Mad for his daughter to become a duchess.
Leaning forward, Marcus raised himself off the seat, urging the horse onward. The road was smooth but, knowing he could nearly halve the distance by cutting across some pasture, he drew them off the road and into an open field.
Emily would likely not hold her tongue with a man like Quimbly. Marcus forced himself to relax his hands on the reins, hoping against hope she didn’t anger Quimbly to do anything stupid.
As they neared a fence, he silently thanked the servant’s choice of mount and he and Lady went flying over it almost effortlessly.
Rather than enjoying the thrill of the ride, his heart thudded painfully.
He did not want to exist upon this earth without her.
He wanted to listen to her oddly timed recollections and observations. He wanted to hold back his laughter when she veered from socially acceptable conversation at dinner parties.
He wanted to allow her to experiment with him. Seek new techniques for pleasuring one another. He wanted to make love to her in the traditional way, over and over again. He wanted to spend the next half-century growing bored with her.
Good God, he even wanted her to attempt to manipulate much of his life again.
He needed her alive in order to do all of this.
When a distant Tudor-styled home appeared behind the rise, an icy calm settled in him.
He would find her.
He would bring her home.
He had to. She was the only home he’d known in years.
Emily’s eyelids felt heavy. So heavy. Why was she so tired? Except she wasn’t tired. When she went to raise her hand, touch her face, her hand felt as though it weighed a thousand tons!
A funny taste in her mouth. Sweet. Fruity. She licked her lips and used all her strength to force her eyes open.
Drat and fiddlesticks! Although one eye could focus on the ceiling above her, the other blended with her corrected eye and blurred her overall vision.
What?
Where was she? Was she dreaming? Was she at Eden’s Court? Marcus had taken her spectacles though… to repair them.
And then her memory rushed in like a crashing wave.
She’d been in the Duke of Waters’ library. Quimbly’s henchmen. The arsenic! Marcus’ father.
She squirmed and clenched her fists, hoping to regain normal use of her limbs. She’d been drugged. Likely that very new chemical she’d read about that was used to calm patients with asthma. She could not remember the name. It wasn’t necessary right now. She needed to warn Marcus about Quimbly.
She needed to escape from Quimbly herself!
Quimbly wanted her gone! Out of Marcus’ life forever!
Feeling some of her strength returning, Emily forced herself into a sitting position.
Identifying the slanted ceilings, Emily deduced that she had been locked away in an attic. A sparsely furnished attic, but she was not bound. Her hands and feet were free.
But one of the lenses had fallen out of her spectacles. Again. Double drat and damn!
She pinched that eye closed and peered about the room. The mattress she now sat upon, the one she’d awoken on, lay on the floor. One chair. One desk. And dusty, ancient-looking trunks. Sunlight filtered through a window near the ceiling.
If she had more time, she’d explore the contents of each and every treasure chest. What might such trunks contain? Secrets from the past? Old clothing? Jewelry? Or better yet? Books?
She forced her curious mind aside and, as best she could with only one functioning eyeball, explored her surroundings thoroughly.
