Returning the poker to its stand, he turned to her, his rugged face set with determination. “Kate, it’s very important that you tell me exactly what happened to you, from the beginning. I’m sure it’s difficult to recount, but if my tenants are committing crimes of this magnitude, I need to know the details so I can put a stop to it immediately. You help me get to the bottom of this, and I promise that you will see justice.”
That word got her full attention. She met his gaze sharply. Aside from going home to her cottage, justice was the thing she wanted most.
“We will get this sorted out,” he assured her. “Now, I’ve ordered Doyle brought to the castle so you and I both might get some answers. It’s hard for me to fathom he would sanction such a thing—I’ve known the old man since I was a boy. But I also know his authority is being challenged lately by some of the younger men. Perhaps they’re the ones behind it. Firstly, I need to know if there were any other girls in that cellar with you, or if you saw any others who might also have been taken, as you were.”
She shook her head. “I did not see any, but that doesn’t mean they’re not there.”
“Very well. I’ll have my men search the village anyway. We’ll tear apart every house from top to bottom if we have to, and every fishing boat, as well, in case there are any girls being kept out there. Now, I’m going to need a clear picture of the facts so I can help you.”
When she did not immediately answer, he scanned her face in regret. “You still don’t trust me.”
She gave a wary shrug as she drew the coarse blanket more tightly around her. “It’s just—they told me some rather alarming things about you.”
“I can imagine.” He shook his head. “Kate, dealing with such tenants as these … let’s just say they see what I want them to see.” He reached out and gently wiped away a spot of dried mud on her cheek that she hadn’t known was there. “If I were as bad you were led to believe, would I have left my bed last night so you could sleep in peace?”
The light touch of his fingertips on her face now, and the memory of how she had writhed beneath his skillful caresses last night brought a scarlet blush to her cheeks.
She looked away; he lowered his hand to his side.
He was silent for a moment. “You are in no danger, Kate. I am not going to hurt you. I know you are afraid, but look at my actions if you doubt my words. I saved your life, didn’t I? That must count for something.”
She looked up slowly, her gaze skimming the chiseled symmetry of his muscled abdomen and the powerful swells of his chest until she met his steady gaze.
The look in his gray-blue eyes seemed sincere, and she desperately longed to believe in him. He might be her only hope. With a reluctant nod, she decided to trust him with her story and see where it might lead. In truth, she had nothing left to lose.
Still shivering a bit from her brush with death, she sat down in her chair once more and took a deep breath. “It was the twenty-seventh of November, about ten o’clock at night. I was sitting at home in my cottage on the southwest edge of Dartmoor, just reading by the fireplace. Waiting for the kettle to boil. I was making tea. How far away are we from there, anyway?”
He considered. “About twenty miles.”
“Twenty miles,” she echoed in amazement. It was the farthest she had gone in ages.
“You were saying?”
“Yes—I was reading by the fire, when all of a sudden, three filthy ruffians burst into my house. There was no warning, not even time to react. It happened so fast. They dragged me outside and threw me into a carriage, where I was bound hand and foot. Then two of them went back inside to steal any valuables they could find.”
Warrington leaned against the mantel, watching her. He appeared to be taking great pains to restrain himself, keeping his face carefully expressionless. But something in his eyes had turned quite terrifying.
As he listened to her with his arms folded across his chest, his fingers slowly tapped his massive biceps. He nodded at her in encouragement. “Go on.”
She swallowed hard. “A few minutes later, the other two returned to the carriage. I heard one of the younger men address the leader as ‘O’Banyon.’ Do you know a man by that name, Your Grace?”
He shook his head. “No, but I assure you, I will find him. Continue, please. And by the way, between last night and nearly dying together this morning, I’d think we’re past the formalities. Call me Rohan.”
His invitation surprised her, but she resumed her account, unsure if she wanted to take him up on it. “As soon as the other two men got into the carriage, we drove off at break-neck pace to the smugglers’ village. When we got there, they hauled me out of the coach and locked me down in a cellar for, I think, it’s been five weeks.
Five weeks
,” she added resentfully. “I spent Christmas in that cellar, in the dark, alone.”
She would have been alone on Christmas, anyway, but that was not the point. “It was just a few days ago that the smugglers finally brought me up to a bedchamber in the house above the cellar. I didn’t know why at the time, but I see now it was because they had decided to get me ready for you.”
The very room throbbed with his brooding silence. “Tell me,” he murmured, “would you recognize your kidnappers if you were to see these men again?”
“Absolutely. Why?”
“Because I think it altogether possible that I may already have them locked up in my dungeon.”
“Really?” she breathed as an unholy eagerness for revenge took hold of her. “Now, that is a sight I would love to see.”
Her fierce reply appeared to please him. He tilted his head slightly, studying her with a searching gaze, just as a knock on the door signaled his servant’s return. He gave her a shrewd glance and went to answer it.
“Here are the things you asked for, sir.”
Kate turned in her chair as Eldred gave the duke an arm-load of dry garments.
“Will there be anything else, Your Grace?”
“No, thank you, Eldred. This will do.”
The butler bowed and pulled the door shut while Rohan carried the clothes into the room and deposited them on the table.
Kate watched him with veiled admiration as he reached for the fresh shirt his servant had brought him and slipped it on over his head. He pulled the dry coat on, as well, and headed for the door with a look of grim determination.
“Come below when you’re ready,” he ordered, sending her a nod of encouragement. “You and I are going to get some answers.”
Rohan stepped out of the watchmen’s chamber and pulled the door shut behind him, leaving Kate to dress in privacy.
He paused, letting out a long exhalation and shaking his head in shock over all she had told him. Then he marched down the dim, narrow stairs to the sparse room below, where a couple of the guards remained on duty.
They rose when he joined them, asking if the young lady was all right. He nodded and continued pacing, as he had upstairs.
In point of fact, he was too furious to stand still. Now that the whole story of her nightmarish ordeal had come out, he could not wait to get his hands on the men who had done this to her.
They were going to pay.
Last night, his anger at the smugglers had been mostly for show. Today, by God, they were going to find out what his rage looked like when it was genuine.
Damn it, he had known Caleb had seemed nervous about something, but he had attributed it to guilt over the shipwreck! Now that he knew there was more to it, he would wring the old man’s neck for trying to trick him into deflowering a drugged, abducted virgin.
Why?
Why would Caleb have deliberately tried to lure him into unwitting involvement in this? If Kate had not passed out before he could make love to her, he would have been as badly bound up in this perfidy as the smugglers were. To be sure, what had seemed a dashed inconvenience last night had proved a boon.
He shook his head with a black look as he continued pacing. Something here wasn’t making sense.
His people were no saints, but he simply could not bring himself to believe they would resort to trafficking in abducted females.
Then again, he had not expected them to resort to shipwrecking in their desperation, either.
Rohan paused to glare absently out the window, lost in his roiling thoughts, rather sickened to realize that he was partly responsible for this. If he did not spend so much time abroad on his various missions for the Order, the smugglers would not have dared try such a thing.
Yet they had gone beyond trying. They had terrorized this poor, defenseless beauty.
He would make them rue it.
As for Kate, after all she had been through, she had impressed him with her self-possession, to say nothing of her fiery spirit. She had stood there ready to battle him like some spunky little terrier barking at a wolf, aye, and throwing the greater predator into temporary confusion with her unexpected show of ferocity.
Though petite of build, she was large in courage, a little lady of intrepid spirit, he thought, just as the sound of the door opening above heralded her return.
Slowly, he raised his hungry gaze and held his breath. God forgive him, he wanted her still. He throbbed at the mere sound of her hesitant footsteps creeping down the stairs. Who was this woman, that she should have such a deep effect on him?
When she appeared, however, he pressed his lips together and fought the urge to smile. She looked comical, in an adorable sort of way. Something about her made his heart clench. Dressed in the clothes Eldred had found for her, she looked like some sort of angel-faced page boy. But the glance she shot him warned that if he said a word, it might well cost him his head. He dropped his gaze, stifling a chuckle; she cleared her throat and lifted her chin, clearly determined to press on with the business at hand, never mind her ridiculous appearance.
Her businesslike attitude only amused him more. His twinkling gaze traveled up from the black boots on her feet, up to the dark blue breeches that revealed the shapely turn of her legs and a sweetly rounded derriere.
A long livery waistcoat with brass buttons molded her waist and the flare of her lovely hips. The close-fitting sleeves of the livery coat showed off her slender arms, then widened with big, folded cuffs at the sleeves.
All she lacked was a tricorn hat to make her the world’s most seductive footman. He swallowed his amusement as she pulled on a pair of borrowed gauntlets like a highborn lady heading out for a drive. This done, she swung the cloak she had been given around her shoulders, apparently eager to hide her male apparel.
“After you,” Rohan invited, gesturing toward the door.
“Thank you, Your Grace.” She eyed him in red-cheeked hauteur, then marched ahead, pulling up the cloak’s large, draping hood to shield her face.
Dryly, Rohan nodded his thanks to the two remaining guards, who were also fighting smiles.
He got the door for his fetching little page girl, and they left the shelter of the gatehouse.
As they stepped outside, a silver burst of sun fought its way out from behind the pewter clouds, and for a moment, the thin layer of ice that still coated everything glittered with extraordinary brilliance.
With the whole courtyard sparkling around them, Rohan turned to Kate. She returned his gaze uncertainly, her creamy cheeks pink with the chill. The wintry sunbeams illuminated the raw vulnerability and the almost painful hope hidden deep in her emerald eyes.
Hope in him.
He looked away, narrowing his eyes against the glare and feeling damned uncomfortable with the knowledge that the softness she no doubt required after her ordeal was in no wise his forte.
Even so, she was gazing at him like she had decided he was some sort of hero. If she only knew the savagery he was capable of when the occasion called. That deadly gift that made the Warrington line so valuable to the Order. He did not want any woman ever to see that side of him—but at the moment, he understood that she needed someone to believe in right now.
Avoiding her stare, he scanned the castle’s forbidding exterior for the shortest route to the dungeon. He spotted the door they needed and sent her a military nod.
“Follow me,” he ordered, then added gruffly in spite of himself, “Careful on the ice.”
Chapter 6
H
olding the edge of the hood over her face to ward off the wind, Kate followed Rohan back to the castle in wary reluctance.
He forged on ahead like a force of nature himself, the shoulder capes and long skirts of his dark wool greatcoat billowing in the wind, and wrapping around his towering stature.
When he reached the castle, he hauled open a massive door and shepherded her inside, where they both stood for a moment, stamping the melting slush off their boots.
Then he jerked an autocratic nod in her direction: a wordless order to follow. She raised an eyebrow as he marched ahead of her once more.
She was beginning to think the man only knew how to communicate in the imperative; the fact that he was so certain of being obeyed roused the rebel in her blood. But given her situation at the moment, she curbed her stubborn streak and obliged—though she nearly had to jog to keep up with his long, swift strides.
He stopped at the end of the dim stone corridor and opened a very old-looking wooden door. A dank draft wafted out of the darkness beyond, reminding her of the smugglers’ cellar. Peering past him into the void beyond the door, she grimaced slightly. “What’s down there?”
“The dungeon.”
“Oh,” she murmured with an involuntary shudder.
He turned and scanned her face. “Are you sure you’re up to this?”
Glancing at him, she had to decide anew if she really ought to trust him. If not, his leading her down there could prove to be the cruelest trick yet. What if he was luring her to the dungeon only to lock her up again?