In Love with the Viscount (American Heiress Trilogy Book 3), Page 2

  Heart now blazing with terror, she struggled and tried to scream, but couldn’t make her voice work. Then she felt weak and dizzy, and lost all sensation in her body before she gave up the fight and remembered nothing more.

  Part One

  The Adventure

  Chapter 1

  Somewhere in Northern England

  Three days. It had been three long days, and now it was beginning to rain. A storm was brewing.

  Adele rose from the hay-filled tick that served as her bed and walked across the creaky plank floor to the window. All she could see in every direction were endless, rolling hills of grass and rock beneath an angry gray sky, swirling with the oncoming threat of bad weather. Hard raindrops pelted against the glass.

  It was barren and lonely, this part of the world, wherever it was. She hadn’t seen one person. Not even a lone goat or sheep. There were no trees, and the wind never stopped blowing. It pummeled the stone cottage on top of this sadly forsaken hill, rattled the windowpanes, and whistled eerily down the chimney. The door to the stable knocked and banged constantly. All day long. That—combined with the musty, damp smell of this room—was enough to drive a person to the brink of madness.

  Adele made a fist and squeezed it. She had been steered off course into fierce, treacherous waters, and she wanted her calm life back.

  If she still had a life to go to…. She wasn’t even sure Harold—or any man, for that matter—would want her after this, because she had no idea what her kidnapper had done to her. All she knew was that he had undressed her at some point, because when she woke up, she was wearing someone else’s shabby, homespun dress. Beneath it, she wore petticoats and a shift with ivory stockings, but no corset and no shoes. She had no idea what happened to her nightgown, nor did she know why her abductor had undressed her. To be less conspicuous, perhaps, in delivering her to this place of custody? She hoped that was the reason.

  Adele breathed deeply in an effort to keep a cool head. She must not panic or lose control. That would do her no good. She had tried everything to escape this room in the past few days. She had pounded on and shaken the door, shouted for help, used all her strength at the window, but her efforts had been futile. All she could do now was wait for something to happen—something she could act upon. Or for someone to find her. Surely her mother was searching, and the police were investigating.

  Just then, the front door of the cottage opened downstairs. Heavy footsteps entered the house and pounded across the hard floor. The door slammed shut and Adele’s heart quickened with fear. She stood quiet and still, listening.

  Voices. It was more than one person, which wasn’t the usual routine. There had only ever been one captor here to bring her food and water. What was happening?

  Suddenly, a commotion erupted. There was a frenzy of footsteps. A piece of furniture fell over. Or it was kicked over. Was someone here to rescue her? Harold? But Harold would never face a kidnapper on his own. Or would he?

  Her father? If only it could be him! But no, he was at home in America. He wasn’t due to arrive in England until the wedding. Perhaps it was a constable. Or a neighbor who had discovered what was happening and had come to her rescue!

  Footsteps pounded up the stairs and Adele’s breath caught in her throat. Every particle of her being froze with fear and dread. Was someone here to ravish her? Murder her? Her eyes searched for a weapon, but there was nothing. Nothing but a chair. She picked it up. It was heavy, but she would swing it if she had to.

  The lock clicked and the door swung open. Two men walked in. One held a pistol to the other’s head. The one holding the gun was tall and dark and his eyes smoldered with fury. He wore a heavy, black greatcoat that matched his black hair. Adele feared him instantly.

  Was he her captor? She had never seen the man in daylight.

  “Your name!” he barked.

  “Adele Wilson.” It didn’t occur to her to ask why he wanted to know. Or to ask anything at all. All she could do was answer the question because he expected an answer.

  In that instant, the other criminal—a short, stocky fellow with rotting teeth and thinning hair—whirled around and grabbed the pistol, lunged forward, and took hold of Adele around the waist. He pressed the cold, steel barrel to her temple. She dropped the chair as fear shot through her. She’d never faced a gun before.

  “Now the ransom!” The man’s high-pitched voice revealed his desperation.

  For the first time, Adele looked fixedly at the other man—the dark, wild one—and understood that he was her rescuer.

  He held up his hands in a gesture that invited calm, but it wasn’t easy for Adele to relax because his dark eyes and windblown black hair gave him the look of the devil, or something worse. Masculine to the core, rough around the edges, he looked as if he’d been traveling for three days straight and hadn’t taken the time to shave or bathe or even sleep, because he’d been hell-bent on reaching this house.

  Who was he? Where had he come from?

  “Harm her and you will die,” he said.

  His English accent caught her off guard, for he didn’t have the look of a polite English gentleman—at least not the type she’d ever met in New York. This man was pure, unleashed aggression.

  “Or you can take the ransom and run,” he continued. “I recommend the latter.”

  Adele felt the other man’s grip tighten about her waist. She sucked in a breath.

  “You won’t let me leave,” her kidnapper said shakily.

  Her rescuer stepped out of the way of the door. “I will let you leave when you let the lady go. But be quick about it because my patience is dwindling fast.”

  The man pressed the pistol harder against the side of Adele’s head. “I don’t believe you will let me go.”

  Paralyzing fear twisted around her heart. This man was not going to simply walk away. Why should he risk them following?

  By the dark calculating look in her rescuer’s eyes, Adele sensed he was thinking the very same thing.

  In an instant, survival instinct took over. Adele dropped to the floor and sank her teeth into the man’s thigh. While he screamed out in pain, her rescuer dashed forward and propelled the man to the wall, where they smacked into it, hard. They wrestled for a few seconds, both grunting as they tried to gain control of the pistol.

  It would have been prudent for Adele to run for safety, but some other reflex took over. She darted at the pair of them and leaped onto the shorter man’s back. He swung around and threw her to the floor, then aimed the pistol at her heart.

  “Damn you!” Her rescuer tackled the man just as he fired. The noise was deafening, the pain shocking. Adele grabbed hold of her thigh and curled forward.

  The two men rolled around on the floor until her rescuer swung the handle of the gun and struck his foe on the head. The man’s body went still, while thunder rumbled in the distance.

  Clutching her throbbing leg, Adele stared numbly at the two of them.

  Her rescuer looked up. “You’re shot.”

  “Yes,” she rasped.

  He crawled across the floor and without so much as a second’s hesitation, tossed up her skirt.

  Adele leaned back on her hands, trying not to show her sudden ridiculous sense of modesty in these circumstances. She had been shot. He—whoever he was—needed to examine the wound.

  She looked down at her leg. Her ivory stocking was stained red on the inside of her thigh. The whole area burned like nothing she’d ever experienced before. It was as if someone were branding her with a red-hot poker.

  Her rescuer wrapped his hand around her calf and moved her legs apart to get a closer look. Adele stiffened. She had to fight the urge to squeeze her legs back together again.

  “I must remove your stocking,” he said, “to get a better look. May I have your permission?”

  “Of course.”

 
Her reply came intuitively, but after she’d said it, she felt her modesty return. She swept the petty notion aside, for now was not the time to worry about decorum. She squeezed her eyes shut and focused on overcoming the pain.

  The man’s hands were swift as he rolled the stocking down her leg. He barely touched her skin. His touch was light as silk. He eased the stocking to her ankle with great care, as if he were handling something very precious. Adele held her breath the entire time.

  “This looks painful,” he said.

  It was. Her whole leg throbbed, and the pounding sensation reverberated all the way up to her shoulders.

  Adele opened her eyes and watched the man’s face. His dark brows drew together with concern as he inspected the gash. He slid a hand over her bare thigh as he touched all around the wound.

  “It’s just a graze, thank God,” he said, sitting back on his heels. “We’ll bandage it and you’ll live.” He stood up and glanced around the room.

  Looking up at him, so tall and serious, Adele had to fight the sense of embarrassment and intimidation that made her almost afraid to speak. She had never let a man who was not a doctor touch her so intimately before.

  “May I ask who you are? And how you found me?”

  He considered her question for a moment. “I apologize, Miss Wilson. I should have identified myself.”

  Suddenly, he was transformed into a proper gentleman. At least his words were gentlemanly. His appearance was quite another matter altogether. He was unshaven, wild, and rough. His black wool coat looked shabby, dusty, and weathered, as if he’d rolled down a hill in it. There was intensity in everything about him, and it left her breathless and panicky.

  Adele was nowhere near ready to relax. Especially when she found herself locked in his dark, gleaming stare.

  “I am Damien Renshaw,” he explained. “Viscount Alcester. Harold’s cousin.”

  Harold’s cousin? Yes…she knew of him. Her sister Sophia had met him in London and described him as the polar opposite of Harold. Lord Alcester had a terrible reputation with women, he was irresponsible with money and his mother had been a scandalous adulteress. He was following in his mother’s footsteps, it was said, and led a careless life with a string of mistresses of questionable repute. The current one was a famous and beautiful actress.

  “The ship’s master at arms informed Harold of your kidnapping,” Lord Alcester said, “as there was a ransom note left in your stateroom. Harold informed me of the situation, and it was deemed that I should take care of things.”

  Deemed? By whom?

  “I assured Harold that I would bring you home quickly and quietly,” Lord Alcester added. “We will leave here in the morning, after the storm has passed, and travel under assumed names to meet your mother and sister in two days’ time, in a village between here and Osulton Manor. It has all been arranged. She will then escort you the rest of the way, as if nothing ever happened.”

  Adele was in shock. She was to travel alone with this man?

  Still fighting the excruciating pain in her thigh, she struggled to collect her thoughts and understand the situation. “No one knows about my kidnapping?”

  “Besides the ship’s officer, no one except your family and Harold’s mother and sister. I suggested he not even tell them, but by the time he contacted me, he had already informed them. They have since been advised to keep quiet.”

  “To avoid a scandal,” Adele said.

  “Yes.”

  She glanced uneasily at her rescuer—a rake of the highest order—then at the unconscious man lying on the floor beside them, who had done God-only-knew-what to her while she was unconscious.

  Adele felt sick and dizzy.

  Lord Alcester followed her gaze, then crossed the creaky floor to where her kidnapper lay. Kneeling down, he pressed two fingers to the man’s neck. The wind from the storm outside moaned like a beast inside the stone chimney and the draft lifted the clinging cobwebs around the hearth.

  When at last Lord Alcester spoke, his voice was low and subdued. “He’s dead.”

  Adele swallowed hard as Alcester pinched the bridge of his nose. All the color left his face and he looked as if a severe headache had just taken root inside his skull.

  “Are you all right?” she asked.

  As soon as he met her gaze, his color returned. “Yes.”

  He stood up and she found herself trying to read his thoughts but couldn’t.

  “I’ll need to wrap your wound.” He was gone before she had a chance to utter a single word.

  A moment later he returned with a cloth in a bowl of water and a bottle of whiskey. He shrugged out of his long black coat.

  “This house was abandoned long ago. There’s nothing downstairs to use for bandages. My shirt will have to suffice.”

  Adele sat forward to protest—partly because she couldn’t fathom the idea of this man walking around shirtless—but the movement caused a stabbing sensation in her leg.

  “Sit still,” he said. “You’ll worsen the bleeding.” His voice seemed strained and impatient. Was he annoyed with her?

  “I’m sorry,” she replied apprehensively. “I wanted to tell you that we could use my petticoat for bandages. It has a bullet hole in it anyway.”

  He considered that for a moment and nodded.

  Adele swallowed. “If you would be so kind as to avert your eyes while I remove it?”

  “Do you need assistance?”

  Assistance! Her pulse drummed at the suggestion. Based on his reputation, he was probably a master at removing women’s underclothes.

  Adele was astonished by the sudden depraved direction of her thoughts. It was exhaustion, surely. She’d hardly slept in three days. Think clearly, Adele. He is merely offering to help in order to spare you pain.

  “I can manage, thank you,” she replied.

  He left the room but remained just outside the door while she struggled to reach up under her skirts and free the ribbons at her waist. With more than a little discomfort, she slid the garment down over her hips.

  “You can come in now.” She held the petticoat out to him.

  He took it and began to tear it into strips. “If you’re in pain, you’re welcome to take a few swigs of that whiskey.”

  She eyed it uneasily. “No, thank you.” She wanted to keep her wits about her in the coming hours, for she didn’t know what those hours might bring.

  While Lord Alcester stood tall above her, ripping and tearing at the petticoat, he glanced around the bare room with assessing eyes. “You spent three days in here?”

  “Yes.”

  He met her gaze. “After I clean and bandage your wound, we’ll move you downstairs where you’ll be more comfortable.”

  “I’m perfectly fine here,” she replied.

  The sound of fabric ripping filled a long, drawn-out silence between them. Adele felt a great need to add conversation to that silence, for she needed to distract herself from her anxiety.

  “I don’t even know what it looks like downstairs,” she said. “I was unconscious when I arrived, and sick when I woke up.”

  Lord Alcester stopped ripping. “Sick and unconscious?”

  “Yes. I was drugged on the ship. He kept me drugged until I woke up here.”

  “Were you hurt in any way?”

  She understood his meaning. He was wondering if she had been violated. She was wondering that herself, with more than a little concern. She knew nothing about such things regarding the female body.

  “I’m not certain,” she replied. “I didn’t feel....” How could she put it? “I felt no pain anywhere. Except for a headache. But I suppose a lady couldn’t be sure about a certain kind of pain. Or could she?”

  What kind of question was that?

  Alcester’s expression revealed no hint of awkwardness. He knelt beside her, dipped the c
loth into the bowl of water and gently squeezed it out. His eyes lifted to meet hers and he responded with composure.

  “It depends,” he said softly. “Pardon my candor, Miss Wilson, but did you notice any bleeding when you woke up?”

  “No, but couldn’t he have...?” Lord, this was awkward. “He disposed of my nightgown. Couldn’t he have…tidied up afterwards?”

  She’d never had a conversation quite like this before.

  “I suppose, if he were an exceedingly neat person.” Lord Alcester smiled gently at her, and Adele knew he was trying to minimize her concerns.

  Continuing to rinse the cloth in the bowl, he said, “My suspicion is that you are probably fine. I believe you would know if something was wrong. But if you wish to be certain, a physician can examine you.”

  “He’d be able to tell?”

  “Yes.”

  “Would he be able to tell if I was—” She stopped. She couldn’t go on.

  “If you were what, Miss Wilson?”

  “If I was with child?” The idea was unsettling, to say the least, but she had to ask.

  “I believe it would be too soon to ascertain the answer to that particular question, but let us deal with one problem at a time, shall we?”

  Grateful that Lord Alcester was direct and honest with her about this awkward topic, she considered what she knew about the English aristocratic code. A woman was expected to be a virgin upon marriage to ensure any child born of the union was the true heir to the man’s title. Perhaps Harold was worried. Perhaps Lord Alcester was worried, too. He was a member of that family, after all.

  “I would like to be examined officially,” she said, remembering that she was to become an aristocratic lady herself. It would be her code, too. Best to follow the rules.

  Lord Alcester held the cloth above her wound and squeezed water over it. “The Osulton family physician is a very good man,” he said. “I would trust him with my life, and you can rest assured that he will be discreet. I hope you are not unduly worried?” Alcester’s eyes met hers again. He often seemed to be assessing things.