Nicholas’s insides had rolled with it, and it was with some relief that he managed to pull down the gag seconds before the contents of his stomach surged up and spilled out into the confined space.
Bloodied and now covered in his own vomit, Nicholas allowed himself to feel a few seconds of gratitude that he was at least still alive.
Although how long that state would continue depended upon the people who had put him here and what their plans were for him now that things had gone awry by the carriage crashing.
He was sure their original intention had been to remove him from Surrey in such a way that no one would be any the wiser as to where he had gone.
Nicholas had some idea about who might wish for him to disappear.But he doubted they had wished that to happen in a carriage accident.
No, he believed the people responsible for his abduction would much rather have him as their prisoner, to torture information from him before disposing of his body, than to have him be accidentally killed in a carriage accident before they were able to question him.
They would be wasting their time, of course.Nicholas might give the impression of living a dissolute life, but in truth, he was physically very fit and mentally unbreakable.
As were all the members of the Prince Regent’s private army.
* * *
“What was Wolfingham even doing in your carriage with you?”Julia now demanded of the lawyer, her voice perhaps a little sharper than she had intended after realizing she cared if Wolfingham had been harmed in some way.“I did not see him sitting inside with you when you left here earlier,” she recalled suspiciously.
Mr.Masterson turned his gaze from hers.“I did not know he was there either until after the carriage had crashed.”
“How could you not know he was inside the carriage with you?”Julia scoffed.
“Because he was not inside the carriage with me.”
“Then where was he?”She spoke her irritation with this man’s unhelpful answers.
“He had been locked in the— Please, you have to understand,” he pleaded.“These men have taken my sister.She is only fourteen.A child still.And those men—those men threatened to?—”
“Your sister has been kidnapped?”Julia gasped.
Matherson swallowed hard.“Yes.”
“When?”
“Shortly before I departed London to come here.”He shuddered.“As far as our family was aware, Susan was at a piano lesson, taken there by her maid, but then while she was away, a letter was delivered to me.It said they had taken Susan as she left her lesson to come home.That the maid was dead.That—that they would do terrible things to Susan before killing her too if I did not do as they instructed.”
“But why?”Julia demanded to know.“What possible reason could anyone have for doing such a heinous thing?And what does any of this have to do with Wolfingham?”She really was completely at a loss to understand that part of this rambling explanation.
The lawyer frowned.“The letter stated that if I wanted my sister to be released unharmed, I must be the one to come to Foxburgh Manor for the reading of the will.Not my father, who was Lady Roxburgh’s actual lawyer, but me.They said they would provide the carriage to bring me here, along with the driver and groom, and that I was just to keep my mouth shut and do as I was told.”
“So that rickety old carriage was not yours at all,” Amanda observed with some relief.
“I really do not think the age, or otherwise, of the carriage I arrived and departed in is of the least significance when my sister is obviously in danger,” Giles Masterson snapped.
Amanda’s cheeks blazed with color at the reprimand.“No, of course not.”
“What else did they say?”Julia’s mother prompted gently.
“That once we had arrived in Surrey, I had only to play my part as a guest and read out Lady Roxburgh’s will when the time came, and that they would take care of the rest of what needed to be done.”
“And what else was that?”Amanda, never one to be silent for long, now looked as perplexed as Julia felt.
“They did not tell me,” the young lawyer admitted shakily.
“But you now know those plans involved the Earl of Wolfingham?”the marquis questioned.
“Yes.”
