Wicked Surrender (Regency Sinners)(8)

It was also the reason for his current impatience and anger.

Bella’s expression sharpened. “If the dowager is now dead, and there is no longer any reason for me to go to Huntingdonshire with you, why are you still insisting I am to go in your carriage with you?”

A question Dante had no intention of answering quite yet. Instead, he stepped forward to take a firm grip of Bella’s arm.

“Take your hand off me!” She attempted to release herself as Dante pulled her along beside him to where his carriage waited.

“You will only succeed in bruising yourself,” he warned grimly as he maintained that hold despite her struggles.

“I am already bruised from our earlier encounter,” she accused heatedly as they approached the black ducal carriage.

It had never been Dante’s wish to hurt Bella. Not physically nor in any other way. But the fact she was trying to leave London in the dead of night did nothing to allay his suspicion she might be a spy. She could merely be trying to escape him, of course, but even that supposition was not without questions that would need to be answered.

“I demand to know where you are taking me,” she insisted as Dante pushed her inside his lit carriage before removing his top hat and following her inside. He closed the door behind him, then sat opposite her.

Dante’s smile lacked humor in the carriage’s lamplight as he placed his hat on the seat beside him. “If I were to tell you that, then you could no longer accuse me of kidnapping you.” He tapped the roof of the carriage to signal his driver to depart. “I am more than willing to play the game of your captive to my abductor if it pleases you,” he added huskily.

“It is not a game if it is the truth.” Even in her indignation and distress, Bella could see this was a far superior vehicle to her own, with plush upholstery and curtains at the widows. The suspension was also first class, as the carriage began to move down the cobbled road with none of the rocking from side to side that she often experienced in her own carriage.

None of which changed the fact she was here against her will. A fact Dante St. Just seemed to think would hold no sway whatsoever with the authorities, when or if she were free to report the matter.

“Once my butler becomes aware I have been spirited away, he will immediately go to the authorities,” she predicted somewhat triumphantly.

The duke shrugged his broad shoulders. “And they in turn will jump to the conclusion that you have come away with me voluntarily because the two of us are involved in an affair. It will cause a scandal, but none will attempt to pursue us or rescue you.”

She snorted. “And why on earth should anyone think we are intimately involved when none of my household staff had so much as set eyes on you before today?”

Dante was loath to reveal too much of his plans to Bella. But on the subject of her rescue, he wanted her to have no doubts. “I have left behind an…indication, proof, of the intimacy of our relationship, conveniently sitting on top of the desk for all to see in my study at Huntley House.”

She frowned. “What sort of proof?”

“A love letter from you agreeing to come away with me this evening.”

She drew her breath in sharply. “I wrote no such letter.”

“It is enough that others will believe you did. Damn it, you left me no choice when you decided to leave town this evening,” he snapped as she glared at him accusingly.

“Why are you doing this?” Her bewilderment deepened. “We have barely acknowledged each other these past seven years, and all of a sudden you seem determined I am to leave London with you, even against my will.”

He bared his teeth in the grimace of a smile. “Perhaps I am tired of fighting my desire for you and am now overcome with the lust to possess you.”

Bella made a sound somewhere between a snort and derisive laughter. “And perhaps it is true that pigs really can fly!”

Dante ignored the sarcasm. “You have yet to tell me where you were traveling to tonight.”

Her spine stiffened. “I do not owe you any explanations either.”

“Unfortunately, that is exactly what you will very shortly be giving me,” he assured her grimly.

“What do you mean?” Bella appeared totally confused by the statement.

Dante sighed. “We will talk once we have reached our destination.”

“Which is?”

“My hunting lodge.”

“Which is where?”

Dante gave a humorless smile. “You can keep asking me the same question, and in a dozen different ways, but my response will still be to refuse to answer you directly.” If Bella had no idea of her destination, then she could not reveal it to others, either when they stopped at an inn later tonight or when they stopped briefly for luncheon tomorrow.

“Surely it is reasonable for me to want to know where you’re taking me.”

“As reasonable as it is that I refuse to answer you.”

Bella frowned her frustration. “At least you might tell me how long we will be traveling.”

“Perhaps two hours this evening, until we are safely away from London, and then we will seek accommodation for the rest of the night. Several more hours’ travel tomorrow will see us reaching our destination.”

Her eyes widened. “We will be staying somewhere overnight?”

“I have just said so.”