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“This is all well and good, gentlemen, but who is going to pay this hefty ransom now I am also your prisoner?” The calmness of Hunter’s voice revealed none of his turbulent thoughts.
He had hoped to be able to enter the camp, reason with his ward’s kidnappers, and take her back to Lincoln Grange with him before then returning to London.
He had totally underestimated the desperation of the men who had taken Evelyn.
The same men who had now claimed him as their prisoner too.
The man who had crept up behind him leaned forward to whisper something in Paul Harker’s ear, too softly for Hunter to be able to make out any specific words.
A smile curved the older man lips when he refocused his attention on Hunter. “Our informants tell us that Lady Margaret ’Athaway came back in ya carriage with ye yesterday.”
“Lady Margaret has been to London?” Evelyn asked.
Damn her voice! Low. Husky. The sort of low and sensual female voice a man wanted to hear whisper dirty demands of him in the bedchamber in the darkness of the night. The early morning too. And the late morning. All afternoon. Every evening…
Dear God, this was not the time—and most decidedly not the woman!—for Hunter to allow himself to become lost in the heady desire now pulsing through him and once again painfully engorging his cock.
What the hell waswrongwith him?
Hunter St. John, the Duke of Lincoln, was known for his cool levelheadedness and his ability to remain unemotional, whatever the situation. He was not, decidedlynot, the sort of man who became aroused, his whole body aflame and clamoring for release, at the mere sound of a woman’s voice.
Only one woman’s voice, he reminded himself, because this had never happened to him before now.
As if that was going to make him feel better about the situation, when the woman in question was his nineteen-year-old ward and the daughter of his own father’s previous mistress. It would not do. It simply would not.
“She went to tell ’Is Grace what ’ad occurred,” Paul drawled. “Why else would ’e ’ave bothered ’imself to come ta Yorkshire?” he added derisively.
Hunter kept his gaze firmly fixed upon Paul Harker as he answered the older man rather than look at Evelyn. “Lady Hathaway is hardly in a position to request that five thousand pounds of my funds be released into her keeping.”
“Tha letter ye write will say otherwise,” the other man assured.
His brows rose. “The letter I write to whom?”
“Ya secretary an’ valet arrived in another carriage hours before you an’ Lady Margaret, I ’ear. One of them will ’ave tha good sense ta know ’ow to act, I’m sure.”
Hunter once again realized he had seriously underestimated this ragtag gang of kidnappers. In this case, he had not even contemplated the possibility they might be having Lincoln Grange watched in expectation of his arrival to the area. Not only that, but they would also have learned of his having had several people brought to the house after his arrival so that he could question them as to the whereabouts of Paul Harker’s gang of thieves.
He still needed to speak with Ben Watkins about the circumstances that had resulted in this situation in the first place. But that was for another time, to be dealt with once he had succeeded in releasing Evelyn from her kidnappers.
“I—”
“Enough,” the older man silenced him. “Make tha sen comfortable next to Evie. Ye are goin’ ta be stayin’ awhile.”
“Evie?” Hunter questioned sharply, having assumed Lady Margaret used that shortened version of her charge’s name out of affection.
“I prefer it over Evelyn,” his ward told him softly.
That was hardly the point. Oh, Hunter knew that one of the rules when captured by the enemy was to try to engage in conversation, in an effort to make them aware you were a person and not just a means to an end.
Hunter knew that, but he still disliked it intensely that these men, ragged and dirty, appeared to be more intimately acquainted with his ward than—
Dear God, no!
Hunter had firmly put from his mind thoughts of the possibility Evelyn might have suffered being physically molested or raped by her kidnappers during her days of captivity. He had done so because he had known such thoughts were not conducive to the task at hand.
Unfortunately, having now seen Evelyn the woman, those thoughts now plagued Hunter so deeply and so vividly, he barely noticed the indignity of having rope secured about his wrists and ankles.
After which he was pulled to his feet and dragged across the clearing, only to then be pushed down into a sitting position on the ground beside where Evelyn sat on a tree stump, calmly watching these events unfold.
