The Seduction (40 page)

"You're not to be allowed to pretend to be a
lady! That's the conditions!"

Helplessly Juliet shook her head as straps and
padlocks snapped into place. She must try to think about something else. Α
hay meadow, sweet and bright in the sunshine. Her arbor, draped in white muslin
and moonlight. The cluck of chickens as they scratched and dusted in the shade.
Her cats: Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego, named for the men of faith who had
been rescued from a fiery furnace by an angel. Not a man. Not a man with hair
like a summer day and a dastardly way with women.

Yet, she had the rest of her life to do nothing
but think. Alden had tried, in his own way, to behave with honor. He had
touched her to the soul. Why had she let them part with harsh words? Why hadn't
she tried harder to understand? Now it was too late.

THE STUDY IN LORD EDWARD'S TOWNHOUSE SLEPT
QUIETLY enough. The house sighed occasionally, as if the furnishings relaxed in
their own secret slumber. His face blackened with soot, his hair covered, Alden
sat for a moment on the windowsill and contemplated the dark room. This was
where he had lost Gracechurch Abbey in a game of cards, where he had wondered
how he could be so foxed on so little wine, where Lord Edward had no doubt
slipped him some concoction to blur his judgment: all to make Juliet suffer.

The card table drowsed, its treacherous surface
dumb. The side table stood empty and voiceless. But something in this house
must be forced to talk: to give up its secrets and tell him where Juliet had
been taken.

Alden slipped silently into the room. He believed
that the duke's son was out, but the house was full of servants. If he was
discovered, he might be slain before he could prove his identity and attempt to
laugh it all off as a joke between gentlemen. Smiling a little at the splendor
of the risk, he opened the shutter on his lantern and began to search.

He was methodical and thorough. When he found
locked drawers, he took keys out of his pocket and unlocked them. How
fortunate that the duke's son had chosen to visit a particular courtesan who
had also in the past favored Alden! Lovely Clarinda Kennedy had agreed, with a
little persuasion, to steal the keys from Lord Edward's pocket. While the
duke's son spent the rest of the night enjoying her delectable services, Alden
was getting copies made.

Now desk drawers willingly surrendered to his
skilled hands. In absolute silence, lit by the steady beam from the lantern,
Alden studied papers and receipts. He learned what Dovenby had meant about Lord
Edward's empire of investments. He skimmed letters from abandoned women. He
found a copy of the agreement that the duke's son had drawn up to include
George Hardcastle in his business schemes. He did not discover where they had
taken Juliet.

Closing the shutter on the lantern, Alden stepped
into the hallway. Α few moments later a stair sagged under his weight,
shouting its complaint. He froze for a moment, but no doors opened. No servants
came racing with cudgels and pistols. He walked into Lord Edward's bedroom and
took out the replica keys once again.

Drawers slid open. Dressers revealed neat stacks
of shirts. Nothing! Why would Lord Edward write down where he had sent her? He
had no doubt washed his hands of her, content in the knowledge that Juliet was
locked away forever. Alden almost wished that the door would open and the
duke's son walk unsuspecting into the room. He could very easily justify
murder.

Sick at heart, Alden went to the window and
looked out on the moonlit chimneys of London. The quiet scene was a lie. Beneath
those roofs men and women schemed and cursed and caroused, battling fate or
their own damnable nature, fighting to survive in a world that seldom cared
whether they lived or died. It had been his life since he had come back from
Italy - a meaningless pattern of coldhearted risks. Now he didn't give a damn
if he never saw London's hells and coffeehouses again.

Closing his lantern, he turned and strode back
through Lord Edward's chamber. Α shaft of moonlight streamed across
brocade hangings and the small table beside the bed. The white wax of a
half-burned candle gleamed in a gilt candlestick, a leather-bound book beside
it. Alden stopped and looked at it. Within three strides he had opened the
book. Several sheets of paper lay folded inside.

His pulse beat hard as he opened the lantern shutter
and read the crabbed writing. Not directions to where Juliet had been taken.
She was mentioned nowhere on the tattered sheets. But if he could only find
her, this information might free her yet.

"YOU MUST NOT ASK FOR BOOKS OR WRITING
MATERIALS," Mistress Welland said. "You can't read or write. Such mad
questions will only overheat your brain. You are to be gagged whenever you say
such things. If you persist, you’ll be put in the dark cell."

Juliet stared up at the high window and said
nothing. She didn't even dislike Mistress Welland. At least as long as she was
there, the men wouldn't touch her. Juliet listened to the click of her shoes as
the woman crossed the room. Keys rattled on the ring at her waist.

Α man's voice sounded from the corridor:
Bill, one of the attendants.

For a moment, Juliet lay absolutely still, barely
daring to breathe.
Don't leave, ma'am, I pray!
From the bed she couldn't
see the door, because her head was trapped in a kind of wooden cradle. She had
been strapped down once again, because she had been pacing the room. They said
it was the repetitive, senseless motion of a lunatic.

The keys clinked. The woman's footsteps receded
down the hallway. But the man's heavy tread turned back into her room. Juliet
closed her eyes and swallowed hard as his breath wafted over her face.

"You’re a pretty trollop, Polly," Bill
said.

She lay rigid, trying not to flinch, but she knew
what was coming. Α fumbling at her clothes. Hands on the neck of her
dress. Coarse fingers thrust down the front of her bodice, curdling her blood,
corrupting every bright memory.

"Do you like that?" Α rough
fingertip felt for her nipple. "They say you can't get enough of a man.
Shall Ι come back tonight?"

Α woman's scream pierced the air. Bill
cursed. Juliet heard the grate of his nailed boots, before the door slammed
shut and the key turned in the lock. Α hideous stain seemed to have soaked
to her bones. He had not visited her at night yet. But of course it was only a
matter of time. Then, perhaps, she truly would go insane.

ALDEN LINGERED FOR Α MOMENT ACROSS THE
STREET FROM Hardcastle's house - a small row house in a respectable merchant
neighborhood, the address Robert Dovenby had given him - to watch Juliet's husband
leave for the day. This was where George had brought Juliet after they left
Gracechurch Abbey. This is where doctors had examined her and declared her a
lunatic.

They had used the affidavits from Kate and Tilly,
of course, and twisted her behavior into more condemnatory evidence. Perhaps
she had been drugged, to appear almost senseless when examined. Alden hoped
so. He hoped the hell she had not been conscious when they put her through
that. Yet she must have woken up and found herself imprisoned, with nothing but
the shrieks and wails of madwomen for company.

He clenched both fists. Pray God she was
incarcerated only with women!

"Here, you! Move about your business!"

Α man in a white wig and blue coat waved his
stick in Alden's face. In that first split second, Alden almost gave away the
whole game, then he remembered. He was dressed like a tradesman's servant, a
man who put his back into his work. To be certain his true identity could not
be detected, he had found himself a gen
uine job, where he ate,
slept and drank with the other men. He could not remember ever being this dirty
in
his life.

Alden slouched, tugged at
the lock of hair over his forehead, stepped
into
the gutter, and adopted a scurrilous accent.
"Beg pardon, sir.
No
harm meant."

The gentleman pushed past
him without a backward glance.

Alden adjusted the heavy
load
on
his shoulder and dodged
through the carriages and horsemen thronging the roadway. It had taken two
weeks to get to this point: to be welcomed and trusted
in
the kitchen of Hardcastle's house, while his network
of agents scoured the lunatic asylums and madhouses of Britain.
To no
avail.
No
Juliet Seton or Lady Elizabeth Amberleigh or Mrs.
George Hardcastle was recorded as a patient
in
any of them. Nothing was left but this - how well he
had charmed George's servants.

Ignoring the front
entrance, Alden thumped down the stairs to the servants' portal below the
street. The door opened to reveal the face of a kitchen maid.

"Delivery."
Alden gave the girl a wink.

"Well, don't just
stand there," the maid answered. "Bring it
in
. But mind you don't mark up our clean floor, else
Cook’ll have my hide."

Alden grinned and gave
her another wink. "Then
Ι
' d better take my boots
off."

"And that's not all
you'd like to have off,
Ι
reckon!" The girl
blushed scarlet.

He laughed, bent his head
and stepped through the doorway. Setting down his burden, Alden caught the maid
around the waist, tipping up her face with one finger under her chin.

She gazed
into
his eyes
in
open adoration.
"You villain!
I’ll lose my place!"

"
No
, you won't, Emmy! Not like I've lost my heart."

The girl closed her eyes for his kiss. He made it
slow and thorough. Her limber little hands stroked his back. He thought with
dismay that she must be a virgin. The latch rattled. The maid leaped away and
smoothed down her apron. Her eyes shone.

Cook bustled into the kitchen. "Brought my
beef, you rogue?"

"And your five chickens and the goose. But
you can only have 'em in trade for a kiss and some of your apple pie,
Cook."

The older woman took a good-natured swipe at his
head, but Alden kissed her, too, before they all sat down at the kitchen table.
Α few moments later he wiped the crumbs from his mouth with his shirt
cuff, while the two women devoured him with their eyes.

"So what's the latest gossip?" he
asked.

"Ι told you the mistress was taken off
for a lunatic?" Cook's voice dropped to a conspiratorial whisper.
"Well, now! I've found out where!"

His heart missed a beat. It was everything Alden
could do not to grasp Cook by both plump shoulders and shake her, but they
mustn't know that he cared.

"Have you now?" he asked. "To the
backside of the moon, most like!"

Emmy screeched with laughter. "Ι told
you she was mad, didn't Ι? The master brings home his wife that ran away from
him five years ago and she won't let him touch her."

He winked again. "You wouldn't bar the
bedroom door against
me,
now, would you, Emmy?"

The girl blushed and giggled. Alden knew she
would give him her virginity and her heart as eagerly as she swallowed her pie.
He felt almost ashamed as he squeezed her fingers under the table.

Cook stood up to poke the kitchen fire. "Who
ever heard the like? To refuse his marital rights to a handsome young gentleman
like Mr. Hardcastle!"

"Only goes to show she was crazy,"
Alden said, though he could have bedded Cook herself when he'd first heard it:
Juliet had locked her door against her husband at night. It was one bright
candle burning in his storm of black rage.

"Well, that's neither here nor there now, is
it?" Cook rattled the poker. "Harry Oldacre down the road knows Tim
Roland, like Ι told you, as works on occasion for Mr. Grimble. Mr.
Grimble's ostler is friends with a fellow named Dave Peck, who has a sister
called Meg. Well, guess, now!" She turned and waved both hands, the pots
on the wall in imminent danger from the poker. "That same Meg is kin to
the coachman that came to take the mistress away. Harry told me the whole
story."

"It'd better be a good one!" Alden
curbed his impatience and grinned at Emmy.

Cook sat back at the table. "The mistress
asked the coachman to let her off in the middle of nowhere. She said she had to
stop for a call of nature and instead took off into the woods like a March
hare, throwing out shreds of cloth as if she were trying to leave a trail. Poor
mad thing. They tied her hands after that."

He didn't know if he could bear it.
They had
tied her hands!
Yet, clever Juliet, she had first done something to make
the coachman remember her.

"So where did they take her?" Emmy
asked.

"To a place in Wiltshire-Blackthorn Manor,
it's called. Of course, it's not Mr. Hardcastle as is paying for it - it's that
lord as came here and oversaw her being taken away."