What Isabella Desires (17 page)

“I know.”

“But it’s not enough,” he said resignedly.

She shifted in her seat. “I just wish you trusted me. I suppose that is what hurts most.”

He put his fork down carefully on his plate. “I trust you, Bella.”

“Not really, you don’t.”

“Why do you say that?”

“There are other things you are keeping secret.”

“I can’t tell you my every secret. Especially not those that are not my secrets to tell.”

“I don’t want you to share someone else’s secrets. I just want…”

“Yes?”…yours.

“…I just want you to trust me,” she finished somewhat lamely.

“I do.”

And somehow that made things worse than before. Because as much as he said he trusted her, he didn’t trust her completely. Probably didn’t trust anyone completely. Did she even know what she was asking for?

Could he love her if he didn’t trust her completely?

Maybe. She didn’t know. And that was the problem. She wanted so badly for him to return her love that she was scrambling to decipher the clues as to whether he did or did not.

A servant walked in. “My lord, there is an urgent messenger to see you.” The servant looked uncomfortably in her direction.

She pushed her chair back, and Marcus rose with her.

“Please do not feel the need to stay on my account,” she said. “I believe I will retire early. Good evening to you.”

The words came out more tersely than she’d intended, but she needed to think things over. She didn’t want the looming sense of desperation that clung to her to taint her thoughts before she had a chance to reason them through.

She walked from the room, leaving a pair of narrowed eyes following her wake.

Marcus dismissed the messenger and mounted his horse alongside his men.

“Your lordship?” one of the men queried.

Marcus caught a glimpse of a rose-gowned figure in the ivy-crowned first floor window. Long, dark hair flowed loosely around her shoulders, one gloved hand rested on the pane. Caught like a fairy princess in a gilded cage.

His mouth tightened. He whirled his horse toward the woods. “Let’s head out.”

It was time to remove the threat.

They rode hard and fast into the dark forest. Hooves pounded along the path, kicking up clods of dirt. Marcus ducked to avoid a low lying branch and leaned forward as his mount soared over a fallen log.

With each stride his pent up anger, his guilt, his frustration increased. The responsibility for the deaths of his men and the threat directed toward Isabella was so near, so tangible.

They slowed the horses some fifteen minutes later near the stream that divided the forest. He took two deep breaths, trying to center himself amidst the overwhelming need for revenge.

“They are just to the west, my lord, using the abandoned cabin in the glen. Our men are already stationed near their camp.”

Marcus nodded. “Good. You two.” He pointed at two of the men. “Go around north and circle in. Wait for the signal.”

The two riders took off north. He motioned to the other two men. “Same orders, but south.”

He waited with Stubbins at the edge of the river as the riders receded from view.

“It’s time, Stubbins. Past time.”

“Yes, my lord.”

They headed straight west, straight into the heart of the enemy’s camp, straight to where vengeance beckoned.

Marcus broke through the trees. A startled shout echoed in the clearing as two men stumbled from the cottage and ran in different directions. Marcus watched through narrowed eyes and rode around the side of the cabin in time to see a third man falling from the back window. The man, upon seeing him, fled toward the edge of camp, toward a horse tethered to a great oak.

Marcus could see his men emerging from their spots, hemming in the campsite and roughly capturing the other two. He rode forward and swung his horse to a stop, blocking the fleeing man from reaching his mount.

“Going somewhere?” He asked, his tone mild.

“J-just to my horse, sir. We haven’t done nothing wrong. Swears it on my honor, I do.” The man sported an ingratiating smile.

“And pray tell, what are you doing in this clearing, on private land, at this hour?”

“Just resting our heads. We didn’t mean any harm.” The man’s smile turned crooked and disarming.

“The rifles are just for show then? For any large, wild animals that might come round?”

Marcus watched the man’s smile dip as he saw the cache of weapons resting on a crate, clearly visible through the open front door. The man cast nervous glances as each route of escape was closed off by more men surrounding the site.

He regained his smile quickly. “Ye’ve caught us out, sir. We were poaching. A sad business. Take me to the local constable. I’ll pay me fine.” He smiled ingratiatingly again.

“Tie them up,” Marcus said, speaking to the men behind him, but keeping his eyes on the reedy fellow in front. “We’ll make use of the cabin these three so precipitously vacated.”

The man’s eyes went wide. “Now, now, don’t be hasty, your lordship. My family, we’re just so hungry. One or two little rabbits, who’d notice?”

Whereas in a normal case Marcus might have been darkly amused by the man’s ploys, nothing about the current situation was amusing. “When one of those rabbits answers to the title of lady, I’d say a great many would notice.”

The ingratiating look vanished from the man’s face. “I don’t know what ye speak of.”

Ah, there was that street accent coming through. Marcus smiled. “That’s not a problem. We’ll help jog your memory.”

He motioned to Stubbins, who hauled the man up the steps and thrust him into the cabin.

There was very little inside except for a few blankets, two chairs, and the weapons. These men were better at their jobs than some he’d seen. They hadn’t lit a fire outside. They hadn’t called attention to themselves with candles or cooking. If his men hadn’t been canvassing the grounds on an hourly basis, they may have escaped detection. With the door closed, the cabin looked abandoned.

Marcus signaled and the two hulking men who had run out the front door were carted off to the back. He trusted his men to keep them far enough away so that one man could not overhear another’s confession.

Stubbins bound the lanky talker to one of the room’s old wooden chairs.

“Now see here, I haven’t done nothing wrong yet. I admitted to wanting to poach. I’ll pay for my transgressions. But I don’t even have a shot rabbit or deer on me.” He exhaled sharply. “What are you doing to my legs?”

Stubbins secured each of his ankles to a leg with thin, but strong, ropes.

“Just making things comfortable.”

“Comfortable would be in me bed wrapped up with a woman. You gonna make that happen?”

“Perhaps if you answer my questions honestly and quickly you might live long enough to find some pox ridden bird in London,” Marcus said while circling his prey.

The man’s eyes narrowed as he tried to follow Marcus’s movements. “I told ye all ye needed to know. Now send me to the constable.”

“Do you know who I am?”

There was a brief hesitation. “Yes.”

“Good. Do you know what I do?”

“Attack poor men who are trying to feed their families?”

“Mmmm. If that is what you believe, and if you are who you claim, you must feel yourself in dire straits.”

The man’s lips compressed. One layer peeled away. No more talk about poachers.

Marcus continued circling the man bound to the chair and his voice regained a mild timbre. “What is your name?”

The man snorted. Marcus smiled. The criminal had deluded himself into thinking he still had options.

He pulled a chair over. “Such an easy question. Perhaps if you indulge us, you can prevent any…unpleasantness…before it begins.”

“Ye don’t scare me. I don’t believe what they say. Think yer so high and mighty. Ye wouldn’t dare get your hands dirty.”

Marcus lifted a brow. “No? Even if that were true, you obviously haven’t thought things through. I have five men here, friends of three murdered men, who would be more than happy to get their hands dirty.”

He could hear one of his men crack his knuckles behind him.

A trickle of sweat forged a path down a thin grit-laden cheek. “Ye don’t scare me.”

“I see. Does that mean you won’t tell me your name?”

The man’s lips tightened.

“Very well. I think I’ll call you Judas.”

Judas’s lips tightened further.

“Or I can call you something else? But Judas will be so fitting after tonight.” Marcus leaned forward and was pleased when Judas’s head moved back. “You can begin your redemption upon the morrow.”

“I’m not telling ye nothing.”

Marcus lazily rose and snapped his fingers. A long thin box was placed in his hand. He walked around Judas and stroked the box. “Is that so?”

He sat down in the chair again and idly opened the box, taking his time to undo the cloth wrapping inside.

He pulled out a metal rod, dull and heavy, and placed it on Judas’s knees. The man flinched and tried to pull his knees in, but they were bound to the chair legs so he couldn’t move far.

“Did you know Dudley Jones, by any chance?”

Everyone on the streets knew about Dudley Jones. Judas’s eyes went wide before he tried to school his expression back into a cool mask. “No.”

“Ah. Shame. Good boy, Dudley, before he fell in with the wrong types. He became a very, very naughty boy, which got him chased by—well—a different sort of wrong type.”

“Don’t care none.”

“Shame what happened to his face. They say his mother can’t even recognize him now.” Marcus smiled, but he knew it was no smile at all. Stephen called it the devil’s grin.

Marcus removed a hammer from the box and Judas’s eyes bugged. He stroked the head of the hammer, and placed that on Judas’s knees, too. Judas tried to shake the tool off, but both the hammer and rod stayed in place, shifting with the roll of his knees.

“But you assuredly aren’t vain, not with that face.” Marcus smiled again. He was pleased to note that his smile triggered a response on its own, as two more beads of sweat pearled on Judas’s chin.

He pulled out a long knife. Sharp and wicked looking. “Your tongue, however…now that would be a shame to lose.” He pretended an avid interest in the sharpness of the blade. “Tommy the Tongue. Isn’t that what they call you, Judas?”

Judas/Tommy was panicked now—red faced, short rapid breaths, pooling sweat.

“They call you that for your ability to talk your way out of anything, I hear tell. That’s quite a reputation to bear in this situation, Judas. How will I ever believe what you say?”

His head was as far back as it could go. “Now then, yer lordship, don’t be hasty.” Marcus could see that Tommy was starting to believe. The knowledge that Marcus knew his true identity was an unexpected blow—exactly as it had been meant to be.

“I’m never hasty, Judas.” He stroked the flat edge of the knife. “Precise to a fault, maybe. But never hasty. I’m surprised my reputation hasn’t preceded me. Perhaps I need to rectify that. Shall I leave your fingers so that you can still write and tell the story? Like Charles Anthony? Do you know how to write?”

“N-yes!”

“Mmmm, see there. I don’t believe you do. What if we put it to the test? You write a sentence of my choosing, and if you succeed, I’ll let you keep your fingers?”

“No,” he whispered. “I don’t write.”

Marcus gave him another cold smile. “That wasn’t so hard now, was it? I knew Tommy the Tongue would know when to quit.” Marcus looked over his shoulder calmly. “I win that bet, Stubbins. That’s another pound you owe me.”

Tommy was fully panicked now. The wonders of a nasty reputation and a solid dose of fear. It didn’t even matter if Marcus had done any of the things he threatened. The key was that Tommy believed he had. The streets whispered it in hushed tones.

Tommy’s cohorts looked dim at best. They would roll over easily, but their information would not be complete. It would be enough to verify Tommy’s, but it wouldn’t be complete. No, Tommy was the nut to crack. The one who would have the real information.

“And Brian Brisby? Have you heard of him?”

Tommy started to shake his head, then nodded. “Disappeared,” he muttered.

“Yes, Brian was once in your position. He was a good man, though, and gave up his information. Reformed. Perhaps he has been set up with a new identity, a new life. Wouldn’t that be nice, Judas?”

He nodded shakily, his eyes trailing the knife that Marcus continued to lazily wave.

“So let’s begin with your name again. What is it?”

“Tommy Anderson.”

Marcus nodded. “And why are you here?”

“To watch you.”

Marcus shook his head. “No, no. That won’t do.” He slid the tip of the knife down Tommy’s knee.

“To-to grab the lady.”