The Pleasure Trap (17 page)

Leaving the house was ridiculously easy. She simply waited for her moment and, when the night porter had made his rounds, she slipped past him and left by one of the French doors in the library.

The moon provided some light but not enough to see the way ahead clearly. Small sounds made her heart jump—shrubbery rustling in the breeze; the creak of a loose shutter; a cat hissing somewhere close by. What she could not detect was Angelo’s presence, and that alarmed her. Where was Nell? What had he done to her?

Her fingers tightened around her pistol and she brought it up.

Dexter whined.

“What is it?” she whispered.

He started forward and waited till she had caught up to him, then he took the lead at a faster pace, but not too fast. She lengthened her stride to keep up with him. There was no time for doubt or hesitation or questioning Dexter’s instincts. He was far more sure of himself than she was of her own powers. For years, she had suppressed them. The result was that her instincts had atrophied from lack of use. Weak as they were, however, her instincts were telling her to trust Dexter. What else could she do?

When they came to the end of the turf, they entered a dense wilderness of trees and shrubbery, and their pace slowed. Eve knew that if they kept going in this direction, they would eventually come to Vauxhall Gardens. Is that where Nell would hide? Maybe she’d found a way into the gardens at night, though there was a high wall to scale and the great iron gates would be locked. The deserted gypsy camp was nearby. Is that where Nell was making for? Was Angelo hot on her trail? And what about Nell’s ankle? She wouldn’t get far before it gave out.

When she stopped to get her breath, Dexter stopped a few yards ahead of her, then trotted back and nuzzled her hand. Eve shivered. Her mind was a blank. She’d lost Angelo. All the discomforts of her position began to make themselves felt. Cold was seeping through the folds of her robe. The soles of her shoes weren’t as stout as she thought they were and offered little protection against the pebbles she’d stepped on. They were getting too far from the house for the groundsmen to hear a shot from her pistol.

She turned back to look the way they had come. “Dexter, heel!” she said. For the first time in her memory, Dexter disobeyed her command. He tossed his head and moved off in the direction of Vauxhall. With a small exclamation of surprise, Eve went after him.

Chapter Fourteen

His action was automatic. One moment he felt the hand grasp his shoulder, the next, wide awake, Ash lashed out and sent the intruder reeling back on his heels.

“Bloody hell!” exclaimed Reaper, picking himself off the floor. “What’s got into you?” He rubbed his elbow. “That hurt.”

Ash got up and rolled his shoulders to ease his aching muscles. “You should know better.” He yawned. “You have a wrestler’s grip, as I’ve told you before.”

“How do you come to know about wrestlers?”

“Wrestling and fencing were the only things I excelled at when I was at Oxford.” He looked at the clock. “Good Lord! Is that the time? You’d better have a good reason for wakening me in the middle of the night.”

“There’s a lady to see you,” said Reaper.

“Eve? Miss Dearing?”

Reaper smirked. “No. Her aunt. She won’t tell me what she wants. She’ll speak to no one but you.”

“Show her in.”

He’d fallen asleep, fully clothed, on top of the bed and had left a candle burning on the mantelpiece. In fact, he wasn’t sorry that Reaper had wakened him. He’d been lost in a nightmare, desperately trying to find Eve. And before that he’d been dreaming of a ballroom…Everything was mixed up in his mind. What he remembered most was how afraid he’d been.

He did no more than adjust the cuffs of his shirt before Miss Claverley entered. His smile died when he saw the worry lines etched into her face. “What is it, Miss Claverley?” he asked. “How may I help you?”

Miss Claverley sighed. “She’s going to be very cross with me for carrying tales out of school, but I can’t let that stop me. She shouldn’t have gone off like that.”

“Eve?” He felt as if he’d been kicked in the stomach. “Eve has gone off on her own?”

“Well, no, it’s not as bad as that. Dexter is with her. And she has her pistol. She’s gone to look for Nell.”

“How long ago was this?”

The sharp tone made Miss Claverley’s lower lip tremble. “Half an hour, maybe less.”

“And who is Nell?”

“You’ll have to ask Eve. I can’t betray her confidence.”

With a muffled oath, Ash reached for his pistol and yelled for Reaper to find Hawkins and tell him to meet him outside.

Dexter set a fair pace, and Eve had to run to keep up with him. A time or two she tripped over a tree root or some obstacle on the path, but she managed to right herself before she took a tumble. For the most part, it was an easy run. They were on a well-worn path.

Suddenly the trees thinned out and she burst into a clearing at the edge of uncultivated pastureland. One arm was clamped under her breasts to ease the stitch in her side. Her other arm ached from the weight of her pistol. It took her a moment or two to catch her breath and straighten her spine.

There were no clouds now to shroud the light of the moon, and she knew at once where Dexter had led her. This was where the gypsies had made camp.

She shivered and pulled back into the shadows. There were no night sounds now, no creatures of the night passing close by, no feral cats chasing them off. Even the soughing of the wind in the trees had died down. It was uncanny.

And irrational! She had her pistol. She had Dexter. All she needed was to steady her nerve.

Taking a deep breath, she signaled Dexter to follow her and they entered the deserted camp together. There was very little to see, only the blackened embers of the gypsies’ fire and the debris of their last meal. Chicken bones, she thought. They would have stolen the chickens from local farmers. That wouldn’t make them too popular with the locals. Is that why they’d moved on? Fear of retribution?

She tentatively touched one of the rocks that encircled the fire pit. There was no heat in it, no warmth from the embers. No gypsies and no Nell.

Dexter wasn’t interested in the chicken bones. He was rooting about in the tall grasses at the side of the camp. Why had he brought her here if not to find Nell? She gave a shaken laugh. He’d led her on a wild-goose chase. She should have had more sense than to trust Dexter’s instinct. He was only a dog.

Without much hope of success, she cleared her mind of everything and focused her thoughts on Nell.
Where are you, Nell, where are you?

Where are you, bitch? Where are you?

Eve jerked back as the venomous words filled her mind. White-hot anger. Teeth grinding. Hands clenched into fists. Angelo.

You won’t escape me. I know you’re here somewhere. Fucking bitch! Fucking vagrant! Come here, my little bitch, and I’ll show you what I do with little tinker girls who get in my way…. I see you. Now I’ve got you!

Eve’s throat was as dry as parchment. He was coming for her. He thought she was Nell. She could feel it, sense it. She’d known she might come face to face with Angelo, and she’d thought she was prepared. What a fool she’d been. Sheer terror held her in a paralyzing grip. She couldn’t get her feet to move.

“Dexter,” she croaked out.

Her dog was sniffing the air. At the sound of her voice, he bounded over to her. As though sensing her panic, he peered into the shadows and he growled low in his throat. The dog’s presence, or perhaps it was his fearlessness, was enough to steady Eve’s nerves. She moved into the shade of a gnarled lilac tree and leveled her pistol. From the research she’d done for her stories, and subsequent target practice, she knew that she was a fair shot. But she’d never aimed her pistol at a living thing. Angelo was the first, and it did not trouble her conscience one bit. She’d taken his measure tonight and knew that he was a coldhearted killer.

She had one shot. She had to make it count. If only her hand would stop shaking.

“Stay, Dexter,” she softly commanded. She didn’t want to shoot her dog.

“Eve, where are you?” Ash’s voice.

After the first start of surprise, her sense of relief made her legs buckle. “Over here!”

Her concentration was gone and she could no longer sense Angelo’s presence. All the same, she wasn’t taking any chances. She kept the pistol leveled and pointing into the dense shrubbery.

Rough hands grasped her shoulders and gave her a shake. “What in blazes do you think you’re doing?”

Dexter began to dance around Ash’s legs, begging to join the game. Eve lowered her pistol. “He’s out there somewhere. We have to stop him.”

Men came out of the trees and stopped at the edge of the clearing. She recognized Ash’s coachman and one or two of Lady Sayers’s groundsmen. Some had lanterns, others were armed with pistols or muskets. They stayed well back, as if they were aware a quarrel was imminent.

“Who is out there?”

“Angelo! He is after Nell.”

“And who the devil is Nell?”

Impatience threaded her voice. “The girl who escaped from Bedlam. Why are you talking when we should be out there looking for Nell? He’s out there. Don’t you understand? And he may be after her.”

To the groundsmen, Ash said, “Fan out and see what you can find. Be careful. He may be armed.”

He turned his hard stare on Eve. “As for you, Miss Dearing, you are going back to the house. No. Don’t argue. Wait for me in the library. I want to know exactly what is going on.”

She cried impatiently, “What about Nell? You won’t let them send her back to Bedlam?”

A nerve twitched in his cheek. “I’d hoped you knew me better than that.”

He called Hawkins over. “Have her wait in the library until I get back,” he said. His eyes held hers for one implacable, uncomfortable moment, then he went after the men.

Her aunt was waiting for her at the foot of the stairs. “Thank the Lord you’re all right,” Miss Claverley declared. “Now, would you mind telling me what’s going on?”

Eve looked into those kind, worried eyes, and the emotions she had locked tight inside her while she searched for Nell spilled over. “I want to keep Nell safe, but she won’t let me. She’s afraid of people, afraid, I suppose, that we’ll send her back to Bedlam. I blame myself for putting her in danger. There’s a rabbit hutch close to the house, beside the herb garden. We leave food for her there, Anna and I. I think that the man who attacked Lydia was waiting for Nell tonight as she came for the food and he tried to kill her.”

When she stopped to draw breath, her aunt patted her shoulder. “She’s safe, Eve. If anything had happened to her, you would know it. And Lord Denison? Where is he?”

“He’s out looking for her.”

The worry frown on Miss Claverley’s brow faded and she smiled. “If she can be found, he’ll find her and keep her safe. Ah, here comes Mr. Hawkins. Good night, Eve. I’ll see you in the morning.”

As Hawkins ushered Eve into the library, Miss Claverley turned and began to mount the stairs. Her expression was thoughtful. Eve, she was sure, did not realize how much she had revealed by her impulsive outburst. There was only one way she could have known that the man who attacked Lydia had also tried to kill Nell tonight. She had read his thoughts.

It frightened Miss Claverley. It was a terrible burden to bear, this seeing into the mind of another. Only someone who was exceptionally gifted had that power. Eve’s powers were largely untested, but she couldn’t advise her niece. Her own gift was a pale reflection of Eve’s. There was a purpose to this, and only Eve could bring it to completion.

Eve was Antonia’s daughter. Miss Claverley tried to find comfort in that thought.

The burden of Nell was a different matter. There were practical things she could do to help. Whatever she could do to help Eve, she would.

His silence told her everything.

She put down the glass of brandy Hawkins had insisted she drink and got to her feet. “You didn’t find Angelo or Nell?”

Ash shook his head. “No to both questions. An army could be hiding out in those woods and we wouldn’t find them. It’s too dark. And there’s no point in getting out the dogs. They wouldn’t know which scent to follow. It’s a favorite camping ground for gypsies and tinkers.”

He walked to the sideboard, poured himself a generous measure of brandy, and took a long swallow, then another.

“Sit down, Eve.”

He was trying to intimidate her, and she deeply resented it. She had made up her mind to make a clean breast of things, to tell him of her charisma, but that was before he’d entered the library like a sleek black panther poised to attack. She could well imagine the mauling she’d get if she told him the truth.

She sat, not because she was intimidated but to give herself time to come up with a logical and coherent explanation for her conduct, now that she’d had second thoughts about telling him the truth.

When he came to tower over her, she involuntarily shrank into her chair. His voice was soft, but there was never any doubt of the seething anger behind his words.

“Now let me see if I’ve got this straight. A week ago, Lydia was attacked right outside your bedroom window. Since then, we’ve had groundsmen patrolling the area just in case her assailant returns to try again. Earlier this evening, you and I had a discussion about Angelo and we both agreed he is a dangerous character. Am I right so far?”

She nodded.

“Then what in blazes,” he roared, “were you doing wandering the grounds by yourself in the middle of the night?”