Chapter 33
Adull ache drummed in the back of her head, rolling down to her neck. Perry opened her eyes and blinked, clearing her vision.
Her stomach rolled and bile rose. This dark chamber was Sir Richard’s drawing room and…she looked down…she was seated in the same worn chair her father had vacated.
She wiggled her hands and her toes. Still working, and she wasn’t bound.
A loud thwack pulled her attention across the room and her blood roared.
“Stop that,” she yelled.
Sir Richard turned.
The loud drumming in her head picked up, making her shake. Fox slumped in another chair, tied and gagged. Sir Richard stood by him, his shirt and hands bloodied.
“Awake are you, mishy?”
She remembered. She’d been about to lock the door when it slapped open and knocked her back.
He waved a hand and a short barrel of a man limped from the corner. Only two bodies littered the floor and she recognized neither. Fox must have felled one of the new intruders, and this one was the only one to survive. Father and Jane and Kincaid must have escaped.
They would send help. She and Fox must stay alive.
Sir Richard approached and she stumbled to her feet, reaching into her pockets. Her pistols were gone. Her knife also. She’d left the pistol on the floor but she’d seen it in Father’s hand when he left.
“Looking for the pishtol?” Sir Richard’s eyes glittered. His mouth was twisted, his jaw swollen, and one eye blackened. Either Fox or Kincaid had done that damage, bless them. “Bringing pistols and knives into my home, Felicity?”
Her skin slithered and crawled. It wasn’t pain making his eyes glitter, it was insanity.
Little bolts of panic sparked through her and her chest tightened. Battered or not, nothing was stronger than a madman, and the henchman looked hale. He’d escaped any knife, or bullet, or fist aimed at him.
And Fox couldn’t help her, tied up as he was.
Perhaps they hadn’t found the daggers in her boots. She wiggled her ankles. The warm steel still crowded them. She shoved her hand deeper into her pocket.
And she still had the picks she had scrabbled from the floor.
She opened her mouth and said “Perpetua,” but it came out like a squawk.
“Frightened, are you?” Sir Richard’s smile revealed bloody gums where a tooth had gone missing. “Cat got your tongue?”
Fox or Kincaid had done that. A laugh bubbled up in her, bringing bravado with it.
She cleared her throat. “I said, Perpetua.”
His gaze traveled the walls behind her. “Oh, aye, Felicity and Perpetua.”
“Yours is quite an unrestful manor, Sir Richard.”
His eyes focused in on her, widened, darkened. A hand shot out to her neck. “Unrestful.”
She leaned back, trying to contain the fear, mind reeling. Fox roared through his gag, and one of Sir Richard’s eyes ticked.
She must distract him before he turned back on Fox. “Unhand me,” she said calmly.
The muscles around his eyes worked. He was confused. He thought she was her mother, whom he had wanted. Perhaps she should use that against him.
She summoned the memory of her mother’s calm tone. “Unhand me, please, Richard.”
