Page 35

Chapter Thirty-Five

An unlikely ally…

“A re you ready?”

Marina looked at her uncle. “Much more so this time than last,” she said with a rueful smile.

He let out a bark of laughter. “I should hope so.” With that he opened the carriage door and climbed out, reaching in to offer her his hand.

Marina was reaching to take his hand, but her eye was drawn by motion. A screw lodged in her throat as she saw the heavy butt of a pistol come crashing down on her uncle’s temple. As Devil collapsed to the ground, Mr. Reginald Nutter forced his way into the carriage and shoved her backward onto the seat. He knocked sharply on the roof of the carriage. “Drive on or I’ll shoot her now!”

Immediately the carriage began rolling forward. The driver, Helmsley, had been with them since she was a small girl. He would have moved heaven and earth to keep her safe. “What are you doing?” she demanded.

“Getting even,” he snapped. “What a fool you must have thought me! Following you about like a lost puppy while you laughed the whole while.”

“No one laughed at you, Mr. Nutter,” she said. And they had not. They may have made every effort to avoid him, but they had not ridiculed him. “But what you are doing right now is complete madness!”

“I no longer care! I’ve toadied to you for three years. I watched you align yourself with that rat, Stanford Williams, and now I’ve watched you abase yourself with that ruffian who calls himself an earl. The man is little better than a laborer from the fields. That you’d prefer him to a true gentleman speaks volumes about your own character!”

Marina gaped at him. “You’re kidnapping me, and you dare to question whether someone else is a gentleman?”

“This is what you’ve driven me to! With your indifference and derision,” he insisted.

“And what is your plan, Mr. Nutter? To force me to marry you instead?”

He shook his head. “No. I no longer have any desire to marry you… but I’ll be damned before I allow you to marry him. I vowed that I would see you dead before I saw you wed another.”

He said it so dispassionately that it made her blood run cold. Attempting to appeal to any reason that he still possessed, Marina said, “You’d hang. Surely it isn’t worth it.”

“I won’t live long enough for that,” he said. “I fully intend to take my own life, as well. Better that than live with the humiliation you’ve heaped upon me.”

“Mr. Nutter,” she said, trying to keep her voice calm and steady despite the fact that she was trembling with fear, “We never thought poorly of you, and we certainly never derided you. I understood that you held a certain regard for me which I did not return. Perhaps I should have been more direct in informing you earlier, but it was only because I did not wish to insult you that I refrained from saying so.”

“Do you think that makes it better? That you allowed me to fawn over you while you regarded me as an object of pity?” he snapped.

The coach stopped abruptly. Wild eyed, Mr. Nutter began shouting. “Why have you stopped? I’ll shoot her! I swear to you I will!”

“The road is blocked!” Helmsley called out. “There’s a wagon with a broken wheel blocking the road. I can’t go round!”

“I’ll not wait here to be overtaken by whomever is foolish enough to attempt to rescue you,” he said, grabbing her arm. He hauled her up and kicked open the carriage door, wood splintering.

Marina knew that if she got out of that carriage there would be no hope for her. As he tugged her forward, she began resisting, pulling back with all her might. He turned back to her and tugged viciously on her arm, her glove slipping from her hand. Thinking of all the games of tug of war she’d played with her cousins, Marina simply went dead weight, sinking to the floor, allowing the glove to pull completely free from her hand and for him to tumble backward out of the carriage and to the paving stones below.

Helmsley must have been watching. No sooner had Mr. Nutter hit the ground than did the carriage immediately shoot forward, the wheel rolling over Mr. Nutter’s legs with a terrible thump that prompted Marina to cover her ears. Even then, she could still hear his cries of pain.

*

Elizabeth sipped her tea as she stared out the window of the small coffee house, her gaze locked on the carriage bearing the Ashton family crest. It goaded her now to think her animosity for Marina Ashton had been driven primarily by her feeling that she had somehow stolen Stanford Williams from her. In truth, they had both been spared a terrible fate at his hands. Of course, that hadn’t been their only source of animosity. Elizabeth knew her behavior had often been seen as quite petty and even cruel. But she was only too well aware that often the sweetest of smiles hid the most vicious natures. All those insipid misses that she’d insulted and given the cut to had been the very ones who talked behind their backs and spread vicious gossip about others.

Movement caught Elizabeth’s eye, and she glanced to the rear of that carriage. A familiar figure emerged from the shadowy alley beside the church.

“Mr. Nutter,” she whispered. What on earth was he doing?

He approached the carriage but on the opposite side so that she couldn’t see what was happening. Only a moment later, the carriage shot forward, into the street, revealing Lord Deveril unconscious on the pavement. Without hesitating, Elizabeth rushed from the coffee house and to the fallen man. A streak of blood marred his temple, but his eyes were beginning to open.

“Lord Deveril? How badly are you injured?”

“Get St. Aiden… go after her,” he urged, then once more slipped into unconsciousness.

The implications of it all suddenly clicked into place, clearing the fog of confusion. Mr. Nutter had abducted Marina Ashton.

Getting to her feet, Elizabeth rushed to the doors of the church and burst inside. The small group of people assembled had turned expectantly toward the door, no doubt anticipating the entrance of the bride on her uncle’s arm. “Lord Deveril is injured,” she called out loudly, “and Mr. Nutter has driven off in the carriage with Miss Ashton.”

Immediately, the Earl of St. Aiden, Mr. Danvers, and Viscount Seaburn were off, all of them charging past her as they made their way out of the church. Seaburn hoisted Lord Deveril up and aided him into the church. Once he was settled, the viscount took off once more in pursuit of the others.

“How did you happen to be here when this occurred, Miss Whitmore?” Lady Deveril demanded.

Elizabeth bit back a heated retort. The woman had no reason to trust her, after all. “I didn’t wish to intrude today but Mr. Danvers wished to be here for the earl. I was waiting in a coffee house across the way when I saw Mr. Nutter approaching the carriage. I understand, Lady Deveril, that you have cause to doubt my motives, but in this instance, I am only trying to help. No one behaving as Mr. Nutter did today can be counted on to be reasonable.”

Lady Deveril was seated next to her husband, her face etched with tenderness and concern for him. But when she turned to face Elizabeth once more, her expression shifted into something that could only be classified as dangerous. “If you are not being entirely truthful, Miss Whitmore, there will be the devil to pay. Is that clear?”

“Yes, ma’am,” she replied with more meekness than she had displayed in a very long time.