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“Don’t call me ‘my dear’,” Ursula snapped. “I am not your anything.”
“I shall call you whatever I damned well please,” Alfred countered.
“You have been busy, haven’t you? So, your family followed me wherever we went. Your mother has been trying to make acquaintances with people who really don’t like her; in places where it was evident she doesn’t belong. Meanwhile, you have been busy scouring the ton for someone you could kidnap and force into marriage.” Ursula sat back in her seat and shook her head in disbelief. “Do you really think that you can do something like this and get away with it?”
“I know we will. Mother has said it would work and she always gets what she wants,” he assured her somewhat dourly.
“Sounds to me like you are a little resentful of mother. I take it she carries the purse strings?”
When Alfred turned his face to the door and didn’t answer, Ursula knew she had just hit the nail on the head. Alfred was indeed at his mother’s beck and call, and resented it.
“How did you plan to get me to say the words required for a marriage ceremony? After all, you cannot force me to speak when I don’t want to. Especially in front of a vicar, who wouldn’t marry anyone who had been abducted. Not even your precious mother could manage to scam her way through that particular debacle.”
“We have contacts,” Alfred replied in a voice that was stiff and uncomfortable.
She knew from the look on his face that she wasn’t going to get anything else out of him right now. With nothing else to do, Ursula sat back in her seat and turned her gaze to the floor while she waited for the carriage to stop.
Trenton scowled when the sound of an altercation at the far end of the Ladies’ Mile broke the silence of the park.
His heart began to pound. Had someone screamed?
Without any idea why, he knew instinctively that it was Ursula. He ran toward the tall iron fence that bordered the park just in time to watch Alfred Sinnerton push someone into the depths of a familiar black carriage. A maid, who looked suspiciously like Molly, was now lying prone upon the floor.
He ran down the road as fast as his legs could carry him all the while keeping his gaze locked firmly on the carriage as it raced away.
“How do I chase it?” He gasped, wishing he had his horse with him. He knew that if the carriage got too far away then he would never stand a chance of finding Ursula again.
By the time he reached the main road, his chest heaved as he gasped for air and hailed a carriage that was heading in the same direction.
“’Ere, watch out,” the coachman gasped as Trenton grabbed the reins and hauled himself aboard.
“I need help. Someone has just abducted by fiancé. They are in that black carriage at the end of the road. Follow them,” Trenton ordered. “Please, hurry,” he prompted when the coachman merely stared at him.
“Which way?” the coachman demanded when he realised Trenton was being serious.
“It turned left at the end of the road.” Trenton pointed to the end of the road ahead.
“What does it look like?”
“A regular black carriage,” Trenton replied crisply. “I think the coachman is a woman, rather broad across the shoulder and wearing a dark hat pulled low to cover her face.”
“Good Lord, what are you involved in?” the coachman growled as he snapped the horse’s reins to get it to go faster.
“They are fraudsters and have kidnapped my fiancé and accosted her maid back there.”
The coachman glanced back over his shoulder and swore at the sight of the maid being helped to her feet by several pedestrians.
“Best get after ‘em then,” the coachman growled and turned his attention to weaving his carriage in and out of the traffic.
“That way!” Trenton shouted anxiously as they turned onto the main road and spotted the lumbering black carriage up ahead.
“I see ‘em.” The coachman’s eyes were hard with determination.
“Is there a way around them?” Trenton demanded in desperation when they turned from one road into another but lost sight of their quarry.
He closed his eyes on a silent prayer and tried to steady his nerves. The thought of anything happening to Ursula, his precious Ursula, was enough to make him want to tear his hair out.
“No, guvnor, this traffic is too heavy for it to be too far away though.” The coachman studied the road ahead and began to push the carriage through a narrow gap in the traffic. Neither of them paid any attention to the driver behind, who protested loudly at being made to stop rather sharply. “It’ll be faster if you run for them. They are stuck in traffic too. Up there, look,” the man reported and pointed to their quarry.
