“If we gag her, how can we question her?” demanded the man whose hand was clamped on her mouth. His accent, too, was from the other side of the Atlantic.
She had no idea why she had been taken, but she knew enough from the reports she had been typing for Westmorland and from the news in theTimesthat most of the dynamitards hailed originally from America. A new sense of fear washed over her.
Instinct took over. She bit into the fingers covering her mouth as hard as she could. When he released her with a curse, she screamed again, hoping that since they were traveling in a moving carriage, someone may be near enough to overhear her alarm. Perhaps they were still in London, moving amidst traffic…
Her action earned her a cuff on the head. “Bite me again, and I’ll knock out your pretty little teeth.”
“If you do not want us to hurt you, Miss Hilgrove, I recommend you do as we say.” said the other man, his voice far more calm than the man she had just bitten.
Miss Hilgrove.
He knew her name.
The realization made her blood go cold.
These men had taken her, specifically, and for a reason. One she was beginning to suspect had everything to do with the Duke of Westmorland, the Special League, and dynamite.
“What do you want from me?” she demanded with far more bravado than she felt.
“You have been typewriting reports for Westmorland, have you not?” asked the man nearest to her.
Once again, instinct took over.
“No,” she denied. “I have not.”
“Do not lie to us, Miss Hilgrove,” warned the other man. “The duke recommended your Ladies’ Typewriting School most highly in theTimes. You have been observed at his home, and he has been seen at yours.”
Blast.The dratted endorsement. She was the architect of her own ruin. But there was something far more disturbing than the revelation that Westmorland’s announcement in the newspaper had made her vulnerable to these villains.
“You have been watching me?” she asked. “Why? Who are you?”
Her mind whirred with the need to find a means of escape. Her heart was pounding, all the moisture gone from her mouth. She still felt cloudy, as if she were tangled in cobwebs, but she knew she needed to take action if she were to save herself.
One of the men chuckled. “We have eyes and ears everywhere in London, Miss Hilgrove. Of course we have been watching you. But you’ll not be the one asking the questions here.”
Taking a slow inhalation against the horror welling within her, she tried to maintain her calm, to make sense of her surroundings. She was seated on the hard bench of a carriage. If she could somehow find her way to the door, perhaps she could kick it open and throw herself into the street. It would be dangerous, the likelihood of her injury high, but she had a horrible prescience that remaining in the carriage with these scoundrels would be far more perilous.
“If you tell us what we want to know, you will be returned, uninjured, to your home,” added her other captor.
Perhaps if she preyed upon their mercy, they would release her.
“Return me now, I beg you,” she pleaded. “I swear I will forget this ever happened.”
“Give us the information we need, and we will return you,” said the first man, seemingly the leader of the two. His voice possessed an assurance that the man who had hit her lacked.
“I have no information that could possibly be of use to you,” she said, quite truthfully. “I am the proprietress of a typewriting school. I have not been acting as the Duke of Westmorland’s typewriter. He has merely been kind enough to help my fledgling school to grow by offering his support.”
“And now why would he do that, I wonder? A fancy duke like Westmorland, taking note of a humble lady typewriter?” he asked, his tone suggestive.
“Perhaps you are warming his bed, Miss Hilgrove?” the second man prodded. “Is that it?”
“No, of course not.” Her cheeks flamed at the suggestion, and a rush of shame hit her. Because the assumptions these awful men had made about her were not that far from the truth.
“Tell us everything you know, madam,” demanded the leader of the two.
“I know nothing.” She swallowed, still trying to gather her wits, to formulate a plan. If the carriage would sway around a turn, perhaps she could throw herself from the bench before she was caught…
“You have been typing reports, you prim bitch,” said the man who had cuffed her on the head. “Admit the truth, or I will hit you again.”
