Page 70 of One Night with a Rake

The man snorted.

At least it was better than stony silence. Either he doubted she had access to ready cash or he was being paid such an astronomical sum, he didn’t believe she could deliver on her promise.

Who would want to abduct her in the first place?

Perhaps the motive was political. Was there someone who didn’t want her match with the royal duke to proceed?

In that case, she was hopelessly out of her depth. She drew herself up to sit as tall as possible and decided to play the only card of that suit she had.

“My father is the Marquis of Yorkingham. He wields a great deal of influence in the House of Lords and is a confidant of the Crown.” Of course, King George III was hopelessly mad most of the time, but her father did still have His Majesty’s very unreliable ear. “Trust me. You do not want to make so formidable an enemy.”

In the silence that followed she heard only the clop of the horse’s hooves and the creak of the wheels. In the distance, St. Paul’s great bell tolled noon.

Her initial reaction had been outrage. Now panic was creeping up the scale to form a close second.

The carriage slowed and her heart rate sped up. If they were nearing their destination, she was losing her opportunity to win free. When the conveyance stopped, another possibility pushed its way into her mind, one she’d been trying to keep at bay.

There was every chance that her abductor and Vesta’s murderer were one and the same.

***

The doctor, if that’s what the quack actually was, took every last farthing in Mercy’s little coin purse. In exchange, he’d lanced the growing lump on Reuben’s head and let the accumulated blood flow into his little porcelain bowl. Then he bound up Reuben’s head with a length of clean muslin—at least, Ninian had claimed the chemise it was torn from was clean—and left orders that the patient be allowed to sleep until he woke naturally.

Well, what else would they do? Hire a brass band to wake him?

Once the doctor left, Madam Bouchard shooed the rest of the girls away. Before she slipped out of the room as well, she gave Mercy some parting advice.

“Sometimes,” Madam Bouchard said, “a patient with a head wound will rally if he hears a voice he recognizes. Talk to him.”

Mercy skewered her former employer with a frown. In what lifetime had the madam spent any time in a sick room? “But what if he can’t hear me?”

“It doesn’t matter. You need to say the words. Now.”

While there is still reason for you to say them shimmered unspoken in the air. The door closed behind Madam Bouchard with a soft snick of the latch.

Mercy hitched a hip on the side of Reuben’s bed, sinking a bit into the feather tick. He didn’t stir.

“Most fellows give me a better welcome when I sit on their beds,” she said, trying to keep her tone light. Her brittle smile faded as he continued to lie still as stone.

Normally Reuben had so much color in his tanned face, Mr. Humphrey was after him to use rice powder to give himself a more fashionably pale complexion to go with the fancy livery the Yorkingham footmen wore.

Reuben would need no rice powder now. His skin held a chalky, gray undertone. He looked as if he were leaving her by inches, slipping farther away with each shallow rise and fall of his great chest.

Tears trembled on Mercy’s lashes and she began to speak. At first she chided him lightly for being careless enough to let someone get the drop on him like that, but then she decided he’d paid dearly enough for that lapse in judgment.

“Ye’re a good man, Reuben Darling. But not a very smart one. Ye were wrong when ye told me…” Her voice faltered. “When ye told me I deserved to be loved. Ye don’t know what ye’re talkin’ about, truly ye don’t.”

She told him how it had been for her, how men had used her since she was barely old enough to have sprouted breasts. “So I decided I’d use ’em right back.”

She confessed to stealing from her customers and making it seem as if they’d misplaced their valuables elsewhere. Then when she’d learned to twist men to her will, she conned them into buying her little baubles she could sell without the madam’s knowing. That way Mercy could collect the whole amount without letting her employer take her cut.

“I even cheated Lady Georgette countless times since I came to work for her. Does she really think her dresses wear out as quick as I tell her they do? I rip a seam here or lose a bit of lace there and sharp as ye can say Bob’s yer uncle, I’m nippin’ off to the secondhand shop to sell a lovely gown for every last shilling I can get.”

Tears spilled over her lower lids, but she brushed them away angrily.

“The only reason I haven’t lifted any of her jewelry yet is because I ain’t figured out how to have paste copies made first. And you, Reuben Darling.” She moved up and propped herself over him, letting her hair fall down to tickle his face. He didn’t twitch a muscle. “I call ye names and make fun of ye, but when I crook my little finger to ye, ye hop along to me bed, biddable as a lamb. And I think to myself, I’ll have me a bit o’ sport with this one before I toss him back.”

Her chin quivered.