Chapter 37
Thirty-seven
Fletch
When no one answered the Hall’s front door, Fletch tested and found it locked.
Not wanting to waste effort on beating in Damien’s solid door, he tried a different tactic.
He drove the team back to the lane and tied it directly in front of the drive so no one could leave.
Any farmer trying to pass by would curse, but he’d take his chances.
He'd heard faint shouting in the distance. Someone was here. Had Kate already made her way around? The shouts were too coarse to be hers. A lady like Kate was unlikely to attack scoundrels. She’d sensibly stay hidden until he had time to reach her.
Making his way around the outside of the workshop, he recognized female cries of. . . rage? . . . closer than the coarse shouting. Kate?
His heart stopped. She should be safe in the bushes, waiting for him. What the devil. . . ?
Where was Kate?
Abandoning any semblance of rationality, Fletch raised his rifle to his shoulder and ran toward the rear— Before his brain overtook his berserker, and he halted, out of sight. If anyone held a weapon on Kate, they’d hurt her before he could stop them.
As a soldier, it had never mattered. He’d simply shot the enemy on sight.
He wasn’t a soldier anymore. How did civilians do this? Not very well, he suspected.
But this was Kate, the perfect lady who had cared about his rotten carcass, understood when he reached the edge, and accepted his surliness with understanding. Women like that were rare. He’d die before letting anything happen to her. He’d die simply knowing he’d sent her into danger.
Fearing what he’d find, Fletch crept up on the back corner of the house, trying to actually think about how to reach Kate without harming her. Where was the guard? Who the devil was in the house?
More screams, followed by loud crashing. He couldn’t think past Kate lying in a pool of blood. The house was huge. Where did he begin?
Outside, clear the ground of the enemy.
To keep from seeing nothing but red, Fletch ran up the woodpile to the roof of the shed and sprawled on the tin roof. He now had the yard in sight. Aiming his rifle, he swept the scene. If he concentrated on eliminating the villains. . .
He could swear that was the black wool of Wilma Jameson’s fat backside waddling into the shrubbery where Kate ought to be hiding.
Don’t shoot. . . not yet. He scanned from the far side of the yard to the barn, seeing nothing untoward. The crashing and screams continued, somewhere nearby. That sounded more like fury than a brutal beating. . . He could be wrong. Ever the proper lady, Kate did not do furious.
The man he’d sent to guard the barn finally peered around the corner. Fletch whistled, and the man had the sense to look up. He pointed him toward Wilma. The man nodded and cautiously studied the shrubbery. The chances of Wilma being armed were slim.
Where was Morgan? With Kate? Panic and rage raised their ugly heads. Kate’s life depended on him throttling the monster. . .
Logic underlaid his madness. He didn’t know the Hall’s layout. He had to reconnoiter. Fletch slid down from the roof and peered inside the shed. Dark and musty, nearly empty, it contained no dead bodies, but a door had been left open into the house. The furious thuds emanated from there.
Kate needed him to be calm, rational, not a berserker. With his heart pounding at his ribcage, he fought instinct. Learn the terrain, go slowly, monitor the situation. . . do not blast holes in the walls.
He peered into a dark, narrow hall.
A crash to his left cast caution to the winds. He dashed past damp, enormous. . . pink drawers? He smacked enveloping petticoats aside and heard definitely unladylike cursing. Kate? His blood raced and he nearly swallowed his tongue to keep from crying out.
The sight of a door half off its hinges escalated his alarm to terror. Who was in there with her? Were they touching her? That frantic fear cast any scattered threads of caution to the winds. He sprinted past the rest of the damp undergarments, rifle raised.
Kicking the shattered plank of a door aside, Fletch swept the weapon around the room, searching for a target to take down.
Kate kneeled on the floor beside a couch, swearing and frantically picking at ropes tied around a woman’s slender wrists. Arms tied behind her, the prisoner lay on her stomach, moaning and gagging into the saggy cushions. A huge bonnet decorated in flummery covered most of her head.
Panicking, Fletch needed to shoot someone.
“Knife, Fletch, please, hurry.” Kate’s normally pleasant voice stopped swearing to bark peremptory commands.
The lady had transformed into a general.
He ought to be appalled, but instead, her calm orders froze Fletch’s inner monsters, allowing reason to emerge again.
Finding no target, he cautiously set his rifle on a battered desk and removed his sharpest knife from his belt.
Kate glanced up grimly and shifted aside.
Instead of murmuring sympathetic reassurances when he started on the ropes, or freeing the prisoner’s head from that dreadful contraption, Kate snatched up a splintery log.
With a fury and strength no lady should possess, she whacked uselessly at the unopened exterior door, shouting, “I’ll kill him! ”
Fletch understood her rage. The victim’s delicate skin was chafed by the harsh ropes, and she moaned, as if only regaining consciousness. She stank of vomit. Had they poisoned her? As the blackguards had probably poisoned Jasper.
He ground his teeth and kept his raging monster under control, trying to be the sensible one. “Stop it, Kate. You’ll only kill yourself. Where’s Morgan?”
The rope on the wrists frayed loose and he started on shapely ankles. He shouldn’t be looking at a lady’s ankles but he scarcely noticed what he did when all his attention was on Kate.
She raised her battering ram again—but before she could senselessly pound the door, the panel shifted off its rusted hinges, revealing Hugh Morgan on the other side.
“Wha’ the de’il ye bist doin’. . .” The lunatic didn’t have the chance to finish his whine.
Volcano finally erupting, Kate slammed the log into his face.
Nice work. Fletch sprang to his feet and yanked Kate back against his chest before she actually killed the bastard.
If he had learned anything at all, it was that killing another human being scarred for life.
And it was possible the monster Kate was seeing in her head wasn’t this pathetic bedlamite.
Holding a screaming, kicking bundle of fury, Fletch verified that Morgan was down for the count before comforting her. “Hush, it’s over.”
Her thick auburn hair brushed his chin as she struggled, and then abruptly, she went limp, weeping. Fletch turned her around and held her soft curves, rocking her while years of pent-up rage and sorrow poured down his shirt so hard she was shaking.
He knew a bit of her story and finally recognized that this dingy office must have been where she’d been violated. He’d chop up that couch later.
He'd like to tell her it would be all right, but he knew from experience that emotional pain lasted far longer than physical. It just muted over time. So he gave her something to do the way she had done for him. “I need to tie him up, take him to Hunt. Help me undo those ropes.”
He set her away before he started thinking thoughts he didn’t deserve to allow near his empty attic.
“Lavender!” Reminded of others, Kate lunged for the couch.
The atrocious bonnet finally falling aside, Miss Marlowe coughed and pushed up on one elbow, looking far more bedraggled than that fashionable lady had ever appeared.
Calming his racing heart with practicality, Fletch used the frayed ropes to tie up Morgan.
Kate had broken and bloodied the lout’s nose and probably knocked his teeth loose but he was stirring.
Apparently someone had padded the knife wound in his side with a large bandage.
Fletch wondered if the scoundrel’s toes were bandaged beneath his shabby boots as well. The lunatic had an accomplice.
“Where are the other ladies?” Fletch inquired.
Lavender coughed on her response. “Sent them off.”
Thank all that was holy, he didn’t have to waste time searching for anyone else.
Kate had finally calmed down enough to remove her cloak and wrap it around the shivering, terrified modiste. Lavender had led a sheltered life, coddled by an entire household of doting relations.
Kate had grown a tough shield over years of tribulation. Fletch needed to start recognizing that a lady might also be a warrior.
Shouts from the front warned of new arrivals. He hoped it was Damien and not the actors. The fast-talking lawyer could take Lavender in hand. Fletch didn’t want to be around when she arrived at the manor. Hunt would call in armies and hellhounds.
Fletch handed Kate his rifle. “Shoot anyone you want, including the bastard on the floor if he so much as moves.”
Leaving her looking startled, Fletch strode outside and toward the shrubbery where he’d sent the guard, following the sound of voluble cursing. The old soldier held Wilma’s wrists behind her back and a knife to her throat. She wasn’t going anywhere soon.
“Give me a minute,” Fletch shouted at the soldier as the bellows in front escalated. “I have to shut up the neighbors.”
Taking the shortest path through the open kitchen door, Fletch stomped through the house as if it were his own. Low-ceilinged and dark, the ancient part of the Hall wasn’t particularly prepossessing. He flung open the front door to greet the men already circling the house, weapons in hand.
“Laggards,” Fletch called, relieved to see Rafe had brought Cantherius.
He wouldn’t have to ride in the carriage with the women.
His brainbox was already overwhelmed, without adding his rioting monsters to the mix.
“We have Morgan trussed in the workshop office. He’ll need Dr. Walker.
We need rope to tie up Mrs. Jameson. No idea what the old besom has done but she’s putting up a fight. ”
As Rafe, Damien, and others raced off, Fletch faced the glowering heir to an earl’s fortune. Damn. He’d hoped Hunt would stay home. The captain didn’t often wear a patch over his blind eye unless it was hurting. On a day like this one, anyone would have a headache.
“We found Miss Marlowe,” Fletch told Hunt in what he hoped was a sane voice. “Mrs. Morgan is with her. She was bound and gagged and is just coming around. I’ve not had time to question her. I thought it best that she awake to a woman’s care.”
Hunt’s relief was visible. It didn’t moderate his growl of fury. “The clerk and the younger Jameson?”
“Miss Marlowe said she sent them away. The actors?” Fletch patted Cantherius’s head, longing to escape the battlefield for the calm oasis of his clocks—fleeing the taunting memory of Kate in his arms, clinging to him as if he were actually a man she could rely on.
“I’ve told the motley fools not to leave town. And since apparently their wagon was stolen. . .” Hunt gestured at the cart sitting in the drive. “They’re not going anywhere soon. They may drink Rafe out of business though.”
Fletch nodded. “I’ll ride in, take them in hand. Damien can bring the ladies to the manor in his carriage.” Which was still blocking the lane. “Kate isn’t likely to leave Lavender until reassured she’s well.”
“Meera thinks Jasper was poisoned with mushrooms,” Hunt warned. “We need to find Vivien. Those two were stepping out, weren’t they? Is she the poisoner?”
“Deuced if I know. I’ll question the lad, if I can, and I’ll try not to eat any mushrooms.” Grimacing at the pain in his shoulder, Fletch swung up on Cant’s back, eager to escape. He couldn’t manage calm respectability much longer.
He couldn’t drink himself into a stupor either. He’d have to find a clock.