Page 29 of How to Seduce a Viscount (Wed Within a Year #3)

‘T ime has run out for you, gentlemen.’ Luce paced the length of the storeroom, coat off, expression grim, tone far cooler and more controlled than he actually was.

He would have his answers and his vengeance.

Rage, multifaceted and complex, still coursed through him.

The righteous rage of seeing someone he cared for attacked, harmed.

He would not soon forget the sight of Wren struggling futilely on the ground.

There was impotent rage, too, at having not found her sooner, he could have prevented all of it from happening, and a rage he couldn’t name directed at her .

Rage that she’d tried to handle it by herself when they’d planned to do it together tomorrow night at a carefully orchestrated supper where he could protect her.

Luce stopped in front of the men, impatient as he waited for the doctor to finish treating Paterson’s wound.

He was aware of Wren in the room, near the door, her own hackles horripilated.

Her stiletto clenched in her hand and his coat draped about her.

She looked far more like the street scrapper his grandfather had rescued years ago than the demure beauty he’d left Tillingbourne Abbey with earlier this evening.

She was angry and bristling. An avenging angel in the flesh, hair flowing about her shoulders, her beautiful ice-pink silk ripped, a red mark on the pale perfection of her skin where Wilkes had landed a blow.

She was more than capable of conducting the interrogation herself but Luce would stand between her and her attackers now. It was the least he could do.

The doctor stepped away with a nod and Luce stepped in.

‘Let’s start with the easy questions. Who are you working for, gentlemen?

I will give you this one chance to answer voluntarily.

Should you choose not to, we’ll forego the magistrate and send you to a place where answers will be retrieved involuntarily. ’

They would not leave his grandfather’s network alive.

But, with cooperation, Luce would settle for turning them over to the local magistrate on charges of drunken conduct.

They’d get some time in the local jail and then be free to go—a far better and far lighter sentence than being turned over to his grandfather’s minions.

‘We aren’t telling you anything.’ Wilkes’ bloody spittle landed at Luce’s feet, courtesy of Luce’s fist to his jaw earlier. Some resistance was to be expected, Luce supposed.

‘Jail might be the safest place for you,’ he reminded them.

‘Perhaps you fear your own boss’s retribution if you give me a name.

Will that be worse than what the network might visit upon you?

’ He knew it wouldn’t be. They’d be safe in jail.

And when they were out they’d have a fighting chance, if they were clever, to disappear and escape any retribution that might be waiting for them.

Wilkes slanted a look at Paterson. Luce could see the reasoning move in their eyes.

‘Tell him.’ Paterson coughed and spat blood, the effort bringing him pain. Luce wondered if his wound was worse than it had looked.

Wilkes gave him a malevolent look. ‘Dieter Gerlitz sent us.’ His mouth twisted into a sneer. ‘That name means nothing to you, does it? Hah hah.’ The laugh cost him. His ribs hurt. Served the bastard right.

Wren stepped forward, fingering her blade, her tangled hair and wrecked ball gown giving her a fierce beauty.

Primal desire surged through Luce, savage and sharp.

She put the blade to Wilkes’ neck. ‘Dieter Gerlitz worked for Cabot Roan. He was Roan’s right-hand man when it came to munition sales in Europe.

He and Roan were selling arms to the Ottomans and hoped to sell to the Greeks via connections in England before the Horsemen foiled their plans that night in Wapping. ’

Luce shot her a warning look. ‘Put the knife away.’ He didn’t want Wilkes and Paterson dead. At least not yet and not by her hand. She stepped back and he watched Wilkes breathe a little easier although the man’s gaze emanated pure hatred for her.

‘Of course she knows,’ the man growled, wanting to bait him but Luce didn’t bite, at least not out loud.

Internally, he did wonder what the man meant.

What did Wren know? The man’s gaze lingered on Wren.

‘I bet not even you knows the rest though. You put that blade in me or Paterson here and you’ll never know. Not until it’s too late.’

Luce shifted his gaze to Wren, gauging her reaction in order to adjust his own guesses as to what Wilkes might be alluding.

Clearly, there was information to be had.

Wren had gone pale, her eyes two blazing grey lights, her hand subtly flexing around the hilt of her blade as if she knew or guessed what that information might be and would do anything to extract it.

‘I don’t have to tell you anything.’ Wilkes sneered.

‘Maybe I’m just playing with you. Sowing doubt.

Sowing worry.’ Luce hated Wilkes’ eyes on her.

He should have given the man a black eye instead of a sore jaw.

But that was what Wilkes wanted. He wanted this to be about emotions, about forgetting what the goal of the interaction was.

Luce needed information. That would be the real revenge, not the short-term, base satisfaction of wrecking violence for violence.

‘I don’t think so,’ Luce replied coolly.

He split his gaze between Wren and Paterson.

Wren knew there was information and Paterson was hurt badly.

‘Your friend here is going to need more than bandages.’ Already, blood was slowly seeping through the doctor’s hasty work.

Wren had done more damage than originally suspected.

Paterson was paling, struggling against unconsciousness and pain.

‘We have laudanum. We can get him stitches if need be. But you have to pay in information.’

‘That’s extortion,’ Wilkes bit out. ‘The Hippocratic oath…’

‘Holds no sway with me. I am not a physician,’ Luce snapped. ‘It’s not extortion, it’s a trade. Or perhaps you’d like to join your comrade in feeling the effects of Miss Audley’s blade?’

‘Miss Audley. That’s sweet. She isn’t any Miss, any more than you’re really a lord. Look at you two, giving yourselves airs.’ There it was again, this indicator that Wilkes knew something about her. But that was not the goal of this interrogation. He would not let Wilkes distract him.

‘Tell him. It won’t matter in the long run,’ Paterson urged hoarsely, starting to slouch in his chair. ‘Get me the drugs.’

For a moment, Wilkes looked nervous, concerned about his comrade’s condition. It was good to note the man had a modicum of loyalty. Luce would continue to use that as long as he needed to.

‘It’s about your brother,’ Wilkes snarled.

He might confess but he wouldn’t be nice about it.

Luce felt the man’s gaze shift to him and carefully schooled his features.

Wilkes had been trying to provoke him from the start.

Features schooled, but his pulse still raced. Wilkes knew something about Stepan?

‘Gerlitz has found him in Essex. He is sending a team to finish the business started in Wapping. The explosives expert your brother killed in the water was Gerlitz’s cousin.’

Myriad reactions rocketed through Luce. Joy that Stepan was alive. Fear that Stepan was in danger. A thousand questions jockeyed for his attention but now was not the time for it. Wren was on the move, her blade pressed once more to Wilkes’ throat.

‘That is not a given.’ Luce had the impression her words were for him, not for Wilkes. ‘There is a supposition only that Stepan is in Essex. There is no proof.’

Luce stiffened, another flood of realisations sweeping him. ‘You knew?’ He threw the accusation at her.

Wilkes chuckled. ‘Seems like the two of you have a lot to talk about.’

No, he would not let this scoundrel of a man sow his doubt.

Wilkes wanted a wedge between them. Luce would not give him the satisfaction.

Luce stepped forward, waving Wren away. He gripped the man’s lapels and tipped back the chair.

‘Where’s the team now?’ How much time did he have to get to Stepan?

To warn him? To save him? The Essex coast was up to four days away from the Surrey Hills by horse.

‘Tell me or there’s no laudanum, no magistrate, no protection of jail.

I’ll feed you back to Gerlitz myself and tell him how you betrayed him. ’

Paterson moaned. The doctor stepped forward, but Luce waved him off.

‘Cap Gris-Nez, that’s the last I knew,’ Wilkes offered and Luce beckoned the doctor forward.

Cap Gris-Nez was thirteen miles from Dover on the French side of the Channel.

‘Storms would have kept them in port. They won’t have been able to cross yet,’ Wren added.

‘She knows all about Cap Gris-Nez,’ Wilkes hissed. ‘It’s Falcon’s favourite port. Discreet and less public than Calais.’ He sneered at Wren. ‘It took Gerlitz a while to figure out where you’d disappear to, but he finally did it.’

Luce whirled back to face Wilkes. ‘What did you say?’

‘You didn’t know?’ Wilkes gave an evil grin. ‘She’s Falcon.’

Luce felt as if a carpet had been pulled out from under him. His sharp mind reeled. Wren was Falcon? Stepan was alive? Wren had known all along and had not told him?

‘Luce, I can explain.’

He grabbed her arm. ‘You damn well will, but not here,’ he growled in a low voice.

He would not give Wilkes the petty satisfaction of having caught him off guard.

He got them to the sleigh and he managed the drive home.

The silence between them was very different than the peaceful silence in which they’d arrived in town, expecting a night of fun and revelry.

A night that was supposed to have involved stolen kisses and playful seduction in an alcove.

All of that was gone now. His lover had betrayed him, trust and all, after having promised not to.

Long before they got home, something inside him broke, his hope perhaps? Or was that his heart?

He’d been unaware until now how deeply his affections for Wren had run, of how much he’d given to her.

He’d used the word love in his thoughts earlier but he’d not understood what that meant until now when it was shattered, part and parcel of what had broken in him.

He knew intuitively this was why he’d never done it before—never given his heart, only his body.

This hurt. Belonging hurt. This was the price.

His despair was equalled only by the initial feelings of losing Stepan. It was as if the stars had faded from the sky and the joy from the world. He was dead inside again. The life he’d felt these last few weeks, put out.

But none of that could matter now. He could sort out his brokenness later, after Stepan was found.

Time was of the essence. He would do what he always did when faced with an emotional crisis that threatened to overwhelm him.

He would work. By the time he entered the library, aware of Wren trailing silently behind him, Luce Parkhurst, Lord Waring, lover of the exquisite Miss Audley, had been firmly replaced by the fourth Horseman.