Twenty-six
“This is monstrous!” Georgette protested as her assailant carried her bum first out of the House of Pleasure and down the cobbled street.
She seemed destined to be transported from the crooked lane in this undignified manner with alarming frequency.
If the situation weren’t so deadly serious, she’d have laughed.
Her captor had looped a stout length of rope around her waist after he covered her head with the burlap bag. Her arms were pinned to her sides, so she couldn’t pummel him as he deserved.
Georgette could, however, kick with all her might and she landed a few solid digs of her pointy toes into the man’s thighs. But when he delivered a stinging smack to her buttocks, she was shocked into holding still. That didn’t stop her from shrieking for help, however.
Where was Reuben? Where was Mercy? For pity’s sake, was there no one to come to the aid of a woman being abducted in broad daylight?
Not on Lackaday Lane, evidently.
She was rudely deposited into some kind of a conveyance. After she heard the door slam, the vehicle lurched forward.
Georgette couldn’t see him, but she knew her captor was there on the opposite squab. She could hear him breathing.
“I hope you know,” she said, trying mightily to keep her tone even, “that the law frowns on the abduction of the daughter of a marquis. You’ll be fortunate if you don’t hang.”
He didn’t answer. He hadn’t said a word to her, not even to order her to be quiet.
His silence was more unnerving than a threat.
The burlap bag allowed in a little light but was woven too thickly for her see anything but vague shadows through it. The strong fibrous hemp smell masked all other scents.
“If it’s a ransom you seek, no doubt my family will pay,” she said. “Though I warn you that you will likely be caught and be unable to spend any of the money.”
There was only silence.
The seat on which she’d been deposited was reasonably soft. When she clutched at the upholstery, short bristles of velvet rubbed her gloved palms. She was in a private carriage then instead of a hired cab. Her abductor had means.
Money was not his motive.
“This can only end badly for you,” she said. “However, there is still time to salvage matters. If you release me now, I promise not to breathe a word to anyone of this unfortunate incident.”
The man said nothing.
Her thoughts darted like a swarm of midges, too many crowding to the forefront for her to focus on one for very long.
Finally, she settled on the fact that just because she was riding in a gentleman’s equipage, it did not signify that the man with her was the owner of the carriage.
More likely he was a hired lackey, and therefore perhaps susceptible to a higher offer.
“Whatever you are being paid for this, I will double the amount if you release me now,” she said.
The man snorted.
At least it was better than stony silence. Either he doubted she had access to ready cash or he was being paid such an astronomical sum, he didn’t believe she could deliver on her promise.
Who would want to abduct her in the first place?
Perhaps the motive was political. Was there someone who didn’t want her match with the royal duke to proceed?
In that case, she was hopelessly out of her depth. She drew herself up to sit as tall as possible and decided to play the only card of that suit she had.
“My father is the Marquis of Yorkingham. He wields a great deal of influence in the House of Lords and is a confidant of the Crown.” Of course, King George III was hopelessly mad most of the time, but her father did still have His Majesty’s very unreliable ear.
“Trust me. You do not want to make so formidable an enemy.”
In the silence that followed she heard only the clop of the horse’s hooves and the creak of the wheels. In the distance, St. Paul’s great bell tolled noon.
Her initial reaction had been outrage. Now panic was creeping up the scale to form a close second.
The carriage slowed and her heart rate sped up. If they were nearing their destination, she was losing her opportunity to win free. When the conveyance stopped, another possibility pushed its way into her mind, one she’d been trying to keep at bay.
There was every chance that her abductor and Vesta’s murderer were one and the same.
***
The doctor, if that’s what the quack actually was, took every last farthing in Mercy’s little coin purse.
In exchange, he’d lanced the growing lump on Reuben’s head and let the accumulated blood flow into his little porcelain bowl.
Then he bound up Reuben’s head with a length of clean muslin—at least, Ninian had claimed the chemise it was torn from was clean—and left orders that the patient be allowed to sleep until he woke naturally.
Well, what else would they do? Hire a brass band to wake him?
Once the doctor left, Madam Bouchard shooed the rest of the girls away. Before she slipped out of the room as well, she gave Mercy some parting advice.
“Sometimes,” Madam Bouchard said, “a patient with a head wound will rally if he hears a voice he recognizes. Talk to him.”
Mercy skewered her former employer with a frown. In what lifetime had the madam spent any time in a sick room? “But what if he can’t hear me?”
“It doesn’t matter. You need to say the words. Now.”
While there is still reason for you to say them shimmered unspoken in the air. The door closed behind Madam Bouchard with a soft snick of the latch.
Mercy hitched a hip on the side of Reuben’s bed, sinking a bit into the feather tick. He didn’t stir.
“Most fellows give me a better welcome when I sit on their beds,” she said, trying to keep her tone light. Her brittle smile faded as he continued to lie still as stone.
Normally Reuben had so much color in his tanned face, Mr. Humphrey was after him to use rice powder to give himself a more fashionably pale complexion to go with the fancy livery the Yorkingham footmen wore.
Reuben would need no rice powder now. His skin held a chalky, gray undertone. He looked as if he were leaving her by inches, slipping farther away with each shallow rise and fall of his great chest.
Tears trembled on Mercy’s lashes and she began to speak. At first she chided him lightly for being careless enough to let someone get the drop on him like that, but then she decided he’d paid dearly enough for that lapse in judgment.
“Ye’re a good man, Reuben Darling. But not a very smart one. Ye were wrong when ye told me…” Her voice faltered. “When ye told me I deserved to be loved. Ye don’t know what ye’re talkin’ about, truly ye don’t.”
She told him how it had been for her, how men had used her since she was barely old enough to have sprouted breasts. “So I decided I’d use ’em right back.”
She confessed to stealing from her customers and making it seem as if they’d misplaced their valuables elsewhere.
Then when she’d learned to twist men to her will, she conned them into buying her little baubles she could sell without the madam’s knowing.
That way Mercy could collect the whole amount without letting her employer take her cut.
“I even cheated Lady Georgette countless times since I came to work for her. Does she really think her dresses wear out as quick as I tell her they do? I rip a seam here or lose a bit of lace there and sharp as ye can say Bob’s yer uncle, I’m nippin’ off to the secondhand shop to sell a lovely gown for every last shilling I can get. ”
Tears spilled over her lower lids, but she brushed them away angrily.
“The only reason I haven’t lifted any of her jewelry yet is because I ain’t figured out how to have paste copies made first. And you, Reuben Darling.
” She moved up and propped herself over him, letting her hair fall down to tickle his face.
He didn’t twitch a muscle. “I call ye names and make fun of ye, but when I crook my little finger to ye, ye hop along to me bed, biddable as a lamb. And I think to myself, I’ll have me a bit o’ sport with this one before I toss him back. ”
Her chin quivered.
“Only ye ruined it for me.” She laid her head on his chest and sobbed. “Ye told me ye loved me. Worse, ye said I deserve it. Ye stupid, stupid man.”
Mercy didn’t mean for it to happen, but the rest of the words poured out of her along with the tears. She’d never have said them if she’d thought he could actually hear her, but once she started, she couldn’t seem to stop.
She told him how her chest pounded each time she happened to round the corner and see his handsome face.
How she arranged her days so that their paths would cross more often than needed.
She confessed that even though she knew he was wrong, she longed for him to be right, that somehow even if she didn’t deserve it, she might still be able to make-believe that he loved her in any case.
“Because if ever a man had a shining soul to match his fine face, it’s you, Reuben Darling.” She lifted her head and looked down at him again, willing him to open his big brown puppy dog eyes.
She pressed a kiss on his lips, but there was no response.
“I don’t know if I can love anybody. I’d probably be hopeless at it,” she admitted with a ragged sob. “But if ever I was to try to love someone, it would be you.”
One of his eyelids moved and she sucked her breath in over her teeth.
“If you’ll try to love me, that’ll do, Mercy Atwood,” Reuben said softly. “That’ll do.”
***
Once Georgette was dragged from the carriage, she was forced to walk. She heard a door opening before her and she was ushered inside, surrounded by the bustling noises of a busy kitchen.
“Oh, my! What are you—” a matronly-sounding voice started and then stopped abruptly, as if her words had been strung on a thread snipped off by an unseen seamstress.
“Help me, whoever you are. I promise you’ll be rewarded,” Georgette pleaded. “I’m Lady Georgette Yorkingham and I’ve been taken against my will.”
Well, of course you have, ninny. Anyone can see that. You’ve a burlap bag over your head and your arms are bound.
She silently cursed herself for her outburst. Naturally, whoever had spoken was in her captor’s employ. No help would be coming from that quarter.
So she not-so-silently cursed her assailant with a number of choice phrases she’d picked up from Mercy’s colorful vocabulary as he forced her up a set of stairs. She was done pleading. She wouldn’t take another step willingly.
Which was how she found herself being carried upward with no gentleness at all. The man kicked a door open and they passed into a room. He dropped her without ceremony but instead of the hardwood she expected to land on, she sank into a mattress.
She’d been outraged. She’d tried to reason with him. She’d pleaded for help.
Now for the first time, real fear snaked down her spine.