Chapter Eight
Present Day
When Chris woke up, it had to be at least a few hours later.
His head was still in pain, his limbs were still tied, but somehow his dreams of memories rejuvenated him.
But it wasn’t for a few seconds that he realized his body was no longer jostling in a carriage.
Though he was still sitting on some kind of cushion, the small space they were in was dark and static.
In other words, there was no movement.
“’Bout time you woke up. We thought you were going to sleep all day,” Lester complained.
Jax bumped Chris’s shoulder as he moved past him to sit down. “We need some information. And we need it now.”
Chris was pretty sure he didn’t want to give them anything that they wanted, but he also had an inkling that it might be his only chance to get out of this mess.
Earlier, he had overheard Lester warning Jax not to kill him.
So…that was probably a good thing. They needed him alive for now.
And he needed to be alive for now. As well as into the foreseeable future.
So…despite his chagrin at wanting to play nice with these two ruffians, he was probably going to have to give them whatever they asked for.
“We want the pistols,” Jax demanded.
Except that.
Damn it. Why did these two buffoons want Sam’s pistols? That had to be what they were talking about. Just before the house party, Sam had entrusted Chris with a package—two dueling pistols that belonged to Sam’s father.
As far as everyone knew, those pistols mostly held sentimental value.
And calling them “sentimental” was questionable.
Sam’s father had been somewhat of a dueling connoisseur…
and well, it was not so honorable to be a connoisseur at shooting people.
Even if he always deloped. Really, after the fifth duel, it seemed the man just did it for sport.
But no, every quarter of a year or so, the man would become a riled up jealous lover (over nothing) and call a man out.
He should have learned how to call out an apology instead, but no, the man was reckless. Hence Sam’s overcompensation to be an unaffected lover. As if that were a possibility.
But those damn pistols. Sam clung to them like gold. It was awe-inducing that they had been a bargaining chip for him against Wes. None of the Betting Buddies understood why Sam made that bet in the first place, but it was starting to become clear. Perhaps he knew their worth to a darker sort.
In Chris’s mind, he still didn’t see the full picture, but he was getting a premonition that it could soon be revealed to him if he was patient enough. True, they were worth a bit of money given their antique status. But surely they weren’t worth abducting a duke over.
Jax kicked Chris in the shins. “Did you hear me, duke? We want the sodding pistols. Where the devil are they?”
Should he feign ignorance? Try his hand at a bluff? Or some other tactic. He wasn’t sure, but why not start with the obvious to make sure they were all on the same page.
“What pistols?” he asked his captors.
Jax grabbed him by the collar and twisted the fabric. Hard. “Don’t play the fool with me, Duke.” The title crumbled off his lips like a moldy loaf of bread. “We know you have them.”
“How do I know that you know anything?” Chris asked, hoping to confuse them enough to talk more.
“I don’t know how you would know that I know anything,” Lester stumbled through his words, “but we know you got them. You can thank a footman or two for that.” Lester guffawed as though he had shed light on the most startling secret.
But of course, staff had to be involved.
Chris knew that Sam wouldn’t have leaked the information.
“So where are they?” Jax prompted.
“How should I know?”
“We know you got them because we have people on the inside. People who saw it with their own two eyes.”
“Not four?”
Jax scrunched up his face and walloped Chris for his sarcastic reply.
“Shut up.”
Raising his hand, using it in lieu of uttering a threat, he demanded, “Now tell us where they are.”
Chris scratched his head not really sure why he was provoking these two. Maybe to see just how far they might go. Maybe to see what else they might reveal. But either way, he kept at it. “You want me to shut up or talk?”
“Talk,” Jax grumbled.
“I’ll direct you to them if we get back into the carriage.” He was trying to take some semblance of control back in this chaos. This seemed to be the best way. Soon enough they would know that he was just leading them to his house, but maybe in that time he could think up a plan.
He could see a silent conversation being exchanged between Lester and Jax. And then Jax was grumbling as he hauled Chris to his feet. Lester must have been the one to put a hood over his face because he could see Jax’s grip on his arm as two other hands secured the hood in place.
“Let’s go.”
Chris heard a door open, stumbled over his steps, but all the while was prodded along by Jax.
A prickling sensation broke out on his neck, as though he were being watched.
He shook it off since he couldn’t very well look around with a hood over his eyes.
When they stopped, assumedly in front of the carriage, Jax hoisted him up and set him on the squabs.
More grunting and complaining came from the two captors, and finally they were seated.
“How can I give directions if I can’t see where we are?”
Grumble. Grumble. Jax’s hand ripped off the hood, revealing the landscape just outside the carriage window.
Chris recognized the shack attached to a little pub he had frequented before, so he knew where he was.
He tried to look through the window to see what caused that prickling sensation, but he saw nothing.
For a moment he thought someone might have been on their way to rescue him, but if they hadn’t acted yet, there was probably no one there.
“Go south until we hit the end of the road. Then wake me up for the next instruction.” He wanted to trade each piece of instruction for information, but he didn’t think the two would be willing to go for that. So instead, he planted a seed in their mind in hopes of reaping a harvest.
“I don’t know what you want with a couple of old, broken pistols, but I’ll take you to them. They don’t mean anything to me.” With that, Chris rested his head back on the seat and willed himself to stay awake while appearing to be asleep.
After a few minutes, Lester started talking. Chris could have placed a bet that he would be the first to break down.
“Old and broken? That doesn’t sound like the right pistols.”
“Sh!” Jax growled. “He’s right here.”
“He’s sleeping, just look at him.”
Chris hoped his slumped posture was doing the trick, but he really needed to commit. He let his body fall toward Jax, and just as his head was about to land on the burly man’s shoulder, he was pushed back toward the door. He did his best not to recorrect his position.
“See? He’s sleeping, you big oaf.”
“Fine.” Chris felt Jax’s thick finger poke his arm for good measure. “Don’t worry about if it sounds like the right pistols. We know they’re the right ones. Our man saw them. Don’t you remember?”
“Hardly.”
Jax grounded out his next word. “He damn well saw them. And now we’re going to get them back, and we’ll get that reward.”
“You think this is worth five thousand pounds?”
“It’s worth it.”
“Even though we’re condemning one of our own?” Lester’s voice carried a wave of concern as Chris tried to keep himself lifeless.
“Aye. Well, maybe Big Tall Tom should have thought twice before doing what he did at that duel. Two men dead. One a duke. He deserves what’s coming to him.”
“They’ve been looking for these pistols for a while. I can’t believe our luck. What are the chances that we put a spy in with the right duke?”
“You know there’s luck and there’s stupidity. And we just got stupid lucky.” Jax’s laughter rattled through Chris’s head as he tried to make sense of what they were saying.
Chris racked his brain for stories involving a man named Big Tall Tom.
He vaguely recalled the confusion over Sam’s father’s last duel.
Instead of deloping, he had apparently shot the man and killed him.
It was the same duel where Sam’s father passed away.
There were suspicions, especially since no man had brought seconds, witnesses, or a physician.
But they were both found dead with no leads.
No reason to think other than that the dueling duke finally found his death match.
Chris recalled Sam being relentless to find and keep those pistols. At the time, Chris thought it had been a grieving son’s way of remembering his father.
But now…were those pistols used against Sam’s father’s wishes?
There was a crime here beyond the duel. And did Sam know about it?
No. He couldn’t. If Sam had known, he would have told Chris.
Or at least one of The Betting Buddies. But none of the four knew anything.
Chris had to trust that Sam was only getting rid of the pistols because of his cousin.
Sam had known at the beginning of the season that his cousin Randolph was coming to town.
And though he had been suspicious of him, everyone had cleared up the miscommunication with his last visit.
So was this all a great big coincidence?
Sam bet the pistols trying to keep them safe. He lost the bet but couldn’t let the memories of his father go until push came to shove. When Sam had finally entrusted the pistols to Chris, it just so happened to be at the same time new staff (apparently spies) noticed the exchange.
And then the house party had happened, so no one could take action. And no one took action against Chris until he was alone.
That thought—of being alone—that was the darkest thought in his whole contemplation.
Normally he didn’t mind being alone. He was an independent man.
Introverted. Liked—really, needed—time to himself every day lest he turn on some unsuspecting bystander.
But this thought of being alone…right now.
And then alone again once this abduction was done, he was planning on traveling the world…
alone. Whereas once that had excited him, thrilled him, called to him…
now, he wasn’t so keen on all the aloneness.
It didn’t sit right. It didn’t feel right. Not one bit.