Martha Schroeder (12 page)

It moved. She took a deep breath and tried to still the terror that clamored within her. What had he imprisoned with her? A wild animal? A snake? Something threatening. It had to be that.

“Amy?” The whisper was so quiet, it hardly seemed to disturb the air that carried it. Yet Amelia knew immediately who was there.

“Gideon!” She leapt to her feet. “Oh, Gideon, thank God you have come!” She crossed the room in two bounds and knelt at his side.

“Hush!” Again, it was but a breath of sound. “We must whisper. I think there is a guard outside the house, probably immediately under the window.”

“How did you find me? Are you hurt? Do you have a plan to escape?”

“I must teach you how to whisper sometime, Amy. You never did know how. You always got us caught.” Impossibly there was laughter in his voice, the sound of Gideon having a wonderful time in the midst of a scrape that threatened to land them both in the briars. She hadn’t heard that precise sound for a good many years.

“Never mind whispering,” she said. “Just be glad I’ve learned not to squeal!” She hoped she sounded brave, because she could feel herself shaking with a mixture of emotion and cold.

A low groan was her only response. Terrified, she reached out to him. “Oh, God, you are hurt. Where, Gideon?”

She touched him and sighed. He was warm and breathing regularly, thank heaven. Her fingers began a frantic search to see if she could detect where he had been wounded. Another groan. She felt her heart lurch into her throat. She could see his face, but not clearly. She ran her fingers over his beloved features, tears overflowing her eyes when she realized that there was no wound there. She smoothed his hair, murmuring his name, and felt a warm stickiness when she took her hand away. “Oh, no. Gideon. A head wound.” Without stopping to think about it, she tore the ruffle from her petticoat and wiped his head. “They bleed a great deal, but I seem to remember your telling me that they weren’t necessarily serious. Please, Gideon, don’t be hurt badly. Please don’t.”

She hardly knew what she was saying. He was here because of her, and he was wounded. They were alone in the dark, facing God alone knew what and he was hurt.

“I’ll try not to be, my lady. I would not want to inconvenience you.” There was still a note of humor in his voice.

Hope sprang alive again at the sound. “You cannot be badly hurt if you can still joke.”

“The merest scratch. Once again, I have to give thanks for a hard head. I’ll hold that scrap of cloth here while you tear more of it for a bandage. What are you tearing up?”

“My petticoat, of course.” Amy bit off the end of her ruffle. She was trying hard not to cry. She handed him the ruffle and sat back on the floor. “How do you feel, Gideon?”

“Angry at being caught flat-footed by that rat from Seven Dials.” He wound the second ruffle around his head to keep the pad in place. “A hit on the head with something like a cudgel, I imagine. No worse than taking a fall from a horse, and I’ve done that a hundred times.” He took her hands. “We’ll come about, Amy. We are going to get ourselves out of this fix.”

We.
She liked the sound of that.

“I came as soon as we made sure that Eustace was still in London and had not taken you to Scotland. If I had not been so eager to find you, I would have scouted around here more carefully and not let myself be taken. But at least now I am here, and together we’ll find a way out.”

Now he was here.
Amelia yearned to put her arms around him and hold him, simply hold him. As if by placing her body next to his, she could absorb some of his courage and give him some of her strength. Together they would escape, she was sure of it. As long as he was with her, Amelia felt warm and safe and indomitable. She laced her fingers with his as they had done when they were children and sat down next to him on the cold stone floor.

“Gideon.”
My friend, my love, my life.

“Did they send the Doncaster carriage? How did they get you here?” His words pulled her back to the practical, and she took a deep breath.

“The carriage must have been waiting for me. The man—he calls himself Mr. B.—forced me into the carriage and poured something down my throat. It may have been laudanum. When I woke up, I was here.”

“He did not—you were not—” The grip on her hands suddenly became so hard it was painful.

“No, Gideon.” She knew what he meant. “He must have been the one who removed my dress and my shoes, but I think it was just to keep me prisoner more easily.”

He ran his hands up her arms. “My God, he took your clothes and you are freezing. And I hadn’t noticed. What a dolt you must think me.”

He chafed her skin, and his palms reminded her of how chilly she was. He released her for a moment, and then she felt the heavenly warmth of his coat as he placed it around her shoulders. She was enveloped in the smell of him and the heat his body had generated. For a moment she felt safe and almost happy.

“Thank you,” she said.

“Oh,
Amy, I have done nothing thus far but get hit on the head and make you tear up your petticoat. As a rescuer, I leave much to be desired.”

Not as far as Amelia was concerned. “You are here, and I am safer than I was when I faced that man alone.”

He pulled her into his arms. “You are sure that nothing happened when you were drugged?”

“Yes, Gideon. I am sure.”

She heard his sigh and felt his grip on her waist loosen, though he still held her firmly within the circle of his arms.

“Then, perhaps I will let him live.” To her shock, he sounded perfectly serious. For a moment he leaned toward her and rested his forehead against hers. She could sense the way he allowed the tension to seep slowly out of his body. He released her, and Amelia felt bereft until he spoke again.

“If anything had happened to you—” She heard a long, shuddering breath.

“Where are we, Gideon, do you know? It is so dark I can hardly see you, much less anything else. I couldn’t feel anything I recognized when I walked about the room.”

“We’re in the old dower house. In the pantry, I think.”

Amy thought for a moment. “Of course. That’s why the windows are so high in the wall. It is downstairs by the kitchen. What have they done? Boarded them over? Then, they must have planned to bring me here. But why? Surely they cannot think that I would marry Eustace after they did this!”

“They hoped that you would be so thoroughly compromised that you would have to marry him.” Gideon’s anger was clear in his words.

But Amy only laughed. “They’ll catch cold at that now, will they not? It is you who have spent the day with me alone in a dark room. And me scarcely half dressed. I am very much afraid you will have to marry me, Captain Falconer, when we free ourselves from this coil.”

“That is not something to joke about, Amy.” His voice had returned to the serious, commanding note that she had so disliked in his recent conversations with her. It was the sound of the stiff martinet who always played by Society’s rules. That was not Gideon. In the past few minutes she had rediscovered her old friend, but now he had vanished again. The minute marriage came into the discussion, Gideon became as starchy as Mrs. Drummond Burrell.

Amy was not going to put up with it. “Very well. Allow me to be forced to marry Eustace if you feel so strongly that only a title will do for my husband, no matter who carries it.” She strove not to cry. It was anger that made the tears spring to her eyes, she told herself. Rage at his perfect masculine incomprehension.

“I do not think now is the time to discuss your matrimonial prospects, Amy.”

“Oh, go to the devil! I don’t have any matrimonial prospects. The only prospect I want is too thickheaded and stupid to understand the first thing about—matrimony!” Horrified, she heard her voice crack. They stood in potentially deadly peril, and she was picking a quarrel over her hypothetical marriage! Jane would apostrophize her as a weak-minded woman.

“Enough, brat.”

And Gideon thought her a child. She drew away from him and felt him struggle to rise to his feet.

He managed to do so, but Amelia could feel him stagger. She rose quickly. Enough of this foolishness. She meant every word, but there would be time to deal with Gideon’s feelings and her own after they had escaped. She reached out for him, seeking to reassure him with a helping hand. When her hand touched his warm solid back, she patted him gently, then put her arm around him and said, “Let us find the windows. You are tall enough to feel them.”

“Yes. Right. Excellent idea.” He sounded relieved by her retreat from emotion. She knew he could deal with action, which was the essence of his profession.

Holding hands, they made their way carefully across the room until his knee struck the iron cot and he staggered. She took his weight for a moment, then staggered herself and landed on the thin mattress with Gideon falling on top of her.

The breath had been knocked out of her, and for a moment Amelia thought she might faint. Then the feel of Gideon’s body stretched out fully on top of hers began to seep into her very marrow, and she reacted by clasping him in her arms and pressing him close to her.

His breath was warm on her cheek. Instinctively Amelia turned into that warmth, and her lips met his in a kiss that at first was as light and innocent as a butterfly’s wing. Then she angled her mouth against his as if she had been doing it for years. No, she had only
wanted
to do it for years. Their mouths fit perfectly together. Gideon’s arms went around her like steel bands, and his mouth opened over hers in a kiss so deep and demanding that Amelia could feel herself spinning out of control. But it didn’t matter. She was with Gideon. Gideon, who had come to save her.

At that moment the door opened, letting in a shaft of light that seemed so bright as to be blinding, though it was actually only the pale reflection of mid-afternoon winter’s light. Amelia froze.

“Well, well, wot ’ave we ’ere?” The false joviality of Mr. B.’s voice raised goose bumps on Amelia’s flesh. “A little slap and tickle, is it, guv? Not a nice way to treat ’er ladyship wot’s engaged to another bloke.”

In a flash of movement, Gideon rolled off her and stood. “And who might you be?” he asked. He sounded as haughty as any nobleman in the kingdom.

Amelia sat up slowly, still dazed but trying to think of some way to turn this to their advantage. She could see the large pistol in the blackguard’s hand. She looked at Gideon. “It is the man who kidnapped me,” she said.

“Ah, yes, Eustace’s mysterious friend.” Gideon sounded positively happy to face the enemy. “And he has a very large pistol, which he no doubt used to knock me out before he dragged me here.”

Amelia got to her feet and moved toward Gideon, but he waved her away. “Did you ever see anyone else with him, Amelia, or was he always alone?” His eyes still held the light of battle and triumph.

“Alone,” Amelia said, her voice amazingly calm. “I have never seen anyone else with him.”

“’Ere, ’ere,” the man said, clearly angry at being ignored. “ Who’s the one wit’ the gun, I ask you? It ain’t Mr. Bleedin’ ’Ussar ’ere. It’s Josiah Bleedin’ Blakeley wot ’as the gun!”

Before Amelia could do more than gasp at the man’s lapse in admitting his identity, Gideon was shoving her down to the floor. He whirled around and dove toward Blakeley. There was a roar like a thousand Guy Fawkes fireworks in her ear, the thud of something heavy falling, and then silence.

“I told yer,” Blakeley’s voice said, “it was me wot ’ad the gun.”

“You—you devil!” Amelia raced across the room and threw herself on Blakeley. “You’ve killed him!” She raked her fingernails across the astonished Blakeley’s face. Before she could do more damage, he flung her off him and retreated out the door, which he slid shut and locked.

“You little ’ellcat, we’ll see wot ’appens to you when ’is bleedin’ Grace gets ’ere!” Blakeley yelled from the other side.

“Coward!” Amelia raised herself to her knees and yelled back, her heart pounding in a mixture of fury and terror. What had happened to Gideon? Her heart hammered, and she screamed through the door, “If you have killed him, I will kill you!”

Arms reached around her, and she fell back against his chest. “Oh, my God, Gideon, are you all right? Did he hit you?”

“No, he is almost as bad a shot as you are.” His arms tightened around her, and his breath tickled her ear as he whispered, “My fierce warrior comrade. Did you ever think in the old days that we might face an enemy as dangerous as old Josiah? When we pretended to be Cavaliers and Roundheads?” His chuckle warmed her almost as much as the pressure of his arms and the warm strength of his body against hers.

“You are sure you are all right?” She turned in his arms and ran her hands down his arms and chest. “I was so afraid he’d killed you.”

“Gypsies have more lives than cats, Amy, you know that” he said, smiling down at her with the warmth that always brightened her life.

He stroked her hair, and she closed her eyes, basking in the sheer pleasure of his touch for a brief, fugitive moment.

“I only wish you wouldn’t risk as many of yours as you seem determined to do.” She breathed deeply of his scent: soap and leather and, now, clean masculine sweat. It was intoxicating.

She felt a touch, light as thistledown, on her hair and knew that it was Gideon’s kiss, secret and unacknowledged.

She could only breathe his name, before he resolutely took her arms and set her on her feet and at a safe distance from him. “We had better start looking for those windows,” he said.

“Right-o, Captain.” Absurdly she was still happy. More than anything else he had ever done, that quiet kiss told her that Gideon loved her. No matter how stiff and formal he acted, no matter how much he might deny it or try to marry her off to someone else, he loved her. With that knowledge she could face anything, because she would never give him up now. Whether he knew it or not and no matter how he might fight against it, Gideon Falconer was going to be hers.

“Do not be cheeky to your superior officer.” Gideon grinned at her. “A little respect, if you please, Corporal.”

She raised her eyebrows. “Corporal? I thought I was promoted to sergeant when I was thirteen.”