Defiant Captive Page 37

  Alexandra Maitland had almost as many demons as he did, Hawke thought, remembering how he'd come upon her screaming in terror on the wind-blown cliffs. And now he knew she carried the guilt of her father's suicide along with everything else.

  Damn, why couldn't things ever be black and white? Why was nothing ever easy?

  With a weary sigh Hawke leaned back in his chair and studied the lock of Alexandra's hair, soft and rich against his fingers. Soon he'd be waxing sentimental, Hawke thought, smiling grimly. He was half foxed already, and in a few hours he'd have a devil of an aching head.

  Just as the ormolu clock chimed the quarter hour, the Duke of Hawkesworth rose tiredly to his feet and made his way slowly off to bed, the burnished lock of hair still gripped tightly in his hand.

  * * * * *

  Not even fierce loyalty can override the curiosity of a mongoose for long, and so it was with Rajah. Gradually, Alexandra grew aware of his slight movements as he slanted his head to sniff some new and perplexing scent. London was new terrain to him, after all, she recalled ruefully, terrain he was hungry to explore. She felt a pang of guilt that she had kept the mongoose from his adventures so long.

  "Very well, my little friend, I shall open the window for you. But mind you don't wake the household, or we'll have Hadley clambering in here looking for a thief."

  The little mongoose issued a sharp, high-pitched squeak as Alexandra bent to open the window. Situated at the rear of the house, her bedroom looked out over a narrow backyard that opened onto the mews. In the small garden a May hawthorn had just come into bloom, spilling its rich fragrance into the night air. A gentle spring wind ruffled the curtains as Rajah jumped lightly to the sill and perched there for a moment, sniffing briskly. His pink nose twitched and he arched his tail gracefully, then turned to give Alexandra a last lingering look.

  "Oh, be off with you!" she said with mock severity, then smiled when he disappeared. Almost immediately, she missed his company. For some minutes she stood at the window watching his sleek form jump deftly from sill to sill until he found a drainpipe and slipped down to the garden.

  The cool wind played across her shoulders, and Alexandra shivered. She was still wearing her silver gown and the necklace of diamonds and emeralds. The large square-cut gems hugged her skin, heavy and cold against her bare neck and shoulders. She wondered suddenly if Isobel had worn them, and the thought made her feel sick. Very carefully, she unhooked the metal clasp and returned the precious necklace to its case. But she wondered as she did so why an odd, cold sensation hung about her skin.

  Just then, the curtains fluttered open to reveal a boy's grimy face. "Ye be Pence's friend?" a small shadowed figure demanded. "Said as 'ow ye was a flamer." He must have seen her eyes widen in fear, for he added quickly, "Gone and got 'isself in a bit o' trouble, and needin' yer 'elp, is our Pence." His thin legs slipped across the window sill and he stood up to assess the room by moonlight. "Said ye was a rum 'un what wouldn't run shy, so 'e did."

  "Pence? In trouble?" Alexandra repeated in confusion. "But how —"

  "Best stow the whids." Seeing her incomprehension, the boy added impatiently, "No time for questions now. Digger'll be givin' me a bastin' as it is fer comin' 'ere."

  Digger. Alexandra shivered, remembering that Pence had refused to speak of the man who represented a past the boy was desperate to forget.

  "Reck'n I'll shab off the way I come then, and wait fer ye in the mews." Silently, the boy moved back to the window. One leg over the sill he turned, his eyes narrowed as he studied her. "Best make it fast. There ain't much time 'til Digger finds me out. Give ye three minutes, then I pikes off, 'ear? And don't blow the gaff to nobody, or it'll go bleedin' 'ard with Pence."

  "Wait!" Alexandra called desperately, but the boy had already slipped noiselessly into the night.

  Her head spinning, Alexandra ran to the door. Hawke! She must find Hawke.

  He would know what to do.

  * * * * *

  Hawke's head had already begun to ache as he paused outside his bedroom door. Curiously reluctant to enter, he turned and looked down the corridor to the closed door behind which Alexandra slept.

  No good, old boy, he thought grimly. Get yourself to bed before you do anything else you'll regret in the morning.

  His candle guttered in a sudden draft as he opened his door. Across the room a slim figure slipped from the darkness, but Hawke did not notice, engaged in lighting an oil lamp by the door.

  "Hawke." The low soft whisper made his whole body freeze.

  " 'Tis I, truly, and no dream."

  Slowly, the duke raised his head and studied the beautiful woman sitting before him on his bed. He blinked and shook his head, afraid to believe his eyes, afraid the brandy was fogging his brain.

  "Love me, Hawke. Let me love you." Long arms reached out to him, white in the candlelight.

  With a ragged groan Hawke stumbled across the room to the bed, kneeling before the woman. She studied his face intently, a soft smile curving her red lips.

  "At least you haven't forgotten me."

  "I could never forget," he mumbled hoarsely, struggling free of his jacket and waistcoat, anxious to feel her warm skin against his. Her hands soon came up to help him, freeing his shirt, then moving to the buttons at his breeches.

  A moment later, he stood naked before her, burning and urgent in the semidarkness. When her cool fingers reached out to stroke his stiff manhood, Hawke nearly gasped. Fire shot through him as her white hands circled him possessively.

  His muscles tightened in immediate response, hungry for more. Slowly, her fingers began to move.

  From outside in the hall he heard a whisper of feet approaching his door, and somewhere in the back of his mind he felt a sharp prickle of uneasiness.

  He frowned, trying to fight the fire snaking through his fevered body. Behind him the footfalls ceased. His doorknob clicked.

  "Hawke?" It was the merest whisper, soft and uncertain. "Are you there?"

  Frozen with shock, he stared down at the glittering eyes of the woman before him. "My God!" he rasped in disbelief. "It's impossible!"

  And that was how Alexandra found Hawke and his singularly undead wife. When she stepped into the room, the pair was caught in that most intimate of contacts, Isobel's silken talons wrapped around her husband's jutting manhood.

  Alexandra choked in horror, too stunned by Hawke's betrayal to wonder how his wife had come back to life. With a strangled sob she flung herself back toward the door, desperate to escape the nightmare vision before her.

  "Stop!" Hawke cried hoarsely, but the woman he loved was already at the threshold.

  "B-bloody, cheating snake!" she sobbed. "I wish you both joy of each other!"

  Isobel's jeering laughter followed Alexandra down the hall.

  "Away from me, succubus!" Hawke thundered, but his wife only gripped him more tightly, her fingers cruelly efficient.

  With a curse Hawke pinned her wrist in a deadly grip that threatened to crush her very bones. Isobel released him then, falling back against the bed and laughing demonically.

  Savagely, Hawke yanked on his breeches, ran for the door, and dashed past two startled footmen on the staircase. The entrance door was still open as he pounded out into the street.

  A carriage rounded the corner, moving fast; it nearly ran Hawke over as it hurtled down the empty street.

  "Alexandra!" he screamed. "Wait!" His bare feet hammering across the sharp cobblestones, Hawke raced in pursuit, but the horses were already at a gallop. His mouth twisted in pain and frustration as the carriage disappeared around a corner, leaving him ashen-faced and disbelieving, crushed as he watched all his dreams vanish into the night.

  Thirty minutes later, he was banging at Morland's door. Whitby's thin eyebrows rose in surprise as the duke hurtled past him into the foyer.

  "Damn it, Tony, where are you? This is urgent!" Hawke bellowed.

  Morland strode angrily out of his bedroom, silk dressing gown sw
irling at his ankles. "What in the name of God do you want now?" he demanded.

  Hawke's tense fingers gripped his friend's sleeve. "Has she come here to you?" he asked hoarsely.

  Lord Morland did not pretend to misunderstand. Dragging his arm from Hawke's grip, he spun about and stalked toward his study. When they were safely inside, he turned to Hawkesworth with an angry look. "Miss Maitland is not here, you fool! Why do you persist in imagining enemies wherever you look?" Then his eyes narrowed, seeing the raw despair that darkened Hawke's face. "She's left you then?"

  Wearily, Hawke dropped into a trim leather chair by the window and accepted the glass that Morland pressed upon him. He took a small sip, then rolled his head tiredly against the back of the chair. "Yes, she's flown, Tony, just as you said she would. I still cannot believe it. My God, Isobel was there, and Alexandra—" His voice ended in a sound of inchoate pain. "I'd hoped that she came to you."

  Slowly, Morland sank into the chair opposite. "I've seen nothing of Miss Maitland since dinner. Maybe she went to a friend."

  "She knows no one in London." Suddenly, Hawke sat up straight in his chair. "No one except Sir Stanford Raffles, that is." His face tightened in fury. "If she's gone to that silver-tongued orator, I swear, I'll see him stuffed and hung alongside the rest of his museum specimens!" Hawke jumped up and made for the door.

  "I'd better go with you," Morland said quietly. "In such a mood there's no telling what sort of scrape you'll get yourself into."

  But Sir Stanford, when they found him, declared himself as ignorant as they of Alexandra's whereabouts, and his obvious concern convinced Hawkesworth that he was telling the truth.

  "Where can she be?" the duke ranted as he and Tony walked back down the steps in front of Raffles's townhouse.

  "Is there no one else she might have gone to?"

  "No, no one," Hawke muttered, drawing an unsteady hand across his face. "But when I get my hands on her, I'm going to thrash her within an inch of her life!" He turned tortured eyes upon his friend. "If I find her. Dear God, Tony, where can she be?"

  "Buck up, man!" Morland ordered. "She can't have gone far, not in such a short space of time. Did she have no relatives, no old friends of her father's — old military men put out to pasture? A nanny, perhaps, or an old retainer living nearby?"

  Hawke's eyes flashed to life with fierce intensity. "That's it, Tony! by God, you're a bloody genius! She must be there." Suddenly, he sprinted down Berners Street.

  He found Madame Gres in her shop working late on a trousseau. She received him with quiet composure and ushered him into the privacy of her sumptuous office. There she offered him a glass of sherry while he caught his breath.

  It had to be Miss Mayfield, the modiste thought, a tiny smile playing around her lips. No other person or thing could make the duke appear on her doorstep at such an hour.

  But Hawke's hoarse question soon wiped the smile from her face.

  "No, Miss Mayfield has not come here," she said in surprise, frightened by the blackness that settled over Hawke's features at her words. "Oh, God, Hawke, never tell me she's left you? She's alone, with no money!"

  "Don't you think I haven't told myself that a thousand times?" he cried in a tortured voice. "Don't you think I haven't pictured what might have happened to her? Where she might be lying right now?"

  The woman's small fingers gripped his shoulder reassuringly. "Now, don't be plaguing yourself with dark fancies. Miss Mayfield is a sensible female and well able to take care of herself. She'll turn up shortly, either here or somewhere else. Take heart, for this brooding does no good — either to her or to yourself."

  "You're right, of course, Olivia. I'm making no sense." His hand, cold but strong, found hers and squeezed it briefly.

  Before he could say more, the modiste stepped gently away from him. A faint note of regret entered her voice. "You must go now, Hawke, go and find her. Find her soon," the woman said tensely, "for she carries your child."

  The Duke of Hawkesworth groaned and ran an unsteady hand through his dark, disordered hair. The last vestiges of color drained from his face, and his glass of sherry fell unnoticed to the carpet, bleeding in a crimson pool across a chorus of smiling cupids.

  "Alexandra!" Hawke cried, his voice hoarse with shock and pain. "Where are you?"

  * * * * *

  Alexandra.

  It was no more than a dry whisper of wind through long grass or the wild beating of birds' wings. But the sound inched its way into her consciousness, into the dark, throbbing tunnel of pain where she slept.

  Numbly, Alexandra opened her eyes, and blackness opened into blackness. Tentatively, she raised cold fingers to her forehead, where the first blow had caught her. Gingerly, she explored the swelling. Her teeth clenched in pain, only to begin chattering from the cold a moment later.

  The boy had been waiting all right — along with a scowling coachman, who'd swept her inside his carriage and away before she could do more than deliver one hoarse scream.

  Where she was now, Alexandra did not know. Around her all was unrelieved darkness, no glimmer of light to be seen anywhere. If only she could make out where she was, discover a means of escape! From the muffled silence, she thought she must be in an enclosed space, and an echoing drip of water confirmed that guess.

  Then her head swam, and she gave up trying to plan or reason. Every ounce of energy was given to fighting the black waves of pain and nausea that swept over her. But she failed.

  Alexandra.

  Again it came, a sudden trembling in the silence of her mind. The word gave her hope. He would come for her, Alexandra told herself.

  She had to believe that he would come.

  Chapter Thirty-Six

  The Duke of Hawkesworth's face was dark and shuttered when he left Madame Gres's establishment, ignoring the curious glances of a strutting trollop as he dashed past.

  His mind raced back and forth like a cornered animal's, pondering the same question, always the same question: Where could she be, damn it? No one had seen her. She'd left not the slightest trace. How, in a city with as many curious eyes as London had, was such a thing possible?

  He'd returned to his room to discover his cursed wife vanished as well, just when he'd been yearning to wring some answers out of her. And Hardy, that damned footman Bartholomew Dodd had recommended to protect the duke's household, had taken himself off as well.

  With a scowl that sent two drunken dandies scurrying out of his path, Hawke jumped over a half-collapsed section of gutter and dashed across the street. Maybe hard exercise would clear his head, he told himself and decided against hiring a hackney coach to carry him home.

  There had to be an answer, if only he could think clearly!

  Hawke's long strides carried him along quickly while he fixed his mind on the problem before him. Frowning and preoccupied, he did not notice the greeting called by an officer he had known in Spain, and the man sniffed and remarked to his companion how damnably broodish the Black Duke had become of late.

  Ah well, the officer's companion remarked philosophically, a wife like the Duchess of Hawkesworth might drive any man to brooding.

  Unaware of the slight he had just delivered, unaware of anything at all except finding Alexandra, Hawke stalked along the midnight streets. In a matter of minutes he reached a less populous part of town.

  A horse neighed suddenly, and the duke halted his long strides to allow a carriage to cross the narrow side street before him. Impatiently, he waited for the coachman to move, signaling the fellow with a hard jerk of the hand to make haste. But the man's eyes tightened, and he showed no inclination to set his horses in motion.

  "Are you blind as well as stupid, man?" Hawke called angrily to the man upon the box. "Or merely desperate for a fare?"

  Then the duke had his answer, for a slim white wrist swung open the carriage door. The interior was in shadow, and Hawke could make out no more than a dim female form. But then she drew closer and slid the hood of her cloak a
way from her face.

  His blood hammered as he gazed upon creamy cheeks, bright red tresses, and flashing aquamarine eyes.

  A cool laugh drifted from the carriage, freezing him where he stood.

  "You pick your moment well, madame," Hawke growled, "but not well enough, I think. Canning is all set to introduce the divorce bill in Parliament. He plans to dispense with a judgment in the courts and anticipates no difficulty in the bill's swift passage — particularly not in view of your well-documented infidelities. Which means, my dear, that you and your brother will soon be adrift once more among the dregs of society, precisely where you belong."

  "How dreary of you, Richard — but how precisely what James predicted! You do understand that it cannot be permitted, of course. I've become dreadfully attached to the quarterly allowance you made me, pitiful though it is."

  Hawke's hand snaked out to crush her crimson-tipped fingers. "Five hundred pounds? Pitiful? What a mercenary bitch you are!"

  The duchess's eyes narrowed in fury and pain and then she regained control of herself, ignoring his brutal grip. "And how crudely vigorous you are, Richard! Which puts me in mind of something else. How have you fared during my absence from your bed, dear husband? Have I interrupted your interlude with the little cripple? James will be terribly amused when I tell him of the scene in your bedchamber. I suppose the creature's deformity adds a certain novelty to your bed play."

  Hawke's fingers dug into his wife's shoulders and shook her so sharply that her head snapped with an audible click. "What have you done with her?"

  "Take your clumsy fingers off me, Richard, or you'll never find out," the duchess hissed, her eyes glittering with unmasked hatred. "She's beyond your reach by now, beyond anyone's reach — unless you choose to cooperate, that is."

  Hawke swallowed the fear that threatened to choke him and let the old dispassionate cunning take its place, just as he had done on the battlefields of the Peninsula. When he finally spoke, his voice was cool and slightly ironic. "I might have known your brother was involved. The scheme carries all his earmarks."