Four Nights With the Duke(55)

"Saddle up Jafeer," Vander instructed Mulberry. "And Ajax for Mr. Dautry."

"Are you certain about Jafeer, Your Grace?" Mulberry had clearly  appraised Vander's attire and guessed that something was afoot, not much  of a leap, given the pistols tucked into Vander's belt. "He still tends  to shy at the slightest thing."

"He'll be fine." Vander could see it in Jafeer's eyes. The horse had  known love back in Arabia and lost her; he had known love here in  England and lost her. He had won his first race. Jafeer had grown up.

A half hour later they were flying straight across Pindar fields, and  Jafeer was responding to every touch of Vander's knees and hands as if  he had been born with a man on his back.

The moon was rising by the time Vander slowed Jafeer to a walk, Thorn  pulling up Ajax behind him. The horses were breathing heavily, but  Jafeer's ears were twitching with delight and the willingness to gallop  through the night.                       
       
           



       

They had reached the border of Sir Richard's land. They picked their way  quietly through the surrounding wood, finally stopping at the edge of a  long, rolling lawn.

Vander dismounted, tied Jafeer to a tree, and told him to be quiet.  Thorn followed suit, and they melted into a clump of ash trees.

He had a shrewd notion that Sir Richard kept men on guard all night. He  likely had enemies of every stripe. Sure enough, as Vander came closer,  he saw that there was a man standing beneath the front portico, his  outline just visible when the moon came out from behind a cloud.

Thorn touched his arm and nodded toward the shadow cast by a man leaning  against the side of the house. There were likely at least two more  guards inside the front door.

At that moment, the moon emerged fully from the clouds and Vander saw  the cruel face of the man guarding the front door. He had the  bone-chilling air of a man who would kill for a triviality, for a baked  potato.

Vander gestured with his hand parallel to the ground, and Thorn nodded.  Silently, slowly, they sank to a sitting position against a tree and  waited for something to happen, something they could take advantage of.

For an hour or perhaps longer, the grounds were utterly silent. More  clouds drifted by, causing the moon to be obscured more often than it  shone. The man in front took a piss off the steps, but no one made a  circuit of the house. In fact, neither man stirred, which Vander took to  mean that Sir Richard wasn't worried about the house being broken into  from the rear.

No, his threats entered straight through in the front door, likely  because he defrauded men like Squire Bevington, an honorable gentleman  who had no idea how to contend with a perfidious villain.

Vander's mouth curled in faint amusement. He and Thorn didn't qualify.

Thorn had grown up on the streets, and he had taught Vander a great  deal. Vander had had all too many opportunities to practice those skills  in the rough world of horse-racing, where a desperate owner could hire  any number of thugs to take out the opposition by stealth or outright  violence.

He touched Thorn's arm, and they rose and made their way silently up to  the back of the house. Sure enough, no one appeared to be stationed  there at all. Just as they were about to cross to the kitchen window, he  saw an indistinct figure against the wall enclosing the kitchen  gardens. It seemed Sir Richard had a guard in the rear of the house  after all.

As he and Thorn watched, the moon emerged from a cloud and shone  directly-on Reeve's face. Vander swore under his breath and they both  stepped out of the shadows and walked over to him.

Reeve was wearing a tattered shirt, so shabby that Thorn guessed he'd  had it in prison, and leather breeches of the sort that blacksmiths  wear.

A shiver went over Vander's skin, visceral hatred for the man who had taken Mia. His wife.

Bloody hell.

Reeve showed no surprise at their presence. Instead, he jerked his head  at the dim light one story above their heads. Vander took the lead. He  would have doubted that a professor had experience in breaking and  entering, but Reeve slipped into the shadow of the house like a man  trained to robbery from the cradle. Of course, this was child's play  compared to breaking out of Scotland's most fortified prison.

A kitchen window had been propped open to allow the heat of the ovens to  escape the house. Vander pushed it farther open and put a leg over the  sill. In a moment he had a hand clapped over the shoeblack's mouth.

Large eyes stared at him, more excited than afraid. Vander grabbed a cloth from the table and tied it around the boy's mouth.

For a brief moment they all stood silently, listening to the sounds of  the great house breathing. There was a restless flow to the air. The  master of the house was awake; Vander would bet on it. Likely Sir  Richard had received word that Reeve had broken out of prison. Likely,  too, he was planning to flee; only a fool would imagine no revenge would  be taken, and whatever else he was, Sir Richard was no fool.

Thorn and Reeve followed Vander, low and close, down the servants'  corridor leading to the baize door, which in turn led to the entry.  There would be guards in the entry, trained for combat, but they  wouldn't be expecting men to attack them from behind.

The three of them came through the door as one. There was a ferocious  crack as Vander knocked a man to his knees, a bitten-off cry as Reeve  took out another, and the sound of a brief struggle until Thorn dealt a  third man a clout from the butt of his pistol. They were tying them up  when a foot scraped outside; the man on the porch had heard the  disturbance.

As the guard pushed open the front door, a flood of moonlight  illuminated his coarse features and slack, thin lips. Sir Richard wasn't  a man to do dirty work himself, so it was unsurprising to find that  he'd hired a man who looked capable of anything. Vander took him in a  silent rush, knocking him out with one well-placed blow.                       
       
           



       

At first Vander thought Reeve crossed to his side in order to help in  tying up the guard, but instead he heard the sudden sound of a dagger  leaving its sheath.

"What in the devil are you doing?" Vander growled, seizing Reeve's wrist.

Reeve's jaw hardened but he didn't resist Vander's grasp. "He shot two  of my grooms, knocked me senseless, and threw me in prison. He kept me  from my own damn wedding."

"Let the authorities take care of him." Vander had occasionally taken  the law in his own hands-no one involved in the horse racing could avoid  it-but he had never watched a man being killed in cold blood and he  didn't intend to now. "The price of murder is too high," he added.

Their eyes held a moment. Then Reeve snarled, "He gut-stabbed my  thirteen-year-old post-boy. I was told last night that the boy lived a  full day in excruciating agony before he died. He's a monster."

"In killing him, you risk becoming a monster yourself." When the truth  of that had registered on Reeve's face, Vander let his arm go.

They drifted up the stairs as quietly as snowflakes, Vander thinking  hard. He loathed Sir Richard Magruder, but Reeve was transported by  rage, his body clearly burning with steely fire. Sir Richard's greed had  cost Reeve the life of that boy, of his other servants, nearly cost  Reeve his own life, not to mention his marriage.

That same greed had given Vander the best days of his life. It had given  him Mia. Even though he'd had her only a short time, it had been worth  it. He fell back, ceding the other man's right to revenge.

Whatever Reeve did to Sir Richard . . . he did.

By the time Vander reached the top stair, it was as if the shock of  Reeve's return had evaporated. Instead, a new truth ploughed into him  with a body-shuddering blow. For good or bad, despite the similarities  with his father, he could not live without Mia.

She was his.

His woman, his wife.

He stood in the door of Sir Richard's study as Reeve swiftly and cold-bloodedly pummeled the man into submission.

Watching absent-mindedly, another fact hit Vander hard: something that  had been there, but he hadn't allowed himself to look at. She was his  life. In a few short days, she had worked her way into his soul, and for  the first time in his life, everything had felt clean and true.

The hell with his past, with his parents' relationship. He refused to let her go without fighting for her.

If that aligned him with the tragedy of his father's marriage, the hell  with it. He didn't give a damn. He had been a fool to walk away.

Vander left without bothering to say a word to Magruder. He no longer gave a damn about the man.

Mia was exasperating and fiery. She would likely disagree with him on a  daily basis. She would court scandals, and ride with her eyes closed,  and write stories in which men fell on their knees at the drop of a hat.