The Scoundrel’s Seduction Read online

  Esme pushed over her plate of toast. “Here, eat this, at least.”

  He took it gratefully. His stomach was still twisted up from whatever the hell Élise had given him last night, and maybe the toast would help. He glanced up at his sister. “Now tell me about our mother.”

  She sighed. “We came here to Kendal because Mark found a witness who’d helped disband Steven Lowell’s camp in Preston. The man told Mark that the players had traveled in a southeasterly direction. Except for two of them: Steven Lowell and a woman. Those two had headed north.”

  “But why Kendal?”

  Esme gazed down at her food but didn’t take a bite. “We didn’t know at first, but then we found a man in Lancaster who’d encountered a gypsy named Steven Lowell, and the woman, whom I’m sure is our mother. He’d heard them speaking of visiting the Lake District. They said they wanted to go there because …”

  She hesitated, and he tried to wait patiently, though he knew that every second he dallied, Élise was drawing farther away from him.

  Nevertheless, he knew he had something that Élise didn’t. She wasn’t experienced in flight. He was, however, quite experienced in the pursuit of his prey.

  He took a deep breath. “Because our mother’s old house is at Lake Windermere?”

  She shook her head. “No. I don’t think they intend to visit her house. It would be too obvious, you know.” She clasped her arms over her chest and blushed deeply. “Well … evidently, the lakes are the most sublimely romantic place in all of England.”

  He blinked at her. Swallowed his mouthful of toast and washed it down with hot, bitter coffee. Then he said slowly, “Our mother and Steven Lowell … have gone to the lakes … for a romantic interlude?”

  Looking appalled to be discussing this with him, Esme nodded.

  Sam rubbed the bridge of his nose. “Good God.”

  “And Kendal is the gateway to the lakes if one is arriving from the south, so they must have journeyed through here. Mark and Theo are questioning everyone to see if they can discover exactly where they went.”

  “And you, Esme?” He glanced at the pen and ink bottle and the notebook lying on the parcel beside her plate.

  She followed his gaze and sucked in her breath. “I … er … Well, I am questioning people, too. I questioned several at yesterday’s market.”

  “What’s that package?” He was only mildly curious, assuming it was something she was sending home to Sarah or the baby.

  “Um …” Panic flared in her eyes, and everything within Sam went on high alert.

  “What is it?” he asked, more sharply.

  “I …” She swallowed hard and whispered, “I can’t tell you.”

  He raised his brows. “I’m your brother. Of course you can tell me.”

  Curving her arm protectively around the package and notebook, she pressed her lips together and shook her head, dark resolve settling in her gaze. “I cannot.”

  He studied her for a long, drawn-out moment. This was beyond odd. Esme had never been rebellious before—

  It hit him over the head like a hammer, and he bit out, “It’s for a man, isn’t it?”

  Her eyelashes fluttered as she blinked at him several times. “No!”

  “Esme …” He infused a heavy dose of fatherly warning into his voice. God, what kinds of examples of proper behavior had the poor girl been given? He and Trent were much older and had been gone throughout her forming years, living their own lives. Their mother had had dozens of lovers, and she’d practically flaunted them under her daughter’s nose for most of her life. Esme had never known her father, the old Duke of Trent; he’d died before she was born.

  “It’s not … It’s not a man. I promise you. It’s not!”

  “What, then?”

  “I can’t tell you!” Her voice was a low wail.

  “Then I’ll just have to see for myself.” Lightning fast, he reached for her with both hands. With his right, he lifted her arm, and with his left, he snatched both the parcel and the notebook from the table.

  She jumped to her feet, her chair scraping over the wood floor, and rushed to his side. “Please, Sam, no!”

  He held both items firmly, and though she attempted to grab at them, her efforts were futile. Tears welled in her eyes.

  God. He’d never made his baby sister cry before. But then, he’d never been given reason to believe she was anything other than completely angelic prior to this moment.

  “You’re drawing attention to us, Esme,” he growled in a low voice. “Sit down.”

  His tone brooked no argument, and she did as she was told, plunking her body heavily in the opposite chair. Her hand shook as she rubbed at her eyes. “Please …”

  “Calm down.” He tried to infuse gentleness into his voice. “Just tell me what this is about.”

  She took several deep breaths, as if trying to compose herself; then she said, in a mournful whisper, “You will not approve.”

  “I am already aware of that. Otherwise you wouldn’t have tried to hide it from me.”

  “But …” She rubbed her eyes again. “You’ll make me stop … and … and I don’t want to stop, Sam. I can’t.”

  “Stop what?”

  She hesitated; then she murmured, “Writing.”

  He looked down at the package and notebook he clasped in his hands, then back to his sister. “Writing? This is your writing?”

  “Y-yes.”

  He looked at the package. The address in London was not one he recognized. “Where are you sending it?”

  “To … my publisher.”

  It took a moment for this to sink in as he gaped at her. “Your publisher?”

  She nodded.

  “You have published your writing?”

  She nodded.

  He still couldn’t wrap his head around this news. “So … you have written something that a publisher has accepted and made into an actual book?”

  She nodded yet again.

  “And … this book is available for sale? And people have read it?”

  “Them,” she whispered. “People have read them. There are three of them now. This is the fourth.” She gestured to the package.

  He stared at her. His sister had just turned twenty, and she was a secretly published author. Of three books.

  “Have you told Trent about this?”

  She shook her head. “No. No one outside of those directly involved in the publishing of the books knows my identity.”

  “Esme … what kinds of books are these?”

  Her flush deepened to a dark rose color. “They are … well … I’m afraid they are torrid romances, Sam. Please … do not read them.”

  He blinked at her. His sweet, innocent, unmarried sister, his sister who’d never even had a suitor, had written torrid romances under a nom de plume. Bloody hell.

  He didn’t know what to say. Words completely eluded him.

  “Please don’t tell Trent,” she whispered.

  And then, surprisingly, a tiny, grudging respect for his sister bloomed. Young as she was, she’d written stories that a publisher had deemed publishable. “Well,” he said shakily, “I must congratulate you, then.”

  Her eyes widened.

  “I will obey your request and not read them. I believe it shows a great deal of bravery to do what you have done. How long have you kept this a secret?”

  “More than a year, now.” Pride crept in to cover the fear on her face. “The first one was published just after Mother went missing.”

  “And you plan to continue to publish these … stories?”

  “Oh, yes. For as long as I possibly can.”

  He slid the package, along with the notebook, across the table to her. He felt almost dizzy. His world had been knocked out of kilter this morning when he’d discovered what Élise had done, but now there was an even greater sense of unreality.

  His sister was no longer a child. She was a published authoress who had successfully kept her identity hidden from the
world—and from her overprotective family—for more than a year.

  He needed to spend more time with Esme. To learn more about his baby sister, who had, somewhere along the way, become a woman.

  Unfortunately, though, it couldn’t be now.

  She gazed down at the package. “I was planning to get this into the post before Mark and Theo woke.”

  “Don’t let me keep you from that task.” He sighed. “I really do need to go.” Again, the image of Élise riding farther and farther away from him pushed through his mind.

  He clapped his hat upon his head and rose. Then he bent down to kiss his sister’s cheek. “We’ll talk again. Soon.”

  She nodded. Then whispered, “You’re not telling Trent?”

  “It is not my secret to tell, is it?”

  She smiled. “Thank you.”

  He returned her smile. “Good luck with the search for Mother. I hope to join you in the search very soon.”

  “I hope you will,” she told him.

  He walked out of the common room feeling bemused and unbalanced. But as soon as he stepped back into the rain, determination twisted into a hard knot in his stomach.

  It was time to find Élise.

  * * *

  Élise wrapped her arms around her body and stumbled down the road.

  Everything that could have possibly gone wrong had gone terribly wrong.

  Before she’d reached Kendal, the horse had gone lame. She’d had to walk the beast the remaining way into the town.

  She’d waited until the mail coach arrived at seven o’clock in the morning, her panic mounting that Sam could be on his way at that very moment.

  But she’d managed to board the mail coach, and they left Kendal on time. Still dressed in her boy’s clothing, she’d avoided the askance looks from the other passengers. She was certain they’d all suspected she wasn’t really a boy.

  And then it had begun to rain in buckets, and around noon, when they were just to the north of Preston, the mail coach sank into the mud, and in the continuing downpour, more mud flowed over the road with every minute that passed. Though the drivers and passengers had all banded together in an effort to disengage the coach from the knee-deep bank of mud, it was an entirely fruitless endeavor. The coach was hopelessly and irrevocably stuck.

  As a group, the passengers chose to walk back to the village they’d just passed through to wait for the coach to be dislodged and the rain to abate, but Élise had no desire to go backward. Instead she had decided to continue south. She could manage the rain a bit longer. Preston was a large town, and she’d find a warm, dry place there to rest before heading on to London.

  But as she walked, the rain fell harder. It was a deluge. It seemed everyone else in the world had been wise enough to stay off of the road today—the cold and wet permeated her clothing, her skin, and then her very bones until she couldn’t control the chattering of her teeth.

  All she wanted was to find a warm, dry place, curl up into a ball, and sleep. She hadn’t slept at all last night. She hadn’t realized that one night of missed sleep could make a person feel so wretched.

  Her muscles ached—every one of them, from the tips of her toes through to her neck. Her head throbbed. Her throat felt hot and parched, and when she swallowed, it felt as if she were swallowing pieces of glass.

  She stopped in her tracks, gazing into the sheeting rain at the ribbon of gray road that seemed to go on and on before her.

  Lovely, she thought sarcastically. This was not just lack of sleep. She was getting sick. A cold, perhaps, although if it was a cold, it was the worst cold she’d ever had. Perhaps it was made worse by the chill and the rain. Usually, people weren’t foolish enough to brave the elements like this when they were afflicted with a cold.

  She trudged forward, her steps heavy, slow, and very deliberate. Preston couldn’t be too far. The driver had said it was only three and a half miles. She could walk three and a half miles any day.

  Except, perhaps, today.

  She stumbled over a fallen branch in the road and fell to her knees. Her right knee smarted as she returned to her feet, and she looked down at it to see blood seeping through a tear in her trousers.

  Just a skinned knee, she told herself. Just a small cut, like the ones you had countless times as a child.

  Unaccountably, tears blurred her vision. The world around her went out of focus. The rain stung her cheeks like little pinpricks of ice.

  She tripped again. This time she stayed down longer, breathing through the sharp burst of agony of the knee she’d cut the last time.

  After several moments, she rose again. She looked around her hopelessly. On both sides of the road, there was nothing but endless fields. No shelter to be seen.

  But on the right, a stone slab lay on the side of the road. A perfect bench. She could rest there for a little while, gather her wits and her energy, and then forge onward.

  She limped over to the slab and sat upon it. Letting the saddlebag that had been slung across her back fall to the ground, she hugged her arms around herself, shaking too hard and feeling too exhausted to examine the damage to her knee. All she knew was that it hurt like a hound of hell had sunk its teeth into it.

  Shelter. She needed shelter. She was sick, and she was cold, and she was tired. She wouldn’t be able to walk much farther.

  The driver had said Preston was three and a half miles away. She’d walked at least two already—maybe even two and a half. One more mile, and she’d be in Preston, safe and dry.

  The thought was enough to bring her to her feet, resolutely strapping the bag over her shoulders once more. One more mile. She could do that.

  One more mile was nothing at all.

  Chapter Thirteen

  Late that afternoon, Sam plodded onward. He couldn’t push the horse too hard in this driving rain, but damned if he didn’t want to.

  She was out here somewhere. He hoped to hell he caught up to her before she reached Preston. Preston was a larger town, and it’d be more difficult for him to find her there.

  Foolish, stubborn woman. When he’d encountered the mail coach, a sinking feeling had contracted his gut. The drivers, unable to leave their cargo, had been huddled inside, waiting for the rain to let up and for assistance to arrive.

  Sure enough, a “slender, effeminate” young man had come aboard the coach in Kendal. And that young man, when the coach had become stuck, had mumbled—in a rather feminine voice—that he intended to continue on to Preston instead of returning to the hamlet a quarter of a mile back, as the rest of the passengers had done.

  As alert as if he’d not been drugged near to death just the night before, Sam’s senses were sharply attuned to his surroundings. There was little movement besides the pounding rain, the gathering puddles of water and mud in the road, the flutter of tree leaves as the rain lashed at them. There was no sign of life—no birds, no forest animals ducking into the bushes as he passed. Every living thing with any sense had found shelter and had tucked itself away to wait out the storm.

  Clearly, Élise had no sense whatsoever.

  He turned the horse down a tight bend, and on his next visual sweep of the road, he stopped dead at the sight of a huddled form off to the side. He pulled the horse to such a sharp halt, the animal reared. By the time it regained all four of its legs, Sam had already dismounted and was running toward the dark figure.

  “Élise!” he shouted with a cracking voice. The figure was a dark blob of wet wool and virtually unidentifiable. But he knew it was her. He skidded to his knees beside her and rolled her over.

  She was unconscious and deathly pale. He cupped her cheeks in his hands, all the anger and frustration that had accumulated within him over the past twelve hours draining from his body in a furious rush.

  Her skin felt clammy under his palms, and her lips were a disturbing shade of blue. “Élise, can you hear me?”

  She gave a low moan, and he released a harsh breath at the sound.

  She was al
ive. That was something.

  He gathered her into his arms and walked her to the horse. He knew exactly where he was—where the closest shelter was.

  Masterson.

  Fifteen minutes later, Sam stopped the horse in front of the gatekeeper’s tollgate.

  Élise had woken for a moment on the short journey. Gazing at him through shining eyes, she’d given him a faint smile, whispered, “My Sam,” in a croaking voice, and then had snuggled more tightly against him before drifting off once again.

  “Masterson!” he barked out.

  The man stuck his balding pate out the door of the little shack he kept beside the gate. His eyes widened when he saw Sam, and he rushed out into the rain, pulling an oilskin coat over his shoulders.

  “Hawk, what the hell’re you doing out here?”

  Sam glanced down at the unconscious woman in his arms. “She tried to escape.”

  Masterson gave a disapproving grunt. “Couldn’t have chosen a better day, could she?”

  “Evidently not,” Sam said dryly.

  “What’s wrong with her? Did you shoot her?”

  “No, I did not shoot her. She’s … I don’t know, exactly. I think chilled to the bone, possibly ill. And she’s bleeding—I think she cut her leg. I need to get her warmed up.”

  “Of course.” Masterson held out his arms. “Hand her over, then.”

  Sam’s arms reflexively tightened around Élise. But he took a deep breath and handed her down, an awkward proposition given the depth of her unconsciousness. The thought crossed his mind that she might have taken some of whatever she’d given him last night.

  He dismounted and exchanged the horse’s reins for Élise. Masterson secured the horse and then led Sam down a muddy path to his cottage, which was hidden behind a thick row of pines.

  Masterson led them inside to a small bedroom. “Lay her down here. I’ll fetch some towels for you, but I’ve got to return to the booth. You’ve anything you wish here at your disposal.”

  “Thanks.”

  Masterson nodded and left the room. Moments later, he returned with the towels and then disappeared, telling Sam that he’d be back at six and they could talk more over dinner.