The Duke's Hellion Page 19

  Tabi nodded, but she looked troubled. "I was. We were going to go explore some ruins as soon as dawn came about. But you have been so upset..."

  Georgiana smiled at Tabi. It occurred to her that Tabi was growing up very well. At times, she seemed like a self-possessed compassionate young woman, and other times, she was that same girl with grubby knees who had loved to do charcoal rubbings in the graveyard close to Fox Hall.

  She should have a proper coming out sometime soon. I should see to it, assuming that all goes well, and I am not banished from polite society over blackmail.

  "Please, do not worry about me, Tabi. I'll be fine. I'll simply return home and do some moping. I swear that there will be an explanation. I know I owe you that much."

  Tabi studied her with eyes that were surely too knowing. "You do not owe me anything, Georgiana, but... you will take care, won't you? People are already talking about what happened, and it sounds quite terrible."

  It wasn't so very pleasant to live it either.

  Georgiana nodded. "Thank you for being... well, you, but I promise. All will be well."

  "I will hold you to that."

  Georgiana could tell that Tabi was not completely comforted by Georgiana's explanation, but it would have to do. Now it was time to return home to Fox Hall and simply, as Tristan had said, wait for her blackmailer like a sitting duck.

  She made her apologies to Lady Perrinfield, and when she went to find her carriage, she was surprised to find it already pulled up. The coachman touched his fingertips to his cap in a salute.

  "The lady told me that you would be needing me sooner rather later, Lady Georgiana,"

  said Oxley, Tristan's driver.

  Georgiana smiled at him, even if her heart wasn't in it.

  "Sorry to be cutting your evening short, Oxley. I just find that I haven't the heart for more company."

  Oxley shrugged in a good-natured way. "Saves me losing at cards over and over again."

  She decided in the carriage that this would work out well. Oxley returning to Fox Hall with her would help spread the gossip further. If she was lucky, perhaps the blackmailer would appear soon. Tristan was meant to be right on her trail, and no matter how dire the conditions, she had a feeling that he would keep her safe.

  I am always safe when I am with Tristan.

  The thought crept into her mind like something afraid of the light, and as the miles passed underneath the carriage wheels, she turned it over to look at it completely.

  She wouldn't be a Martin if she was afraid of danger. Her life featured more daring the conventions of society than gambling, as her brother's did, but there was a part of her that was always on its guard as well.

  London Society could be an unforgiving place if you were a woman who operated the way that she did, and Georgiana realized that for years, it had all been about whatever she could do for other people.

  With Tristan, she had never had that fear. Even when they had met each other in the drawing rooms of the ton, she had never thought to be afraid of him, of what he might say to her or what he might have done to her reputation. Instead, some part of her trusted him implicitly, understood that even if they were not in accord, he would never offer her harm.

  Why him of all people?

  Because no matter what her mind told her, her heart believed something else. Her heart trusted Tristan even as the gulf between them grew wider and wider. It longed for him, it craved him, and at the end of it, it would never believe that he could do them harm. She could hear him say that he was the blackmailer, and she might still not believe him.

  He had asked her to ask him again what he wanted when all of this was over. The cynical part of her rather thought that he would want to return to London and simply be done with her and all things Martin. The other part of her, the part that seemed frozen in that moment long ago when he had kissed her under a harvest moon, refused to even think that.

  Abruptly, Georgiana stared out at the black downs outside the window of the carriage. Something didn't feel right. She wondered for a moment if they were passing some haunted glen or ruin, but then the feeling kept going, making her bite her lip.

  There's nothing wrong at all. You're just feeling anxious over everything that has happened. You are going to be fine.

  She stared out the window for another few moments, pulling the velvet curtains aside and taking long deep gulps of the summer air. It was warm during the day now, but there was still a certain crispness to the night that she relished. In London, it would quickly be growing incredibly warm, intolerable in everything but the lightest muslin, but the cool air clung to Devonshire like rags of mists and clouds.

  It took her another few moments before she realized once and for all that something was wrong. She stared out the window and realized that they were on the western road, that is to say, not the one that would return them to Fox Hall.

  Georgiana bit her lip, quelling the panic that welled up in her heart. Surely, there was some kind of mistake or miscommunication?

  She rapped smartly on the roof of the carriage, the sound loud and echoing. She knew Oxley must have heard it, but he did not call down to her, and he did not slow the horses or halt them in any way. Instead, to her shock, she realized they were in fact picking up speed.

  Her stomach turned over, and her mind tried to deny the obvious. After a few panicked breaths, however, she came to the grim realization that she had put herself into one of the worst positions possible.

  It's Oxley. It's been Oxley all along.

  The pieces fell into place with a nearly audible clatter. It wasn't someone who was of her household at Fox Hall. It was someone who had been invited in, traveled with Tristan, had been with Tristan's household since she had met him.

  Georgiana's brain worked fast, and none of the conclusions she was drawing were comforting or kind. He now knew that she at the very least suspected him. What in the world was he doing now?

  Her stomach turned over at the thought that he no longer cared for secrecy. That meant he no longer cared whether she could identify him or not. That could bode very, very poorly for her.

  The carriage slowed, and another look out of the window told her that they were going up a hill. She bit her lip, looking at the rocky ground below. Leaping from a moving carriage would hurt, but it probably wouldn't kill her. However, what if she broke her leg? The idea of being trapped with Oxley and unable to run made her choke a little.

  Still, I have to try something...

  To her shock, both of the carriage doors had been bolted shut. She reached her hand out of the windows, but her fingertips encountered large crude locks.

  "Bastard!"

  Before she could draw her hand back, however, there was a deafening crack and a hot blaze of pain bloomed over the back of her hand. Georgiana yanked her hand back inside the carriage, the pain only subsiding slightly. There was a livid red welt running across her hand, so vicious that she was having trouble flexing her hand now. It swelled up, and when Georgiana realized what had happened, she saw it was a miracle that the skin over the welt hadn't burst.

  Oxley had reached back and slashed at her hand with his riding whip.

  "Stay in there if you know what's good for you, bitch. He might not pay for you dead, but he'll still be happy to get you back with your hide striped all to hell!"

  It was Oxley's voice, but it was terribly far away from the deferential tone he had taken when she entered the carriage.

  Another glance out the window told her they were drawing ever farther from Fox Hall and Tristan. A look around the carriage told her that she had virtually nothing with which to defend herself, but she had to try. If she could identify Oxley, who knew when he might decide that she was not worth keeping alive?

  I have to stay calm. I have to stay alive. I just need to last until Tristan comes.

  At another time, she might have wondered why she was so sure that Tristan would appear. Right now, though, she only knew that he would. There was no questi
on in her mind.

  * * *

  Chapter 39

  At Fox Hall, Tristan had rousted the entire household out of bed, and he didn't care if one of them was the blackmailer because, at the rate he was going, there was a good chance he was going to kill them all and stop worrying about right or fair.

  "What the hell do you all mean, she's not here? She left almost half an hour before I did."

  The staff of Fox Hall were trembling in their shoes at his rage, and finally, Honey stepped forward. He could still remember her part in figuring out his cousin Blythe's rescue, and for just a bare moment, his rage was pulled back.

  "Please, my lord. We are none of us here guilty. We are telling you the truth. I have waited up for Lady Georgiana for most every ball she has gone to, and she never came home tonight."

  Tristan looked at her uncertainly, and Ridley, Fox Hall's senior coachman, stepped forward as well. There was a look of shame on his face, and Tristan's eyes locked on him.

  "My lord, I was the one who drove you home tonight."

  Tristan stared at him.

  "What do you mean? Of course, Oxley drove me back from the Perrinfields' ball."

  The moment he said it, however, Tristan knew that there was no way to be sure. After that interminable drink with Lord Perrinfield, he'd gone straight to his carriage, the Perrinfields seeing him off. There had been someone in the driver's perch, but damned if Tristan had ever looked up to see who it was.

  Blythe, whenever you get back from your wanderings with Thomas Martin, I swear I will apologize to you. You were right, I am terribly bad at remembering the servants.

  "Explain."

  Ridley winced, but spoke clearly. "You've been staying here for some time, my lord. Oxley fell in with me and the other lads at the stable. Tonight, he complained of a toothache, and when the carriage was called for, he begged off to take the Fox Hall carriage back here while I took your rig. I didn't see the harm in it, my lord, and I am so sorry..."

  The black rage that Tristan felt must have leaked into his gaze. Ridley blanched and took a step back, and Tristan shook his head. No matter how much satisfaction he got from it, beating Ridley to a pulp would not spare Georgiana any grief.

  Besides, if Oxley truly was the villain, then there was an appropriate target for his rage.

  "All right. Every man who can ride, I want you on a horse—"

  "You do not give the commands here."

  Every head in the hall snapped up to the landing, where wrapped in a fur-lined cloak and clinging to the banister, stood the Duke of Southerly. He might have trembled, but there was a command in his tone that could have stopped bullets.

  "Parrington, I dealt with your father as men, and I will deal with you the same way. Your autocratic ways will not be borne here. You come to my house, you subvert my daughter against me—"

  Tristan turned away from him. That Carrow restraint was serving him well right now; otherwise, he would have clubbed to the ground anyone who wanted to get in his way.

  "Tonight, we must all work together to save Georgiana. As I said. Every man who can, get a horse. Go east and north along the road. Look for the Fox Hall carriage and find Georgiana. If Oxley is with her... use your best judgment, but if the man comes to harm, believe me when I say that I will protect you from the law with everything I have. All that matters is returning Georgiana to her home. If one of you brings her back, I'll settle upon you a thousand pounds, yours, free and clear."

  The amount of money Tristan was proposing was enormous, and some of the serving men who had looked skeptical as Tristan spoke stepped forward.

  "Go. I am heading west."

  Tristan strode toward the stables, ready to take two geldings and ride through the dawn if he had to, but he was halted by the Duke of Southerly's howl.

  "In my own house, Parrington!"

  "If you gave a damn about the most important person in it, perhaps I might not have. Go lie down in your bed, Lord Southerly. I'm going to go find your daughter."

  * * *

  Tristan rode west, pushing his mount fast and leading another. He passed the Perrinfields' estate, where the ball was still going strong, and it struck him what a different world it had been. Just a few hours ago, he had looked up to see Georgiana being announced by the majordomo, the most beautiful woman he had ever seen.

  Now everything was changed, and Tristan could see every mistake he had made.

  I should have just taken her to one of the Carrow estates, Marrowly Grange or one of the places in Scotland. I should have put a guard around the house, I should have demanded that the constables get involved.

  What tortured him was that it still might not have made a difference. The blackmailer wasn't in her household but his. Oxley had been with his family for years, and it would have taken a great deal of evidence before he even began to suspect the man.

  When I find Georgiana, when she's safe and Oxley behind bars, I will tell her how wrong I was, and I will beg her to forgive me. I will make all of this up to her.

  He couldn't think of a world where that didn't happen, because that would mean somehow, terribly, that Georgiana was not in his world, and he didn't think he could bear that.

  He almost missed the turn off in the darkness. The moon was well risen, but there was a thin stand of trees on either side of the road. Before he reached a rutted road that was nearly hidden by the brush, he was startled to see something flapping in the trees. At first, he thought it was something caught in the branches, a bird or a large bat, but soon he saw that it was a garment, the dark spenser that Georgiana had worn over her gown that night. It hung from a branch as neatly as it would hang off a peg at home, and then Tristan saw the track leading into the darkness.

  A sharp and nearly painful joy sliced through Tristan like a knife. That meant that Georgiana was still alive, that she knew someone was coming for her.

  He turned down the beaten track, and his instincts sharpened like a wolf's on the hunt. He would find Georgiana, and after that, he would make sure that Oxley never hurt anyone again.

  * * *

  Chapter 40

  Georgiana flexed her hands where they were tied to the chair. They hurt, and they were sore from how much she had tried to budge them, but she kept grimly at it. Otherwise, there was nothing she could do, and she would be damned if she sat there helpless.

  The cottage where she was being held looked as if it had once belonged to shepherds. She sat in the only chair and behind her was a rotten bed piled with rotting straw. She shuddered at the idea of lying down in it, let alone sharing it with her captor.

  Across the room, Oxley leaned over the crude table, writing something laboriously on a scrap of paper. Next to him was the revolver he had used to keep Georgiana subdued while he tied her up.

  "Did you have someone write the messages for you?"

  He glanced at her, something furtive and desperate in his eyes. She wondered uneasily if his plot had gone off the rails.

  "Shut up. I don't got to answer to you."

  "Whoever it was wrote easily. You're having more problems."

  "Shut up! No one wants to hear you open your mouth, whore."

  She was silent for a few moments. She considered staying still, but the worst had happened, and she didn't think that much worse could befall her.

  "Are you going to ransom me? I swear to you, my father might hold out from spite. He does not care to be bullied, even when the subjects in question are his children."

  Oxley snorted. "I only had to be at Fox Hall for a week before I figured that one out. Your pa don't want you much. Probably let me slit your throat from spite and then call the constables on me."

  Georgiana struggled to keep a straight face at Oxley's unfortunately somewhat accurate statement. She didn't concentrate at all on the part where he spoke about slitting her throat, because it did not serve her to do so.

  "Then who? And why not wait for me to get you the money?"

  "Because you don't have it, do y
ou? I figured if you wanted to come home and beg it off your daddy or steal some of your family's jewels, that would be fine, and I would get my payment. Then we come here, and I see you got nothing."

  "But—"

  He spat on the ground next to her foot, glaring at her. "Ain't I got eyes? You get an allowance. You get all the pretty dresses and gems you want. But you got no money, and that's my mistake."

  Georgiana felt that it was ridiculous to be taking his scorn to heart, but it was true. She was a female relative with plenty of luxury but no lands or investments of her own. She was silent as Oxley muttered over the letter some more, crumpling up one page to throw it on the ground and start another.

  "But the duke, he'll pay for you."

  For a moment, Georgiana thought the man was finally going insane.

  "But you just said you knew my father wouldn't pay."

  "Not your damned father. My master. The Duke of Parrington."

  Georgiana stared at him. "You're going to try to ransom me to Tristan?"

  "Parrington's been hot to get all over your skirts for years now. He'll pay."

  "He won't. He absolutely will not. He barely tolerates me at all."

  For a moment, Georgiana thought she had made a mistake, telling the madman his plot was worthless, but Oxley shrugged.

  "He don't need to tolerate you if all he wants to do is have you."

  She shivered at the cold way he spoke. He thought to sell her to Tristan like a haunch of beef. Just because she knew that Tristan would never buy her didn't mean that it made the idea any less terrifying.

  Oxley swore low and loud, and he turned to her. He drew out the knife he carried, and for a moment, Georgiana's blood ran cold.

  "You're going to write this note for me. I'm going to free your hand, just one, and if you give me any trouble, Lady Georgiana, believe me when I say I will break your fingers. I done it before. I done worse than that. You understand?"

  "I do."

  The knife flashed, and one hand was free. He dragged her chair to the table, setting it down with a thump that jarred her teeth, and he put the quill in her hand.