Mr. Nelson was frowning, but he jammed his hat on his head and tipped the brim to her, before disappearing back inside the Crown and Thorn once more. The door had scarcely closed when Drummond started propelling her forward.
“Where is your carriage?” he demanded.
She glanced around the alley, desperate to find some way of escaping him. But there was no one else about, except for a handful of waiting conveyances and their drivers. She could not bear to put anyone else’s life at risk merely to save hers.
She had no doubt Drummond would shoot her if she tried to escape.
“It is waiting for me just over there,” she managed to say, pointing in the direction where her driver awaited her.
“You will walk calmly to it,” Drummond ordered. “You will smile and act as if nothing is amiss. If you alert your driver in any way, I will shoot him in the head. Do you understand?”
She swallowed down a knot of pure terror. “Yes.”
“Good. You will tell the driver you are no longer in need of his services for the evening. And then you will return to me. If you attempt to communicate anything to him in any fashion, he will die. Now walk, Jojo.”
Johanna did as he asked, feigning nonchalance. She approached her driver, smiling as she went, keenly aware of her brother watching her every move. She did not dare attempt to show her driver she was under duress for fear Drummond would make good on his threats. Her driver did not appear suspicious. She had already paid him for the evening, and he seemed only too happy to be on his way.
Attempting to be as calm as possible, she walked back to her brother. He grasped her elbow. “Come with me, Jojo.”
He walked them hurriedly to the end of the alleyway and turned a corner to where another vehicle waited.
“Get inside,” he told her, nudging her with the pistol barrel. The force he exerted sent a rush of pain through her, and she knew there would later be a bruise. But a bruise was the least of her worries as she allowed herself to be shoved into the vehicle. She tripped on her hem and sprawled to the floor as she attempted to scramble onto the bench.
“Up, you clumsy cow.” Drummond caught her chignon and roughly pulled her to her feet. Tears stung her eyes as sharp pain lanced through her.
Choking back a sob, she righted herself before hastily sitting.
Drummond climbed inside and settled across from her, his gaze as hard as flint as he pointed the pistol toward her. The carriage seemed extraordinarily small. But larger still than her chances of escaping this situation alive.
She could run, but her past always found her. The carriage lurched into motion, bearing them to an unknown destination.
“I have heard a great deal about you, sister,” Drummond said then, sneering. “You have been whoring yourself for the Home Office and Scotland Yard.”
She flinched at his viciousness. “I was not doing anything of the kind.”
“I have it on good authority you were,” he said bitterly. “All I do for you, sister, and as soon as you are out of my sight, you are a slut for the enemy. I expected better from you.”
“All you have done for me is terrorize me and force me to assist you in your plotting,” she said, her outrage getting the best of her and making her speak too freely. “You were being watched in New York and you knew it, and that is why you used me in your schemes.”
“I see being a duke’s whore has given you airs,” he said coolly, assessing her as one might an insect about to be squashed. “I would advise you against using them with me. You won’t like the consequences.”
“Where are you taking me?” she demanded.
His smile was ugly. “To a place where you will be most useful to me,Mademoiselle Beaumont.”
“You can tell everyone who I am,” she said, meeting his stare. “I won’t cower to you any longer. I won’t do what you want me to do. Tell the world I am Johanna McKenna. See it printed in every newspaper. I will explain the monster I was running from. Rose Beaumont is just another role.”
“Ah, but you are cowering to me now, Jojo,” he countered, his tone one of mock sympathy.
“You have a pistol pointed at me, Drummond,” she said. “And me, your own sister. Your flesh and blood. What else am I to do?”
“You were always weak,” he spat. “Just like Ma.”
He was so much their father’s image in that moment—the feral beast, the snarl and the rage—that she wanted to retch.
“And you were always a brutal monster, like Pa,” she returned.
He gave her a cruel smile, but it did not reach his eyes. His eyes—the reflection of hers, in the same shade of deep blue as their father’s—were flat. “I am who the world has made me.”
