Dusk With a Dangerous Duke (19 page)

Wrong … wrong … wrong.

She tried to speak, but the sounds coming from her lips made little sense to her.

“Grace, let go,” he commanded.

How does he know I’m falling?
she mused before succumbing to the darkness waiting to claim her.

*   *   *

“You drugged her?” Regan shouted at Hunter as he carried the now unconscious Grace to the coach. “How could you!”

“I had no choice,” he muttered, glancing back to see that Dare and Frost had already packed away most of their possessions while he had kept a watchful eye on Grace.

Instead of falling asleep, Grace had proven stubborn even when under the influence of wine laced with laudanum. She had gotten up and walked to the river’s edge. The goal, as Frost had pointed out, was not to drown her into compliance.

By then, Regan was beginning to suspect their afternoon plans had been altered.

“Grace trusted you, you arse,” Regan said, pounding her fists against his back while he struggled not to drop his sleeping bride.

“Dare, a little help,” Hunter called out. If his friend got her hands on something heavy, she was likely to bring it crashing down on his head. “Regan, I’m doing this to protect her.”

“You are doing this to protect yourself.” She raised her fist again, but Dare grabbed her wrist.

“Enough,” her husband said as Regan struggled to free her wrist. “You’ve given him enough bruises. And it’s safe to say that he deserves them all.”

“I do,” Hunter assured her. “You may not approve of my method, but time is running out. Everyone has an opinion, and many of them are not in my favor.”

Regan made a scoffing sound. “Do you expect me to pity you?”

“No.” Hunter gritted his teeth. He was unused to explaining himself, but he needed Regan’s assistance if he ever hoped to sway Grace. “I understand that you are vexed with me—”

“
Vexed
barely covers what I feel right now.”

He nodded, belatedly realizing that he had to earn back Regan’s trust as well as Grace’s. “I deserve every insult, and when I have more time, I will allow you to verbally flail me for tricking Grace into traveling with us to Gretna Green.”

“You shouldn’t worry about me. Think about Grace.”

“I am thinking about Grace,” he shouted back. “And me, as well. Regan, the lady was surrounded by foes. Her servant Rosemary has been whispering vile things about me for years. She had convinced Grace that I had abandoned her.”

“You did,” Dare and Regan said in unison.

“That is hardly the point,” Hunter growled, settling into the seat with his precious burden. “Rosemary had already convinced Grace that she should break the terms of the contract, and then find a husband in London.”

“From where I’m sitting, it’s a sound notion,” Regan said, climbing into the compartment of the coach and sitting on the opposite side so she could spend the long journey glaring at him. “I am even willing to help her if she orders you to turn the coach around.”

Frost poked his head through the doorway. “Regan, you are being too hard on Hunter. While I may not exactly agree with his methods—”

“You were the one who suggested the laudanum in her wine,” Hunter fiercely protested. Sacrificing his friend gave his sister’s wrath another target.

“Frost!”

He did not bother appearing contrite. Regan was too angry to notice anyway. “The laudanum was supposed to make her tired. She would have fallen asleep and we would have headed north.” He nodded in Hunter’s direction. “She would have awakened, and figured out that this was her wedding party. It would have been up to him to convince her to marry him.”

“Get into the coach, Frost,” Dare said behind him. “Hunter, we’re ready to leave.”

Regan’s face softened as she stared at Grace. The lady truly cared about her friend, and suddenly Hunter felt like a brute for frightening her.

“How long will she sleep?”

“Hours … half a day. It depends on her.” He brushed a strand of hair from Grace’s face. “She told me that she hasn’t been sleeping well. She misses Frethwell Hall, and there have been other concerns.”

Like me.

Regan smiled, and it wasn’t friendly. “Good. Then you have hours to convince me about why I shouldn’t drug
your
wine and abandon you at the first inn.”

Hunter silently appealed to Dare and Frost for help, but he had created his own mess. “Let’s start with why Grace’s grandfather approached my grandmother.”

“I’ve heard the story,” she said, yawning.

“Parts of it,” he agreed. “However, not everyone knows the whole story. I didn’t even know until I took a closer look at my grandmother’s old papers.”

“Very well. Tell me what you found.” She pinned him with a look. “But don’t expect me to forgive you for a very long time.”

Regan was offering him an olive branch, and Hunter seized it with both hands.

Chapter Eighteen

Grace awoke to the sound of laughter.

She opened her eyes and was astonished to find herself in a bed. Sitting up, she grabbed her head and moaned. Then she recalled the wine Hunter had poured into her glass. How many glasses had she imbibed? Two, three … four?

It would certainly explain why her head was pounding and her throat was parched. She winced as the door opened and Regan appeared in the doorway with a tray laden with food and a pot of tea.

“The innkeeper needs to oil the hinges,” Grace said, pressing her finger to her forehead.

Regan grimaced in sympathy. “Forgive me for waking you. I thought you were overdue for some food.”

“I am,” she croaked, and then grinned. “I guess my throat needs oil, too.”

“How are you feeling?” Regan placed the tray on the mattress. “Be honest.”

“As if I’ve been licking the plaster from the wall.” Grace stretched her arms, noting the various aches in her limbs and back. “I also feel rested. Did I humiliate myself by drinking too much wine?”

Regan hesitated. “Not precisely. What do you recall?”

“Nothing important.” She frowned. “The picnic. Laughing at your brother’s stories, and drinking wine. Feeling dizzy. Was I sick?”

“Hunter mixed laudanum into your wine,” her friend said bluntly.

For a few minutes, she did not speak. Finally, she asked, “Why would he do such a thing? Was he trying to poison me?”

“Of course not,” Regan said, preparing a cup of tea for her. “The laudanum was Frost’s idea, but I’m not certain you should blame him. More and more, I suspect our nurse dropped him on his head when he was an infant.”

Grace allowed herself to be briefly distracted by the notion of Frost as a child. He must have terrified the servants. “What about Hunter? Should I blame him?”

“Oh, most definitely,” Regan said lightly. “Though to be fair, I can promise he has suffered for his sins while you slept.”

“Good.” She nodded approvingly. “You are a wonderful friend.”

Regan glanced away. “I would have been a better one if I had deduced what the gents had planned when they proposed the picnic.”

“What was their plan?”

She handed Grace her tea. “Nothing too outrageous. The plan was to kidnap you, stuff you in a coach with some amiable companions, and journey to Gretna Green before your uncle figured out Hunter intended to marry you.”

“No,” Grace said without thinking. “I will not agree.”

“Regan forgot to tell you the best part,” Hunter said from the doorway. “The part where I have days to wear you down and you finally agree.”

“Never!”

Hunter made a soft tsking noise. “Never is a long time when one is sitting on a mattress dressed only in her chemise.”

Grace seized the hard roll from the tray and flung it at his head. She missed. “Beast! Fortune hunter! Seducer of innocents—get out!”

He bent down, picked up the roll, and placed it on the table. “Only one applies, love. During the journey north, you can decide which one fits.”

“Get out!” Grace reached for the teapot.

Regan shook her head. “I warned you.”

“Make certain she eats something,” Hunter said to Regan before he closed the door.

Grace fought back tears. She was confused, and more than a little frightened. At some point she had fallen asleep, and now she was ensnared in a nightmare.

“He’s not a fortune hunter,” Regan murmured. “His father and grandfather squandered the family’s fortune and then had the good sense to die. Hunter was raised by his grandmother. I have no doubt she was a shrewd old woman, and she made a point of teaching him everything that she knew. He doesn’t need your inheritance, Grace.”

She wiped away her tears. “That’s not what he told me.”

“Whatever he told you was a lie.”

*   *   *

“Tossed you out of the room, eh?” Dare observed when Hunter had rejoined him and Frost.

“Not exactly,” he coolly replied. “I retreated when she reached for the teapot.”

His friends winced as they nodded in sympathy.

“I never considered that Grace might hold a grudge,” he said, struggling not to feel sorry for himself. “Regan promised to help me sway Grace, but I don’t think she is having much luck.”

Frost chuckled and took a sip of his ale. “And you trust Regan to keep her word?”

“She’s your sister!” Hunter protested.

“Not to mention, my wife.” Dare glared at his brother-in-law. “You will show her some respect, or I won’t stop her if she feels a strong urge to break some crockery over your thick skull.”

The last thing this ill-fated journey needed was more bad luck.

“No one will be breaking dishes.” Hunter sounded unconvinced; females were so damn unpredictable. “And Grace will marry me once we reach Gretna Green.”

Frost snorted. “Care to wager on it, gent?”

Without hesitation, he said, “Yes.”

“How much?” Dare asked, his eyes lighting with interest.

As two men debated over their friendly wager, Hunter thought about Grace sitting in the middle of the bed. She had been too angry to notice that her chemise revealed more of her body than it concealed.

He had been willing to undress his future bride, but Regan had insisted on taking care of her friend. When he tried to insist, she reminded him that he had plenty of obstacles to overcome when it came to Grace.

“Are you in?” Frost asked, referring to the wager.

Hunter nodded. Aye, he was committed. He was laying everything on the line and betting everything on Grace.

Never had he been so uncertain of anything in his life.

*   *   *

Grace was running out of time.

They were hours away from Gretna Green, and soon the duke would demand a reply to the same question he asked daily. On second thought, it was not exactly a question. Hunter had a way of turning everything he asked into an order.

“You will marry me.”

For days, she had managed to avoid giving him the response he longed to hear. Regan applauded her efforts. Her friend thought it was fitting that Hunter suffer for assuming he could trick her into traveling to Gretna Green by slipping laudanum into her wine.

What if Regan hadn’t been along to dissuade the gentlemen? Would Hunter have kept her drugged until their arrival? Appalled by her accusation, he had taken the time to assure her on several occasions that he wanted to put some distance between her and London.

Poor Rosemary. She must be frantic with worry. Unfortunately, Hunter was less sympathetic now that he knew the older woman had pressed for Grace to seek a more respectable gentleman.

Hunter angrily told her that her uncle had little interest in Grace marrying anyone. He implied that if her uncle had his way, she would imbibe the juice of the poppy on a daily basis since it had transformed her into an agreeable person.

He had been angry at the time he had made his prediction, so she was not certain if he was teasing. It was her fault. Since the day she had awakened in an unfamiliar bed, Grace had rebuffed Hunter’s attempts for reconciliation.

When he had calmly announced that she would be sharing a bed on their journey north, Grace had put her foot down and insisted that she and Regan would share the inn bed. Naturally, her husband had been disappointed by the decision, but he wisely remained silent.

All three gentlemen were aware that she had not forgiven any of them, so they were attempting to make amends in their own fashion. Frost tempted her appetite by procuring her sweets; Dare entertained them by sharing stories that involved various members of the Lords of Vice.

Initially, Hunter had been vehemently opposed to the idea. However, her laughter had forced him to reconsider. She assumed the tales that were shared were heavily edited so Grace would not judge them too harshly.

In particular, Hunter.

She often caught him staring at her with an odd expression that might have been fear, though she could not imagine him being afraid of anyone or anything. Neither could she envision him accepting his grandmother’s dictates without a certain amount of resistance.

So while the dowager lived, the young man had quietly chafed against the restraints she had used to tether him. Later, when he had found himself alone, his resentment had shifted from his grandmother to Grace.

After all, she had been the only one who stood between Hunter and his freedom.

Now she was willing to grant him the reprieve his grandmother had always denied him, and he was furious that she had power over him.

She tried to tell him that she was not interested in playing games.

His cynically retorted that all women played games.

Throughout this battle of wills, Regan pleaded with Grace to give Hunter a chance. She still had not forgiven him for truly kidnapping her friend, but she had known the Lords of Vice for most of her life. They were many things, but they were not intentionally cruel.

So each night she waited for Hunter to ask the same question. Each night she turned him away. With the horses eating up the miles, Grace could feel the duke’s weighty stare as Regan, Dare, and Frost dozed within the confines of the coach.

“It’s time. No more games, Grace,” Hunter said, keeping his voice low so as not to waken their companions. “I’ll have your answer, and don’t disappoint me.”