“Stay where you are or you’ll regret it,” Buchanan shouted at Jane.
He thrust Maddie into the arms of a ruffian who manhandled her while he tied her wrists with twine. “My husband will see you on the gallows,” Maddie said in a fierce hiss, her throat closing in horror. But the man just laughed, showing a wide gap in his teeth. When he finished tying her, Maddie stared up at the box. Another armed man held a gun on Henry and the coachman. The footman lay still on the ground. He was bleeding.Please God, may he be still alive. Maddie drew in a sharp trembling breath, appalled. “What do you want with me?”
Buchanan wrote something on a piece of paper. “It’s not you I want, Lady Montford. It’s your husband, and you will help me get him.”
He stepped up to the open door of the coach and thrust the paper into Jane’s shaking hands. “I’m sending you back. Make sure Lord Montford gets this note.”
Jane just stared at him, her fingers closing tight over the paper.
He reached in and took her arm, shaking her hard. “Did you hear what I said, woman?”
Her eyes wild, Jane nodded.
Buchanan jumped down. He signaled to his man, who stepped forward and gestured with his gun to the coachman. “Return to Montford Court.” While Henry stared worryingly back at her, the coach with Jane inside took off down the road.
Maddie felt abandoned and afraid. The foul-smelling man who had tied her hands hoisted her up onto his horse and settled her before him. He turned his horse’s head and rode in the opposite direction from the coach, the other man and Buchanan following. Maddie gasped at the pain from his rough handling. “Where are you taking me?”
“You’ll find out soon enough.” He pinched her thigh, hard. “So shut your trap.”
His eyes stared into hers, cruel and uncaring. His breath was so foul she turned her head away and looked at the road through a blur of tears, praying someone would come along who would help her.
Chapter Twenty-Three
Hart sat inhis study, holding a letter which arrived in this morning’s post. He read the same line several times without taking it in and, in the end, put it down. His unsettled thoughts focused on Maddie, her face at the coach window as it pulled away. She reminded him of a wild bird you might tame for a time and then wished to be set free. And no matter how much he wanted it, he could never penetrate that part of herself which she kept from him. Would it have been this way if the circumstances of their first meeting had been different? While he did not know the reason, there had been a definite change in her. She had slowly withdrawn from him since they came to London. He feared she was content to leave him, and his heart yearned for her. He had never known such love. It made him vulnerable, and he wasn’t sure he could live without her. In such a short space of time, Maddie had become everything to him.
As soon as he was able, he would go to Pembury and try to regain those heady earlier days of their marriage. Had she been in love with him then? Fool that he was when he failed to realize the depth of his feelings for her. And now, when he wanted to be the best he could be for her, and earn her love and trust, was that even possible?
The knocker banged and Crispin went to open the door. Hart heard a man’s voice and went out into the corridor.
Lord Telford stood in the hall. “Sorry to disturb you, milord. I wanted to alert you. I saw that fellow again when I went to the stables for my early morning ride. He talked to your staff. When he saw me, he ran off. There was no sign of him when I returned later from Rotten Row. But I considered it prudent to advise you of it.”
“I am grateful you have, sir,” Hart said. “I will question my stable boy. Thank you for alerting me.”
Telford turned away at the door. “Just as well to investigate,” he said. “I hope it’s nothing to concern you.”
Hart went immediately to the stables in the lane behind the house where the stable boy swept out the stalls. When he questioned him, the boy shrugged. “I didn’t ’ear what e’ said, milord, e’ spoke to old Pratchett. But the coachman didn’t see fit to tell the likes of me.”
Returning to the house, Hart deliberated whether to ride after the coach. Was he making too much of it? Devil take it. He couldn’t risk ignoring it, not with Maddie involved. He called for his valet and ran upstairs to change into his riding clothes.
When he came down, Crispin had admitted Boyle, who waited in the hall. He hurried across to Hart. “I saw the fellow this morning, milord. I gave chase but lost him in the crowds in Piccadilly.”
Hart cursed. “The coach is on its way to Pembury with Lady Montford. I’m about to ride after it. I’d like you to come with me.”
“Happy to, if you’ll just lend me a horse, milord. I have my gun.”
“Good man.”
A short time later, they rode through the busy London streets and out on the road to Tunbridge Wells. Not long afterward, they rode through green fields. If they pushed their horses, Hart expected to catch up with the coach not far along the road well before they reached Tunbridge Wells.
He had not expected to see his coach rounding a bend driving furiously toward him, the coachman, Pratchett, cracking the whip with Henry beside him on the box. Pratchett saw Hart riding toward him and pulled on the reins. The horses, snorting and sweating, came to a stop.
Hart dismounted and ran over to the coach. His heart pounding in his ears, a distressed Jane was inside tending to his wounded footman. But no Maddie.
Fear ripped through him as he pulled open the coach door. “Where the devil is Lady Montford? And what’s happened to William?”
“They shot poor William, milord. And one of them took milady away on his horse. They told me to give you this.” Jane held a note out to him in a trembling hand.
Hart read it. “Buchanan has my wife.” Hart bit back a frustrated growl. “He wants me to come to his hunting box in Godden Green, a mile from Seven Oaks. Alone. If I don’t, he will kill her.”