Along Came a Rogue (28 page)

Emily stared at her, her swirling mind suddenly unable to focus. Why was Yardley sitting at her desk, using her stationery? “What are…” Her lips grew thick, barely able to form words. “What are you…”

Yardley blotted the ink and shook her head regretfully. “Why couldn't you have gone to Glasgow as we'd planned? I would have gotten the money, and no one else would have been hurt.” Swiping the back of her hand against her eyes, she carefully folded the note and rose. “You'd have been safe then. There would've been no need for any of this.”

She set the note on the fireplace mantel. When she finally glanced over her shoulder at Emily, tears streaked down the older woman's cheeks.

“I would have taken care of you, just as if you were my own daughter. But I need the money, you see. For my sister. She's terribly sick and can't afford medical care, can't keep up her dress business…We could have helped her with all of that, you and I. If only you'd listened to me.”

Emily shook her head as the chair began to tilt beneath her. Something was wrong,
very
wrong. “The tea,” her tingling lips forced out in a garbled mumble. “You…the tea…”

Her body numbed. Her breathing came labored and hard as she fought to keep her eyes open. The teacup and saucer fell from her deadened hands and spilled across the floor.

“But you had to let that man into our house,” Yardley scolded angrily. “When he arrived, you forgot all about leaving, didn't you? Now we've no choice but to do it this way.”

Emily's head swirled so thick with dizziness that her stomach rumbled nauseously, and for a moment, she thought she might cast up the poisonous tea. Her hands groped numbly for the chair arms as black spots flashed before her eyes in time to her pounding heart, her vision growing darker and darker.

With every ounce of strength, she levered herself up from the chair, opened her mouth to scream. But no sound came—

She sagged slowly toward the tea-stained rug.

Yardley caught her.

“There now, don't you worry, my lady.” Putting Emily's limp arm over her shoulders, Yardley led her toward the door. “It'll all be over soon, and as painless as possible, I promise you that.”

Emily blinked rapidly. The room around her came slowly into focus as the fog lifted from her eyes. Her head pounded with sharp pains as she tried to remember who she was, where she was, what had happened…

“She's waking up.” A familiar voice cut through the blurriness inside her head, and Emily was just able to make out Yardley's concerned face in front of her in the dim lamplight.

“Finally.” A man's voice came from the darkness behind her, this one unrecognizable. “You put too much of that damned powder in the tea.”

“I had to make certain she was asleep. I couldn't very well have her screaming for help while I was carrying her out of the house, now could I?”

Her fuzzy mind slowly registered what they were saying. She'd been drugged—that was why the tea tasted like licorice, why she'd gotten so tired, so suddenly.

And Yardley had done it to her.

“You…” The word was thick on her tongue as she struggled to clear her mind and form words. “You…”

The haze lifted fully from her eyes now, but she had no idea where she was. Empty except for pieces of trash and debris strewn across the plank-board floor, the room must have been inside an abandoned building, an old warehouse or office still inside the noisy city. And near the river, judging by the stench of fish rot pinching at her nose. The last reds of the sunset seeped in through the holes in the roof over their heads, and the sound of rumbling wagons and horses drifted up from below through the broken windows. A rat scurried along the far wall.

She sat on a wooden chair in the middle of the room, her wrists tied to the chair arms. Her feet were free, but her legs were still too weak from the drug to function. Even if she'd been able to stand, she would have fallen to the floor.

“Yardley.” Her lips tingled as the feeling slowly returned to them, and she concentrated on the woman before her, willing herself to find clarity and regain control of her body. “What…what's happening?”

Her maid shook her head, distress pinching her face. “I tried to help you when we were back at Snowden Hall. I tried to make you understand that you had to convince those men to leave,” Yardley told her quietly, “but you wouldn't listen.”

Ice water ran through her, and fear stole her breath away. “The fire…you set the fire?”

“I had no choice. It was only a matter of time until they found out about the baby and—”

“Shut up!”

The man who was with her shoved Yardley aside and leered down into Emily's face. Her eyes widened in recognition—Harold Crenshaw, the bored young man who came to her house for tea with his father.

“
You
…it was you all along,” Emily whispered fearfully, knowing she was looking into the eyes of a murderer. “You killed Andrew.”

“Of course, I did,” he admitted arrogantly with a sneer at his thin lips. “You think I'd let anyone stand between me and my fortune? Now, with you and your bastard gone, my father becomes a marquess, and when he dies, it all becomes mine…the estates, the title, every last pound and penny.
Mine.
”

His eyes flickered coldly in the lamplight. She realized with sinking terror that there was absolutely no mercy in him, no empathy. He'd pitilessly murdered Andrew and tried to do the same to her—and he was still planning on killing her and her baby. If she couldn't find a way to escape.

“I wasn't able to make you have an accident like your husband, although God knows we tried, didn't we, Yardley? The fire, the phaeton…”

The maid shifted silently from foot to foot, clearly uncomfortable beneath his attentions, as if she didn't trust him not to come after her as well.

“Fortunately,” he murmured as he trailed his knuckles down her cheek, and she shuddered with revulsion, “there are other ways.”

Emily swallowed hard, the swirling fear making her shake. “You don't have to kill me.” She prayed she could talk him out of this, or stall him just long enough to get away. “If the baby is a girl—”

“Then she'll take part of my inheritance in that damned allowance and dowry my father promised her.” He laughed bitterly. “But I can't take the chance that it won't come out a boy and take everything. Besides, once it's born, if it has an accident then, I'll be blamed, and I'll swing at the gallows. Better to stop it now, I think.”

“I don't think you really want to hurt an innocent baby.” She tried again to make him see reason. “If you'd wanted to kill me, you would have done it by now, while I was still unconscious.”

A slow, wicked smile spread across his face. He tsked his tongue with a shake of his head. “Where's the fun in that?”

Panic swelled inside her, the metallic taste of fear sickening in her mouth.
Fun…
An abhorrent shudder sped through her—he was enjoying this.

He put his hands over her bound wrists, pinching her arms painfully against the chair until she winced, and leaned in closer with a low chuckle.

“Of course I want to kill you, bitch. But if I'd done it while you were in Chatham House, someone might have interrupted us. And in the carriage it wouldn't have looked like an accident.”

Her mouth went dry. “Why does it have to be an accident?”

She didn't care—
dear God
, she didn't care how he planned on killing her!—but if she could stall him a bit longer until her leg muscles worked again, she might have a chance of running away. Testing herself, she kept her eyes locked onto his but tried to wiggle her toes…and they moved.
They moved!

Now, if only she could untie her hands and get herself free of the chair. She wouldn't have to run far to escape, only down to the street and into traffic, screaming for help, causing a scene—

He shrugged. “Accident, suicide…no matter as long as you're dead and no one suspects me.”

Her heartbeat thundered in her ears. “No one will believe I killed myself.”

“You were horribly unhappy recently, everyone could see that. Yardley will testify to it, too, won't you?”

Yardley folded her arms nervously across her chest and nodded stiffly, looking down at the floor and guiltily avoiding Emily's eyes.

“In fact, she's already written the note you left behind before you took your life and placed it in your bedroom for your family to find.” He shook his head with a mocking look of grief. “You poor dear…you were inconsolable over the loss of your husband, whom you loved deeply, and the thought of having to raise this child by yourself was overwhelming. You just couldn't live with the constant reminder in your child of your dead husband.”

“No one will believe that.” Not Thomas, and especially not Grey. Despite the terror rising inside her, she took comfort in that—Grey wouldn't believe the note, and he wouldn't stop until he'd hunted down Harold and saw him hanged.

“Oh, you stupid chit!” He sighed with aggravation, rolling his eyes. “They don't have to
believe
it. It just has to be good enough that they can't place blame on me.”

“How?” she demanded, feeling anger stir inside her and slowly replace the fear. He thought she was weak and passive. Someone he could easily control and manipulate. Yet she refused to die without a fight. “How are you going to kill me?”

“You were so distraught that you took a knife from the kitchen at Chatham House, hired a hack to bring you here, and slit your wrists.”

Oh God…

“In the morning, a rag-and-bone man will come inside this building, looking for scraps to sell, where he'll find your dead body.” He laughed with grisly amusement. “Let's just hope he's better at reporting dead bodies than he is at driving phaetons.”

He'd meant to frighten her but only infuriated her. “Slit a lady's tied wrists,” she echoed, unconsciously clenching her hands even as they remained bound to the chair. “Spineless coward!”

Baring his teeth with a growl, he drew back his hand to strike her—then stopped at the last moment, just before he hit her face.

Enraged, he forced down his hand. “You almost had me. If I'd hit you, there would have been a bruise on your body, evidence that someone forced you into this.” He leaned over her menacingly, his voice chilling. “That's the only thing stopping me from beating you right now the way I've longed to do since I found out you'd been bred and ruined everything. Punching your face, kicking your belly…”

He paused to lick his lips, and she sickeningly realized that he was becoming sexually aroused at the thought of harming her.

“I bet you'd beg for mercy, wouldn't you? Soft little cries and pleas—”

“Stop it!” Yardley scolded him furiously. “Stop playing games! It's time now.” She held out her trembling hand. “Give me the money you promised.”

With a murderous glare, Harold took out a small bag from his jacket. The gold sovereigns inside clinked softly together. “If you breathe a word about any of this,” he warned as he slapped the bag into the maid's hand, “they'll fish your dead body from the Thames.”

Silently, Yardley slipped the bag into her skirt pocket and handed over the knife. Even in the dim lamplight, Emily saw the monogram etched into the handle identifying it as belonging to the household of the Duke of Chatham. A knife taken from the kitchen, just as he'd told her.

Harold carefully undid the ties at her wrists so as not to leave any suspicious marks on her skin. No bruises to identify that she'd been murdered, she thought with horror.

She swallowed hard, her heart pounding relentlessly. She had one chance to escape, only one chance…

The last of the bindings fell away. Emily kicked her knee between his legs as hard as she could. He howled in pain, doubling over.

She pushed up to her wobbly feet, shoving him aside and running toward the door as fast as she could, her hands holding desperately around her belly. The street! She only had to reach the street, and she'd be safe. She reached the door and flung it open—

A hand grabbed her shoulder and shoved her backward. Her back slammed against the wall with a painful jar that ricocheted through her and left her gasping for breath.

A forearm pressed against her throat, crushing at her windpipe. Her fingernails dug into the muscle beneath the jacket sleeve in an attempt to free herself, in one last desperate attempt to save her life. But Harold's face loomed over her savagely, his teeth bared like a lion's in attack. From the corner of her eye she saw him raise the knife over his shoulder to stab her—

The sound of a gunshot tore through the building, and the ball ripped into his arm as the knife plunged downward. With a scream, he staggered back. Cowering away, Emily glanced up to see Thomas standing in the doorway, a trail of smoke rising from his spent pistol, and Grey's large body hurling furiously toward Harold.

Grey hit him with such force that the two men propelled forward into the wooden chair, smashing it beneath them as they fell to the floor. He punched his fist into Harold's face and stomach as hard as he could, so hard that she heard him grunt from the exertion of each blow. Blood and spittle flew from Harold's cut and bruised face with each sickening thud of Grey's fists.

“Grey!” She started toward him, but strong arms went around her and held her back.

“Not yet,” Edward Westover said calmly behind her, watching over her head as Grey continued to beat Harold.

Long, agonizing seconds passed until the ferocity of his punches weakened, until each jab came with great effort in swinging punches that seemed to take every ounce of energy inside him. When finally he couldn't lift his arm for another blow, he sank back on his heels and took deep, gasping breaths, the fury in him spent.