Page 74 of Love Unraveled
Sophia stared at him, genuinely perplexed. Why would a man in such a position resort to such treachery? One minute normal, the next unhinged. And she knew which he would be when he discovered there was no buried treasure. She had only bought some time.Mon Dieu, how was she going to save Gaston?
Chapter Fifty-Three
Where one door shuts, another opens.
—Miguel de Cervantes, The History of Don Quixote
Gaston struggled tosit, but trussed like a sheep for shearing, he could not manage it. Pain split his head, and the dripping blood was congealing, making his eyelashes stick together. He kept blinking them so they would not seal shut. He had to get free. Had to go to Sophie. Her plan was foolhardy. While he’d been unable to see the scrap of paper, he was certain it was a copy of the map he’d drawn for Liverpool. There would be no buried money. The Duke of Salinger would truly lose what was left of his mind when he found out. Gaston needed to get there before he did.
The other man—Lord Drake, Sophie had called him—came into the room and paced back and forth by the front window. Finally, he walked over to the chair, grabbed the duke’s glass, and downed the brandy only to return to his pacing. Like a cat on edge. The man was nervous. That could be a good thing or a bad thing.
He stopped suddenly and swore an unintelligible string of epithets. A few minutes later, the knocker sounded at the front door. Gaston debated shouting but decided his voice would not carry from where he lay. But if Drake would go answer the door, there might be a chance.
“You might want to check on that. I assume it’s our curricle arrived.”
“They will leave,” Drake said indifferently, stepping away from the window but jumping as the knocker banged loudly in the empty foyer. It was obvious he was not a man used to doing such things. Gaston pondered how the duke had managed to get him on board for this nasty little escapade.
Disappointingly, Drake was right. After a third attempt, the hallway fell silent. Gaston knew the postilions had left when Drake sighed heavily. Drake walked to the table and poured a large brandy before returning and sitting in a chair where he could watch Gaston.
“What will you do when the staff return? Truss them all up? Or do you think they’ll simply go about their business and ignore the fact their mistress is gone, her husband is bound and battered, and their butler is lying unconscious in the library?” Gaston could tell the practicalities of remaining behind had only just registered with Drake. “Whatever he has on you, it’s not worth this.”
“Shut up,” Drake said and took a swig of the brandy.
“If you kill me, you will swing. If you free me, I guarantee I will hunt you and ensure you stand before a magistrate. And if so much as a hair on Sophie’s head is harmed, I will skip the magistrate and make a noose myself for you. So you see, whichever way this plays out, you lose, lose, or lose. The duke has put you in this tenuous situation.”
“I said, shut up,” he barked, finishing the brandy in one long gulp and coughing as he wiped at his lips. He got up, paced again, returned for his glass, and glared at Gaston. “So I might as well kill you and be done with it.”
“You haven’t got the courage.” Gaston wasn’t sure he was helping things any, but he couldn’t lie passively while his mind reeled with thoughts of what was happening with Sophie.
“Bloody foreigner,” Drake said, stomping over to the decanter.
It was not Drake’s continuing rant that held Gaston’s attention. A shadow had shifted in the foyer; he was sure of it. He glanced at the window. It was impossible for a change of light there to affect the hallway. Again. Barely perceptible but definitely there. His heart ramped up. Someone was in the house. Whichever servant had returned, he hoped they had the good sense to go get help. Hope blossomed in his chest. He needed to stop poking Drake and instead get him talking, keep him preoccupied. He wiggled again, trying to sit, but to no avail. All it did was make his head ache more.
Drake returned and threw himself into the chair again. He raised the gun, pointed it at Gaston, and made the sound of a shot firing. “That’s how easy it would be.”
Gaston might have given the threat more credence if the man had put his finger on the trigger, and if his hand didn’t have a slight tremble. Drake was no killer. Although, now there was hope of someone alerting authorities, he had no desire to test that theory.
“What does he have over you?”
“Over me?” Drake laughed bitterly. “It is not the duke I worry about. No. He is not my problem. In fact, we are bedmates in our troubles.”
“I do not comprehend your meaning?”
“We have both lost everything.”
“So? You start again. It is not unusual.”
Drake shook his head. “Not so easy when you still have debt outstanding to men who are not forgiving. When you’ve had to do things you would never have done…things that would see you hang.”
It was a weighted confession, and Gaston nodded solemnly, trying to keep his eyes from roving to where a man was walking quietly into the room.
“What things?” Gaston asked.
“Yes, do tell, what things?” asked Laurence, the man from Sophie’s lake house, as he pressed a gun against the back of Lord Drake’s head. And, unlike Drake, his steady finger was on the trigger of a cocked gun. This man knew how to kill.
Chapter Fifty-Four
Though this be madness, yet there is method in ’t.
