The Pleasure Trap (19 page)

Muttering under his breath, he unlocked the French door and followed Dexter out.

Chapter Fifteen

He found Hawkins as he’d left him, in charge of a small troop of groundsmen beating the bushes close to the house.

Taking Hawkins aside, he said, “What’s the servants’ gossip on this runaway from Bedlam? Have you heard anything, Hawkins?”

Hawkins shook his head. “Not much. They says that she has gone off with the gypsies, but I think that’s only to put the keepers off the scent. The maids say that they’ve seen Miss Dearing and Mrs. Contini leaving food in an old rabbit hutch beside the herb garden.”

Ash was incredulous. “They what?”

“That’s what one of the maids told me, but they thinks it’s for a tinker girl.”

Ash breathed out through his nose. “Who is the girl? Who are her people and why was she sent to Bedlam?”

“Nobody knows, not even the keepers. Not that I’m friends with them, but they comes in for a drink sometimes at the Black Prince when I’m there, and I hears them talking among themselves. She came straight from living on the streets to Bedlam. That’s what I heard. No one has ever visited her. She can hardly talk, but they know one thing: She hates to be locked up.”

“Seems to me,” said Ash, “you know a great deal—more, I’m sure, than they’d tell me if I went knocking on Bedlam’s front door.”

Hawkins grinned. “I keeps my ears open.”

Ash clapped him on the shoulder. “So what’s happening out here?”

“Bugger all if you wants the unvarnished truth. The men are beginning to grumble. They haven’t found a thing out of place, not even a dropped handkerchief. I think we should call them off and let them go home to their beds.”

Ash agreed. “Tell them there will be beer with their breakfast tomorrow and I’m paying the shot. That ought to cheer them up.”

Hawkins grinned again and went off to do Ash’s bidding. Ash looked around for Dexter. There was no sign of him. He didn’t want to call the dog’s name in case he roused the whole house, so he gave a low whistle. A dog barked off in the distance. Not long after, Dexter appeared, tongue lolling, tail wagging. He circled around Ash, then took off again.

Ash recognized the way Dexter was heading, so he commandeered a lantern from one of the groundsmen and struck out along the path to the deserted gypsies’ camp. He wasn’t alarmed. They had made a thorough search of the area and found nothing. All the same, he had his pistol with him, but that came largely from his training as a soldier. He was always prepared for trouble.

Eve’s conduct, on the other hand, was inexplicable. She’d wandered off with a pistol in her hand, in the middle of the night, because her dog wouldn’t come when she called. Dexter was well able to look after himself. Any normal woman would have turned back, frightened off by the thought of what had happened to Lydia.

He was annoyed at the sudden stab of admiration that made his lips twitch. It wasn’t rational. Eve Dearing had been a thorn in his side from the moment he’d met her, except for a few notable exceptions. The notable exceptions made up for a lot. Too bad that most of them occurred in his dreams.

“You’d better watch your step, old man,” he told himself with a chuckle.

He automatically turned up the collar of his coat when a gust of wind funneled through the trees, making the leaves dance and scatter. A fine drizzle began to fall. He debated about returning to the house, but he was too restless to find sleep. He couldn’t stop thinking about Eve, couldn’t stop wondering what went on inside her head. He always had the feeling that she was holding back, letting him get only so close and no closer.

He wanted to tear that veil she hid behind and know her as possessively and as intimately as he knew her in his dreams—willing, giving, wanting him as much as he wanted her.

He reined in his thoughts as the fantasy began to play itself out in his mind. Mere wishful thinking on his part! He was well aware that he could have her if he made up his mind to it, but that wasn’t what he wanted. He wasn’t a seducer of women. In fact, he was more often the hunted than the hunter.

Sophie Villiers was a case in point. The only reason she wanted him was because he wasn’t interested. A little thing like that wouldn’t stand in Sophie’s way—just the reverse. Like a lioness on the hunt, she singled out her prey and chased it down till it gave up in sheer exhaustion. All he was to Sophie was another conquest to add to the notches on her bedpost.

That had never bothered him before…before what?

Before Eve Dearing came streaking into his life. No doubt about it, her impact had set him back on his heels. And what was her impression of him? That his proper element was in Sophie’s grotesquely vulgar bed with its crimson drapes and gold tassels.

He would have been insulted if he hadn’t felt like laughing. Eve was jealous of Sophie Villiers? She might as well be jealous of…well…his favorite dinner. He could not live on a steady diet of steak and kidney pudding any more than he could live on a steady diet of Sophie Villiers. They both gave him indigestion.

He was smiling as he quickened his steps to keep up with Dexter, but that did not last. He was wondering how Eve had come to know about Sophie’s bed.
Crimson drapes and a profusion of gold frogging and tassels.
It was a small point, but it nagged at him. Who would be so uncouth as to mention such a thing to Eve? No gentleman of his acquaintance, and Sophie didn’t have women friends.

The problem was still turning in his mind when he reached the gypsies’ camp. With lantern held high, he made a cursory inspection of the area, not expecting to find anything new, because they’d gone over it thoroughly when he’d come out to look for Eve. As far as he could tell, the gypsies had left in an orderly manner. There was a sandy trail giving locals access for cattle and vehicles, but time and the weather had obliterated most of their tracks. There was no sign of the girl called Nell. As for the man Eve had encountered, he’d had enough time to make for home, possibly as shaken by his encounter with Eve as she was by her encounter with him.

It bothered him that Eve had evaded the night porters when she left the house and had armed herself with a pistol as though she was prepared for trouble. Did she expect to see Angelo and Nell out here? And why would Angelo want to harm a runaway from Bedlam? What was Eve not telling him?

The rain was steadily becoming heavier, and there was nothing more to be gleaned here. He hadn’t set out with the idea of checking out Eve’s story. It was Dexter who had led the way.

“Dexter!” he commanded.

Dexter answered with a low-pitched whine, but he did not appear. The sound seemed to come from a dense thicket of underbrush at the edge of the camp. Ash repeated his command with the same result, only Dexter seemed to have moved deeper into the underbrush or had come out on the other side.

Muttering a stream of curses, Ash went to investigate. The thicket was protected by a barrier of rampant briar bushes, their sharp thorns a menace to man and beast. He skirted the bushes until they thinned out. Though he still couldn’t see Dexter, he could hear him rummaging around. Dexter seemed to have found something that was far more interesting than a ramble in the rain.

He hoped to hell it wasn’t a badger’s set.

“Dexter!” he roared.

An answering bark led Ash to a low stone wall on the other side of the thicket. A closer look revealed that it was the remains of the foundation of what might have been a workman’s cottage.

“Dexter!” he roared again.

This time the bark came from the bowels of the ruined hovel. Ash felt his way along the wall and stopped when he came to a gap that he suspected was the entrance to the cellar. He could hear Dexter moving around, making a series of snuffling sounds. It didn’t sound to him as though anyone was hiding in the cellar, or Dexter would have been barking in excitement or running in circles.

He positioned himself cautiously, close to the gap, and held the lantern up. Dexter was standing at the foot of a set of broken stone steps, looking up at Ash, his eyes shining in the light of the lantern. No one else was there.

Ash let out a breath. “It’s raining,” he told Dexter sternly. “My lantern is burning low, all I want is my bed, and you want to play games?”

Dexter thumped his tail.

Ash was curious to see what Dexter had found, if anything, so he lowered himself into the cellar one careful step at a time. The cellar was no bigger than a cell, with hardly enough room for a man to stand up. Ash knew at once that someone had been here recently. There were no cobwebs. In fact, the place looked remarkably tidy. In one corner, the driest corner, was a makeshift bed of hay and dried grass.

Just a place to bed down for the night, he thought, a temporary shelter from the elements, but it was hardly snug. Though the walls were made of stone, the floor was earthen, and water dripped in a steady stream from the floor above. It wasn’t safe. The crossbeams were sagging either from age or the weight of the roof.

Dexter was taking stock, as well. He was sniffing the makeshift bed, going from one end of the cellar to the other. Finally, he flopped down beside Ash and rested his head on his paws, the picture of abject misery.

Ash went down on his haunches and scratched Dexter’s ears. “Who did you hope to find?” he asked. “Was it Nell?”

Dexter’s ears pricked, but that was all.

Was this where Nell hid out? Ash shook his head. The cellar didn’t have the look of a place that was well used. The girl could be anywhere. There were scores of abandoned buildings like this in these rural areas.

He felt a pang of pity for the girl. She would be moving from place to place to evade capture. No one should have to live like that. He supposed it was better than Bedlam. He thought of his rooms at the Manor and the soft bed that awaited him….

Crimson drapes and a profusion of gold frogging and tassels.

The thought that had been turning in his mind suddenly came into focus, and behind that thought a spate of others: Eve, claiming that the girl was running from Angelo; Eve, braving the elements to take Dexter out—armed with a pistol? Eve, in his dreams, dreams that were so vivid they felt real to him.

How could she describe Sophie’s bed so accurately? How could she know that Nell was running from Angelo? Angelo and Lydia. Angelo and Nell. Why was Eve always first on the scene?

He didn’t believe what his brain was telling him. What man who prided himself on his intelligence would? But his brain was becoming corrupted by events.

He stayed as he was for a full minute, his head buzzing with a series of questions he could not answer. One way or another, he had to know the truth. But how…

At last, he heaved a sigh. He knew exactly what he had to do.

Nell didn’t know where to hide. She had been running in circles all night, first from the bad man, then from the groundsmen who were searching for all the secret places she had made her own. The pain in her ankle was slowing her down, but she couldn’t stop or they would find her, and bind her, and send her back to Bedlam.

All she wanted was to get as far from the searchers as she possibly could. But she couldn’t go far. This was the only world she knew. Towns were dangerous places. Cruel people lived in them. The ladies up at the big house were kind to her. They left things for her—a sandwich, a piece of pie, an egg. But sometimes she was too scared to take them, because there were people about.

She paused and turned her face up to sniff the air. She could always catch the scent of anyone who was near her. That’s when she would hide. The scent she liked best was the scent of Dexter. Animal scents didn’t frighten her.

Her eyes widened in fear when she heard a sound on her right. Panic took over. Her feet had never moved faster; her heart had never pumped so hard. She could feel it burning a hole in her throat. Tears were streaming down her cheeks. The only thing that kept her moving was her fear of Bedlam, or what the bad man would do to her if he caught her.

It was raining again, but she hardly noticed. Trees, hedges, and shrubs flew past her in frenzied confusion. Even the pain in her ankle was forgotten, till she stumbled over a tree root and fell headlong, scraping her hands and knees on a patch of gravel. When she pulled herself up, she ached all over.

Ahead of her was a wooden fence. On hands and knees, sucking air into her lungs, she groped her way toward it. She didn’t have the strength to climb over it, but she managed to squeeze between the lowest bars. The scent she was picking up was an animal scent. Horses? Donkeys? Goats? Her mind was numb, just like her body, but one thing she knew: animals were her friends.

Shivering, soaked to the skin, she crawled to the darkest corner of that enclosure and came upon a shelter, open on one side, that gave some protection from the driving rain. She gave a heartfelt sob when she felt the straw on the earthen floor. Maybe the good Lord hadn’t forgotten her after all.

The animals were restless. They stamped their feet and snorted, letting her know that they didn’t want to share their home with her. She was too tired to be frightened of them, too tired to care.

She sat on a cushion of dry straw, hugging her knees to her as she strained to see into the darkness. Long minutes passed before she relaxed and closed her eyes. She wakened when she felt warm breath on her cheek and almost panicked until she realized that the animals were curious about her. The next time she wakened, they had formed a little circle around her, sharing their warmth as though she were one of them.