Lady Caro (19 page)

“Oh, Ashley, be careful. I love you so,” she admitted to the silent room. “I could not bear to lose you.”

Chapter 26

When Caro, dressed in a forest-green riding habit and a matching high-crowned hat with a jaunty ostrich feather in its band, went to claim her horse the following morning for her ride in the park, she was surprised to see a stranger, instead of her usual groom, holding the reins of her hack.

“Where is Sam?” she asked.

“Oi’m told ’e’s under the weather, ma’am,” the man answered.

“What’s wrong with him?” Caro cried, immediately concerned.

“Oi don’t know, ma’am,” his replacement replied, looking uneasy. He had a pockmarked face, a slovenly carriage, and an unkempt look about him that surprised Caro, for her husband required the servants who wore his burgundy and gold livery to present an impeccable appearance. But this man’s livery was ill-fitting, as though it were a size too small. Caro decided that he must be a stable boy who had been hastily pressed into service because of Sam’s illness.

Caro loved this time of day. There was hardly anyone about on the streets except for a mounted butcher boy making deliveries. His saddle had a tray for his wares strapped onto its front and only one stirrup, but he managed to ride at a bruising pace despite these hindrances.

When Caro and her groom reached the park, it was
all but
deserted of humanity. Cows and deer browsed peacefully beneath the trees and along paths that in the late afternoon would become congested with the carriages of the ton.

Caro had stayed home the previous night. The entertainments on her schedule did not tempt her when she knew in advance that she would not see Ashley at any of them. Nor had she any interest in seeing Henry Neel. Not that she could bring herself to believe he was a murderer. But when she had learned the real reason that Ashley objected to her flirtation with his cousin, it had effectively killed what small interest he had held for her.

She turned her hack down her favorite path, the one she chose every morning for its quiet seclusion. It was guarded on both sides by tall, thick hedgerows of guelder rose, elder, and black bryony. A nondescript closed carriage, without a crest on the door or a coachman on the box, was parked off the side of the path in a secluded little nook. How strange, Caro thought, slowing her mount to a walk as she passed it. This was the first time she had seen a vehicle on this path during her morning rides. Even stranger, it appeared to be abandoned.

Suddenly, her groom called to her to halt. “Oi needs to check yer cinch. Methinks it’s loose.”

Although Caro had noticed no problem with it, she obediently stopped and dismounted.

Her feet were barely on the ground when she sensed a movement in the bushes behind her. A dark shroud descended over her head and she was enveloped in its scratchy, moldy-smelling folds. Before she could recover from her surprise, a rope was looped about the outside of the blanket and pulled tight around her arms, binding them to her sides. A second rope was applied in like manner to her ankles.

Caro tried to scream, but the thick material muffled the sound. Not that there would be anyone about in the park at this hour to hear her. Suddenly, she was hoisted off her feet, thrown over a burly shoulder, and carried off as though she were a sack of grain.

A minute later, she was unceremoniously tossed into a vehicle—no doubt the closed carriage she had seen—and dumped on the seat, still tied in the rough blanket. She tried to struggle against her bonds but quickly realized that this was futile. She was as helpless as a trussed goose. The coach started up and was soon moving at a lively pace.

Although terrified, Caro refused to give in to panic despite being scarcely able to breathe through the scratchy blanket’s thick folds. She should have been more suspicious o that unkempt groom who most certainly must be part of the kidnapping plot. But who would want to abduct her and why?

“Who are you?” she demanded. “What do you want?”

There was no response, and she could not be certain that her abductors even heard her question through the blanket. Its wretched smell made her gag. An unnerving thought struck her. It was just like being wrapped in a shroud preparatory to being laid in a grave.

The wheels of the coach left the dirt of the park’s paths for the hard cobblestones of a London street where costermongers’ cries advertising their wares were already being heard. Caro tried to scream again, but the effort was drowned in the blanket’s folds, the clatter of metal wheels on stone, and the din of peddlers’ cries.

Several minutes later, the carriage stopped. Caro, still in her black shroud, was again picked up and tossed over the burly shoulder. This time she was carried a short distance before her captor climbed a long flight of stairs that, she perceived, from the turns he made, must have several landings. At last, she was dropped on her backside on the floor.

The sharp blade of a knife cut the rope that bound her arms, then the one around her feet, and the blanket was thrown off her. After the darkness, her eyes were blinded by the sudden light that assaulted them, and she could only bring the room into focus slowly.

Raising herself to a sitting position, she saw that she was in a handsomely decorated bedchamber, clearly a man’s from the masculine furnishings, which included a mahogany armoire, a sturdy round table with a porcelain ewer and basin, and a four-drawer mahogany dressing chest with a serpentine front. The room was dominated by a large tester bed with a flat canopy and a petticoat valance. Although it was the time of day to be getting up rather than retiring, its red coverlet was pulled back and its pillows plumped up in preparation for occupants.

The room had but one door, and a broad, hulking man in coarse clothes, his pants held up by a rope tied around his waist, was moving toward it. From his size, Caro knew that he had to be the man who had carried her up the stairs. He was followed out the door by her substitute groom. A third man in a brocade dressing gown was standing beside the door with his back to her. He told the groom, “First, bring up the chocolate, Needham. Then get out of that livery and bury it. Be quick about it. Lord Oldfield and Plymtree arrive here in an hour.”

Caro recognized Henry Neel’s voice. He pushed the door closed, leaving her alone in the bedchamber with him, turned the key in the lock, and dropped it into his pocket.

Fear prickled along Caro’s spine. She had thought her husband’s concern for her safety at Henry’s hand silly, but now she knew that Ashley had been right. Determined not to let Henry see her fear, she scrambled to her feet, demanding, “What is the meaning of this?”

He laughed. “I desire your company, my dear.”

“It is an odd way you have of obtaining it,” she said tartly. “Be so kind as to restore me to my home.”

“I shall, in due course.”

“Do so immediately.” Hiding her desperation beneath a haughty veneer, she lied, “My husband is expecting me home to breakfast with him.”

Henry laughed harshly. “Your husband is in Brighton.”

“How do you know?” Caro gasped.

“Because I was responsible for sending him there in search of the one-eared man who is nowhere in the vicinity.”

“Why? To get him out of town while you abduct me?”

“You have a quick understanding.”

“But why have you abducted me?”

The cold hardness of his eyes frightened her. “I have an insatiable desire to bed you. Much as it grieves my consequence as a notorious seducer to admit it, I did not think you could be persuaded to come to it any other way.”

Nausea roiled in Caro’s stomach. “You mean to rape me?”

“Nothing so crude as that, I assure you. In truth, I prefer my women considerably more, shall we say, voluptuous than you, my dear. I merely wish for you to occupy my bed for a little while.”

“And then?”

“And then I will send you home.”

For a moment she stared at him, perplexed. Then, remembering what he had said about Lord Oldfield, the nastiest gossip in all of London, and Plymtree coming to call, comprehension dawned. “You mean to have your visitors find us together.”

“As I said, you have a quick understanding. Plymtree, who dislikes you intensely, will be particularly edified to see you in my bed and only too delighted to spread the word of your infidelity.” Henry smiled at her wickedly. “We shall be the scandal of London, my dear.”

Caro reeled beneath the impact of his words and grabbed one of the bedposters to steady herself.
I will not tolerate a wife who involves me or my name in a scandal
! Ashley would certainly divorce her now. No longer able to hide her emotion, her voice cracked as she asked, “How will my ruin obtain the earldom for you?”

Her question clearly startled him. “Good God, is that what your husband thinks, that I am after the title? No, he can rest easy on that score.”

“Then why did you kill William?”

“Did you ever meet your husband’s brother?”

“No.”

“You were fortunate. He was the most sanctimonious, overbearing, toplofty bastard I ever met.”

“You did not like him,” Caro observed politely.

“I loathed him as much as he loathed me. The pompous cod’s head thought himself so much better than he was, particularly when it came to tooling the ribbons. I wanted nothing so much as to see him and all his consequence in the dust.”

“So you murdered him.”

“It was his pride, not his body, that I sought to wound. I meant only for him to suffer a humiliating defeat in that accurst race, but William, disobliging as always, caught a congestion of the lungs and died. I will not permit him the last laugh by sending me to the gallows. That is why you are here, my dear.”

“The connection escapes me,” Caro said.

“You are only a means to my end of silencing your husband’s lips on the subject of his brother’s death. He means to see me convicted of it. After today, however, he will think twice before he publicly accuses me of murdering William.”

“I still do not understand.”

“You disappoint me, but your husband will grasp it immediately. No matter how long and hard he tries, he will find no proof of my involvement in his brother’s death because there is none. The best he can hope for is the word of a disreputable associate of mine. Vinson can make the accusation, but he would be a fool to do so after today.”

“Why?”

“Only think how very peculiar it will look that he waited so many months after his brother’s death to lodge the charge, doing so only after my seduction of his bride had become the talk of London. Nothing is more humiliating to a man than to have the world know that he had been cuckolded. I will be able to laugh off his allegation as nothing more than a crude attempt to revenge himself on me. By accusing me, he will only intensify the scandal over his faithless wife.”

Caro’s hands covered her mouth in horror and despair at Henry’s scheme. “Ashley will divorce me,” she moaned.

Henry smiled cruelly. “Very likely. He married you only for an heir, which a faithless wife is no longer worthy of bearing.”

“You are mad if you think I will not trumpet your abduction of me at the top of my lungs!”

“Of course you will,” he agreed. “Just as Lady Lewis did. And after her Banbury tale, you will have even less chance than she of being believed. Everyone will think that you are borrowing her story in a desperate effort to cover your guilt.”

“You are diabolical!” Caro cried, her voice trembling with loathing. “Are you so certain that Oldfield and Plymtree will believe you instead of me when they find us?”

Henry only gave her a triumphant little smile that made her flesh crawl. Somehow he was certain that this would be the case. There was more to his plan than he had told her.

Suddenly he jerked off her hat, its high crown and once perky feather now sadly crushed, and tossed it casually on the dressing chest.

“Don’t you touch me,” she cried in revulsion.

“Then you must oblige me by removing your riding habit and getting into my bed.”

“I will do no such thing!”

Before she realized what he was about, his quick hands seized the front of her habit and ripped it open to her waist, sending its black jet buttons flying in all directions.

“If you do as I say, I shall permit you to retain your shift,” Henry told her. “Otherwise, I shall have the pleasure of stripping you naked.”

Staring into his hard face, Caro knew that he would do exactly as he threatened and that he was far too strong for her to fight off. A red flush of shame colored her face at the thought of being naked in front of his cruel, mocking eyes. “Very well,” she said with as much dignity as she could muster.

A knock sounded at the door. Henry crossed to it, pulled the key from his pocket, and unlocked it. Needham entered, carrying a tray with a cup of chocolate and a slice of toast on it. Caro hastily turned her back to him so that he could not see her torn habit.

“Set it on the table beside the bed, Needham,” Henry instructed. “I’ll join you downstairs in a few minutes. Be sure you are out of that livery by then.”

Needham left and Henry relocked the door. “Now get undressed and into bed,” he told Caro.

“Turn your back,” she demanded.

He shrugged and did so. Hastily shedding her riding-habit, she climbed beneath the bedcovers and pulled them up to her chin before Henry could turn around and see her in her shift.

“Drink your chocolate,” he told her.

Her stomach convulsed at the thought. “I don’t want it.”

“Drink it, I said,” he snapped at her.

Caro stiffened with alarm, looking dubiously at the cup of chocolate. Had he borrowed another leaf from Lady Lewis’s story and drugged her chocolate? “My stomach is unsettled. I fear it will make me sick.”