Starlight & Promises (49 page)

A produce wagon appeared, overturned ahead, its owner ambling about and retrieving cabbages and squash from the cobbled street. Cullen slowed and halted the horses. He resigned himself to waiting until the wagon moved, but at the corpulent grocer’s unhurried pace, Cullen vented a soft curse.

“I’ll be right back,” he called down to Samantha. “If’n I don’t ‘elp this bloke, we’ll be ‘ere fer ‘ours.” After setting the brake, he tied off the reins and climbed down from his perch.

Samantha leaned her head out the window and released a sigh at the mess in the roadway. Easing back against the seat, she closed her eyes. When the carriage door opened after only a handful of minutes, she smiled. Cullen seemed to have quickly sorted out the grocer’s dilemma.

Rough fingers clamped over her lips. Her eyes flew open, and her heart ceased to beat. A hand seized her wrist and hauled her upward with force. She fell out of the carriage door into strong arms.

Though his breath gushed out in a hiss against her cheek when her bulk toppled into him, he quickly recuperated. With an arm wrapped beneath her breasts and his hand pressed against her mouth, he dragged her away from the carriage and into an alley between two warehouses.

Samantha struggled to free herself, but her abductor seemed possessed of an unholy strength. After shoving her through an opened doorway, he kicked the door shut, engaged the lock, and released her.

She stumbled to her knees, bruising them on the dusty wooden floor, and her size prevented her from climbing immediately to her feet. Samantha panted with the exertion. A sudden, sharp pain, stabbing low in her belly, followed. She grunted and looked up. “Steven!” she sputtered. “What are you doing here?”

“Shut up, bitch!” He extracted a length of rope from his jacket pocket and bent over her.

She twisted away, ending up on her back, straining to roll over and get to her feet but managed only to writhe about like a turtle stranded on its back.

Steven grabbed her arms and jerked her up onto her knees. Pulling her hands behind her back, he looped the rope around her wrists.

A pounding came on the door behind them. Cullen shouted her name from the other side. Samantha jerked her head toward the sound. “Cullen! Get h—”

Steven whipped out a handkerchief and tied it over her mouth. She sank down on her side, gasping from her struggles and the lack of air. When Steven moved out of view into the shadows along the wall, a chill swept over her skin.

Cullen kicked at the door, rattling it on its hinges. Finally the lock gave way, and the boy stormed into the gloomy space. He sprinted to her side and knelt.

Steven came up behind him.

Samantha screamed behind the gag, tried to signal Cullen with her eyes, but her bound hands held his attention.

Steven drew a gun and brought the butt down on the back of Cullen’s skull.

When Cullen collapsed, a deadening fog swept through Samantha’s brain. Her belly convulsed and squeezed her womb in a long, throbbing contraction that made her fight for breath. Her chest compressed at a sudden realization. The pain came, not from her fright but from the babe. She battled an agonizing wave, and tears sprang from her eyes. She strived to relax her muscles until the contraction passed.

Steven loomed over her, legs braced apart, eyes as hard as diamond chips while he regarded her with a pitiless expression. Snagging Cullen’s collar, he dragged the boy away to a far corner. When Steven returned, he squatted on his heels and removed her gag. Cupping his hands beneath her arms, he slid her along the floor and propped her into a sitting position against a wall. Resting a shoulder against the boards, he smiled coldly.

“Well, now, Samantha, here we are, my runaway bride and I. Did you truly believe you could leave me at the altar without even a backward glance?”

“Why, Steven? Why are you here?” Through the dull roaring of blood in her ears, she swallowed thickly and tensed at another contraction gathering. Breathing through her mouth, she rode out the long, dark, rolling waves. When they ebbed, leaving her breathless, she looked up at him. “What do you want from me?”

“What do I want?” He laughed harshly. “I daresay I want my wife.”

Every instinct cautioned her to keep her wits about her, to remain calm and still, though the thought of her baby coming now in this dirty warehouse was a river of icy water washing over her. Nevertheless, she was unable to still her mouth. “You know full well I’m not your wife. Christian is my husband. We wed in Hobart. Why are you doing this?”

He spun away from the wall and paced in front of her in short, heavy strides that thudded on the wood louder than the beating of her frantic heart. When he brought himself up short, he jabbed a finger at her. “You owe me! Your family owes me! I intend to collect the debt.”

She shook her head, making every effort to follow the thread of his words. An insane light glittered in his eyes, warning her to hold her tongue.

“The Colchesters owe me!” he continued, spittle flying from his lips. “Your dear uncle Richard ruined my life, my career. He made me a laughingstock in society and caused my father to disown me.”

“How, Steven?” she asked as softly as her nerves and the coming baby would allow. She sensed his preoccupation with the past and encouraged his tortured mind to release the memories it seemed he longed to air, though how it would help her, she did not know. Nonetheless, every moment she could gain was precious. “How did Uncle Richard ruin your life?”

Swinging his head in her direction, he cut the air with the blade of his hand. “You care nothing for me or the pain your family visited upon me.”

A film of sweat broke out on her forehead with the crouching pain. She had to force her tone to remain even. “I do care for you. I would have wed you had my husband not come back from the dead. I was legally obligated to go with him. It had naught to do with how I felt about you.” Soon Delia would miss her, and surely someone would come looking for her. She had to keep him talking. “I beg you, tell me why you hate my uncle so dreadfully. Perhaps I can help.”

He tilted his head and looked at her. The madness faded from his eyes, but now they looked far away, as though he were peering into the past. Lifting his chin, he gazed up at the dust motes dancing in thin streamers of light, released a breath through his teeth, and leaned back against the wall beside her.

“Richard and I were the best of friends,” he said, his recitation strangely wooden, as if repeated by rote. “Our love of nature compelled us to spend countless hours combing the meadows and woods on our fathers’ adjoining estates.” He lowered his gaze to rest on her. “You never knew I was Steven Burnett, Richard’s neighbor, did you?”

She shook her head, though she recalled Aunt Delia mentioning the Marquis of Lansdowne and some scandal broth. “Please go on.”

He inhaled a breath, and his eyes glazed over again. “Our devotion to science grew with time, and a mentorship beneath the aegis of Charles Darwin spurred us on to Oxford and serious scientific research.”

“Then you didn’t attend Oxford on scholarship, nor did you study commerce,” she interjected, unsurprised by his lies.

A chuckle rumbled from his chest. His mouth lifted in a cynical smile. “Hardly. After all, my father was a marquis. I held title as a viscount. As our careers began, Richard catalogued flora and studied its fossil remains, reconstructing climate change progression and plant evolution. I gained a reputation for my discoveries along the pathways of human evolution.” His voice grew softer, a wistful expression coming over his face. “We were a jolly good team. Together we painted a picture of time in flux. In those golden days, Richard and I were like brothers. We stuck so closely to each other’s sides, one could not have separated us with a shoehorn.”

Samantha stiffened, occupied in riding out a contraction squeezing her belly like an anaconda’s coils. “When did it change?” she asked with only a modicum of strain in her voice. “What happened to that friendship?”

The flesh across the bones of his face stretched as tightly as the skin of a drum. “We had been accepted into the membership of the elite Royal Academy of Science, rivals yet colleagues. But while Richard’s fame grew, important discoveries and their elusive meanings falling from his pen like autumn leaves, I encountered naught but roadblocks to my continued professional success.

“You must understand,” he said, “human fossils are a great deal rarer and more difficult to uncover than plant fragments. My work suffered, and my reputation waned. I required some major discovery, something … spectacular.” His gaze caught and held hers. He gave her an earnest look, as though he wished to sway her to his point of view. She returned what she hoped resembled a sincere smile. “You see, the academy was close to ejecting me. My father would never have allowed me peace should I have permitted that to occur.”

She nodded, praying the gesture conveyed sympathy.

Steven’s gaze drifted away. “I was reaching the end of my tether when I encountered a man who offered me a chance for redemption. A partially intact skull, meticulously constructed, a chimera of ape and human parts.” He grinned. “It was quite nearly perfect. I presented it to the academy as the first solid evidence of the missing link between apes and humans. At first, accolades propelled me to the scientific forefront. Scientists bandied my name about the London salons in the same breath as Darwin’s. Then Richard Colchester emerged, like the Grim Reaper from the London fog.” He raised fists, and his voice turned bitter. “His righteous scythe cut me to the knees, exposing the fossil as a fraud. Richard vowed he did so, not out of jealousy but through scientific outrage that one of his own should go to such lengths to gain notoriety.” He paused, his chest heaving as he gulped in air.

“What happened then?” Samantha asked cautiously.

He laughed and waved an arm in an airy gesture. “Oh, quite a bit, indeed. A storm of censure descended. The ensuing gale blew through London, wiping out my reputation and erasing all my previous, legitimate scientific contributions. My friends shunned me. I became a social pariah virtually overnight.” The maniacal light that so concerned her before surfaced again in his eyes. “The academy expelled me, and my father summoned me.” He chuckled. “But I took care of him as I believed I had taken care of Richard.”

With an intake of breath that had naught to do with her worsening physical condition, Samantha recalled Delia’s words: intruders had murdered Steven Burnett’s father shortly after the marquis petitioned the House of Lords to elevate his younger son. Surely Steven could not have killed his own father? Another thought struck terror in her soul. Richard’s abduction by pirates. Steven orchestrated that situation, too?
He
was the gentleman who paid Miggs? She could not quell a loud gasp.

Steven pushed away from the wall and looked down with a chilling smile. “Quite right, my dear. Miggs was to dispose of Richard after he learned where to find the Smilodon.” He stretched out his arms with a plea on his face. “Can you not see that Richard owed me the Smilodon? Its discovery would restore my standing. However, circumstances intervened, and your damned uncle has more lives than a cat. Like all the others in my past, Miggs turned out to be a disappointment.” Lowering his arms, he pulled back and smiled reflectively. “Yet, now Richard is dead, as fairness dictates he be, and I have you.”

After his confession, if that was what it truly was and not merely a boast, she discarded any sympathy, false or otherwise, she might have had for the man. “Christian will come for me. When he finds us, he will punish you for your transgressions, both past and present.”

His laugh echoed off the rafters, setting into flight a roost of bats in the far reaches. Dust and wood fragments sifted downward, and he brushed off his shoulders, glanced up at the bats. His gaze came back to her. “Your beloved Christian despises you. He believes that brat you carry to be mine.”

When she flinched, he said, “Oh yes, I know. I followed your affairs with a vested interest. Even should he search for you out of some misplaced sense of responsibility, he will soon join Richard and my father in hell.” He brandished the gun. “After all, we cannot properly wed until you become a widow.”

Samantha tried to discard Steven’s assessment of her marriage as the ravings of a madman, though it held more than a grain of truth. Christian had no earthly reason to rescue her. He
did
believe she carried another man’s child. Even so, she refused to abandon all hope. “What do you truly want, Steven? You obviously have no love for me.” The abdominal pain, which had briefly quieted, gripped her womb once again. She fought to bear it and hold back the scream swelling in her throat. When the curtain of agony lifted, Steven was speaking.

“—my dear. I’ve not an iota of love for you. Quite the contrary. As the spawn of a Colchester, I loathe you. Yet I desire what you possess. Your fortune, respectability, and social consequence.” He leaned down into her face. “Most of all, I desire the Smilodon,
my
discovery. It will propel me back into the ranks of eminent scientists. With your money, my scientific achievement, and you as my respectable wife, doors will again open for me.”

She battled the pains coming closer together. She must keep him talking. “What about the scandal? Marriage to me will hardly undo the past.”

“You
will. Your words will redeem me. You will let it be known that Richard confessed to constructing the fake fossil and made me his pawn out of jealousy. Before he died, he regretted the injustice he perpetrated on me and my family.”

“Wh-whyever would I utter such an untruth and smear Richard’s name?” she asked, incredulity infusing her words.

He hunkered down and pressed a hand cruelly hard on her rippling belly.

She grunted with pain.

“Because of this, Samantha. Because of your child. The child whose future depends upon my charity.”

Despite the heat inside the warehouse, she shivered. He meant what he said. He had already proved he was not above murder, and he would harm her child were she to defy him. A red wave of agony sunk its teeth into her guts, causing a moan to slide past her lips. The baby was coming quickly. If help did not arrive soon, they could die here.