“I have the copies of the documents within the package in my possession,” he said. “Johanna intended to turn it over to Scotland Yard along with the dynamite.”
“So she says,” Arden pointed out, his mien more grim than it had been before. “You must understand how it appears to Ravenhurst. This female is entangled with Fenians. She smuggled dynamite into England—”
“At the behest of her brother, a villain who has perpetuated a reign of terror upon her,” Felix interrupted. “Damn it, Arden, she is an innocent in all this.”
“It hardly looks as if she is innocent,” Arden said. “If she were truly innocent, she would not have smuggled the dynamite and the correspondence to begin with. She would have refused her brother’s demands.”
“And have him beat her or worse?” Felix’s ire was fast getting the better of him, blood pumping through his veins, and he needed to move once more. To walk, to pace, to keep from smashing his fist through something.
Like the Duke of Arden’s face.
Because his quarrel was not with the Duke of Arden. Nor was it with Ravenhurst, who was only doing his duty as the chief of his division. Rather, it was with Drummond McKenna, just as it had always been.
“Do you have proof he beat her?” Arden asked softly.
Of course he did not, aside from the fear he had witnessed in Johanna’s eyes. The terror in her voice. The tears she had cried. Tears which he had tasted.
He turned and stalked back down the length of the library. “I have her word,” he said, his voice trembling with the conviction and the rage burning within him. “That is enough for me.”
“The word of an actress who has surrounded herself with Fenians,” Arden concluded.
“Bloody hell! I do not give a damn that she is an actress. Her profession does not render her any less capable of telling the truth than anyone else,” he bit out.
“Perhaps not her profession,” Arden said, “but her connections to Fenians certainly do. I want to believe she is innocent as much as you do, Winchelsea, truly I do. But you are too involved in this case, in this woman. You must try to take a step back from it all and view the facts as presented in a calm, objective fashion.”
“Forgive me,” he returned bitterly, “but this soliloquy is rather an irony coming from you, Arden. Tell me, have you ever been capable of viewing your wife in a calm, objective fashion? Were you calm and objective when you ran into a burning warehouse to save her?”
Arden had risen as well, and now he stiffened, almost as if he had been delivered a blow. “She is my duchess. The woman I love. Miss McKenna is a veritable stranger to you, and one you would do well to be skeptical of.”
But Johanna was not a stranger. He loved her. He had spent inside her.Good God, he could have gotten her with child this morning in his mad lust. He had only just found her. He could not lose her. Not now. Not ever.
“I care about her, Arden,” he managed past the lump in his throat. The fear clogging his lungs. “I care deeply. I would run into a burning building to save her, without a thought for myself.”
“This is worse than I feared,” Arden said.
Determination had him moving, crossing the chamber. “What are you saying, Arden? Just tell me and have done with it.”
“Ravenhurst intends to have her arrested when Scotland Yard arrives to take command of the trunk.” Arden sighed. “They are going to use the witness who saw her delivering a package to the Fenian, a man they have already arrested this morning and are holding on charges of possessing an infernal machine. Ravenhurst intends to offer that man an incentive to testify against Miss McKenna.”
All the air seemed to flee from his lungs.
So, too, the capacity to speak.
The thought of Johanna imprisoned was enough to make his entire body go cold. Ravenhurst was calculating enough to do such a thing. Determined enough to use whomever he must in his quest to be the one who put an end to all the Fenian uprisings.
“I will not allow it,” he growled, denial coursing through him. “I will do everything in my power to see that they cannot arrest her.”
Arden’s gaze was searching. “What do you have in mind?”
“First, I am going to marry her,” he said. “And then, I am going to lure her bastard of a brother here once and for all so he can pay for his sins.”
If this was the burning building, he was running inside. And he was not emerging until she was safe in his arms.
Chapter Thirteen
Johanna sat inthe small salon following breakfast, Verity at her side on the piano bench. Felix had been inexplicably absent from breakfast, leaving behind a note that he would shortly return. Following everything they had shared, coupled with her realization that she must fast put some time and distance between them, Johanna found his desertion disquieting indeed.
Fortunately, his daughter was there to lift her spirits. They had spent breakfast trading silly tales they invented, each trying to outdo the other, until the both of them were giggling helplessly, wiping tears of mirth from their eyes. She had to admit that not much breakfast had been consumed. But Johanna had been grateful for the distraction from the heaviness of her thoughts and the looming prospect of what she must do.
