Page 65 of Fit for a Duke
‘Could be. No one would suspect a humble groom.’ Godfrey frowned. ‘But why?’
‘That is what I have been asking myself. Mother said he waited for her when she visited Brennan, but I don’t suppose she looked out of the window every five minutes to make sure he was still there.’
‘But Miss Benton was at the luncheon, right up until the storm broke. I saw her myself. Barnes would have been pushed to abduct her and get back to Midhurst in time to collect her grace, who maintains she left when the storm broke.’
‘She would not have left until it cleared. No one with any sense would deliberately set out in such weather, and I suspect she would have welcomed the excuse to linger with Brennan. By the time the weather had improved, Barnes would have been back and Mother none the wiser.’
‘Where would Miss Benton have been kept?’
‘In the carriage’s trunk,’ Ezra said scowling. ‘Tied and gagged to keep her quiet, one assumes. However, she would not have been heard above the noise of the horses’ hooves even if she did manage to kick at the carriage’s bodywork and cause a ruckus. It was risky but possible for a man with enough determination.’
Godfrey nodded. ‘What a scoundrel, picking on a harmless female in order to get to you. The worst sort of despicable coward.’
‘Quite, but we are now one step ahead of him. I’m confident that he won’t have killed her—at least not yet. He might be waiting to do so in front of me, but one thing’s for sure, she will not be permitted to live once Barnes has confronted me, so we shall just have to find her before I have the pleasure of kicking him like the dog that he is. Except I would never kick a dog,’ he added, reaching down to scratch Merlin’s ears. ‘They at least understand the meaning of loyalty. Anyway, whereabouts on this estate would the blaggard take her in order to be assured of privacy?’
‘There are too many grooms for them all to fit into the accommodation above the stables, so the senior retainers have been given rooms in the vacant cottages a half mile from the stables.’
A grim smile spread across Ezra’s face. ‘Well then, this mutt had best earn his keep.’ Ezra whistled to Merlin, who roused himself, wagged his tail and sniffed at the reticule that Ezra had kept hold of. ‘Go find her, boy!’
‘We will all find her, your grace,’ Godfrey said in a firm tone as he pulled a pair of duelling pistols from a case and ensured that they were both primed. ‘You can’t do this alone. Quite apart from anything else, I’m too old to find another position.’
Clio opened her eyes, feeling groggy and disorientated. Her hands and feet were tied, her mouth tightly gagged, and she felt cold, desperately cold. She struggled to recall how she had finished up in this farrago. It came back to her in fragments. Being accosted, fighting, trying to escape, the storm, getting soaked to the skin, being hit with considerable force. Her head thumped at the recollection. She laid back on a bed of some sort and waited for the dizziness to pass.
There had been a carriage ride, she remembered, but she must have been bundled into the trunk while still unconscious. She had been terrified when she regained consciousness in the total darkness of such a confined space and had passed out once again.
Now, here she found herself in this damp hovel; little more than a shed, as far as she could make out in the dim interior. She knew who her captor must be, much good that knowledge was likely to do her in her current predicament. She had recognised his voice as that of the duchess’s driver, Barnes.
The duchess!
Was she responsible for Clio’s abduction? Had she pretended to befriend her in order to win her trust, only to have her wiped out in the cruellest of fashions in order to prevent Ezra from making what she would undoubtedly look upon as amésalliance? Clio shook her head, her squeal of pain that the gesture occasioned covered by her gag which allowed for almost no sound to escape from her mouth. If the duchess wanted her out of the way, there were surely much easier ways to go about it. She only had to make her disapproval of Ezra’s supposed interest in her apparent and anyone who mattered would have cut her out of a sense of loyalty, or more likely because they would prefer their own charges to make an impression upon the handsome duke.
But Ezra took little notice of his mother’s wishes and the lady knew it, so why go to such lengths—and worse, why involve someone else in her machinations, leaving herself open to blackmail and betrayal?
It made absolutely no sense.
Barnes must be working alone, there was no other explanation. He was systematically killing off Ezra’s family for reasons that had yet to become apparent, and was using her to get to Ezra. Which meant that neither of them would be permitted to live.
Despite her debilitated state, Clio felt fresh determination to get the better of her vile captor. And to do that she would need to escape. The storm had been both a hinderance and a help, Clio reasoned. She had seen the duchess leave the luncheon in her carriage not long after their arrival, which meant she had been right to assume she would call upon Lord Brennan and enjoy the entire afternoon in his company. She would not have kept check on her faithful coachman, who had returned with the intention of…
Of what precisely? Had she always been his target, bait to tempt Ezra into a trap, or had he improvised when the storm hit? The man was brazen and unscrupulous, but Clio would best him or die trying. She shuddered when she considered that the latter outcome was more likely since he currently held all the aces.
But he was not in love, as far as she knew, and did not have a compelling reason to ensure that the object of his affections remained alive.
Resolved to protect Ezra, Clio swung her bound legs until she could manoeuvre her feet onto the floor and then used her elbow to push herself into a sitting position. The room swam in front of her eyes as a result of that small effort, which was not encouraging. She took stock of her surroundings and discovered that she was in a small shed of some sort. The bed she had been resting on took up at least half of the limited space. There was one window high up in the wall, against which rain pattered, and a door that was almost certainly locked from the outside. Her hands were bound behind her but Clio lifted her legs and bottom and managed to bring them to the front.
From there she awkwardly fumbled with the knots that secured the rope around her ankles, which had been rubbed red raw by the rough hemp. It seemed to take an age and she kept having to rest and allow time for her muddled head to clear, but eventually she managed to free one leg, then the other. Euphoric at this small act of defiance, she stamped her feet to restore feeling to them and wondered what to do next. If Barnes came back, she was too weak to run away and knew that if she tried it he would likely kill her.
The gag tasted rancid and made it hard for her to breathe. She lowered her head into her lap and painfully pulled thick locks of hair free from the back of the gag where it had been tied around her head, her bound hands making the task awkward. She loosened it enough to flex her jaw until it slipped away from her mouth, enabling her to gulp down greedy breaths until the pain in her chest eased.
Then she heard footsteps approaching and her heart quailed.
‘So close,’ she muttered, desperately looking for a hiding place. But the room was too small; there was nowhere for her to conceal herself.
She heard voices. Not two people, please! The door flew inwards with a loud crash. Clio grabbed the first thing that came to hand, a china chamber pot, and raised it awkwardly above her head in her bound hands. If she had to die, she was damned if she would do so passively.
‘Argh!’ she screamed as the first body tumbled through the door. But before she could crack him over the head with her weapon, a steady hand took it from her. Clio, deflated and defeated, sagged against the wall. Then a cold nose pushed its way beneath her hand and a familiar aroma assailed her nostrils.
‘Ezra?’ She stared up at him in disbelief for a moment, thinking her addled mind must still be playing tricks on her, then fell against his chest, at which point his strong arms closed around her.
