Chapter 24
Letitia hated this stupid room.
It wasn’t squalid. It was quite comfortable, actually, if rather boring.
There was a bed with a decent pillow and a soft blanket—a fireplace, though it was warm enough that it had not been lit.
There was an old, woven chair that offered neither comfort nor visual interest. There was a window, made of tiny panes of glass, that looked out onto another brick wall.
A chamber pot was tucked discreetly under the bed.
And that was it.
Apparently, prisoners didn’t get more than that. In fairness, she absolutely would have used anything else as a weapon. She would have broken a table apart with her bare hands to wallop Peter with it. If given fire, she would have tried to burn her way through the door.
She had balked at braining him with the chamber pot, mostly out of fear of what she would do if he took it away.
So, it wasn’t that the room was uncomfortable. It was that she was a goddamned prisoner!
Also, she was so bored that she had recently started counting the individual strands of her hair. When she had lost count, she had almost cried.
The boredom was preferable, though, to the burning self-recrimination for all the harsh words she had spoken to Ezra.
God. If she had known that it would truly be the last time she would see him—not just because it was unwise to keep coming together, but because she was about to be bloody abducted—she would have behaved so differently.
It had been nearly a week since Peter had forced her to come here. They were in Belgium, she knew, but not a town she recognized. That was all the information Peter had deigned to give her.
The heavy lock turned, as if her thoughts had summoned the man himself.
Peter entered, then stepped aside, allowing a mouselike maid who refused to speak to Letitia in both French and English to enter.
Letty didn’t know if this was because the girl didn’t speak either language or because she was simply so terrified of Peter that she didn’t dare.
Either way, it ended up the same: the girl was no help in planning an escape.
The maid skittered in, bearing a basket that Letitia now knew contained a few basic supplies. Then, the girl left, taking the chamber pot with her. She would return with it cleaned, and afterward, she would bring an ewer of water.
Other than this scant interaction, the only interaction she had was with Peter.
And that was worse than the boredom.
“Hello, my dear,” he said now, ignoring the maid entirely to take his place in the woven chair. That was where he always sat when he came to accost her with his conversation.
She turned her face away, pressing her cheek into her drawn-up knees.
“Oh, Letitia,” he said chidingly. “Do not be like that.”
This had been her tactic for the past few days. For the first day or so, she had tried explaining in a very calm and reasonable tone that there were so very many reasons he should let her go and almost no good reasons at all to keep her captive. Unsurprisingly, this had not worked.
Sulking wasn’t working, either, but it seemed to annoy Peter, which was satisfying.
She tried not to think about what would happen when he lost patience with her antics. But for now, he seemed to remain amused with the idea that he would eventually woo her.
“You know, Letitia,” he said when she remained mulishly silent, “this would all be so much more pleasant if you just decided to be agreeable. Wouldn’t you like to get out of that dress, for one?”
She was still wearing the damned ballgown.
It was no longer quite as fine as it had once been, and she had never managed to get it laced up properly.
She was agonizingly aware of the fact that the laces were pulled together loosely, since that was all that she could manage with her hands behind her back.
She did not like any sense of vulnerability in front of Peter, let alone having her clothes improperly tied.
She kept ignoring him.
“You are behaving like a child!” Peter snapped. The time between his arrival and his anger had been growing shorter and shorter. She was running out of time. “I am sure that you thought that duke of yours would rescue you, but by now you must realize that that is absolutely not going to happen.”
She stiffened, turning slightly to look at him before she could think better of it. It was the mention of Ezra that had done it. She could not help herself. She didn’t know if Peter looked more pleased that he had gotten a reaction or more annoyed over what had finally caused it.
He stopped looking mockingly protective and started looking cruel.
“Oh, yes, I know all about how you whored yourself out to Swifton,” he snarled.
He was not a handsome man at the best of times, but now, with his face twisted into a sneer, he was downright hideous.
“You decided that my title was not good enough for you, was that it? That’s rich, coming from a gutter-born nothing.
But I suppose that’s how it goes. Your mother was a whore, and now, so are you. ”
She was steeled against the flinch now, so she didn’t let him see how she felt at the reference to her mother.
Letitia’s background wasn’t a secret, not necessarily, but she didn’t advertise it. Governesses lived and died on the appearance of respectability, and the sins of the parents were still laid at the feet of the children.
Peter had asked around about her. He had done more than look for her in the present; he had dug up her past, too. And he was not afraid to wield it like a weapon.
She hated him so, so much.
He might have gotten under her skin, but she refused to let it show.
There was another pause, then Peter surged to his feet and kicked the chair across the room. The woven seat fractured when it hit the wall.
This time, Letty could not hide her reaction. She shoved back the extra few inches she had between herself and the wall. Anything to put as much distance between herself and the blistering heat of his anger.
“He abandoned you, Letitia!” Peter seethed. “They all abandon you. But not me! I came for you because you are mine. Even when you throw my affection back in my face, I remain at your side. But I do not have eternal patience. I grow weary of your senseless defiance.”
“Then let me go,” she gasped, finally breaking. “If you are tired of me, just let me go.”
At once, his anger vanished—and it was frightening to watch it suddenly disappear as it was to watch it suddenly appear. It reminded her that she could not trust any of his reactions, not even the negative ones.
“Oh, darling,” he purred. He came to sit next to her on the bed.
She flinched away as he reached out to pet her hair.
“You know I cannot do that. And I didn’t mean to scold you.
You have just been so very difficult. But I understand that this is difficult for you.
How about this? I shall give you one more day, all right?
And then you can decide how you want it.
You can either admit that you are mine and come with me.
You will have everything you ever wanted, and we will be so very happy together. Or…”
He paused, then reached out and lifted her chin. He drew her face up until she looked at him.
“Or,” he said with a friendly casualness that was far more disturbing than his rage would have been, “you can remain a prisoner, right here, for the rest of your days. You will still be mine, of course. We will be together, no matter what happens.”
He chucked her lightly under the chin. Letitia’s stomach roiled at the touch and at the threat in his words.
He planned to force her. He planned to take what she refused to give…or she could pretend to be willing. Both options were intolerable.
“The choice is all yours, darling.”
He stood and left.
The sound of the lock clicking behind him reminded her of a gun cocking. When his footsteps faded, she put her hands down in her face and wept.
* * *
After several days of travel, Ezra arrived in Belgium feeling as though his nerves were frayed. He had never been much of a traveler, and rushing across the Continent as quickly as he could with fear dogging his every step had not precisely made for unusually good circumstances.
The whole situation was so dire that when he disembarked from the last ship he had taken, the one that had dragged up the Zenne river with excruciating slowness, he was actually grateful to see Xander waiting for him at the docks.
And he was exhausted enough that he didn’t even mind when Xander immediately took charge of things, sending his footmen to gather Ezra’s belongings and load them into the waiting carriage.
“Ezra,” Xander said, smiling broadly as he clapped Ezra on the shoulder.
Xander had not always been so happy. This was Helen’s influence.
Or Helen’s fault, depending on how you looked at it.
“Hugh wrote and said the circumstances are dire, but still, I am glad to see you. Did Hugh misunderstand when he said that this Dugley person has abducted someone that you know?”
“No, that is correct,” Ezra said, sending up a brief prayer of thanks for Hugh Blackwood’s suspicious nature. It was better that he was here before Xander knew the whole picture.
They entered Xander’s carriage, which was well-sprung and elegant, though it did not carry the personal Godwin crest that adorned Xander’s carriage in London. When the door closed, it cut off the bustle of the docks.
“Then who was it?”
Ezra exhaled slowly.
“Letitia Knightley.”
Even in the dimness of the carriage, he could see Xander’s look of confusion.
“Letitia Knightley… my former governess?” he asked.
“Yes.”
“How do you even know... Miss Knightly has been abducted?”
It was hard to say which of these facts surprised Xander more.
He breathed out a heavy breath.
“Listen,” Ezra said. “I am going to tell you a whole lot of information. You will have many questions. You do not have time to ask them.”
Xander didn’t look happy about it, but he nodded.
So, Ezra told him everything. The search for information about the fire.
Iris’ arrival. Hiring Letitia. Everything she had revealed about how Dugley had harassed her.
He was circumspect about the particulars of his relationship with Letty, but it was clear that Xander understood that Ezra regarded her as more than an employee.
To Xander’s credit, he took it all extraordinarily well.
“Right,” he said. “You have a child in your home. Her mother was likely your sister. You hired a governess—our governess. An evil gentleman has become fixated on her and abducted her. And you have come here to rescue her because you have fallen in love with her.”
Ezra choked on nothing.
“I didn’t say—”
Xander gave him a look so acutely skeptical that it stopped Ezra’s protest in its tracks. That was a neat trick. He would have to get Xander to teach it to him. Later, though.
“Yes,” he said. “That is—more or less—accurate.”
“Right,” Xander said. “Well, we had best not hesitate, then.”
“We?” Ezra asked.
Xander scoffed. “I am not about to let you confront this bastard alone. We are family, Ez. That’s what family is for.”
Ezra had little room in his mind for anything other than Letitia, but this warmed him.
He hoped that Letty would never let him hear the end of this sudden affection he felt for his family. He wished she would tease him about it every day of his life.
Because, God above, that would mean she was there. It would mean she was alive, safe, and by his side.
“Thank you, Xander,” he said quietly.
His cousin looked appalled. “Don’t thank me. Did I not just say that that’s what family is for? I understand that you are exhausted, Ezra, but do try to pay attention.”
There was a note of wry amusement beneath Xander’s high-handedness, and Ezra wondered faintly if his cousin had always taken himself a bit less seriously than anyone in the family suspected, but the rest of them had never noticed.
No, he decided a moment later. Xander had been very annoying for nearly his entire life.
“In any case,” Xander went on, “do you need to rest and refresh yourself briefly, or should we travel on to Dugley’s holdings posthaste?
I started making inquiries as soon as Hugh wrote that you were coming.
I have the address of his family home, but I doubt he will carry on his nefarious deeds there.
He did, however, recently purchase a house in a small village about an hour from here—”
“There,” Ezra interrupted. “Let’s go there. Right now.”
When Xander smiled, Ezra was reminded that, for all that the Lightholders were now known for being civilized members of society, each wrapped in the pacifying embrace of true love, in his grandfather’s era, the family had been spoken about in hushed tones as the kind of people that you did not cross. Not ever.
Ezra smiled, too. Dugley was about to learn what it meant to cross a Lightholder. And then he was going to regret the day he had ever heard the name, Letitia Knightley.