Page 27 of To Tame the Wild Rake
She gave the guard on the door to the alley a regal nod of acknowledgement when he opened the door for her. The trips she had made on previous mornings paid off; he did not even ask where she was going.
She let the veil down from her bonnet as Kit hurried ahead of her to find a hire carriage. The sooner they were out of this district the better, not just for their own safety, but for the success of her mission.
Aldridge was in the ducal offices, giving instructions to his secretaries, when Richards came to find him. “A visitor, my lord. A lady. She will not give her name. She says it is a matter of some urgency.”
“Tell her that I am about to take a trip, and ask her if she will make an appointment for my return,” Aldridge instructed.
“My lord, she says she has information about Stanley Wharton and his intentions.”
“Tell Henry to walk the horses,” Aldridge instructed a hovering footman. “Where have you put this lady, Richards?”
The most formal of the parlours in the heir’s wing had not been much used in more than seven decades, since the tenure of the last ducal heir to have a wife and family before ascending to the title.
Richards, who had a butler’s discernment about social rank, had seen fit to leave the visitor there, and to have her supplied with refreshments. It is not often the man is wrong, Aldridge mused, observing the visitor for a moment before she noticed his entry. Indeed, he could not blame Richards. The vicious she-devil had been raised as a lady and had the title and the manners, if not the morals or the ethics.
The boy with her, Aldridge dismissed at a glance. Even when she was still accepted in Society, she had kept such accessories. Pretty youths with little spine and only the ideas she had planted.
“Lady Ashbury,” he drawled. “To what do I owe the singular pleasure? Or should I address you as La Reine?”
He had to give the hellcat credit. She turned her head and inclined it in greeting, her countenance unruffled, for all the world as if she were in her own parlour and not a wanted fugitive from justice. “La Reine is no more, Lord Aldridge. After I tell you what I can of my brother’s plans, returning to that persona would be… injudicious.”
If she intended to startle, she succeeded, but he managed to control his reaction, instead, crossing the room to sit opposite her, and pouring himself a cup of tea from the pot before her.
“You seek to exchange information for your freedom, I assume?”
Again, the gracious inclination of the head. “I do, of course. You may ask me any question you wish, and I will answer. However, there is some urgency in the matter of Lady Charlotte Winderfield, and you may wish to see to her safety and question me later.”
A few minutes later, Aldridge was giving instructions to his butler as he hurried to the mews. “She is to remain here, guarded at all times. No visitors. She is in danger, but she is also a danger to others. I’ll be back as soon as I can.”
He had time for no more as he reached his phaeton, and leapt aboard. “Let them go,” he told the groom, and with a flick he had the horses trotting out into the street.
The Winshire mansion was closer to Westminster than Haverford House, and away from the river. At first, Aldridge was able to gallop, but he took a shortcut through Hyde Park. On the other side, he met the clutter of morning traffic, and had to drop his pair to a walk. It seemed to take forever, though the light vehicle was able to weave around larger drays and carriages, and was seldom stopped entirely.
He pulled up in front of the main entrance and called to a groom to hold the horses even as he leapt down to take the steps two at a time and thunder a knock on the door.
“Is Lady Charlotte home?” he demanded of the man who opened the door.
“Lady Charlotte is not receiving, my lord,” said the butler.
“Yes, fine. I do not need to see her; just to know if she is at home.”
“Charlotte is not well, and is still in her bedchamber, Aldridge,” said the Duke of Winshire from the stairs that descended into the entry. Bentham and Lord Andrew followed behind him. “Is there a problem?”
Aldridge felt weak at the release of tension. He was in time. “If a message arrives for her from a sewing workshop in Clerkenwell, tell her not to go. I have been warned that it is a trap.”
“Sarah!” Lord Bentham clutched the duke’s arm. “Sarah ran the errand for her.”
The duke didn’t hesitate. “Drew, run upstairs and ask your cousin for the address in Clerkenwell. Aldridge, tell us what you know. Who plans to trap her, and why?”
Aldridge took his first deep breath in half an hour as Bentham descended the stairs ahead of the duke, his face blanched of all colour, his eyes wide with shock and burning with anger. “Quick, man. We have to go after her.” He forked his fingers through his hair and grimaced. “She left perhaps forty-five minutes ago, Uncle James. We may already be too late.”
His Grace put a hand over the distressed viscount’s. “Whoever it is must get through Yahzak and John, and your wife is not helpless, Nate. She has a knife and a pistol, and is trained to use them.”
His wife? It was true, then, what Elfingham told me, so long ago. And if that, then probably the other. Aldridge put the thought from his mind to focus on the immediate. “If Lady Charlotte has the address, we will be close behind them,” Aldridge promised. “The men sent to take her at the workshop work for a brothel owner who is, according to my informant, being rewarded for the abduction by someone who hopes to marry Lady Charlotte. They will have to transport her from the workshop to somewhere else. We have time to catch up.”
The duke must have given a signal, for one of his foreign retainers hurried out from behind the stairs. “Yousef, I want horses ready. Assign four men to guard the house with the footmen. High alert. No one comes in or out until I return. Everyone else will come with me.”
“I have my phaeton outside,” Aldridge said. “I’ll go on ahead, and you can catch up.”
