‘You are hardly in a position to bargain, Reid. They are part of this now, thanks to you. You forced my hand, forced me to come here myself—’
‘Whatever your quarrel is with me—’
‘Whatever my quarrel is with you? My quarrel is that you presumed to interfere in an affair that has absolutely nothing to do with you,’ Mellors whined. ‘Fifteen years I’ve been chasing her, you know. Rebecca was smart, always a step ahead. I dare say, though, the chase was certainly invigorating. Had she not run, well, she would’ve been just like the others. Nothing.’
The others...
Liam’s stomach roiled at the thought of other girls like Rebecca—how many?—suffering because of this monster before him. He would get out of this bind, he swore—he’d got out of perhaps not worse but similarly dire circumstances before—and he would see this man hanged as a symbol of what befell those like him.
Justice.
‘And then—’ the man grinned, fuelling Liam’s rage ‘—just when I begin to grow weary of hunting her across England, she falls straight into my lap. First mistake she ever made, coming back here. I shall ask her about that later...’
Mellors’s words penetrated his haze of fury, and Liam’s heart stopped beating.
He has her. She didn’t leave.
‘As for you, well...you should’ve let it be. Enjoyed the life she bought you.’
‘The life she bought you...’ He threatened you with my life so you went to him...
The realisation of what she’d done filled him with both inexorable joy and breathtaking heartbreak. He really needed to get out of here. Luckily the bastard was enjoying the sound of his own voice.
‘Damn you, Mellors!’ Liam cried, beyond caring that his voice betrayed his pain, his fear at all he could lose. ‘You will pay for all the ill you have wrought. On Rebecca, on—’
‘Oh, do cease your remonstrations,’ Mellors sighed, rising to his feet. ‘Really is dreadfully boring.’
‘Time to go, my lord,’ came a voice—Rupert? ‘Shouldn’t tarry, it’ll be taking off now.’
‘Excellent, thank you, Rupert, out in a moment,’ Mellors called back.
With a sickening grin, he strode to the window, tore down one of the silk curtains, then turned back and stopped by the fireplace. He stoked the fire, slid away the screen, and with a disturbingly overenthusiastic flourish threw one end of the curtain into the fire. It caught immediately, whirling and twisting into a mighty flame.
Mellors laughed and stepped away, before coming to loom over Liam.
‘Not that I don’t trust Rupert’s capabilities, but best to make sure things are done properly. On that note, I really must be going.’
‘I don’t think so,’ came Rebecca’s voice. ‘Not quite yet.’
The sound of shouts and a creaky wooden cart had torn Rebecca from her daze. Hours she’d sat there at the window in Rochesdale, in the gaudy, stifling room the Viscount had declared her own, staring out onto the dales and fells which only months before had seemed to sing as they welcomed her back into their embrace.
There had been nothing else to do but wait.
It had been meant as a torture—the slow ticking of the gilded clock on the marble mantelpiece, the solitude—time for her dread to grow as the hour of her surrender drew nearer. Yet Rebecca had been grateful for the time to prepare herself. To say her prayers, and find some peace.
And then, she’d heard the noises.
So at odds with the calm silence otherwise permeating the house, they had caught her attention.
She’d slipped quietly from her room, along the corridor, until she’d found a room which overlooked the tradesmen’s entrance. From her vantage, she’d seen a couple of brutes driving a cart meet Francis. She’d seen them discussing the covered bundle in the cart—unmistakably a man. Gesturing, they had beckoned the Viscount, and when they’d lifted the blanket...then she had seen the man beneath. And though his head had been covered, she’d known him in an instant.
There had been more shouting, and gesticulating, and then the brutes had driven off south. Somehow Rebecca had known precisely where they were going.Thornhallow.
Francis had returned inside, and she’d slipped back to her room. She’d heard shouts ringing throughout the house. Orders. Preparations. And then, not half an hour later, the sound of a door slamming, and the Viscount riding out.
It was not difficult, since Francis trusted that she wouldnotrun away, to do just that. To steal into the stables, and lead away a thoroughbred stallion with no one the wiser. Just as it was not difficult to slip into another house, particularly one she had lived and worked in.
No, slipping back into Thornhallow Hall to find her family was no great feat at all.
