At the edge of the bed, Alexandra let her feet slide silently to the floor. A backward glance confirmed that Nathaniel’s sooty lashes still rested on his cheeks. His chest, broad and golden, continued to rise and fall gently. He didn’t so much as stir.
She let her breath out and began, once again, to work the rope that bound her hands. She had to escape. Nothing she said convinced him or any of the others that she wasn’t who they thought she was.
Her wrists were chafed and bleeding by the time Alexandra managed to loosen the tarry bands enough to reach the knot with her fingers. Still, she was making little progress. The rope was too well tied.
Frustration threatened to bring her temper to a boil. Drawing in a deep breath, Alexandra tried to calm herself. She needed to think. There had to be some quicker way to escape. Nathaniel wouldn’t sleep forever.
Glancing around the room, Alexandra’s gaze lighted on the dagger he had thrown away from her the night before. If only she could reach it. She crept forward, straining as the rope became taut, but it was no use. The knife remained several feet beyond her farthest reach.
Damn Nathaniel. Damn the bloody luck that landed her in his hands on the very day she planned to escape from Willy. Would she never be free? She’d been Willy’s slave, his whipping post, his convenient victim. But something inside her had received its full measure, and regardless of the consequences, she could take no more abuse.
Flouncing back onto the bed, Alexandra used her feet to deliver the blows she wished her fists could land.
“You!” she accused, venting her rage at last, “I hate you!”
Nathaniel yelped in surprise. Coming instantly awake, he tried to ward Alexandra off, barely managing to save himself from a hard fall to the ground.
“So this is my reward for sharing my bed?” he asked in astonishment.
“Am I supposed to be grateful to you? When I shouldn’t be here in the first place?”
She launched a heel into his muscular inner thigh, and Nathaniel sprang to his feet. He was wearing only his trousers, and his stomach looked flat and hard, nothing like Willy’s rounded paunch, though Alexandra tried not to notice. Determined to land a powerful blow, she aimed for his groin, but Nathaniel whirled away, making her miss him completely.
He caught her foot with his hand, tripping her, and together they tumbled back onto the bed.
Alexandra winced in pain as he landed on top of her, then she tried to twist away from his grasp by rolling to her right. But Nathaniel had ahold of her dress. She gasped in surprise when she heard the fabric rip.
Nathaniel froze, and she went limp. His gaze dipped to the top of her décolletage, which now revealed a bounty of soft, rounded breasts bulging above her corset.
His mouth quirked into a grin. “As much as I feel rewarded for this little tussle, might I suggest that propriety would be better served by a more ladylike demeanor? I might be your half brother, but I’m no eunuch.”
“Let me go,” Alexandra pleaded, frightened by his look of open admiration. The blue of his eyes had deepened to inky black, and he was brazen enough not to look away.
Again, Alexandra felt grateful that Nathaniel believed her to be his sister, for it might be the only thing to keep her safe from him. At the moment, even that seemed a thin thread on which to hang her well-being.
“Let me go,” she repeated. “I’ve never done anything to you. I don’t even know you.”
His smile disappeared. “This isn’t between you and me.”
“Then let me go.”
“I can’t.”
Alexandra recognized determination in the set of his jaw, the rigid line of his shoulders. Nathaniel was a much more formidable foe than Willy ever was, and would not be easy to outwit. He was strong, and cunning, with a fierceness that frightened her. Something told Alexandra that nothing would sway him from his purpose.
“Let me up,” she said, feeling all too vulnerable. She wanted to cover what the tear revealed, stop his unwanted appraisal.
Nathaniel rolled off her slowly, as though he anticipated another sharp heel to a potentially vulnerable part of his anatomy.
Alexandra worked her way to the side of the bed, where she stood and turned away.
“Look what you’re doing to yourself,” Nathaniel said in a softer tone. “Come here.”
Her hair had come loose from its pins and tumbled down her back in disarray. Tucking what she could behind her ear, she glanced back over her shoulder to see blood from her wounded wrists, red on the sheets. “No.”
“Come here, you little fool,” he insisted. “I’m going to untie you. Though you haven’t earned your freedom, you’re not smart enough to quit straining against the rope.”
A sharp knock and Trenton’s voice through the panel turned Nathaniel’s attention to the door. He strode across the floor, and when he unbolted the lock, Trenton nearly fell inside.
“There’s a man searching the docks for you,” he explained, wiping the sweat from his brow with his sleeve. Then he caught sight of Alexandra’s disheveled appearance and the bed.
“Oh hell, Nathaniel. How could you? She’s your sister. The duke will never let something like this go unpunished.” He began to pace the floor. “I should have stayed with you last night. I knew you wanted revenge, but I never dreamed you’d take it this way.”
Nathaniel appeared puzzled until the line of his vision followed Trenton’s to the sheets. Then his eyes went wide as he realized what his friend believed.
“Wait.” He lifted a hand in protest. Crossing to Alexandra, he indicated her wrists. “‘Tis this you see, nothing more.”
Trenton raised his brows as Nathaniel threw his cloak over Alexandra’s shoulders, inadvertently making the tear in her bodice more obvious as well.
“I tell you, I was more abused last night than she. I vow she bears my father’s ill-humor,” Nathaniel told him.
Pausing as though weighing the proof in the room against his trust, Trenton said, “She tore her own gown, I suppose?”
“It’s a long story.” Nathaniel waved him off. “But I’m sure you didn’t come here to rescue the virtuous maid. So what is it?”
“We’ve got problems.”
“What?”
Alexandra trained her eyes on Trenton’s face, wondering if their problems were also her problems. Could things get any worse?
“There’s someone visiting the taverns along the wharf asking for you. I’m not sure who he is, but he claims to carry a message from your father.”
Nathaniel stroked the black stubble that had begun to grow on his chin. “Why is that a problem? That’s just what we’ve been hoping for.”
Trenton frowned, causing his brows to pucker. “I’m not so sure. If you’d seen this fellow, you might agree. He calls himself Rat, and he doesn’t look like anyone your father would normally deal with. I told him you’d meet him at noon today, just in case, but I’m not sure you should go.”
“Of course I’ll go. The duke wouldn’t be stupid enough to kill me before he secures the safety of his daughter. As long as you’re here to watch Anne, I’ll retrieve Fury from the stables and see what this messenger has to say.”
Trenton grunted, obviously unconvinced that Nathaniel’s decision was a wise one.
Though her reasons differed, Alexandra had to agree. If the Duke of Greystone was anything like the man her captors thought he was, he would have no compunction about killing Nathaniel, knowing Anne to be safe with her mother. Should that happen, Nathaniel’s mates could very well try to avenge his death with her own.
* * *
Nathaniel Kent strode through the crowded streets of Liverpool with Fury, his giant black stallion, prancing at his heels. His mood was darker than reason would suggest. They had managed to kidnap Anne without any significant problems. By rights he should be feeling differently. But holding his half sister against her will didn’t sit right on his conscience, despite Richard. He had thought it would be easy to hate her. Now he knew he was wrong. He wasn’t sure what he felt—grudging respect, perhaps, a small amount of admiration—but certainly not hate.
As he walked toward the docks, ridge-capped waves rose and fell as a restless sea bucked against the ships at harbor like a horse resisting its rider. Nathaniel reflected upon the fickle nature of that sea. How deceptively gentle she could be. How enraged and unforgiving. Still, she was his first love and had been a part of his life for almost fourteen years.
Rubbing his temples to relieve the sudden pounding of a headache, he scanned the docks for the man he was to meet. The salty air smelled of fish, and the throaty coo of pigeons resounded as the gray and white birds made a nuisance of themselves, flapping and hopping among the crates being loaded into the bellies of various ships.
Finally Nathaniel spotted a small, slender figure who appeared uncertain amid the sailors, merchants, clerks, and bawdy women. He glanced at the sun. Good, the man was on time.
From a distance, the stranger appeared no older than twenty, but closer inspection revealed the shadow of two or three days’ beard growth and lines that creased a leather-like face. Nathaniel guessed he was at least forty.
“Are you Rat?” he asked, checking to make sure no one seemed to be taking particular notice of either of them.
“That’s what they call me.” Shabbily dressed in drab breeches and gaiters, a ragged, oversized coat, and a top hat smashed accordion-style, Rat looked as though he hadn’t bathed in weeks. And he smelled no better.
“What do you want?” Nathaniel came quickly to the point. Meeting a stranger, especially one associated with his father, made him nervous, even on such a busy quay.
“Don’t worry, I’m a friend.”
“I trust friends less than anyone. At least my enemies never surprise me.”
Rat’s whisker-peppered cheeks broke into a smile. “Ye’ll change yer mind when ye ‘ear what I’ve got to say. What I know might save yer bacon.”
“I’m waiting.” A burly sailor hefted the crate closest to them, and Rat hesitated, making Nathaniel scowl. “Pray, make your point. My patience wears thin!”
“Not so fast.” Rat picked something green from his teeth with a long, dirty fingernail. “I’m wonderin’ what it’s worth to ye.”
“So you’re after money. Now we’re getting somewhere—”
“That’s not all. I want ye to take me to sea with ye.” He rubbed his hands together before continuing. “I got myself in a bit of trouble, an’ I got nowhere else to go.”
Nathaniel studied the other man’s muddy boots and the tears in his baggy clothes. There was something about Rat he didn’t like, but the bloke had definitely raised Nathaniel’s curiosity.
“What kind of trouble?”
Rat scratched his greasy head, smiling. “‘Is Grace is lookin’ for me. I worked in the stables at Bridlewood for a time, until a pair of fancy candelabras went missin’ from the ‘ouse. Unfortunately, the ‘ousekeeper claimed I took ‘em.”
Nathaniel winced as sunlight glared off the mirror-like sea, making his head feel as if it would explode. “
Did
you take them?”
Rat revealed his diseased gums with a grin. “Why would I do a thing like that? I could go to gaol, ye know.”
Nathaniel shook his head, irritation making his nerves raw. This man was a common thief and didn’t even have the good sense to hide it. “I’m in no mood for games,” he bit out. “I’ll pay you what your information is worth, but our association ends there.”
A look of surprise claimed Rat’s features. “Yer not cross about the candelabras, are ye? A man’s got to eat. Kimbolten ‘as the money of a king, but ‘e’s bloody mean. ‘E feeds ‘is servants nothin’ but ‘ardtack biscuits an’ gruel. I was starvin’, that I was.”
Nathaniel let the contempt he felt show in his face, and Rat’s voice trailed off. “You expect me to believe that you lived in a household as rich as my father’s and had to resort to stealing in order to get full? Any servant worth his salt can manage enough to eat in a household such as Greystone’s, from the family’s table scraps if nowhere else.”
Rat sighed. “Yer awful uppity for bein’ a glorified thief yerself,” he grumbled under his breath, but his eyes nearly bulged out of their sockets when Nathaniel gripped him by the lapels of his jacket and lifted him several inches into the air.
“I am nothing like you or any other thief,” he ground out, his face so close to Rat’s that he could smell the stench of alcohol on the man’s breath. “I take only what should be mine by rights.”
“Aye.” The smaller man tried to shrink away. “I didn’t mean nothin’ by it. I know ye claim to be the duke’s son an’ all, an’ of course that makes us different. The truth of it is, I took the silver to sell for a bit of grog. But there never was a bigger miser of food than Greystone’s ‘ousekeeper. I wasn’t lyin’ about that.”
Nathaniel set the man back on his feet, none too gently. “As I thought. What do you have to tell me?”
“Ye ‘ave to take me with ye.” Rat’s voice took on a pleading quality. “‘Is Grace will kill me if ‘e finds out I’ve met with ye, whether I tell ye anythin’ or not. Ye’ve got ‘im actin’ like a mad dog, ye do, what with troublin’ ‘is ships an’ all.”
Nathaniel ran his fingers through the hair that had worked itself free of the black ribbon holding the rest back. His small band was a loyal, well-trusted group, only a few of them true criminals. But what Rat said was true. He had risked his life in coming to Nathaniel. “You don’t look like a sailor. Do you know the sea?”
“A bit.”
“Do you have any idea what you’re getting into? What: could happen if we’re caught?”
Flat shrugged. “I’m already a wanted man. I’d go to Newgate regardless. An’ a man’s got to eat—”
“Save your breath.” Nathaniel frowned. “What can you tell me about my father? Is he going to trade Richard for Lady Anne?”
“Lady Anne?” Rat squinted up at him.
“Aye. Is he going to let Richard go?”
“Nay. Mary wanted me to tell ye that ‘e’s on to ‘er. She ‘ad to tell him where ye were. ‘E’s on ‘is way ‘ere.”
Nathaniel’s heart began to pound in his ears, keeping rhythm with his headache. “How did the duke catch her?”
Rat shook his head. “That I can’t say. But she told me to find ye and warn ye.”
“What about Lady Anne?”