Page 40 of Seduced By a Scoundrel

“What is that?” Jeremy whispered, clinging to Derrek more tightly as they both turned to the open window.

“Probably some forest animal,” Derrek said, though he kept his voice quiet and held Jeremy possessively close.

They listened, and the sound came again. This time, it was accompanied by low, human muttering.

That was all Jeremy needed to know they were in trouble. He scrambled to untangle himself from Derrek and stumbled off the bed. Their clothes were still scattered around the floor from the night before. Derrek had taken time to fetch the water, mint, and grease from elsewhere in the cottage, but he had not bothered to clean up.

None of that mattered now, and perhaps it made it easier for Jeremy to snatch up his things to dress as Derrek rolled closer to the window, looking out.

“Who is it?” Jeremy hissed. “Do you see anyone?”

Derrek shook his head, then turned and gestured for Jeremy to be quiet.

Jeremy finished dressing, listening as best he could to the sounds outside the cabin. Sure enough, whoever had wandered into their lonely part of the woods was still outside. By the sound of things, they had wandered around to the front garden.

Derrek pushed back from the window and climbed out of bed. He took a few moments to dress with Jeremy helping him find his clothing in the right order. Once they were both decent, they crept out to the cottage’s main room.

Their haste to get to bed the night before was evident in the way the fires in both the stove and the fireplace had gone out completely. The front room was cool. Derrek had not opened the windows on that side of the house during the night so it was harder to hear what was happening outside in the garden.

Derrek gestured for Jeremy to stay low as they made their way to the settee so that they could look cautiously out into the dawn forest and the clearing around the house. Jeremy nearly cried out when he spotted a man’s back bent over, searching for something in one of the flower beds. He ducked down low, peering up at Derrek as though his lover were his only hope.

“Is he looking for the snail?” Derrek murmured.

It took Jeremy a moment to catch up to what his lover meant by that. By the time he did, it was too late.

“Must be elsewhere,” the bent-over man said.

He didn’t need to straighten for Jeremy to know who he was. Though he’d only heard the voice once and briefly, it was something he would never forget. It was Sir John Conroy’s accomplice.

“It’s him,” Jeremy whispered, scrambling back from the window and backing deeper into the room.

Derrek did not look surprised, which worried Jeremy even more. He stepped back and away from the window and the settee as well, then headed straight for the cottage’s door.

“What are you doing?” Jeremy hissed.

Not heeding him, Derrek yanked open the front door, which they had not thought to lock the night before, just as the form of Lord Albert Howard stood in the doorway with his arms stretched up.

The man looked to be searching for a key above the lintel, which was precisely where Derrek had been hiding it, but it was not there. Instead, when the door opened on him, Lord Albert’s face widened into a look of shock. He hollered in fright and stumbled back.

That initial surprise transformed into a much deeper fear as recognition lit Lord Albert’s face. He shouted again, his arms windmilling as he backed up, like he was not certain whether to fight or to flee from Derrek. His eyes grew larger and larger, and he shouted, “You!”

“Lord Albert,” Derrek growled, pursuing the man out of the house like a lion stalking his prey. “You, my lord, are meant to be on the Continent.”

Jeremy followed Derrek outside, too stunned at first by Lord Albert’s sudden appearance and the fact that he seemed to know Derrek to think much of revealing himself. Lord Albert was clearly the more terrified of the three of them.

“What are you doing here?” he stammered. “This cottage is abandoned. No one knows of its existence.”

The man clearly believed that. Jeremy wondered if he’d thought he’d found in the cottage a place to hide, just as he and Derrek had.

“You!” Lord Albert called out a second time as he spotted Jeremy. “Conroy has been looking everywhere for you.”

With those few words, Jeremy knew his time idling away in the country with Derrek was at an end. The dream was over and the fate that he could not escape was in the forefront of his worries once more.

“I cannot imagine what you mean,” he said all the same, glancing around frantically for some means of escape, or at least something he could use as a weapon against Lord Albert.

As it happened, he had no need to worry about any of that. Derrek was his weapon, and he was an effective one.

Derrek marched right up to Lord Albert, despite his bare feet, and grabbed the man by the front of his jacket. “You were told to go to the Continent and to never return,” he growled, more menacing than Jeremy had ever seen him. “You and your wicked, deceitful father both.”

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