betrayal of his old friend.

      And worse, that it would happen at the expense of an innocent girl. It had been difficult for Stephano to reconcile himself to his own part in the crime. He had not stuck at kidnapping women before. But it had never ended well for him. He was almost guaranteed a headache so strong that he would be too sick to move for several days. His late mother might still want her vengeance, but it was as though she punished him for the dishonourable acts she pushed him to commit.

      But though his head might feel better today, it turned his stomach at how easy it had been to persuade Verity Carlow’s godfather to help in her abduction.

      Keddinton opened the package in front of him, and went even paler when he recognized the contents. It was a chemise, embroidered at the throat with the initials V C, and tied tightly about the waist with red silk rope. He looked up at Stephen with alarm. ‘My God, Hebden. You didn’t …’

      ‘Touch the girl?’ Stephano laughed in response. ‘Certainly not. She is worth more to me as a virgin hostage, than she is as some temporary plaything.’ But the image of the girl sprang to his mind, sprawled upon his bed with her skirts ripped near to the waist to give a tantalizing glimpse of her silk-covered legs. ‘Since you are so quick to search the package I intended for another, then you had best read the attached note.’ He quoted from memory. ‘Your daughter is safe, for now. If you wish her to return the same, then admit in public what you have done.’

      ‘But is this—’ he poked at the chemise and shuddered in distaste ‘—is this necessary? Surely you did not need to be quite so theatrical.’

      ‘Theatrical?’ He laughed again. ‘I have made both the Carlows and the Wardales shake in their beds for months, each one worrying that they would get a bit of rope in the mail. All because of a curse that would have no hold over them, if they did not secretly believe that they were deserving of punishment. And now, because I have sent you a lady’s undergarment, you think that I am developing a taste for the theatrical?’ He could still feel the softness of the garment, as he’d tied it up, and the softness of the girl that had worn it. He felt the pounding in his head begin again, as he thought of the girl, naked in the wagon, waiting for his return. If he truly wanted revenge, it would be so very easy. And so very pleasurable. He laughed louder. But the sound did nothing to stop the lurid thoughts in his head or the agony they brought with them.

      Then, as if one pain would stop another, he grabbed the letter opener from Keddinton’s desk, and dragged the blade of it along his palm until a line of red appeared there. He held his hand out over the shift, watching the drops of crimson fall onto the muslin. He made a fist, and squeezed it shut, until his mind cared about nothing but its own pain and the sharp sting of the open cut.

      Then he looked up at Robert Veryan, as the blood continued to drip from his hand. ‘This, you snivelling coward, is what a taste for the dramatic looks like. Tell your friend, the murderer Carlow, that for now it is my own blood that was spilled. But if he does not accede to my demands, then the next package will be soaked in his daughter’s blood. Can you manage that, without running away again?’ He leaned over the desk and watched the older man shrink away from him. It was as easy as it had ever been to intimidate him into obedience.

      Keddinton gave a shaky nod. ‘If they agree to your demands, how shall I reach you?’

      Stephano reached into his pocket for a handkerchief to bandage his still-bleeding hand. ‘You do not reach me, Veryan. I am unreachable. Invisible. Unfindable. As is the girl, until this is over.’

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