An English Lord's Love Affair

Chapter 24.2. Help

   Wait. No, she could not wait. Certainly not outside. She could at least locate Finni and send him to help. Not that she had a particular desire to come face-to-face with Edward, to expose her part in this, but she'd be damned if he'd ever hurt anyone she loved again.

   And she loved Benedic.

   She began to run toward the house in her Sunday dress, up the stone entrance steps, into the dark oak-paneled hall. How still the place seemed. As empty and quiet as a burial vault.

   "Finni?" she whispered, pivoting as she heard the front door creaking open.

   There was no one behind her.

   She edged toward the vast unlit fireplace and covertly bent to pick up a blackened poker from the hearth. "Who is it? Who's there?"

   No answer.

   She backed into the hall, stifling a gasp as she stepped over a man's brown woolen cap on the carpet. She stared down, sickened, at the small pool of blood beside it.

   It was a gamekeeper's cap. She could not look at it without seeing Finni's leathery features, his shock of red hair, his hesitant smile. What had happened to him? Had he been trying to help Benedic?

   "Where are—" She felt a hard muscular force against her legs and whirled, the poker uplifted, to look down at the heavy tan hound sniffing the carpet.

   "Ares, not you . . . yes, you. It was you at the door. Come along. Earn those sausages you've been eating. Help me find Benedic and Finni."

   The dog led her down the hallway, around the corner, to the library. She could not see any more blood, but it occured to her that there might be more than the one hiding place Benedic had shown her in the house.

   The logical choice would be the library, where a man might spend hours alone and unobserved. The door was already opened. The room smelled pleasantly of brandy fumes and musty, old leather-bound books. It was a dark retreat, the heavy drapes closed against the day-light.

   Papers lay scattered across the floor. A chair was over-turned as if there had been a scuffle.

   "Benedic?" she said in an undertone. "Finni, are you in here?"

   She stared around the room. Ares pushed past her, his nose to the floor, picking up a scent.

   "Find them," she said, gripping the poker in her gloved hands.

   Not the fireplace, she thought. The dog moved right past it without stopping. She watched him walk straight to a corner bookshelf, then disappear.

   The panel gaped open. She followed the dog into the dark crevice, all her senses on the alert.

   "Benedic?" she whispered, staring down into a musty black void.

   A rough calloused hand closed around her ankle. She cried out, pitching forward with the poker, before she hit her shoulder on a beam and regained her balance.

   Ares whined plaintively from the shadows. Below her, at the bottom of three wooden steps, a man moaned. She went down on her knees and pulled from his mouth the cravat that had been used to gag him.

   "Finni," she said in horror as he lifted his battered face toward her. "What happened? Where is Lord Strathmere?"

   "My knife is over there in the corner. Cut my hands and feet free so I can be of use. Sir Edward found me snooping about and took me by surprise. It won't happen again."

   She scrambled down the steps and felt around in the dirt for his knife. "Where is Lord Strathmere?"

   "In the smugglers' vault. I sat here helpless and could hear him moving about. Hurry, Lady Charlotte. Cut harder. Ye'll not hurt me."