Page 53 of A Duchess of Mystery (The Mismatched Lovers #3)

Richard reached the door and the others moved hastily out of his way.

Isabella’s fingers clung onto his coat, her body trembling in his hold, her face turned into his body as though she couldn’t bear to see the place in which she’d been confined.

Heedless of the two magistrates, he carried her down the wide stairs and out into the fresh night air of the market square.

His carriage stood waiting, Dickens on the driving seat, Mr. Hopkins up beside him, a man shrunken in on himself with shame. The colonel’s coach stood behind it.

“You’re safe now,” Richard murmured to Isabella. “I have you now, and you’re safe. It was all a lie. I won’t let them take you again. You’re safe.”

For answer she clung on more tightly to him and his heart swelled so much he feared it might burst. The feel of her in his arms, her warm breath on his neck, her desperately tight clinging hold; all of these filled his heart with something more than immense relief, something he couldn’t quite define.

All he knew was that he never wanted to let her go.

He didn’t wait for the magistrates and turnkey. With a strength born of urgency, he climbed into his carriage with Isabella still in his arms. No mean feat. He set her down on the seat and leaned out of the door again. “Take us home, Dickens. As fast as you can.”

The two magistrates were at the bottom of the stairs, illuminated by the turnkey’s lantern.

“Are you just going to leave?” Sir Oswald called. “What about Dawes? And the investigating fellow?”

“You’ll have to deal with them yourselves,” Richard called as he swung the door shut. “I have other more urgent matters to attend to.”

The horses sprang into a trot, as Dickens set them on the dark road back to the castle.

Richard leaned back in his seat. The single lamp burning inside the carriage showed him Isabella, stiff and upright on her side of the carriage, all the limp vulnerability vanished as though it had never existed.

Her composure had returned. She was, after all, a duchess.

A duchess who had weathered ten years as Marcus’s wife and had the sangfroid to cover up his killing by her sister-in-law.

Would he have expected anything less of her?

“Thank you for my rescue,” she said, polite as though they were both at a soirée and just casual acquaintances.

“I could do nothing else.”

She licked her lips. “How…?”

He told her about Hopkins’s role in her apprehension, observing her eyes widen in shock and then in acceptance.

When he’d finished, he watched her for a moment or two longer as she took time to recompose herself.

She’d had a very traumatic day. It was a miracle she could look so calm.

Perhaps her years of marriage to Marcus had engendered that ability.

She smoothed the skirts of her filthy gown. Her hair was awry, with loose curls falling to her shoulders and across her forehead, and her face was smudged with dirt. The hands she was now clasping on her lap were grubby as a canal navvie’s.

“I know what happened,” he said, keeping his voice gentle. “I know why you let them think it was you who killed Marcus.”

And now her eyes did widen. He’d shocked her. Perhaps she’d thought it a secret no one would ever dare disclose. After all, her faithful servants would never have betrayed her or Dora.

She licked her lips again. Had they given her anything to drink in that place, and if they had, would it have been palatable?

He drew a hip flask of brandy from an inner pocket of his coat and handed it to her.

What he really longed to do was to take her in his arms again and hold her close, but she seemed to have decided the time for that had passed.

He wouldn’t press her. Independence exuded from her every pore, and perhaps she needed to cling onto that for her own sanity.

Without a word, she unfastened the lid of the flask and put it to her lips. She gulped down a goodly measure, paused, then drank again. When she offered it back, he took it and did the same. After the day’s adventures, he needed it. He was becoming quite a toper.

“You will not give her away?” she said, her voice a little hoarse.

“Of course not. You were prepared to give up everything for her. I would do the same. We both of us love Dora above all else.” Well, not quite above all else.

She nodded. “I am sore afraid for her.”

Richard couldn’t disagree with that. “It’s a terrible thing to take a life.” He paused. “I have done so on many occasions as a soldier, and it never becomes any easier. For a young lady raised to gentility, it is enough to derange. She is suffering for it.”

She nodded. “I know. She’s not like me. I am strong, and she is not.

Not in the way I am.” She brushed a strand of hair out of her eyes.

“She has certain strengths, or she would not have survived at Stourbridge under Marcus’s tyranny, but her power is to bend to the wind, to give in, to apologize rather than to fight.

” She gave a little, brittle laugh. “Whereas my strength is a fighting strength. I refused to let him defeat me.”

“And yet she was the one who killed him in the end.”

She nodded. “Ironic, isn’t it? The mouse has saved the falcon from the wolf.”

“She was as brave as you, in the end. She saw that he would kill you if she didn’t try to save you, and because of his position, he would get away with it.”

She fell silent, but he could see how uncomfortable she was. He ventured a smile. “You should have a bath as soon as we’re home. You look as if you need one.”

And now she did laugh. “Don’t worry. That is the first thing I intend to do.

And I shall have Hawkins comb through my hair to check for lice and any other unmentionable creatures that might have hitched a lift with me.

That cell was crawling with creatures that have no place on a human body.

” She frowned. “Will you take it upon yourself to improve the jail? No one, innocent or guilty, should have to put up with incarceration in such a hole.”

“Is that all you can think of?”

She shrugged. “Believe me, that is foremost in my mind and will be until I’ve taken off these clothes and seen them burned. Only decorum is preventing me from doing so right now. The sooner we are back, the better.”

Their knees were almost touching. He reached out a hand and took one of hers. “Isabella, I didn’t know this was going to happen.”

“I know you didn’t. It was that creature, Lady Dangerfield.

I should have realized when we met her in my dressmaker’s, and then later on when she came to the ball.

I should have known then that she refused to accept Marcus’s death.

She was the source of all the rumors, I’m sure.

” She sighed. “She wanted him, but she knew she could never have had him. Not properly. Perhaps she hoped to usurp my position at Stourbridge one day, although she could never have become his duchess unless I died…”

Her voice trailed off as realization must have dawned. “Do you think…?”

It had struck Richard at exactly the same time. “That he intended your death that night so he could replace you? That is very possible. But she has a husband of her own, does she not?”

Isabella nodded. “A hunting man, and old and gouty, or so I’ve heard.

Perhaps someone who could have been disposed of easily when an opportunity arose.

Who knows? I doubt we ever will.” She frowned again.

“Although I’ve always wondered if Marcus had something to do with my own father’s death.

Again, we will never know now. His secrets have gone to the grave with him. ”

Richard squeezed her hand. “You have no need to worry now, Isabella. I know everything, and I will do all in my power to protect you and Dora. You may sleep easy in your bed tonight. Barker will be the one residing in that jail tomorrow. For causing false witness by coercion and bribery. I will press for his transportation to the colonies.”

She gave a little, it had to be said satisfied, smile. “And now, if you don’t mind, I would like to close my eyes for a few minutes. I didn’t dare fall asleep in that awful prison for fear of my fellow cellmates.”

Oh, how Richard longed to suggest she sat beside him and used him to lean her weary head on. But of course, he didn’t. Instead, she leaned her head against the upholstered side of the coach and closed her eyes. Her exhausted, drawn face relaxed as sleep rapidly took her.

All he could do was gaze at her and drink her in. The realization that he need look no further for the woman he wanted to marry swept over him, along with the fear that after Marcus, she might never want to marry again.