“Wonderful,” he muttered as he watched her stride fearlessly along. Once he saw her safely away . . . he was going to walk home. The night air might clear his head of the distraction, of the unsettled, restless feeling dealing with her always left him prey to—a sense of loneliness, and emptiness, and time slipping away.
Of life—his life—being somehow worthless, or rather, worth less—less than it should.
He didn’t, truly didn’t, want to think about her. There were ladies among the crowd inside who would fight to provide him with diversion, but he’d long ago learned the value of their smiles, their pleasured sighs.
Fleeting, meaningless, illusory connections.
Increasingly they left him feeling cheapened, used. Unfulfilled.
He watched the moonlight glint in Heather’s wheat gold hair. He’d first met her four years ago at the wedding of his biological stepmother, Caroline, to Michael Anstruther-Wetherby, brother of Honoria, Duchess of St. Ives and queen of the Cynster clan. Honoria’s husband, Devil Cynster, was Heather’s oldest cousin.
Although Breckenridge had first met Heather on that day in sunny Hampshire, he’d known the male Cynster cousins for more than a decade—they moved in the same circles, and before the cousins had married, had shared much the same interests.
A carriage to the left of the house pulled out of the line. Breckenridge glanced that way, saw the coachman set his horses plodding, then looked right again to where Heather was still gliding along.
“Twenty yards, my arse.” More like fifty. “Where the damn hell is her carriage?”
The words had barely left his lips when the other carriage, a traveling coach, drew level with Heather.
And slowed.
The coach’s door swung open and a man shot out. Another leapt down from beside the driver.
Before Breckenridge could haul in a breath, the pair had slipped past the carriages lining the pavement and grabbed Heather. Smothering her shocked cry, they hoisted her up, carried her to the coach, and bundled her inside.
“Hey!” Breckenridge’s shout was echoed by a coachman a few carriages down the line.
But the men were already tumbling through the coach door as the coachman whipped up his horses.
Breckenridge was down the steps and racing along the pavement before he’d even formed the thought of giving chase.
The traveling coach disappeared around the curve of the crescent that was Wadham Gardens. From the rattle of the wheels, the coach turned right up the first connecting street.
Reaching the carriage where the coachman who’d yelled now sat stunned and staring after the kidnappers’ coach, Breckenridge climbed up and grabbed the reins. “Let me. I’m a friend of the family. We’re going after her.”
The coachman swallowed his surprise and released the reins.
Breckenridge swiftly tacked and, cursing at the tightness, swung the town carriage into the road. The instant the conveyance was free of the line, he whipped up the horses. “Keep your eyes peeled—I have no idea which way they might go.”
“Aye, sir—my lord. . . .”
Briefly meeting the coachman’s sideways glance, Breckenridge stated, “Viscount Breckenridge. I know Devil and Gabriel.” And the others, but those names would do.
The coachman nodded. “Aye, my lord.” Turning, he called back to the groom, hanging on behind. “James—you watch left and I’ll watch right. If we miss seeing them, you’ll need to hop down at the next corner and look.”
Breckenridge concentrated on the horses. Luckily there was little other traffic. He made the turn into the same street the coach had taken. All three of them immediately looked ahead. Light from numerous street flares garishly illuminated an odd-angled four-way intersection ahead.
“There!” came a call from behind. “That’s them—turning left into the bigger street.”
Breckenridge gave thanks for James’s sharp eyes; he’d only just glimpsed the back of the coach himself. Urging the horses on as quickly as he dared, they reached the intersection and made the turn—just in time to see the coach turn right at the next intersection.
“Oh,” the coachman said.
Breckenridge flicked a glance his way. “What?”
“That’s Avenue Road they’ve just turned into—it merges into Finchley Road just a bit along.”
And Finchley Road became the Great North Road, and the coach was heading north. “They might be heading for some house out that way.” Breckenridge told himself that could be the case . . . but they were following a traveling coach, not a town carriage.
He steered the pair of blacks he was managing into Avenue Road. Both the coachman and James peered ahead.
“Yep—that’s them,” the coachman said. “But they’re a way ahead of us now.”
Given the blacks were Cynster horses, Breckenridge wasn’t worried about how far ahead their quarry got. “Just as long as we keep them in sight.”
As it transpired, that was easier said than done. It wasn’t the blacks that slowed them but the plodding beasts drawing the seven conveyances that got between them and the traveling coach. While rolling along the narrow carriageways through the outskirts of the sprawling metropolis, past Cricklewood through to Golders Green there was nowhere Breckenridge could pass. They managed to keep the coach in sight long enough to feel certain that it was, indeed, heading up the Great North Road, but by the time they reached High Barnet with the long stretch of Barnet Hill beyond, they’d lost sight of it.
Inwardly cursing, Breckenridge turned into the yard of the Barnet Arms, a major posting inn and one at which he was well known. Halting the carriage, to the coachman and James he said, “Ask up and down the road—see if you can find anyone who saw the coach, if they changed horses, any information.”
Both men scrambled down and went. Breckenridge turned to the ostlers who’d come hurrying to hold the horses’ heads. “I need a curricle and your best pair—where’s your master?”
Half an hour later, he parted from the coachman and James. They’d found several people who’d seen the coach, which had stopped briefly to change horses at the Scepter and Crown. The coach had continued north along the highway.
“Here.” Breckenridge handed the coachman a note he’d scribbled while he’d waited for them to return. “Give that to Lord Martin as soon as you can.” Lord Martin Cynster was Heather’s father. “If for any reason he’s not available, get it to one of Miss Cynster’s brothers, or, failing them, to St. Ives.” Breckenridge knew Devil was in town, but he was less certain of the others’ whereabouts.
“Aye, my lord.” The coachman took the note, raised a hand in salute. “And good luck to you, sir. Hope you catch up with those blackguards right quick.”
Breckenridge hoped so, too. He watched the pair climb up to the box seat of the town carriage. The instant they’d turned it out of the yard, heading back to London, he strode to the sleek phaeton waiting to one side. A pair of grays the innkeeper rarely allowed to be hired by anyone danced between the shafts. Two nervous ostlers held the horses’ heads.
“Right frisky, they are, m’lord.” The head ostler followed him over. “They haven’t been out in an age. Keep telling the boss he’d be better off letting them out for a run now and then.”
“I’ll manage.” Breckenridge swung up to the phaeton’s high box seat. He needed speed, and the combination of phaeton and high-bred horses promised that. Taking the reins, he tensioned them, tested the horses’ mouths, then nodded to the ostlers. “Let ’em go.”
The ostlers did, leaping back as the horses surged.
Breckenridge reined the pair in only enough to take the turn out of the yard, then he let them have their heads up Barnet Hill and on along the Great North Road.
For a while, managing the horses absorbed all of his attention, but once they’d settled and were bowling along, the steady rhythm of their
hooves eating the miles with little other traffic to get in their way, he could spare sufficient attention to think.
To give thanks the night wasn’t freezing given he was still in his evening clothes.
To grapple with the realization that if he hadn’t insisted Heather leave Lady Herford’s villa—hadn’t allowed her to walk the twenty-cum-fifty yards along the pavement to her carriage alone—she wouldn’t have been in the hands of unknown assailants, wouldn’t have been subjected to whatever indignities they’d already visited on her.
They would pay, of course; he’d ensure that. But that in no way mitigated the sense of horror and overwhelming guilt that it was due to his actions that she was now in danger.
He’d intended to protect her. Instead . . .
Jaw clenched, teeth gritted, he kept his eyes on the road and raced on.
Her captors left Heather trussed and gagged until they were some way out of Barnet and bowling along an empty stretch of road.
The instant they’d bundled her into the carriage outside Lady Herford’s, they’d wrapped a strip of linen about her face, efficiently gagging her, and had swiftly tied her hands, then her feet when she’d tried to kick them.
There hadn’t been just the two men. A woman, large and strong, had been waiting in the carriage with the gag held ready. Once Heather had been silenced and her limbs secured, they’d sat her on the forward-facing seat, next to the woman, and both men had sat opposite. One had told her to calm herself and just wait quietly, and all would soon be revealed.
That promise, and the fact they’d made no attempt whatever to harm her—indeed, they hadn’t even threatened her in any way—had given her pause. Enough to realize that she had no real choice, so she might as well do as they’d asked.
That hadn’t stopped her thinking. Or imagining. But neither activity had got her very far. She knew so little. Nothing beyond that there were three of them plus the coachman on the box, and they were taking her north out of London. She had glimpsed enough landmarks along the way, recognized enough to be sure they were heading north.
They were on the Great North Road when the thinner of the men, at the taller end of medium height and decidedly wiry, with curly, mousy-brown hair and a sharp-featured face, said, “If you’re willing to be reasonable and behave, we’ll untie you. We’re on a long, lonely stretch and won’t be slowing for a good long while—no one about to hear you if you yell and scream, and if you manage to get out of the door, at this speed you’ll likely break a leg, if not your neck. So if you’re willing to be quiet and just sit and listen, we can untie you and explain what’s going on—how things are and how things are going to be. So.” He raised his brows at her. “What’s it to be?”
In the dimness within the carriage, she couldn’t truly see his eyes, but she looked in that direction and nodded.
“Smart girl,” the wiry one said. The comment held no sarcasm. “He did say you’d be clever.”
He, who? She watched as the wiry man, seated opposite, bent, reaching for her feet, then stopped.
He flicked a glance at the woman beside her. “Best you untie her feet.” Straightening, he reached for the cords binding Heather’s wrists.
Puzzled, she glanced at the woman, who huffed, then lumbered off the seat and crouched between the benches. She reached beneath Heather’s silk skirts to the linen strip wound about her ankles.
While they worked to loosen the bonds, Heather realized they’d been mindful of her modesty—as mindful as she’d allowed them to be. She hadn’t imagined kidnappers would be so . . . gentlemanly.
Once her feet were free, the woman settled back beside her. “The gag, too?” the woman asked the wiry one.
His gaze on Heather, he nodded. “We’re to allow her as much comfort as possible, so unless she’s sillier than we all think, no need to keep it on.”
Heather turned her head, allowing the woman access to the knot at the back of her skull. When the linen fell from her face, she moistened her lips, worked her jaw, and felt a great deal better.
She looked at the wiry one. “Who are you, and who sent you?”
He grinned—a flash of white teeth in the shadows. “Ah, now, you’re getting a trifle ahead of us there, miss. I think perhaps I’d better first explain that we were sent to fetch one of the Cynster sisters—you or one of the others. We’ve been watching you all for more than a week, but none of you go anywhere without others about. Not until tonight, that is.” Wiry—Heather decided to call him that—half bowed. “We’re obliged to you for that. We’d started thinking we’d have to arrange something drastic to get one of you on your lonesome. Howsoever, now we have you, it’s best you realize that no attempt to escape us is likely to succeed—no one will help you, because we’ve a story that accounts for us taking you, and whatever you do or say, whatever protests you make, are only going to make our story seem more real and truthful to others.”
“What’s this story?” she asked. Wiry had an air of quiet competence about him; he didn’t seem the sort to make foolish declarations.
Just her luck to be abducted by kidnappers who could think.
As if to confirm her suspicion, Wiry smiled. His satisfaction resonated in his voice. “It’s a simple enough tale. We’ve been sent by your guardian to fetch you back to him. Ran away to wicked London, you did, escaped from his strict household. So he’s sent us to find you and take you back, and”—pausing dramatically, Wiry drew a folded sheet of paper from his pocket and waved it—“this is his authority for us to do whatever we need to do to hold you and transport you back to him.”
She frowned at the paper. “My father’s my guardian and he gave you no such permission.”
“Ah, but you’re not Miss Cynster, are you? You’re Miss Wallace, and your guardian, Sir Humphrey, is most anxious to get you back home where you belong.”
“Where’s my home?” She hoped he might say where they were taking her, but Wiry only smiled.
“You know it well, of course—no need for us to tell you.”
She fell silent, mentally reviewing their plan, seeking any possible way she might scupper it, but she carried nothing that would prove who she was. Her only hope—one she wasn’t about to voice—was a chance meeting with someone who knew her by sight. Unfortunately, the likelihood of that happening in the country in late March, with the Season just starting in London, wasn’t all that high.
She glanced at the woman beside her.
As if sensing the question in her mind, Wiry explained, “Martha here”—with his head he indicated the woman—“is, of course, the maid Sir Humphrey sent to lend you countenance on the journey.” Wiry’s lips curved. “Martha will remain with you at all times. Especially all the times it would be inappropriate for one of us—me or Cobbins here—to be by your side.”
Deciding that at the moment it behooved her to, as Wiry had put it, behave, Heather inclined her head, first to the woman alongside her, “ Martha,” then to the barrel-chested man, shorter than Wiry but of heavier build, who’d remained quietly seated in the far corner of the coach. “Cobbins.”
She turned her gaze on Wiry. “And you are?”
He smiled. “You may call me Fletcher, Miss Wallace.”
Heather thought of a few other epithets she might call him, but she merely inclined her head. Settling on the seat, she leaned her head back against the squabs and ventured nothing more. She sensed that Fletcher expected her to protest, perhaps beg for mercy, or try to subvert him and the others from their goal, but she saw no point in lowering herself to that.
No point at all.
The more she thought of all Fletcher had let fall, the more she felt certain of that. This had to be the strangest abduction she’d ever heard of . . . well, she hadn’t heard the details of any abduction attempts, but it seemed distinctly odd that they were treating her so considerately, so . . . sensibly. So terribly calmly and co
nfidently.
They—Fletcher, Cobbins, and Martha—did not fit the prescription for run-of-the-mill kidnappers. They might not be genteel, yet they were not of the lowest orders, either. They were neatly and unobtrusively dressed. Although rather large and solid, Martha could indeed pass for a lady’s maid, certainly a lady who lived mostly in the country. Cobbins appeared reserved, and in his drab clothes seemed to fade into the background, but he, too, did not seem the sort one would find in a seedy hedge-tavern. Both he and Fletcher looked precisely like the sort of men they were claiming to be—the sort some wealthy country squire might hire to act as his agents.
Whoever had sent them to London had prepared them well. Their plan was both simple and, in the situation in which she now found herself, well nigh impossible to counter. That didn’t mean she wouldn’t escape—she would somehow—but before she did, she needed to learn more about the most puzzling aspect of this strange kidnapping.
They’d been sent to abduct not her specifically but one of the Cynster sisters—her, Eliza, or Angelica, and possibly her cousins, Henrietta and Mary, also “Cynster sisters.”
She couldn’t imagine what reason anyone would have for doing so other than a simple demand for ransom, but if that were the case, why take her out of London? Why take her off to some other man? She thought back, reassessed, but couldn’t shake the impression that all Fletcher had revealed was true—the trio were fetching her for some employer.
Hiring three people of the trio’s ilk, and a coachman and coach-and-four, and they’d been watching her and the others for over a week . . . none of that sounded like a straightforward, opportunistic kidnapping for ransom.
But if not ransom, what was behind this? And if she escaped without learning the answer, would she and the others still remain under threat?
They’d had fresh horses put to in High Barnet, and so rattled on past Welham Green and through Welwyn.