Chapter 32

Outside the Queen Anne Place apartment of the Viscount Albert Manning. Not long after Albert’s public humiliation.

 

Albert alighted from the chaise, which pulled away, the horses ‘hooves and steel-banded wheels clattering along the cobblestones.

He stood for a few moments, looking up and down the street. But there were no suspicious skulkers; at least none that were visible. Indeed, he found that the street was disturbingly quiet for this time of night—though that was probably just his agitation playing games with his mind.

Albert turned toward the door to his apartment. Again, the memory of Elizabeth’s face taunted him.

“Trying to get me murdered? Again? Or maybe you would prefer to merely violate me against my will?”

She knew! Eastcott knew! They had entrapped him and placed him in a position where they could publicly humiliate him beyond recovery.

Still, what was mere humiliation, when anytime now the police could arrive at his doorstep and arrest him—with a similar fate befalling Tyler. For it was almost certain that their plan to dispose of their adversaries lay in tatters.

How?

How could they know?

Albert inserted the key into the lock of the front door and opened it just wide enough to unhook the wire loop connected to the deadly trap for any unwary intruder. The fact that the loop was in place and that nothing else in the hallway appeared to have been disturbed either, provided him with some comfort.

He proceeded further into the hallway and unhooked the trip-wire from the lever set into the skirting. If it had been pulled, the lever would have triggered a mechanism that opened a small panel in the ceiling, from which would have dropped a glass vial containing a significant amount of hydrogen cyanide, a lethal gas that would have killed anyone careless enough to draw even a single breath.

More relaxed now, and forcing himself to think carefully about his next steps, Albert lit the gas lamp in the hallway and the one in his study, then proceeded to disarm the remaining traps, before turning his attention to the safe. All he could do now, was take everything in there and hightail his way out of London.

Where to?

Who knew?

It would be utter folly to return to Manning Manor. That’s where they would be expecting him to go. Not just Eastcott, but the police as well. And, even worse, his associates, for whom he had now become a liability, best to be disposed of.

So, what else could he do?

He had sufficient funds in the safe to leave England and find safety on the continent. But a thousand pounds would only go so far, and eventually…

Albert forced himself to focus on immediacies and set the dials and opened the safe—only to face the dismal reality of the death of every plan he had just considered.

He sat down heavily on the carpet, staring at the empty cavity inside the safe.

Leave!

Now!

Albert jumped up and went to his desk. He tapped a secret panel, which sprang open to reveal two pistols, ammunition and powder, as well as a sheaf of banknotes to the amount of a thousand pounds. It was all he was left with now, and it would have to do. Just exactly what it was to be used for, he currently had no idea.

He went into his bedchamber and dressed for long distance travel, packing a small valise with extra garments, the pistols and the ammunition. The bank notes he sequestered in what he thought of as a hard-to-get-at inside pocket of his dark overcoat.

With a brief look around he finally left his London apartment for the last time—telling himself that it didn’t matter. Right now he had to survive.

Again, the memory of Elizabeth regarding him with a mocking smile sent a surge of almost painful hatred through his soul and his body—the ruby displayed on her cleavage her final insult hurled at all his plans.

She had sent him on this path of destruction of every dream he ever had. And even before that, she had been the one person who had foiled his plans at every turn. Luck—in the guise of a generous father and two curs, and then in the person of the Earl of Eastcott—might have been on her side, but that didn’t matter. She was the bane of his life; had been ever since long before he had inherited Manning Manor. Even now, her dismissive “never” to his proposal of marriage years before rang in his ears.

He still felt the surge of lust rising in him as he started to pull up Elizabeth’s dress to take her—right in front of a common criminal like Alexander to complete her humiliation. The sight of her bare legs being revealed. What he would feast his eyes upon as he spread her thighs. And what he would do to her then.

Her scream. The hounds. Snarling, barking, forcing him and Alexander to back away to a safe distance. Protecting her for long enough to make her escape. And Alexander, the damn fool, had not had the wit to hold onto her, but had let her escape!

Was Alexander dead by now, or had the doctor saved his treacherous hide?

Not that it mattered.

Only two things were important now.

Get away from here.

Make Elizabeth pay for what she had done to him.

Albert headed down Queen Anne Place until he arrived at an intersection, where he finally managed to hail a chaise that took him to the stable where he kept Chaser, the horse he used when in London. His late visit was greeted with some surprise by the stable owner, who appeared in a state of untidy dress, indicating that he had probably been asleep for a while.

But one didn’t ask a Viscount questions about the reasons for his actions, and so Chaser was soon saddled, with the valise affixed securely to the back of the saddle.

The way out of London was convoluted, making use back streets and alleys that carried some risk being traveled at this time of the night. But Albert kept a pistol in one hand, and in the event nobody bothered him.

Once out of the city, on a road only dimly lit by a waning moon, he finally reached a waystation that seemed like a suitable resting place for the remainder of the night. Again, he had to wake people, but they were used to it, and didn’t ask questions either, even though he did not reveal his status.

He finally fell asleep on a rough cot, which might or might not have been infested with bedbugs, but by that time he didn’t care. His eyes closed the moment he lay down, and he was soon immersed in troubling dreams, which included Elizabeth regarding him mockingly, as—dressed in that green gown with the taunting décolletage and the ruby caressing her breasts—she leaned back into Eastcott’s embrace, urging his hands to slide caressingly up her belly to cup them; as her red lips twisted into a haughty smile, and blood slowly seeped out of a wound on her left arm.