Lord Ruin (34 page)

“Is Anne with you?” Ruan asked with such raw passion that Devon and Benjamin stared in shock. A man who’d withstood the horrors of war now sounded like a man frantic with loss, near to breakdown. Devon had never in all the years he’d known Ruan, heard him sound like that.

Henry shook his head, wincing from the pain. “No, your grace.”

“What the hell happened?” Benjamin demanded.

But it was Emily who cut to the heart of the matter. “Never mind that now.” She walked to Henry and daintily pressed a handkerchief to his bleeding head. “Where have they taken my sister?”

Henry, the fool, took one look at that angelic face and told her everything. “Bit east of Waltham Abby, near Epping way, miss. Ah, such kind hands to lay on me. A cottage at the end of the lane just after a stand of oaks.”

“How many men were there?” she asked serenely.

“Three.” Henry visibly melted, thoroughly enslaved to her beauty. “That I saw, miss.”

Emily glanced at Ruan. “Have you pistols for Bracebridge and Thrale, Cynssyr? We haven’t much time. I am sorry, Bracebridge, we cannot wait for Merchant to return.” She called for a servant, completely in charge. No one did a thing to stop her. “We shall want fresh horses.” She was too sensible, damn it all. Should anyone countermand her, they’d only have to give the same bloody instructions.

“We?” Devon repeated. He gave her a glare because he had a very unpleasant notion about Emily’s willingness to wait patiently or otherwise while they went after Anne. “You, Miss Sinclair, are not going anywhere.”

“It’s far safer to bring me along than have me follow.” She put her hands on her hips. “I will follow. You cannot stop me since I have heard where she is.” Her mouth firmed. “She is my sister. She may need me.”

Ruan pretended, or at least Devon hoped he was pretending, to humor her. “Ben, go with Emily and Henry in my carriage. If you’re game, Thrale, you’ll ride with us.”

“You can’t mean to let her come,” Devon protested.

“She will follow, Dev,” Ben said in a weary voice. “You’ve not lived with her for these weeks. A more willful girl there has never been since the day the earth was made. No, don’t think for a moment she won’t follow.”

“Lock her in a room,” suggested Thrale, evidently not closely acquainted with Emily.

Emily marched to confront them. Devon couldn’t look away from those fiery eyes and didn’t imagine Thrale was having any easier a time. “If you succeeded, I would only climb out the window. Or break down the door. I’d remove the hinges if I had to. You won’t keep me from this. Anne needs me. She needs all of us.”

“I ought to ride,” Ben objected. “It’ll be faster that way.”

“I can’t sit in a bloody carriage.” Ruan pushed two pistols across the table toward Devon. “Besides, someone has to teach Emily the rudiments of firing one of these.”

In the concealing shadow of the oaks Henry described, Ruan waited with Thrale and Benjamin, never once taking his eyes off the house. Small as houses went and reminiscent of a hunting box. The two-story structure, built of yellow-gray brick, stood like a once strong man past his prime, hale at the first glance but unable to withstand scrutiny. Peeled shutters, broken newels, a cracked window. Ruan doubted its owner knew anyone was there. A thin curl of smoke rose from the far chimney.

Devon came, silent as death. Ruan felt his approach and turned, watching Dev assess the house. “Easy enough to get in, I should think.”

“Ho, there,” Benjamin greeted him in the same not-quite-a-whisper voice as the others used. “Emily?”

“Henry’s with her. Told her I’d come back for her once we had a look round.” Devon gave a grin that was not a grin. “Left her armed to the teeth and itching to shoot someone.” His eyes scanned the house, pausing at all the spots Ruan had himself marked as vulnerable. Then he asked a shade too innocently, “Wonder who owns this?”

Thrale glared at them both. “It’s not mine.”

“One man came out for a look,” Ruan said. “He didn’t do much, though. Stood a while in the doorway. Drinking.”

“The rest are probably drunk on wallop, too.”

“With luck.”

“Well.” Devon stroked his nose. “I’m off. Wish me luck.”

While Devon reconnoitered, Benjamin, Thrale and Ruan checked and rechecked their guns.

Moments later—it felt a lifetime to Ruan—Devon reappeared. “Two men downstairs. Drinking. Five horses in the barn, though. Two nags. A dray for the gig. Two thoroughbreds. One almost as fine as yours.”

“Anne?”

“Not downstairs, anyway. Upstairs most likely. We ought to assume she is there somewhere.”

“No sign of others?” asked Benjamin.

“None.”

“Standing guard wherever they’re holding the duchess,” Thrale said.

Devon gave him a look. “I’ll watch the back while the rest of you take on the ones inside. Agreed?”

As it happened, the first of the kidnappers fell easily. Before any of them could move into position, one of the men came outside and wandered over to the oaks to relieve himself. Thrale stepped up and punched him in the stomach. While he struggled to breathe, Dev coshed him and that was that, except for making sure of the knots that secured him to the trunk of an oak. The man sprawled, trousers open, head hanging to his chest. A heavy odor of ale and piss rose from him. He was young, healthy, well-formed and handsome enough to have obtained a good position in the best of households.

Thrale stood over him. “Hell. That’s the footman I sacked for theft.”

“Give me to the count of fifty to get around back and to the window,” Dev said. “Then go in. I’ll step in if you need me.” He turned back. With a cockeyed grin, he said, “Check you’ve loaded your guns, milords.”

The ruffian they’d overpowered had left the front door ajar. All to the better. Ruan stepped in far enough to make room for Benjamin. Thrale remained behind them, just out of sight. Ruan cleared his throat and took aim.

“That you?” the man said, picking up his lager and taking a long swallow before he turned to the door. He had a barrel chest and arms the size of clubs.

“Twitch and you’ll not live to see another day.”

The boulder of a man froze, tankard halfway to his mouth.

“Where are they?” Benjamin said. The man pointed upstairs cautiously, in case one of these angry gentlemen took it in his head to squeeze a trigger. “Up you go, Ruan,” said Benjamin cheerfully.

“Ned!” The shout was accompanied by the sound of footsteps on bare wood. Ruan first saw low-heeled shoes, then white stockings and black breeches. “It’s your watch.” The voice came closer. “What the devil are—” The rest of the man appeared. He saw Ruan and stopped dead, one foot poised above a stair.

“You are?” Aldreth said.

With a smile polished as new silver he tugged at the edges of his black coat. “Why, I’m a gentleman’s gentleman, milord. At your service.” He gave a short bow and then clasped his hands before him as if about to pray. “I am here looking after my employer. At the moment he is not at home. What may I do to help you?”

“I am here,” Ruan said, “to fetch my wife.”

“Your wife? Oh, I’m afraid there’s been some—” Though his smile remained pleasant, his eyes flitted around the room like a starling on the wrong side of a closed door. Then he saw Thrale. “Why, my lord Thrale, here you are hours before you said to expect you!”

“Basset!” Thrale leapt forward, but Benjamin grabbed his arm, stopping him short.

“Your valet, I presume?”

“I’ll have your head for this, Basset.” The valet’s mouth dropped open, a perfect likeness of confusion, but his attention skipped from Thrale to Ben and Ruan and there lingered, and Ruan saw in them not a sign of perplexity.

Basset fled up the stairs, Ruan on his heels. He just missed the man’s collar before a door slammed in his face. One kick broke wood, a second shattered the door from its frame. Ruan tore past, frantic at what might have happened during the seconds it took to batter his way in. Basset stood at the broken-down window.

“Where is she?” he demanded when a quick glance around showed him a room empty but for the other man. He lifted his gun.

“I told that coxcomb you’d find him,” Basset said.

“Where is she?”

“Kill me, and you’ll not find her ‘til it’s too late.”

“I won’t ask again.”

“Damned fine-looking woman, your wife.” He licked his lips and edged toward the window. “He’s enjoying himself with her right now, I imagine.” He put a hand over his crotch, taunting. “Shall I tell you whether I’ve had my turn yet? Or perhaps that stallion downstairs?”

Ruan heard himself roar but did not recognize the agonized shout as his own. Basset’s eyes opened wide, and he backed against the rotting window frame.

“I ought to kill you.” How he had ended with the gun extended to within a foot of Basset’s heart, he didn’t know, but there it was, and he was ready to pull the trigger.

“Then I’ll be dead, no mistake, and you’ll be too late to save her. You’re too late already.”

He let the gun drop to his side. The other man relaxed and stayed that way even when Ruan took a step closer. Ruan pressed the weapon to Basset’s cheek. “Start talking.” He didn’t move the gun.

Basset paled when he saw Ruan’s dead eyes and the promise of certain death. “Up there.” He tilted his chin toward the ceiling. “With her. Right now.” Ruan’s hand tensed, and Basset’s eyes widened. He launched himself backward shattering glass and wood.

Whether the fall killed him mattered not to Ruan. If it hadn’t, he had a lifetime to make sure Basset died while Anne’s life could depend on the next few minutes. He ran from the room, taking the stairs three at a time. The door at the top wasn’t locked. He threw it open, half-afraid Basset had lied and the room would be empty. It wasn’t.

Julian Durling wore only a loose shirt open to the waist, trousers and boots. In eerie silence, he knelt on a pallet of the sort given to servants by skinflint masters, holding Anne close to his chest, a parody of a concerned lover. Light glinted on the wicked blade of a knife in his hand. Her skirts, twisted and torn, exposed one leg to the knee. Rope bound her wrists behind her.

Anne’s head flopped back, and Ruan understood why Durling had made no attempt to hide his face from her. She was unconscious. Strands of flaxen hair fell around her face and a bruise rose purple on her cheek. Slowly, Durling turned. A gash from the bottom of his ear to mid-cheek still oozed blood.

“Damn that Basset,” Durling said. Ruan’s pulse tripped when he caught the glitter in Durling’s eyes. “I knew he couldn’t be trusted to follow a simple instruction.”

“Not a bit.”

Durling softly laughed, a dry and ironical sound. “Somehow, I don’t think you brought my diamonds.” With a tender motion, he lifted his hand to Anne’s face, intending, Ruan understood, to brush the hair from her cheek. His shoulders jumped once, as if seeing a knife startled him. Icy fear coiled in Ruan’s gut. The man’s sanity stretched thin as a blade. Durling’s mouth twisted when he looked at Anne. “No wonder you threw Mrs. Forrest aside. I’d have done the same myself.”

“Let her go,” Ruan said.

He shook his head as if declining a glass of wine and hauled her upright, one arm clamped tight around her waist. He used her as a shield, knife in his free hand, an awkward position, for she was dead weight.

“Let her go.”

“She’s a loyal little thing, I’ll say that much for her. Wouldn’t have me to save her own lovely neck, and I tell you I begged most prettily.” He shrugged, sagging against the wall behind him. “Probably do it to save you, though.”

“You are dead.”

A look of regret flitted across his face. “Undoubtedly the case.”

“Do as his grace says, Julian,” came another voice from a darkened corner of the room. “And let her go.”

Durling’s grip on Anne tightened, and he added the support of his other arm. The flat of the knife lay across her waist. “Shoot him, Cyn. Her life depends upon it.”

The hair on the back of Ruan’s neck lifted. Turning his head, he saw first the gun held unwaveringly, then the man who held it.

“Shoot him, Major,” Martin said. He grinned. “Of course. Begging your pardon. Shoot him, your grace. You’ve a better shot than I.” The gun lifted. “Shoot, I say, or it’ll be too late. There’s no telling what he’ll do. He’s mad. If you won’t shoot him, then step aside and let me do it. Look at him. Can’t you see he’s mad?” Martin aimed where Durling’s ribs would be if Ruan stepped aside. “He owes me money, damn his soul, and I wanted to collect. I went to his house. Saw him leaving, you know, and I followed him,” Martin said. “I saw him kill that servant of yours, the one you set on him, following him day and night, and then I followed him here. Managed to conceal myself only just. Now shoot, damn you.”

“For God’s sake, Cyn, shoot him,” Martin repeated. Durling looked frantically from him to Martin. He turned his torso slightly so that Ruan’s margin for error became slimmer yet, though he still had a better shot than Martin. “He’ll kill her if you don’t.

“Hesitate much longer,” Martin went on, “and he’ll slit her throat. Shoot or step aside. You’re the only man I know who could make a shot like that.”

Anne stirred and everyone jumped in response. Martin lunged, trying to get around Ruan. In a flash, Durling raised the knife to her neck. “No!” His cry rent the air, rising to a shriek.

Immediately, the ex-soldier backed down. “Cynssyr,” he hissed. “Move or shoot, damn you!”

Durling’s drawl came back in full force. “I thought I was violent with the women until I saw Martin. He wants her alive, Cyn. And you, for now. He wants you to die knowing what he’ll do to her. That’s why he hasn’t killed you where you stand.”

“Madman!” Martin cried. “He’s a Bedlamite.”

“I wouldn’t let him touch her,” Durling said. “I couldn’t. And here I thought I could stand any depravity. Imagine my shock when I discovered my mistake.”

He laughed, and Ruan fancied a touch of madness rang in the sound. Then Anne shifted again, her feet moving as she tried to stand and found she could not. Durling lurched to compensate.