“Hand, nitwit.”
“You bit your assailant on the hand?” the physician asked. “Bites to the hand can cause a whole host of ailments if not properly treated. I’ve seen corruption and even a locked jaw. It’s the most fascinating progression.”
“Yes, well. We’ll be certain to send him your way if we stumble across the fellow,” Ainsley said. “Is Lady Arabella going to make a full recovery?”
“That she is awake and speaking sense is a promising sign. But she has a contusion of the brain. She will need diligent monitoring to ensure she does not experience brain fever. God willing, she will make a full recovery.”
West’s head fell to Bella’s shoulder, shuddering there for a moment.
“Too stubborn todie,” Bella grumbled, earning exhausted chuckles from those around her. “Don’ worry ’bout me. Find ’liza.”
Ainsley turned his attention back to Benedict. “Do you know where they might take her? Are you certain his goal is monetary in nature?”
There was never any question in Benedict’s mind. “Blackwood. Father planned to draw out Wayland. He will want to revel in your downfall until his dying breath.”
“Then I go to Blackwood,” Wayland said.
“Wait a minute, Michael. You cannot go running off half-cocked into a trap. He’ll kill Eliza right along with you.” Ainsley pressed Wayland back with a hand on his chest.
Sophie whimpered. Benedict sympathized—he’d barely contained his own.
“Shit,” Wayland said, summing up the situation succinctly.
“We do have the benefit of surprise,” Benedict said. “He doesn’t know I’m here, that I’ve warned you. He won’t be expecting you for days.”
“Did,” Sophie interjected, her normally bright eyes dull as they caught his.
“What?”
“Didhave the element of surprise. Then you caused a scene in the middle of the ball.”
Benedict’s stomach dropped through the floor. She was right. He created the opportunity—sent Eliza fleeing from the room and his company. And sacrificed the only advantage they had in the process.
Silence echoed through the hell. It began at Benedict’s feet, curling up and around each leg, his abdomen, trapping his arms to his sides, before it threatened to choke him with its full, oppressive weight.
“This is your fault. If anything happens to my sister… You’ll have to pray I leave enough of you to bury.” The threat should have been absurd, delivered from a shaken slip of a girl. But Benedict rather thought she would manage it.
“Now what are you all still doing standing here? Go call for the carriage,” she insisted. “We needed to leave an hour ago.”
“Sophie…” her mother said tentatively, nearly overshadowed by Bash’s, “Absolutely not.”
“No, Mama. I’m going,” she said, ignoring the dunner completely.
“Not to Blackwood, you’re not,” her mother snapped.
“You cannot expect me to sit by while Lizzie is in danger.”
“That is precisely what I expect you to do. I want you as far away from that place as possible. As far away fromhereas possible. Do we even know how many accomplices there are? Could they be planning to take Sophie as well?” Eliza’s mother turned to Benedict with the final question.
“I don’t— It’s possible.”
“Then we need to get you out of town,” she said over her protesting daughter. “Does your father have any associates in Canterbury?”
“Mama!”
“I will not hear a single argument about this, Sophie.”
Benedict racked his mind, trying to recall where his father’s gaming friends were located. Since Ambrose avoided the hells in London—unwilling to run across Wayland—most of his friends lived on the West Coast.
