The Slide Into Ruin Page 26

  “I’m not a little boy anymore, Eliza. I am a man with honour. Honourable men say the things they want to.” He pointed his stubborn look at Wickham. “You have to take us back to Darius so he can look after us the way he has been already.”

  “Hush, please.” Eliza tried in vain to keep him quiet.

  Wickham addressed Percival as though she weren’t even in the carriage. Her stomach dropped as he said, “Sir Percival, are we in the habit of handing over innocent children to pirates?”

  “Never.”

  Wickham stared at her with a keen intent and she shuddered. “What say you, Eliza? Would you rather live with a bastard and his filthy pirates? Or with an esteemed peer of the realm?”

  “I would prefer you return us to our estate and leave us be.”

  Wickham snorted. “I am your guardian now and I have to decide how to keep you safe.”

  Eliza drew herself up as anger coursed through her. “You failed to mention you were our guardian when you were yelling at me on my own doorstep, my lord.” She filled the last two words with hatred before turning her attention to the magistrate, the only man there who might be able to help her now. “Harold and Wickham have already threatened us once. What do you think they will do once they have us alone?”

  “More lies?” Percival sniggered. “You need Wickham’s help to lift your brother from this mess before he takes the title. As it stands, right at this moment, you are all utterly ruined and heaped in scandal. You need him.”

  Nathanial spoke up for the first time. “We don’t need anyone. We have been doing just fine on our own. Eliza has taken care of us well. Darius is a good man. Your son is a good man.”

  An unholy light shone from Wickham’s eyes. “That pirate is not my son.”

  “He’s not a pirate anymore!” Ethan yelled.

  Wickham roared back, his face only inches from her little brother’s, “He will always be a pirate! He will always be a blight on the landscape! A plague on the seas!”

  “You’re wrong!” Ethan shouted before tears rolled down his cheeks and he buried his head in Eliza’s side.

  Eliza pleaded with Sir Percival, “You can’t let him do this to us. My sisters and I aren’t safe from his demands on our dowries.”

  Percival showed his hidden colours when he grinned and reached out his hand. He placed it on her knee with a lecherous expression that made Eliza want to cast up her breakfast. “You will all be in good hands, don’t you worry, my dear.”

  Eliza stood in the confined space and swatted his hand away but Percival grabbed her wrist and pulled her down on his lap. His fingers bit into her arms as Wickham held Nathanial back.

  Bile rose up her throat and burned her mouth when Percival’s hands travelled up her arms to close about her breasts. Nathanial and Gabriella began to yell at him to remove his hands. Eliza leaned to the side and vomited down the wall of the carriage, the mess spattering Percival’s trousers and coat.

  He threw her off with a curse. The coachman must have worried about the sounds and screams. They came to a complete stop and Eliza was out the door and running. Perhaps if she could get help, convince someone to take them back to town.

  Before she’d even had the time to get her bearings, she was tackled to the ground, the wind knocked from her lungs, snow and gravel biting into her cheek and knees as she went down. She screamed and kicked and bucked but her captor, one of Wickham’s henchmen, was too strong for her. When she tried to bite the hand coming to grab her hair, her nails digging into any piece of skin she could get to, she was hit in the face. Slapped across a cheek already bleeding and swollen.

  She bucked again, tried to dislodge the man. She had to run. She had to get help.

  She saw his fist coming. She tried to dodge the blow. She was too late for that too.

  Her vision swam with tears and the vibrant colours of the roadside trees faded as the pain in her head threatened to overwhelm her. Icy hands reached for her, dragged her down as she rolled and tried to get to her feet. A strange heaviness settled over her as she reached a hand out, as she tried to crawl away.

  She was all they had. She had to protect them.

  Strength abandoned her at the same time the landscape darkened completely and her arms gave out. “I’m sorry,” she whispered as she lay her face against the snowy ground, her head heavy, her eyelids closing.

  Her heartbeat was her only companion as she lost consciousness, alone in the dark.

  Alone, alone, alone, it beat until she shut it all out and let go.

  *

  Just like life aboard a pirate ship, or any ship for that matter, the fight would not be determined by numbers on this day. But Darius was torn. He was torn between tearing off after Eliza and finding a solution for Sarah. He couldn’t take her with him but neither could he leave her behind.

  “Right,” he said after making an agonising decision. “We’re going to split into two groups. Half are to go on in the carriage and take Sarah, the other half will come with me to get Eliza and those children back.”

  As he’d suspected would happen, all the men moved to his side leaving only Tarquin holding the squirming infant.

  Darius shook his head. “You can’t all come with me. I’ll need men to ready the ship and apprise Marcus of the situation once you get there.” He reeled off a dozen names and told those men to go. Now. “Don’t stop for anyone or anything. If we don’t meet up with the ship by dawn on the fourth day, you are to leave. Set sail and don’t come back with that baby on board.”

  Tarquin had genuine fear in his eyes as he approached. “We aren’t leaving without you, Captain. Get your lady and get your arse back on your ship.”

  He smiled and clapped his friend on the shoulder. “I’ll do my best.” Peering down at Sarah, a little smile on her chubby face, her tiny fingers waving around, Darius bent and kissed the soft skin of her forehead. She was his blood. The only real family he could lay claim to and if he botched it all up with Eliza, or he was indeed too late, he had to have Sarah to return to.

  He’d never needed a family, children, or even a pet dog in his life. He had his friends and his crew and his life aboard ship. Not until the day he’d met Eliza had he known how much he had been missing. Now that he finally realised it, his family had been taken away from him and he had been about to let them all go. It would be the single biggest mistake of his life to date.

  Sarah gurgled and wrapped a hand around his fingers. There was a part of his soul that screamed at him to throw it all at saving Eliza and her siblings, to only stop if he was dead. It was how he had always dealt with a battle. He’d survived many a time by sheer recklessness. But now there was also a part of him hissing caution. Sarah would need him more than ever once they reached America’s shores. He had a feeling he needed her just as much. “Guard her with your life, my friend.”

  “To my very last breath if need be,” Tarquin promised.

  Once the details were sorted and the horses readied, Darius gave the command to move out. The carriage would leave a little while after the riders so as not to draw any further attention. His first order of business this day was to locate his brother and get some answers.

  Then he was going to do what he should have done from the very beginning. He was going to kill the man who had sired him, the man who continuously destroyed any chances he’d ever had or was ever going to get at being accepted, of being happy, of being whole.

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  Harold Meddington, next in line to an earldom, rake about town and loved by women everywhere, fidgeted restlessly against the bonds that held him. His nose ached and each time he moved his lips, he felt the bones just below his eyes crunch against each other. He had a cut that ran from his jaw all the way down his chest and he thought perhaps the fingers on one of his hands were broken into a thousand pieces—such was the agony if he so much as twitched.

  This was what he expected of Mr Smith and his men. He would have expected Tobias and Jackson to pummel him to
a bloody pulp and then leave him for dead.

  He had not expected it of his father.

  After the scene in the marketplace the day before, Wickham had demanded a full reporting of his actions. Harold had been forced to hand over the documents pertaining to the Penfolds and to account for every second since.

  Then his father had knocked him down. Wickham had kicked him and punched him until all he could do was cover his face and try to deflect some of the blows. He hadn’t even got one bruising hit in for himself. Tobias and Jackson had arrived but they hadn’t helped at all, just sat smirking in the corner while they watched the corridor of the inn to ensure no one came to investigate the sickening thuds and nauseating crunches.

  His father had been beyond furious that Harold himself had sunk into more debt than his sire. He’d paled at the mention of Mr Smith and had completely cracked when he discovered he was the sole guardian of three substantial dowries. Wickham would never see the Penfold girls as anything more than a means to repay debts. The little one was too young to use right now, he’d said, laughing as he held Penfold’s will in his hands. “But the other two can be brought to heel by the end of the day.”

  Hours had passed in the time Harold had been tied to a chair, a gag wrapped around his head, miserable and wishing for death to claim him. He was supposed to win Eliza, marry her, use her dowry to pay his debts. But then he wanted to start again. She was a good woman and might make a good wife. He was sure he could have turned her head with his charm, made her understand what kind of wife he would expect, but she had been so frigid, holding herself back in every action. She may have lowered herself in station to marry him but as mired in scandal as she was, she should have been content with his offer.

  But then his bastard brother had sailed into their lives again after almost two decades and made eyes at his woman. Perhaps it had made him a little mad and impulsive. Perhaps he should have warned his father the bastard would fight for her. It meant little now, he thought with a sniff that ended in unbearable pain.

  When the knocking started, Harold thought it was in his head at first, a pounding to drown out the other aches, but then the door exploded inwards with a splintering of timber and a rain of paint flecks. He cringed but there was nowhere to go.

  He realised in that moment it wasn’t his father or Mr Smith that he really had to worry about at all. As he met the furious gaze of his half-brother, he wondered if this would truly be the day he left this earth.

  *

  By the time they’d reached the village, there was no sign of Wickham, in fact the tracks on the road told him they’d not stopped and probably wouldn’t, but Darius hadn’t wanted to pursue right away. They risked losing the carriage in London traffic or a shoot-out with Eliza and the children caught in the crossfire.

  There were only two inns in the village so narrowing down his brother’s lodgings hadn’t been difficult. Reining in his impatience and that of his men had been next to impossible.

  Darius waited for Wes to move away from the threshold, pieces of the door hanging by their hinges and waving back and forth. He gave his man a nod and then entered the room. They probably hadn’t needed to break their way in like that but the innkeeper hadn’t wanted to hand over the spare key to the lock and time was a luxury they could not afford.

  His brother was tied to a chair by his hands and feet, which would explain why no one had answered when he’d knocked. Darius hadn’t really expected to find Harold there. He’d expected his brother to flee and never be heard from again. Instead, he was there, held prisoner and left for dead, his face a mess of bruises and welts, of dried blood and fresh.

  “You’re a bloody sight,” he told Harold as he pulled another chair forward and straddled it so they were at each other’s eye level.

  “Just do it, brother. I tire of the games and if someone is going to kill me, I’d rather it be you.”

  Darius almost drew back in surprise. “Why me? You loathe every beat of my bastard’s heart.”

  “I don’t care about any of it anymore. I thought if I hated you as much as Father did, then I’d become more to him. I was wrong. I was wrong about everything.”

  “What are you talking about, Harold?”

  “He hates me just as much as he hates you. Maybe even more now he knows…”

  “Knows what?” He wondered if the beating his brother had taken had partially dislodged his brain.

  “I’m in trouble. Big trouble. Mr Smith is coming for the both of us.”

  “Wickham is in trouble. I think most of the blame can be laid at his door. As for Mr Smith, if you feared the man this much, why gamble to him? You cannot play with fire and expect to escape unscathed.”

  Harold shuddered and Darius wondered what exactly he’d said that caused only more fear.

  His half-brother tried to explain. “Father will get himself out of the pot soon enough. He’ll come for Eliza, marry her and repay his own debts. Mr Smith will find me and I’ll be done for. I’m dead no matter how this day ends. I would rather have my bastard brother slit my throat than have Mr Smith set me on fire.”

  “Do you know his plan, Harold? Do you know where Wickham is taking the children? Tell me and perhaps I can help you.”

  “He’s going to do what he has to, to get Eliza’s dowry.”

  “Eliza’s dowry is already gone, brother.”

  “But that means she already married…”

  Darius confirmed Harold’s thoughts with just one look.

  An even deeper anguish filled his brother’s eyes. “She married you? A bastard? I offered her the world and she turned me down.”

  “She was forced to it. But not by me, never by me.” He shook his head. How could he explain? Why should he have to? He owed his brother nothing.

  “Penfold tried to force her to marry me and she still said no.”

  “It doesn’t matter how or why. They are all in greater danger than you or I. Do you know where he is taking them?”

  “He’ll hurt Eliza if he discovers the truth. She won’t be of any use to him.” Harold’s eyes met his, identical in every way. They were so similar as brothers yet worlds apart as men, as humans. “It was my plan. I shared it with him and then he went crazy. He wouldn’t let me have Eliza. He said I was too weak. Not man enough for her. He was right.”

  “Be a man now, Harold. Tell us where he’s going so we can stop him. He needs to be stopped.”

  “You’re going to kill him aren’t you?”

  Darius was slow to respond, to nod his head. He didn’t have to say it out loud.

  “The Persephone. He’s headed for the Persephone. He will take Eliza out and marry her aboard ship, consummate, and then sail back into port. The children are the leverage he needs to make her go along with it all.”

  “He’s her guardian. He can’t have married her anyway.” The Persephone? It was there in port? It was the ship he had been looking for but also so worried to find. “Are you sure the ship he’s taking them to is the Persephone?”

  Harold nodded, his chin dropping to his chest. “Mr Smith took it after our father fled with the cargo.”

  “And those on board? The crew?” A vicious lump rose in his throat but then raised voices from the tap room of the inn took his attention. He left Harold even though he longed to stay, to discover the truth, even though he already knew what happened to sailors once they’d been overrun. He reached the top of the stair just as a stranger started to ascend.

  When the newcomer finally looked up, he stopped, faltered, backed down a step. More than a dozen of Darius’s men took up the top landing, all with weapons in their hands. “What the hell is going on here?” the stranger asked.

  “Who are you?” Darius called to him, while reaching for his pistol. The confines were too close for swords if he fired his only bullet.

  “Harry Bower. I’m the magistrate. We don’t need trouble here, good fellows. If you go now, without a fight, you won’t be stopped.”

  Confusion set in
. “No, Sir Percival is the magistrate. We saw him only this morning.”

  Harry Bower’s lip curled and the sinking feeling Darius had had on and off for the last two weeks grew heavier in his gut as he asked, “He’s not the magistrate is he?”

  “Hasn’t been for three years. Old codger lost his position and half his mind. Would someone like to tell me what is going on here?” Harry asked.

  “No time,” Darius said, renewed fear and anxiety coursing through him as a plan came to mind. He gestured over his shoulder to three of his men. “Get Harold—he has to come with us.”

  They jumped to do his bidding, groans coming from the wrecked room making Harry climb two more steps. Darius shook his head and raised his gun. “We are going to walk out of here. Wickham will return to pay for his damages so you can tell the innkeeper to relax.”

  “The Earl of Wickham? Oh my God,” he breathed when he saw the mess that was Harold as he emerged, draped over two men’s shoulders, barely standing on his own feet.

  “You need to move now, Mr Bower.”

  Darius began walking down the stairs, his men at his back. Harry gulped, still clearly unsure where to look or what to do. Then he gave a nod and retreated, moving right out of the way when the heavily armed party took their leave.

  “He can’t ride like this,” Baggens said once they’d gained the yard.

  Darius couldn’t afford to wait for a carriage to be brought around—the innkeeper would have more than likely denied them one anyway—and they would lose precious time. Wickham would need to stop, to change horses and let the children have breaks. They could ride on another way, overtake the carriage and get to the Persephone before his father did. “He’ll have to. He can ride trussed up on his stomach or on his arse—it’s up to him.”

  “I can ride,” came Harold’s weak reply. “I can. You’ll need me to get to the ship. To get to Smith.”

  Darius gave a nod and the two sailors holding him helped him onto the horse with Baggens. There was no way Darius was going to let him travel on his own. Despite his words, his brother was more than half-dead. He may not even make the entire journey.