“What do you want from me?” she asked. “Please, I beg you, release me. I do not have the information you seek. I am not privy to any of His Grace’s correspondence. I know nothing of the Special League’s business.”
“You read his reports and compiled them. Tell us what they contained,” commanded the first man. “Tell us everything you can recall. Names, places, dates, suspects, defense strategies. Give us the information, and you will be freed without harm.”
“Very well,” she relented, devising a new strategy. “I will tell you everything I read. There was a letter from his steward in Wiltshire, detailing a problem with the tenants. There was also the matter of the roof on the eastern portion of Manning Hall requiring a repair. The architect His Grace employed to alter certain portions of his estate and bring them into keeping with our modern era wrote as well, questioning whether the duke would prefer to import tile from Italy for the bathing rooms he is having constructed in the private ducal apartments.”
Westmorland had once, quite unintentionally, given her some of his personal correspondence along with the reports he had wished for her to transcribe. She had glanced over some of the letters before realizing he had not meant to give it to her.
“That is not what he hired you for, and you know it.”
Undeterred, she continued spouting off useless facts, inventing when she could not recall more. “He is sending relief to the victims of the Spanish earthquake, so there were a great deal of letters concerning the disbursement of funds abroad…”
As she droned on, the carriage hit a large rut in the road, and Isabella seized the opportunity. She threw herself from the bench to the floor of the carriage and began frantically kicking in hopes she would reach the door.
“Damn it, you were warned,” growled one of her captors.
Rough arms seized her, hauling her back to the seat. Another set of arms captured her legs, though her boots connected with something solid and she heard a gratifyingooof, which told her she had at least landed a blow somewhere on one of her captors.
“Help me!” she cried, swinging wildly with her arms and kicking with her legs as desperate terror gave her new strength. “Help, please!”
She landed a blow to something that felt like a nose with her bound fists. Her knee connected with a stomach.
“Son of a bitch, we need to get rid of the troublesome wench.”
“Help!” she screamed again.
But then, a gag was shoved into her mouth and tightly tied, the fabric cutting viciously into the corners of her lips. She attempted to produce more sound, but her cries were muffled. Strong arms held her captive. The heaviness of a male body upon her legs rendered moving impossible.
There was the sudden sound of a fist thumping on the roof of the carriage. The conveyance came to a halt. She found herself being roughly hoisted between two pairs of hands and lifted into the air.
They were removing her from the carriage.
Dear Lord, do not let them kill me, she prayed.
And then she fought with all her might.
“No one hasseen any sign of Miss Hilgrove since the initial morning reports of her being snatched off the pavements,” reported the latest of the Scotland Yard detectives tasked with interviewing nearby witnesses.
Damn it to hell.
Benedict ground his jaw. “No one I interviewed had either, and nor had any of the other detectives.”
He stalked the length of Isabella’s cozy salon, where the blasted book of poetry gifted to her by Lord Lambert still graced the table where she had last deposited it. Whilst the possessive part of his nature was gratified she had not been paging through it in a lovelorn frenzy, the rest of him had taken note and then moved to more important matters. Such as finding her before something happened to her. Before she was hurt, or something far, far worse…
Nay, he could not contemplate that. Not now. The mere thought of something happening to Isabella made his stomach clench and all the hackles rise on his neck. By only the sternest exertion of restraint did he refrain from casting up his accounts. His heart had been pounding like the hooves of a herd of spooked wild horses ever since Isabella’s maid had arrived at Westmorland House earlier that morning, announcing her mistress had been taken.
Because he had known then, just as he knew now, the villains responsible.
Isabella had been taken by the Fenians, Benedict had no doubt. And it was all his bloody fault. He had been so certain that beginning here, where she had first been abducted, would provide them the clues they needed to discover where she had been taken and why. But they were meeting with nothing save brick walls at each turn.
He turned back to the detective, a man named Livingstone, who was in his mid-thirties and had an excellent reputation. For this mission, Benedict had used his power as Special League leader to summon only the best. Special League agents were scouring London as well, visiting known Fenian haunts and stopping suspicious-looking vehicles, in the hopes Isabella would be found.
A hope that diminished with every passing hour.
“Have you a description of the men who took her?” he demanded.
Thus far, every detective’s gathered evidence had been the same: the men had seemed to be garbed in disguises, heavily bearded, hats pulled low. One had been portlier than the other. Aside from those slim details, they could have been any man in the blasted kingdom.
“The men were bearded. One wore a top hat. There was a taller man and a shorter man, with the shorter suspect much bulkier in frame,” reported the detective.
