Damn you, Nicholas, damn you to hell for a faithless liar.
Two men she’d allowed into her bed. Two men had betrayed her.
Later. Later she’d pick up the bleeding remnants of her heart. She’d always known it was dangerous to allow Nicholas close. Only now did she realize how dangerous.
Traitorous, heinous, contemptible villain.
“Bella, tell me what you saw,” she snapped.
The maid immediately responded to the voice of authority. The voice, did she but know it, of Lady Antonia Hilliard. She straightened and looked less likely to collapse. “I was in the street across from the mansion. I saw Lord Ranelaw come out of an alley with Cassie. Before I could do anything, he bundled her into a gig and took off like the devil was after him.”
“Perhaps he just invited Cassie for a drive,” Antonia said, even as she accepted with bleak certainty that Bella’s suspicions must be correct.
“That’s not how it seemed to me.” Bella didn’t sound like the harridan who dogged Antonia’s life. She sounded like a woman facing disaster. “What are you going to do?”
The lethargy that had infected Antonia for the last four days vanished. With sudden purpose, she whirled away and rifled through her bag.
Her hand finally alighted on the mahogany case holding her dueling pistols, a gift from her father on her sixteenth birthday. A relic of the days when the earl had been proud of his daughter’s spirit and independence. “I’m going to fix this.”
Chapter Twenty-seven
Ranelaw kept the gig traveling too fast through the thick traffic for Cassie to risk jumping out. She remained quiet. His reckless speed as he wove in and out of the other vehicles must make her nervous. The last thing she’d want was to interrupt his concentration and send them both hurtling onto the cobblestones.
When they reached London’s outskirts, he maintained the breakneck pace. Something in him responded to the velocity. He had a bizarre fancy that if he went far enough and fast enough, he’d leave his disasters behind.
The idea of flying into nothing was hellishly appealing.
“You’re not taking me to Antonia, are you?” Cassie’s voice was flat.
“What?”
He kept his eyes on the road although of course he’d heard her, in spite of the wind and the carriage’s creaking and the fact that he damned well wanted to postpone this particular conversation as long as possible.
“You’re not taking me to Antonia.”
She didn’t sound like the little airhead he’d danced with. He hated to think of Antonia, but he couldn’t help remembering she’d repeatedly told him Cassie was considerably smarter than she pretended.
Too bad. Cassie wasn’t as smart as he was. And he was far enough out of London to have her at his mercy. All the brains in the world wouldn’t save her now.
He should rejoice. He’d succeeded with such minimal difficulty, he hardly believed it. God couldn’t be on his side, not when his purposes were so wicked. Perhaps the devil seized control of his fate.
Nothing new there.
The area was deserted. Fields lay on either side and deep ditches lined the roadside. If Cassie tried to escape, he’d have no trouble catching her.
He drew the carriage to a stop and turned to her, gripping her arm to make sure she didn’t do anything stupid. “No, I’m abducting you.”
He braced for hysterics. But she didn’t tremble under his hand. Instead she fixed him with a steady and remarkably contemptuous gaze. “You want to marry me? Why not just apply to my father? I’m sure he’d listen. You are, after all, from a noble family.”
He released a scornful laugh. “Good God, no. I don’t want to marry you. I just want to ruin you.”
She reacted with a cool curiosity he couldn’t help but admire. “Why?”
He frowned. Strangely he hadn’t expected he’d have to explain himself. More strangely, the power seemed to have shifted to this astonishingly composed eighteen-year-old girl who regarded him as if he’d just crawled out from under a rock.
“I’m a rake.”
Her lips tightened. “Of course you are. But you don’t want me.”