Outrageous

Godric Fleming, Earl of Visel, vowed to kill his cousin Rowland when he got his hands on him.

He strode down the alley, feeling like a fool as his ridiculous cape billowed out behind him as if he were some corsair. Which was, of course, exactly how he was dressed—or at least the English public’s perception of a corsair.

When he reached the alley entrance he gaped. “Good God.”

The street in front of the Duke of Richland’s house was crammed with dozens, maybe even hundreds, of carriages. No wonder Rowland hadn’t been waiting for Godric near the duke’s garden gate as they’d planned.

Godric considered the mob of unmoving carriages, his mind as chaotic as the scene before him. Perhaps this mess was a sign he should call off his ill-advised plan? Perhaps there was still time to—

“Lord Visel?”

Godric spun around to find a huge boy dressed like a stable lad.

“Who the devil are you?”

“Mr. Rowland sent me to tell you the carriage is waitin’ at the back entrance, my lord.” The young giant hesitated. “Mr. Rowland said he needed to talk to you before taking the woman.”

Godric clenched his jaws so tightly his head throbbed; trust that idiot Rowland to bring in even more conspirators. It was bad enough the two of them were planning to kidnap the woman—now this boy was part of the plan? Who else had the fool told? The bloody Times?

“No.” He shook his head. No, he would not do it. He could not do it.

“My lord?” the boy asked, his brow furrowed in confusion.

“Come along,” Godric said, ignoring the lad’s question and marching toward the other end of the alley.

The oddest sensation filled his body as he walked, as if he were emerging from a dense fog, his head clearing with each step and his vision shifting slowly into focus. For the first time in months—hell, over a year—he could see. And what he saw was bloody terrifying.

Godric stumbled and the air whooshed out of his lungs at the enormity of what he had almost done.

Good God! What the devil have I been thinking?

You haven’t been thinking, Godric old boy, his long-absent conscience pointed out.

No, he hadn’t. Why the hell had it taken him so long to realize he was behaving like a bloody lunatic? And why had he only come to his senses now—after scheming and planning and preparing for weeks?

Does it matter why you’ve seen the disaster you’ve been courting, Godric? Just be grateful that you have—before it was too late.

Perhaps speaking to his prospective kidnap victim—Drusilla Marlington—earlier in the evening had begun to clear the madness from his mind? The young woman had done nothing to him—they hardly even knew each other—and yet he’d humiliated her and forced her into a marriage with a man who’d been courting another woman.

And when her unwanted marriage had—against all odds—showed signs of becoming a love match? Well, then Godric had decided to use her again to get to the man she’d married: Gabriel Marlington.

To be perfectly honest, her husband had done nothing to him, either. Yet all Godric had done since returning home to Britain was harass the man.

I’ve been telling you this for months, the dry voice in his head observed.

“Blast and damn,” Godric cursed under his breath. Sod it all to hell; this was bloody lunacy.

He would get in the carriage, go home, and try to forget these past few months of insanity.

The relief that assailed him at the thought almost drove him to his knees.

No doubt he’d have a devil of a time with his cousin Rowland—a man so desperate for funds he’d ransom his own grandmother—but Godric did not doubt he could handle the little worm.

The hired carriage waited at the end of the alley, the interior darker than the night. Godric yanked open the door.

“We’re going,” he said to the figure sitting on the back-facing bench. “I won’t—”

Something hard slammed into the back of his head. His vision exploded with red-hot pain and he staggered forward. “Wha—”

“Push him in, James!”

Big hands grabbed his shoulders and shoved.

Godric went headfirst into the carriage, turning his head just in time to avoid landing on his face and breaking his nose. Even so, the pain from the impact was so intense it was nauseating and his stomach cramped, preparing to void itself. He gritted his teeth to keep back the flood of bile.

His aggressor rolled him onto his back and then folded his legs up against his chest. A face lowered over Godric’s: huge blue-violet eyes creased in a frown, red lips parted, a lock of silky black hair . . .

He blinked, “Y-you—”

“Hallo, Lord Visel.”

Whoever was holding his ankles gave him a shove and his head struck the opposite door. The last thing he heard was, “He’s out cold, James, but you’d best tie his hands.”

* * *

Eva de Courtney, middle and least-favored daughter of the Marquess of Exley, worried her lip as she looked at the man who lay crumpled up on the carriage floor.

“Well, here he is. Now what do you want to do with him, my lady?” James had insisted on trading places with her and was jammed into the back-facing seat, his expression mulish, his huge arms crossed over his chest.

“You know what I want to do.”

For such a large man, he could make the most piteous sounds. “Oh, Lady Eva. Are you sure you wouldn’t—”

“I’m quite sure.”

“But you don’t know what I was going to say.”

“I’ve been able to read your mind since we were both old enough to crawl, James Brewster. You were about to try and talk me out of my plan. Yet again.”

Eva squinted down at the earl and used the toe of her boot to nudge the colorful turban off Lord Visel’s head. “Would you look at that?” she said.

James bent to look. “What?”

“The bugger even dyed his hair.” She cut her groom and oldest friend a quick look. “If that doesn’t convince you he was up to dastardly deeds, then I don’t know what will.”

“I never said he wasn’t up to something, my lady—I know he was. I just don’t think this is the only way to handle it—certainly not the best way to handle it.”

Eva made the dismissive hissing sound she’d picked up from her stepmamma, Lady Euphemia Exley. She thought the sound was a perfect response to most of the dunderheaded things men insisted on saying.

“Well, it’s too late to argue about it or change our minds now. He saw me, so we can hardly just drop him at his lodgings as if nothing happened. He’s sure to set the constables on us.” Or worse, my father.

James chewed this over while the two of them gazed at Lord Visel’s unconscious form.

“We could always cut his throat and dump him in a ditch.”

“My lady!” His eyes were as round as saucers.

Eva laughed. “Lord, James—you’ve lost your sense of humor entirely. Of course I wouldn’t actually kill him.” No matter how much he might deserve such a fate.

“Perhaps we should sit him up, my lady? He’s an earl, after all. I think we should get him off the—”

“No. He’s fine where he is,” Eva said. “I checked his breathing; he’s alive.” Visel’s head would ache like the dickens when he woke up, but that was the least his wretched behavior merited.

James flung himself against the seat back, his abrupt movements causing the entire carriage to jostle. “Lord Exley will skin the hide right offa me.”

“My father will never find out, James. We’ll only be up north a week at the most—we can rent hacks for the ride back and make the journey in a fraction of the time.”

“What if the marquess checks on you before we return?”

“Why would he? He believes I am going to join my sister at Lady Repton’s country house, but Melissa and Lady Repton aren’t expecting me to visit for at least two more weeks. It’s perfect.”

“A perfect disaster,” James muttered.

“You worry too much. My father is so concerned with my stepmamma’s delicate condition, he won’t even recall my existence.”

James made a skeptical noise but said nothing—probably because he knew it was true. Anyone with eyes in their head could see that her father worshipped his wife. Eva didn’t blame him; she loved her stepmamma, too.

“We can still change our minds about this, my lady. We could—”

“Don’t fret, we’ll be finished with Visel and back before anyone finds out anything. Besides, my father assigned you to me as my groom. Strictly speaking, your hide is mine, so you can always claim you were just obeying my orders.” The carriage passed a streetlight and illuminated his offended expression, and Eva laughed.

James didn’t join her. Instead, he shivered. “My hide is more likely to find itself in Newgate after we get caught. Cor, my lady, he’s a bleeding duke’s heir.”

“We won’t get caught.”

“Ha!”

“I’m telling you, my father shall never know. Melissa is an indifferent letter-writer and we should have at least two weeks, but probably longer. In the meantime, we will have plenty of opportunity to persuade his deranged lordship to leave my brother alone.”

“What if he doesn’t want to be persuaded?”

Eva had considered that, too. “Then you shall stay with him.”

“And how will you get back to London?”

“I can hire a chaise and somebody to attend me if you are so concerned.”

“What if Lord Visel says something to your father after we let him go? I don’t see a man like him taking kidnapping without a fuss.”

“Oh come, James. Do you think he would ever admit that a mere girl, and a crazy one to boot, kidnapped him? He’d be the laughingstock of all London. Trust me, he’ll be far more interested in keeping this quiet than we are. You’ll see.”

“How the devil do you know he’ll do what you want, my lady?”

“Why, James, are you saying I lack the ability to be persuasive?” Eva laughed when he groaned. “You let me worry about Lord Visel. I trust the chaise will be waiting for us at the Swan?”

“Aye, already paid for it.”

“And did you engage it under his lordship’s name?”

James looked pained. “Yes, my lady.”

Eva grinned and sat back, resting one booted foot on the earl’s motionless body. She had no qualms about using him as a footstool. He’d tormented Gabriel relentlessly since the day he’d returned to England. He’d also said extremely uncharitable things about her. All in all, he’d behaved like a coxcomb toward most members of the ton, even though all of Britain had been prepared to receive him with open arms. And why not? He was exceedingly handsome, he was the Duke of Tyndale’s heir, and he had a reputation for military bravery that was unparalleled. But Godric Fleming had ignored the ton’s adulation and appeared only interested in persecuting Eva’s brother. There was something wrong with him; something very wrong, indeed.

And Eva should know because she counted herself as something of a Visel expert—although not by choice. She’d been at her third wretched ball of the wretched Season when he strolled in looking like an angel cast down to Earth. She’d been sitting with all the other wallflowers, watching the activities from a safe distance. Drusilla, her best friend and now her brother’s wife, had been sitting beside her.

Dru hadn’t notice Visel’s entrance because she had eyes only for Gabe.

Eva smirked to herself. Dru thought she’d hidden her infatuation, but Eva watched others so closely, sometimes she swore she could hear what they were thinking. She knew that her friend had fallen head-over-heels in love with Gabe the summer she’d first met him. Gabriel, of course, was a clueless clod-headed male who’d been too preoccupied with his mistresses and the beautiful Miss Lucinda Kittridge to pay poor Dru any mind. Well, except to taunt and tease her.

But they were married now, so all was well that ended well, in Eva’s opinion. She had to give Visel credit for the marriage—if he’d not behaved like a buffoon, her brother never would have been forced to offer for Drusilla, which would have been a tragedy. Not that you could get Drusilla and Gabriel to admit that . . . yet. No, they were too stubborn to realize they were made for each other. Eva snorted at the foolishness of people in love.

They would sort out their problems in time. She gritted her teeth and prodded Visel’s unconscious form with the heel of her boot. Yes, they would solve their problems if Lord Visel was not around to bother and meddle and interfere in their lives every ten minutes, which he couldn’t seem to stop doing for some bizarre reason.

A low groan came from the floor.

“Er, Lady Eva . . .”

“Don’t worry, James. You can hit him again if he comes around. He certainly deserves it.”

It was James who groaned this time. “It don’t matter how much he deserves hittin’, my lady. It just don’t do to be smacking earls over the head and—”

“Do you recall when Gabriel showed you how to shoot the pips out of a card?”

Silence met her question.

“Do you?”

“Well, yes.”

“And how about the time Gabriel told your father you’d accompanied him to look at bloodstock rather than telling him the truth—that you’d gone to see a mill and became so ill on hard cider I had to pay two postilions to lift you into the carriage?” James’s father was the stable master at her father’s country estate and a man feared almost as much as his master, the marquess.

“But it was you that made me go to that mill, my lady. And it was you that kept buyin’ me cider.”

Details, details. “That isn’t the point, James,” she said in her best lady-of-the-manor tone. “The point is, Gabriel has been a good friend to you on many occasions. Now it is time we do something for him. If we don’t get this man”—she gave Visel a hard shove—“away from Gabriel, Visel will end up either killing him or making Gabe kill him. And then my brother shall have to flee to the Continent and take up gambling to survive.”

As they passed below a streetlamp she saw James scratch his head. “Now why would he have to become a Captain Sharp when he has plenty of money? And his new wife is bloody rolling—”

James was so literal. “Yes, yes, yes. All right, so he shan’t have to become a card sharp. But that is beside the point. We are removing Visel from their vicinity so Drusilla and Gabriel can take his little boy into the country and start a life together.” She didn’t have to hide Gabriel’s illegitimate son from James because they’d discovered the boy’s existence together, while spying on Visel—who had, in turn, been spying on Gabriel and Drusilla.

The hack shuddered as it rolled over the worn and rutted cobbles into the courtyard of the Swan with Two Necks. Eva pulled up the collar of her cloak and put on her hat, tucking up loose strands of her bothersome hair. She’d wanted to cut it short for the journey, but James had practically had a fit of the vapors when she’d suggested it. Sometimes he could be such a girl.

“You’ve a bit above your right ear.” James motioned behind his own ear to demonstrate.

Eva caught the offending lock and tucked it in before looking at him, tilting her high-crowned beaver hat over her forehead. “There, do I look like a young gentleman escorting his drunken elder brother back to our parents?”

“You don’t look like no boy I’ve ever seen,” he muttered.

Eva ignored him and peered out the grimy window. “You go make sure everything is all set and tell them you’ve got a cupshot gent in here and want our chaise pulled alongside so we can easily load him.”

James gave her one last, sad look and sighed before opening the door and hopping down, not bothering with the steps. After he shut the door, Eva bent to examine their captive. The light from the inn was shining through the window and slanted across his face.

He was wearing some stupid costume—she supposed it was a pirate outfit—and his turban had tumbled from his head, exposing hair that was normally an angelic pale blond but was now an inky black. He must have dyed it himself because there were smudges of black on his temple. In profile he looked just like many other aristocratic men of her acquaintance: a knife-straight nose, sharp cheekbones, and thin, supercilious lips. But somehow when you combined those features on Visel, they yielded something exceptional.

Eva did not believe it was just his shockingly good looks that distinguished him from the rest of his crowd, nor the fact that he was a womanizing, drinking, gambling fool, because those things, too, were usual aristocratic habits. No, there was something else. She thought it must be some expression in his eyes, or perhaps the way he held himself: aloof, confident, and coiled—just the way she imagined a dangerous jungle creature must behave.

She’d watched him like the proverbial hawk all Season long, and not because she found him attractive. She’d watched him because he never stopped watching her brother. Visel hated Gabriel with a ferocity that frightened her. He’d already managed to entangle him in one duel; a duel which he’d then stopped with a bizarre and very public apology. But his apology had not meant the end of his hostile behavior; quite the reverse. The few times she’d been close enough to see his face, she’d recognized the pent-up rage in his eyes. And that rage had been aimed at Gabe.

That was when Eva had decided to follow the man and see what the devil he was up to. When she’d found out that, it had been a logical step to kidnap him. Well, logical to her. Although she didn’t like to admit it to James, her father would likely lock her in one of the towers at Exham Castle for the rest of her life if he ever learned about what she’d done.

She looked down at the earl’s unconscious form and smiled grimly; she’d just have to make sure nobody ever learned about what she’d done—or what she was about to do.