He didn’t stop to think, or even to draw a breath before he was out the door and down the steps, Lucius flying before him, a dozen different nightmare scenarios playing through his head as he ran—Tilly lying on the cold ground, one of her limbs twisted from a fall, or Lady Fosberry’s house enveloped in flames.
But when he reached the gate that enclosed her ladyship’s rose garden, there was no fire, and no sign of Tilly. The garden was deserted. He stilled, listening, but aside from his own harsh breaths sawing in and out of his lungs, all was silent, and the garden gate where he’d kissed Tilly not half an hour earlier was closed and latched. “Where is she, Lucius?”
The dog whined, pawing at the ground near the closed gate. Kit fumbled at the latch with clumsy fingers, but at last he managed to wrench it open. “Take me to her, Lucius.”
Lucius darted though the open gate, his tiny paws scrambling beneath him as he tore across the garden in the direction of the front drive. But it was deserted as well, and the house was still and silent, without so much as a flicker of candlelight in any of the windows. With the silvery rays of moonlight shining down on it, it looked like the very picture of calm peacefulness.
If it hadn’t been for Lucius, Kit might have believed all was as peaceful as it appeared, but the uneasiness in his chest told him it was an illusion. Something was terribly wrong. He could sense it now, the prickling at the back of his neck growing more pronounced as he and Lucius drew closer to the house.
The dog bypassed the front drive without a pause, and scurried toward the edge of the lawn, a blurry ball of white fur rolling across the lawn like a billiards ball over the baize, leaving a trail of tiny pawprints in his wake.
Kit tore after him, his lungs burning, the crunch of his footsteps against the frosted ground echoing in his ears, and God, he’d been running for hours trying to get to her, the lawn unfolding in an endless ribbon of green under his feet until at last—at last—he ground to a halt.
Lucius had come to a dead stop at the hedge. He turned his face up to Kit, but there was no urgent barking this time, no whining. He was strangely quiet, as if listening for something.
Kit sucked in a breath, and held it.
That was when he heard it. It was faint, but it sounded like….yes, it was!
On the other side of the hedge, a lady was weeping. No, she wassobbing, the desperate sobs of someone so panicked they were unable to catch their breath.
Was it Tilly? He stilled, straining to hear, but didn’t one lady’s sobs sound very much like another’s?
No, as it happened, because somehow, he knew at once it wasn’t Tilly who was sobbing, but another lady. Who? Lady Harriett, perhaps, but then where was Tilly? What had become of her?
He couldn’t see a damned thing with the bloody hedge in the way—
“Lord Wyle! Lady Harriett has demanded you release her at once!”
Tilly! It was her. There was no mistaking her voice.
“Lady Harriett isn’t in a position to demand anything, and neither, Miss Mathilda, are you!”
God above, was thatWyle? His voice was so harsh and menacing it was nearly unrecognizable, but it sounded like—
“Stay back, or you’ll regret it!”
ItwasWyle, and he was threateningTilly.
Kit’s vision blurred, and his hands curled into fists. He burst through a narrow gap in the hedge, the branches tearing at his clothing and leaving a long, wicked scratch on his cheek, and on the other side, in the center of the drive...
For an instant, he froze in shock. If he hadn’t seen it himself, he never would have believed Wyle capable of such perfidy, but the truth of it was right before his eyes.
One of Wyle’s arms was locked around Harriett’s throat, the other around her waist, and he was dragging her—dragging alady, the scoundrel—toward the open door of the carriage waiting in the drive. Tilly was following them, one cautious step at a time, the slender lines of her body rigid, a riding crop clutched in her fist.
She was afraid— he could feel her fear as if it were his own, the frenzied pounding of her heart as if it lived inside his own chest, but she never paused in her pursuit. She was going after Wyle, a man nearly three times her size, to save her friend.
Harriett was struggling against Wyle’s hold, her anguished sobs growing louder with every step across the drive, but she may as well have been fighting against a bear, for all the effect it was having. Wyle was simply too large, and too strong. Within minutes he’d made it across the drive, and with one mighty heave, he tossed Lady Harriett into the carriage.
He ran for the box, but Tilly jumped into his way before he could reach it. “You’re not taking Harriett, my lord,” she warned, slicing the air with the crop as if it were a rapier.
“Oh, but I am.” Wyle lunged for Tilly, his arms out in front of him and fingers curled into claws as if he were anticipating wrapping them around her neck.
But she was too quick for him, and leapt nimbly out of his reach. “Harriett isn’t going anywhere with you, my lord. Someone inside the house is sure to have heard us by now. I’d go now, if I were you, while you still can.”
“Ah, but you’re not me, Miss Mathilda.” He charged at her once again, and this time he managed to catch the end of the riding crop. He gave it a wicked wrench, twisting Tilly’s arm. She cried out, her grip on the crop loosening. Wyle saw his chance, and jerked it out of her hand.
At the sound of Tilly’s pained cry, the shock that had held Kit in a frozen fog dissolved, and a cold, dark fury unlike any he’d ever felt before descended on him, engulfing him in a haze of red.
