Page 56 of One Perfect Dance
“It’s apartments,” the driver offered. “For bachelors. A couple of rooms and access to the kitchen. You need to know the floor and the room number.”
Ash screwed the cravat tighter, until the man was scrabbling at his hands and drumming his heels. Then he loosened his grip a little. “Floor?” he demanded. “Room?”
“You barbarian,” the boy croaked. “Go to hell.”
“After you,” Ash replied. “Fullaby, start breaking his fingers.”
Ash’s man took a step forward and the villain shrank away as well as he could, the color draining from his face. “Third!” he screamed. “She’s on the third floor!”
He was suddenly a dead weight in Ash’s hands. The coward had fainted.
“Charles, there is some rope in the box under the curricle,” Ash told the footman. “Tie this miscreant up.” He looked at the hackney driver. “Stay here. We may need your services. I will pay for your time.”
The driver nodded, but Ash didn’t wait for him to say anything. He was already pounding up the steps, through the front door and on up the stairs, Fullaby at his heels.
Chapter Twenty-Three
“I’ll start atthe other end, you at this,” Ash told his servant. “Knock on every door. If need be, we’ll break them all down.”
“Those locks won’t hold against an assault,” Fullaby assured him, and began banging the first knocker.
Ash ran to the other end of the passage and did the same. There was no reply from the first apartment he tried, and no noise from within when he put his ear to the door. At the second, a yawning man with a sheet wrapped around his waist denied all knowledge of Geoffrey or Regina Paddimore or anyone called Chalky and cursed him for mistaking the room.
Before he could try the third, Fullaby called from a few doors away down the passage. “I think this is the one, sir. I heard a woman’s voice.”
He reached Fullaby’s side and shouted, “Regina?”
“In here! I’ll try to find the key!”
“Stay back from the door,” Ash warned her, and gave the lock a kick, thrusting his foot out from his hip, throwing all his weight behind it.
It crashed open, and he stumbled into the room with Fullaby behind him.
He took the scene in at a glance—Deffew, naked on the bed, Regina in her petticoat with a pistol held steadily on the wretched low-life.
“It looks like you’ve rescued yourself, Mrs. Paddimore,” Ash said. What a magnificent creature she was!
Regina smiled, but she did not glance away from her prisoner. “I am pleased to see you, Mr. Ashby. This creature and I were at stalemate, and you are just in time to help.”
“Fullaby, tie Deffew to the bed posts, if you please,” Ash instructed. “Mrs. Paddimore, I can keep the gun on him while you get dressed, if that would suit you.”
Regina relinquished the gun to him with a sigh of relief and retreated behind a dressing screen in the corner. The gown that draped over the top of the screen disappeared as she resumed talking. “He threatened to have Geoffrey killed if I would not agree to submit to him tonight and marry him after.”
“You always were a rat-faced sniveling coward, Deffew,” Ash told the man on the bed, who was now spreadeagled between the four posts as Fullaby finished tying the last knot. He’d used the man’s own clothes—the cravat for one wrist, a shirt sleeve for the other, and a stocking for each ankle. Deffew was going nowhere without help.
“He refused to tell me where Geoffrey was being held,” Regina continued. “I refused to put down the gun.”
Ash bent down to fetch the knife in his boot. “I can help with that,” he said.
He approached the bed with the knife held in front of him, smiling at the villain’s attempt to shrivel into the sheets.
“Where is young Mr. Paddimore?” he asked, keeping his voice mild.
“You can’t make me tell,” Deffew squeaked.
Ash’s smile didn’t reach his eyes. “I am glad I am wearing gloves,” he commented to the room at large, before reaching between Deffew’s legs and pulling his testicles away from his body.
Behind him, Regina gasped, the soft sound almost drowned by Deffew’s squeal of pain.
