Wicked Surrender (Regency Sinners)(7)

He stepped into the lit and cobbled yard at the back of Bella’s London town house. He had a black top hat upon his head and was wearing a dark brown superfine with buff-colored pantaloons above brown-topped Hessians. “You may leave us,” he dismissed her maid and coachman as they stood beside the carriage, ready to depart.

“You will do no such thing,” Bella counter-ordered.

“Go.” The coldness of the duke’s tone brooked no argument.

The two servants cast a look toward an indignant Bella before glancing back at the stony-faced duke. Then both scuttled off without saying a word, the maid back inside the house, the coachman into the stables.

“How dare you!” Bella demanded furiously.

“How dare I?” Huntley snapped back. “We had an agreement we would both leave for Huntingdonshire in the morning.”

“You made that agreement with yourself,” she refuted. “I did not agree to do any such thing.”

“I am well aware of that, which is why I was skulking about in the shadows in anticipation of your sneaking away into the night.” Dante had realized Bella’s lack of verbal agreement to their earlier arrangement on his carriage ride home as he recalled and examined the whole of their conversation. To say he was now furious at having his suspicion confirmed would seriously understate the matter.

Did this further confirm the suspicion she was indeed Napoleon’s spy?

Once he’d realized that at no time had Bella actually said she would accompany him in the morning, he’d been alarmed enough to send one of his footmen to stand watch over the occupant of Aston House. That young man had arrived back at Huntley House shortly after nine o’clock this evening with the news that Lady Aston’s carriage was currently being made ready for a journey.

It had then been merely a question of Dante instructing his own luggage be placed on his carriage before he returned to Aston House with all haste. He had arrived just in time to see Bella’s luggage being loaded aboard her carriage, an indication Bella’s appearance in the stable yard was imminent.

She had emerged from her house just minutes ago, covered from neck to toe in a black cloak, a dark blue bonnet covering her dark curls.

Dante’s anger at her duplicity was still such that he thought it best to keep his distance from her for the moment. “Might I ask where you intended going?”

“You might well ask,” she confirmed. “And there is no past tense about it. I fully intend to retrieve my maid and driver and leave London as soon as this conversation is over.”

One of Dante’s grooms arrived in the cobbled yard and, at a nod from him, moved to Bella’s carriage to begin removing her luggage.

“What are you doing?” She stepped forward in alarm.

“Having your luggage placed in my carriage, which is currently waiting on the road at the back of this house,” Dante answered mildly. “You will very shortly be joining it.” He nodded to the groom to depart with Bella’s assorted bags.

Her hands clenched at her sides. “I have no intention of entering your carriage.”

“I did not say you would do so voluntarily.”

Bella gasped her disbelief. “You intend to kidnap me?”

Dante gave the suggestion some thought before drawling, “I prefer to think of it as beginning our journey earlier than expected.”

“You might prefer all you please,” she snapped. “But as I have no wish to go to Huntingdonshire with you, I shall consider it a kidnapping. As such, I will report your behavior to the authorities at the earliest opportunity.”

“I doubt any will listen to you,” he dismissed in a bored voice.

“Are you so powerful, then,” she scorned, “that a lady’s claim to having been kept a prisoner against her will by you will be ignored?”

“Yes,” he confirmed bluntly and without apology. The mission he was presently embarked upon went all the way to the Prince Regent. The instructions had been specific: they were to ascertain the information required, by fair means or foul. For the moment, Dante was being forced by Bella herself to use the latter. “And we are no longer going to Huntingdonshire.”

“Not…?” She looked bewildered.

Dante shook his head. “I received another letter earlier this evening telling me the dowager had died shortly after the first letter was sent.”

“Oh.” Her anger deflated somewhat.

“Indeed.” He grimaced.

“That is…unfortunate.”

“But not, as we were already aware, unexpected.”

Bella’s frown was troubled. “I wish I felt more at her passing, but in truth, I cannot claim to feel much of anything.”

Dante, as Bella had guessed earlier today, could not claim to be particularly saddened by the dowager’s death either. He had only been answering the summons to Huntley Park at all out of respect for his deceased uncle.

And as a convenient reason to call upon Bella and request she accompany him to Huntingdonshire.

The dowager duchess’s death had meant he’d had to hurriedly make other arrangements to be alone with Bella in order to demand answers to his questions. A limited time now that he was forced to return to Huntley Park to make the necessary arrangements for the dowager’s funeral. Bella’s attempt to leave London this evening without him had required he bring forward those plans.