Chapter 39
Chapter Thirty-Nine
Benedict paced the length of Wayland’s office, fists clenching and unclenching with every step. “You broke me.” Eliza’s words played in an unceasing loop through his head—the agony in her eyes and voice haunting him.
The door slammed open, clanging against the wall. West seized him by the collar and shoved him against the wall.
“Christ above, what were you thinking?”
“I’ve already been lectured by her sister. I do not require another.” Benedict shoved West’s hand away.
“How unfortunate for you,” West snapped. “Are you still fixed on ruining that girl?”
“Of course not!”
“You’ve an odd way of showing it. And tonight of all nights!”
“I know I was wrong.”
“You’ve jeopardized everything. You’re done. Go home and wait for news.”
Benedict’s stomach coiled. “I cannot leave her.”
“You can’t be trusted to stay either.”
“I’ll stay out of sight. I won’t approach again—just—”
“There’s naught for it. This is too bloody important.”
“West—”
“No, you’d best keep away. I—”
A petrified screech breached the door.
For the space of a singular heartbeat, Benedict and West froze. Then Benedict lunged, shoving past him, and ripping the door open. The music cut off, severed at knifepoint. They stumbled down the stairs, frantically casting about for a flash of violet silk.
The world slowed. West crashed into Benedict’s back, sending them both tumbling down the final steps. Guests surged toward the double doors, the ones Eliza had vanished through.
His legs dragged as they cleared a brutal path through the onlookers—fairy wings, dominos, and diadems scattered underfoot.
Benedict elbowed his way onto the balcony—and his heart stopped.
Sophie was there, knelt on the stone, with Bella’s head in her lap—Bella’s bleeding head. His sister lay slumped in a crumpled pile of phoenix feathers—they waved a pathetic, ragged surrender in the soft breeze.
Eliza was nowhere—but she had to be.
Bash hovered over Sophie and Bella, knife out and pointed at the crowd, gaze frantic—poised to strike.
West crumpled at Bella’s side, wrapping her limp hand in his trembling ones. He brought her palm to his cheek.
“West?” he croaked.
“She’s alive,” the man said, voice weak.
Relief flickered only to be consumed by the suffocating truth: Eliza was gone.
His pulse thundered, drowning out the world.
“Get out of my way!” a man shouted from inside. Onlookers grumbled—useless obstacles.
“Move! Now!” a feminine voice ordered. Something about the command penetrated the thick skulls of the spectators, and they began a slow shuffle toward the doors.
“If you do not leave the club this instant, I shall have the constable haul you out by the ear. Do not think my threat an idle one. Wait for your carriage outside.”
At last, urgency dawned on the ushers, and they pushed the guests along.
Finally, a path opened, and Wayland stumbled out onto the balcony. “Eliza?” His voice cracked, gaze swiveling.
His eyes fell on Benedict.
“Gone.” The single word cost Benedict everything.
Bella was injured. Eliza was missing, in the hands of a known reprobate—a reprobate who would—
A copper tang flooded Benedict’s mouth. He swallowed it along with the horrific visions crowding his mind.
Wayland’s face crumpled along with his knees.
Eliza’s mother, having cleared an entire gaming hell in minutes, strode out onto the balcony. Even as she took in the horrific scene, she carried herself with poise. In the space of a single breath, she had her shaken daughter enveloped in her arms.
“Get her inside,” she instructed West and Bash, nodding to Bella. West shook his head at the enforcer, then pushed up to his feet and gathered Bella in his arms, one hand banded about her shoulders, the other under her knees. With impossible care, he took her into the hell.
The order finally penetrated Benedict’s frozen mind. He rushed forward to shove the abandoned dice, glasses, and plates to one side of the nearest table.
West’s arms trembled as he placed Bella across the mahogany before smoothing down her hair and wings.
Benedict had never considered a world without Bella’s sharp tongue and sharper wit. Her silence threatened to crush him.
Behind them, Eliza’s mother ushered Sophie forward and pressed her into a nearby chair. Everyone else stumbled into seats surrounding them.
Far from the elegant perdition of a few hours ago—now, the club was an actual hell.
Remnants of debauchery melded into the green carpet: pastry crumbs, glittering gems, tarnished coin, all alike in their irrelevance.
Smoke and soot from the oil lamps clung to the burnished curtains.
Even the heavenly garden wilted, petals drooping and scattered across the floor, trampled.
Beside the bar, Ainsley had three terrified red-headed women to comfort. The fool from earlier still puttered there too, polishing a glass without a care in the world.
A lady in gold that Benedict did not recognize hovered near the exit. “Lee has gone for a physician,” she said. “Leo is calling for the carriage. We’ll be off as soon as he returns. Unless there is anything else you need?” Bellemere’s mother then.
“No, thank you, Charlotte,” Eliza’s mother said.
“Always. The Bennet carriage is yours as well. There are none faster or safer, and I’m certain Lee will insist.”
“We’ll send for it,” Ainsley said on everyone’s behalf. “Actually, would you be so kind as to take my girls home? Stay until I return?”
“Of course!” She nodded, looking relieved for an occupation as she wrapped her arms around herself.
“Potter!” Eliza’s mother snapped.
The man popped up from behind the bar with a curious expression.
“Why don’t you head outside to assist with the mayhem that is surely occurring?”
“Begging your pardon, my lady. But I was told not to leave the bar under any circumstances.”
“Bloody hell, Potter. Get out!” Bash finally erupted.
“But you said—”
“I know what I said. And now I’m saying something different. Get out!”
The man shrugged before he stumbled out from behind the bar. Slowly, he waddled outside, tripping on the threshold on his way.
Bash drew an exasperated hand along his face.
“Now, does someone want to tell me what the hell is going on?” Eliza’s mother demanded. It was clear from the startled reactions that such vehemence was rare from the lady.
“Jules,” Wayland began.
Before he could finish, another man burst in the door Potter had vacated.
A physician followed, overflowing carpetbag in hand.
The first man, impossibly tall with half his face scarred, stopped beside Bellemere’s mother.
She whispered something to him, and he murmured back before he turned and reached for the door handle.
Mrs. Ainsley embraced her husband tightly before she and her daughters followed the couple out into the night.
The physician set to work examining Bella. He pressed two fingers to her wrist as he counted silently to himself.
Still forging order from chaos, Eliza’s mother urged everyone away to another table to give the man room.
West shook his head silently, tightening his hold on Bella’s hand. Benedict dropped a kiss on her other palm. “Call for me if…”
West nodded.
Weary, Benedict joined the others at a nearby table. He dragged an exhausted hand over his eyes. The fabric of his domino caught the pads of his fingers, a surprising reminder of its existence. He ripped it off in disgust.
“Where is my daughter?” Lady Juliet demanded.
Sophie began, voice high and tight with worry. “I went outside to check on Lizzie—she was upset after her dance—and I found only Lady Arabella. But she was bleeding, and I didn’t know—”
“It’s alright, darling. You did so well.” Her mother pressed a reassuring hand to her back.
And then her gaze, recrimination shifting onto her brow, turned to Benedict.
“I-I don’t know for certain, but I suspect she is in a carriage on her way to my father.” His voice was small and shameful.
“And I am expected to believe you’re not involved in this?”
“I am… Well, not in that way. I was here to prevent a scheme like this.”
“So you knew this was happening?”
Benedict shook his head and rushed to clarify. “We knew it was a possibility he would try something. We didn’t know who he would employ or what action he would take specifically. I only wanted to keep Eliza safe.”
“So you snuck in here to—”
“They didn’t sneak,” Wayland broke in, head in his hands. “I let them in.”
Eliza’s mother nodded, lips pressed together in a tight, pinched line. “Of course you did. And you chose not to inform your wife that you intended to use your daughter as bait.”
“It was the safest plan—”
The lady’s mouth opened to deliver what was certainly a crushing set down.
A weak whimper interrupted her.
Benedict’s attention shot to his sister, who groaned as the physician pressed against the wound at her temple.
Benedict stumbled to her side.
“Bell?” West asked.
“Wes— What happened?” she slurred, eyelids fluttering open.
Relief washed over Benedict. Worries he hadn’t even begun to identify floated away with Bella’s display of intelligible speech.
Her brow furrowed. She winced as the effort pained her. “’liza?”
“Eliza is missing,” Benedict rasped out.
The physician pressed again with a pad of gauze against Bella’s temple. In response, she batted at his fingers with a weary hand, her eyes slipping closed. A relieved chuckle escaped West, even as he continued to clutch her free hand.
“Drink,” she mumbled.
“You want a drink?” West asked, turning to request it from the nearest body before she shook her head weakly.
“Drugged drink,” she clarified.
“Someone drugged Eliza’s drink?” Benedict guessed.
Her nod was small but notable. “Not him.”
“Someone was helping him?”
“Ye, recognized, but no.”
Benedict glanced around searching for some sort of clue as to what she meant.
“He was familiar?” West suggested.
“Yes.”
“Alright, so he had at least one accomplice,” Ainsley summed up. “Is there anything else, Bella?”
“Bit him.”
“You bit him?” West asked, brightening slightly. “Where?”
“Balcony,” she said, brow furrowing again.
“No, I meant—not on his co— You know… Right?”
Her eyelids fluttered again to fix West with a glare before shutting once more. Apparently, disdainful looks were worth the effort it took to open her eyes.
“Hand, nitwit.”
“You bit your assailant on the hand?” the physician asked. “Bites to the hand can cause a whole host of ailments if not properly treated. I’ve seen corruption and even a locked jaw. It’s the most fascinating progression.”
“Yes, well. We’ll be certain to send him your way if we stumble across the fellow,” Ainsley said. “Is Lady Arabella going to make a full recovery?”
“That she is awake and speaking sense is a promising sign. But she has a contusion of the brain. She will need diligent monitoring to ensure she does not experience brain fever. God willing, she will make a full recovery.”
West’s head fell to Bella’s shoulder, shuddering there for a moment.
“Too stubborn to die,” Bella grumbled, earning exhausted chuckles from those around her. “Don’ worry ’bout me. Find ’liza.”
Ainsley turned his attention back to Benedict. “Do you know where they might take her? Are you certain his goal is monetary in nature?”
There was never any question in Benedict’s mind. “Blackwood. Father planned to draw out Wayland. He will want to revel in your downfall until his dying breath.”
“Then I go to Blackwood,” Wayland said.
“Wait a minute, Michael. You cannot go running off half-cocked into a trap. He’ll kill Eliza right along with you.” Ainsley pressed Wayland back with a hand on his chest.
Sophie whimpered. Benedict sympathized—he’d barely contained his own.
“Shit,” Wayland said, summing up the situation succinctly.
“We do have the benefit of surprise,” Benedict said. “He doesn’t know I’m here, that I’ve warned you. He won’t be expecting you for days.”
“Did,” Sophie interjected, her normally bright eyes dull as they caught his.
“What?”
“Did have the element of surprise. Then you caused a scene in the middle of the ball.”
Benedict’s stomach dropped through the floor. She was right. He created the opportunity—sent Eliza fleeing from the room and his company. And sacrificed the only advantage they had in the process.
Silence echoed through the hell. It began at Benedict’s feet, curling up and around each leg, his abdomen, trapping his arms to his sides, before it threatened to choke him with its full, oppressive weight.
“This is your fault. If anything happens to my sister… You’ll have to pray I leave enough of you to bury.” The threat should have been absurd, delivered from a shaken slip of a girl. But Benedict rather thought she would manage it.
“Now what are you all still doing standing here? Go call for the carriage,” she insisted. “We needed to leave an hour ago.”
“Sophie…” her mother said tentatively, nearly overshadowed by Bash’s, “Absolutely not.”
“No, Mama. I’m going,” she said, ignoring the dunner completely.
“Not to Blackwood, you’re not,” her mother snapped.
“You cannot expect me to sit by while Lizzie is in danger.”
“That is precisely what I expect you to do. I want you as far away from that place as possible. As far away from here as possible. Do we even know how many accomplices there are? Could they be planning to take Sophie as well?” Eliza’s mother turned to Benedict with the final question.
“I don’t— It’s possible.”
“Then we need to get you out of town,” she said over her protesting daughter. “Does your father have any associates in Canterbury?”
“Mama!”
“I will not hear a single argument about this, Sophie.”
Benedict racked his mind, trying to recall where his father’s gaming friends were located. Since Ambrose avoided the hells in London—unwilling to run across Wayland—most of his friends lived on the West Coast.
“It’s possible he knows people in Canterbury, but I cannot recall any.”
“But, Mama!”
“I’ll take her,” Bash interrupted, voice thick with disuse. “Unless you think I’d be of more help here,” he added as a conciliatory afterthought.
“What?” Sophie asked.
“I’ll take her to the Kent house. No harm will come to her, I swear it.”
Wayland’s gaze met his wife’s, and a silent discussion took place. It was difficult to determine who was in favor and who opposed, but in the end, Wayland offered a gruff, “Bash, pack a bag. You’ll leave at first light. Sophie, enough protests. We will not offer him another victim for the taking.”
Yet fruitless discussion continued.
The answer was obvious, and Benedict grew more anxious with every passing moment. Did they not understand that with every word, Eliza moved farther from him—trapped in a carriage with a known villain and Lord knew who else?
Every breath cost Eliza miles.