He’d have liked to announce,This is an outrage!, but they already knew that. ‘What is this? Who are you people? What reason do you have for this abduction?’ No answers. Everyone was still gaping. Cassian put his hands on his hips and Lord Hugo into his voice. ‘Well? I demand an explanation!’
The second bravo swallowed. ‘Jim. That ain’t Miss Beaumont.’
‘I fucking know that,’ said the leader in a voice that promised retribution. ‘I can see.’
‘Well, why did you—’
‘NowI can see.’
‘Miss Beaumont?’ Cassian repeated. It had taken him a moment to regain his breath. ‘Miss— You mistook me for awoman?’ Outrage warred with a wholly inappropriate desire to laugh. ‘Great God, are you mad?’
‘He’s in breeches,’ the woman observed, in a general, abstract sort of way. ‘Not skirts.’
The leader turned on her savagely. ‘They said she’d be dressed as a bloke, and with that fucker Charnage!’
Cassian took that in with some resentment. Granted he was on the shorter and slimmer side, and Miss Beaumont was a strapping young lady, and it had been dark, but even so. And, he now realised, that put the interaction in the coach in a new light.Serve you right if we treated you like your sort deserves. Keep your mouth shut now or I’ll take my belt to you.And the hand that had dragged, he’d thought deliberately, over his chest, as padded by coat and blanket . . .
These were the men Sir James Vier had sent after a young woman, and righteous fury exploded through him.
‘If you cannot use your eyes, the more fool you,’ he said crisply. ‘You have made a very bad mistake, and I will ensure Sir James hears of this. You will return me to Stratford right away, if you wish me to consider treating this as an error rather than a criminal act. At once!’
The guilty looks that shot between the Second Bravo and the woman made him think, for a second, that he’d have his way. Then the First Bravo shook his head. ‘No.’
‘Jim . . .’
‘No, I say. He was with Charnage. Charnage took out a marriage licence. He knows where she is.’
‘I know no such thing, and nor does Mr Charnage. Miss Beaumont left Stratford two days hence. You have lost hertrail, and a good thing too, if this is how you treat a lady. Now get me back to Stratford!’
The First Bravo’s jaw was grinding. ‘We’ll get Charnage. They’re at the White Swan. We’ll go in the morning and make him tell us where she is. And we’ll keep this one till then. Can’t have you warn him.’
‘Take me back immediately!’ Cassian said furiously. ‘How dare you detain me like this! This is kidnapping and I will have the law on you!’
‘Ah, shut up,’ the First Bravo said, and dragged His Grace the Duke of Severn into a dirty, dark back room by the arm. He was shoved in, so that he stumbled and almost fell.
‘Keep your gob shut,’ the First Bravo advised him. ‘Nobody round here to hear you, and you’ll just rile me. Be a good boy and we’ll bring you something to eat and a pot to piss in.’ The door banged shut behind him, leaving Cassian in the dark.
He turned around, angry, astonished, and undeniably afraid. Vier’s brutes were lawless to an alarming degree, and he had probably been foolish to make threats he was in no position to carry out. Once he was restored to his position he would bring the full might of his dukedom down on Sir James, he promised himself, but in the meantime . . .
In the meantime, he was locked in a room, and Daizell was probably back at the White Swan, where these bullies would arrive the next morning, determined to beat answers out of him that he wouldn’t be able to give. Daizell’s insistence that Miss Beaumont didn’t say where she was going now seemed at once a wise precaution and a ghastly mistake.
Where was he? Not in a town: it was entirely quiet out here. They’d turned left off the Warwick Road, and from the distance, Cassian decided they were somewhere in thedepths of Warwickshire, perhaps in the region of Hampton Lucy. The irony was biting: he knew the Lucy family of Charlecote Park, which was probably within a couple of miles of here, and had even stayed in their grand Elizabethan home. If he could get out, he could seek assistance there.
That would, of course, mean turning up with a dirty face and dusty hair, saying he’d been kidnapped, and demanding their assistance to come to Daizell Charnage’s rescue. He’d deal with that when he had to. For now, he could not simply stand here feeling outraged. He needed to think of something to do.
He hadn’t got anywhere on that a few minutes later, when the door opened again. The First Bravo entered. The woman followed with a chamber pot and a blanket, then went out again and returned with a plate and a mug.
‘Food and drink,’ the First Bravo said. ‘Keep behaving and you can go tomorrow morning, no harm done.’
‘Will you at least leave the candle?’ Cassian said. ‘There are rats in here!’
‘No such thing,’ the woman said with offence. ‘Mice, only mice. We can spare it, Jim.’
‘For a fee,’ the bravo said. ‘Board, lodging, and light. Let’s have you.’
He held Cassian efficiently while the woman slipped her hand into his inside pocket. They both gaped at what she pulled out.
‘Jim,’ the woman said. ‘It’s banknotes. He’s gotthirty pound. Jim, I don’t like it. Who is he?’
