Page 55 of One Perfect Dance
Deffew grinned and unfastened the last of the buttons that held his trousers together. They dropped, and he was unclothed but for his stockings. He stood next to the bed, stroking his male equipment. Disgusting man.
“Are you on the bed, David?” Regina asked, managing to make her voice a purr, though the words tried to stick in her gullet.
He near threw himself backward, reclining on the pillows. “I am ready for you, my love,” he proclaimed.
“And I am ready for you,” Regina said, stepping out from behind the screen with her pistol aimed directly at Deffew’s groin.
He scooted up the bed, his appendage rapidly wilting. “You wouldn’t shoot me,” he quavered.
“Try me,” she invited. Gideon had insisted that she practice loading and firing the gun until she could do it in the dark and with either hand. She continued to practice twice a week, seldom missing her target, but ever since the night she shot Deffew’s father to stop him from putting a second bullet into Gideon, she had suffered nightmares. She never again wanted to shoot a bullet into living flesh and bone.
He deserves it, she told herself,just as his father did. “Where is my son?”
“I’m not telling,” he grumbled, then brightened. “You are bluffing. Ladies can’t use guns.”
She had no idea how he might react if she told him she was the one to shoot his father. Probably better to keep that fact to herself. “This was a gift from Gideon, and I have practiced with it twice a week for many years. In case you haven’t noticed, it fires two bullets. After I have ensured you will never again assault another woman, I will still have one for your black heart.”
He shifted uneasily, put his hands across his groin, and then crossed a bare thigh over the top for further protection. “If you shoot, my men will come to find out what’s happening,” he said, though the threat would have been more effective if it hadn’t been delivered as a tremulous question.
Still, she held her fire, and he held his silence. Each stared at the other. Neither moved.
Until a sudden battering on the door made her start. Deffew moved for the bedside cabinet, and she waved the gun. “Keep your place,” she barked.
He sank back on the pillows, but his eyes lit with glee. “They are coming for you,” he crowed.
A voice Regina did not know shouted, “I think this is the one, sir. I heard a woman’s voice.”
*
Twice more, theylost the hackney, as it took turn after turn. The first time, they made a lucky guess and came upon its path from a different angle. The second, they retraced their steps down several streets that proved to be dead ends before they finally found what they hoped was the right direction, when a street worker shivering under a tree on a corner pointed after a hurrying carriage. She accepted the coin Ash tossed her, bit it, and waved them on their way with a grin. “Good luck, guv. Hope you find what you’re looking for.”
“Stop,” Fullaby said, as they passed the third turning along the new street. “Turn back, Mr. Ashby. I think I saw it.”
Sure enough, once Ash managed to maneuver the curricle around in the narrow street, he could see a hackney parked outside a house partway along a row of them. As he approached, a man came out of the front door and hurried through the rain to the carriage.
“That’s him,” Charles shouted. “That’s the man that came for my mistress.” How he could tell when the man was bundled in coat and hat, Ash did not know, but if it was a mistake, he’d apologize later.
The hackney was pulling away from the house. Ash flicked his team into a sudden burst of speed, passed the coach’s tired horse, and cut in front of it. He leapt down, leaving Fullaby and Charles to deal with the driver, and wrenched the door open.
The young man inside sniffed. “My good man, this hackney is taken.”
That was all he had the chance to say. Ash dragged him out by his neckcloth and held him up by it. “Where did you take her? Is she in there? Is Geoffrey Paddimore?”
“Wh–who? I don’t know what you’re talking about.” His eyes told a different story, the gaze past Ash’s shoulder redolent of a lie.
Ash smashed the man up against the carriage. “Wrong answer. Try again.”
“You can’t do this,” the man protested. “My father is a viscount! He’ll have you in Newgate!”
“Doubtful,” Ash told him. “First, you have to live to tell him. Second, you abducted the woman I love, and no one in England will stop me from doing whatever I need to find her. Or blame me for what happens to her kidnapper in the process.”
“Here,” said the hackney driver. “Wasn’t no kidnapping. Lady came along right eager. I wouldn’t be doing with no kidnapping.”
“He lied,” Ash said, without taking his eyes off his victim. “He told her that her son was injured.”
“He might be injured by now,” the man said, spite distorting his expression. “If the stupid female didn’t co-operate.”
Ash twisted his hand in the man’s cravat until he was choking for breath and banged his stubborn head against the carriage again. “Speak. Who lives here? Where is Mrs. Paddimore.”
