His Wicked Charm

At that moment Con came trotting lightly down the stairs. “Miss Holcutt.” He grinned. “The ladies are all out. I’m afraid you’ll have to make do with me.” He turned to the butler. “I think tea would be in order.”

“Of course, sir.”

“No,” Lilah protested as the butler left. “I mustn’t stay. I was going to the bookstore, and I remembered that Olivia—Lady St. Leger, that is—had expressed an interest in reading one of my books.” Lilah realized she was babbling and clamped her lips together. It was annoying that she should be so jittery and embarrassed at seeing Con again, whereas he was so obviously, so coolly unaffected.

“That sounds like Livvy.” Con reached out and took the book from her hands. “Ah, Wilkie Collins. Yes, she will enjoy reading it.”

“She said his stories were favorites of hers, but she had not read this one.”

“Please, sit down.” He took her arm without asking and steered her down the hall toward the sitting room. “All the women except Anna left earlier. Anna had one of her terrible headaches and had to stay behind.”

“I’m sorry.” Lilah resisted the urge to sit down as he had suggested. There was no reason to stay. She had run her errand. She shouldn’t sit down for a t?te-?-t?te alone with a man. Yet she lingered. “They’re on a shopping expedition?”

Con let out a crack of laughter. “No, Mother’s taken them to one of her suffragists’ dos. They’re standing vigil in front of Edmond Edmington’s house.”

“Edmond Edmington?” Lilah couldn’t hold back a smile.

“Yes, he had alliterative if unimaginative parents. Sit down, Miss Holcutt, please. Smeggars will be crushed if you don’t stay for tea and petits fours. He’s always trying to turn Mother’s meetings into parties, with little success.”

“No, I should be going. I was just—” She gestured toward the door, taking a step backward.

“Going to the bookstore. Yes, I know.” His eyes twinkled. “Come, Lilah, I won’t make any unwanted advances…not with Smeggars lurking about.”

What if they weren’t unwanted, she thought, then blushed at her wayward mind. “You would make some jest about it.”

“About what?” he asked innocently, moving closer.

“You know what.” She scowled. “What we—the other evening on the terrace.”

“Ah.” He leaned in, far too close for polite behavior. “You mean when we talked?” His eyes widened in mock shock. “Unchaperoned.”

“Yes.” Her word came out in little more than a whisper. Irritated, she cleared her throat and went on in a firm voice. “No. I mean it was more than that. We were—we almost…”

“Yes?” His eyes danced. “We almost…”

She had known he would tease her. She should not have come here. “Oh, stop it. Just leave me alone.”

“Of course.” He sighed and stepped back. It was what she wanted, yet perversely she felt let down at his easy acquiescence.

She should go now. It was silly to be so reluctant. Lilah drew a breath to say goodbye but was brought up short by a shout from upstairs. “Reed! Someone!”

“Anna!” Con ran from the room.

Lilah followed him. When she reached the bottom of the staircase, Con was already halfway up the flight to his sister-in-law, who stood still and staring, her face deathly white.

“They’ve been taken!” Anna cried. “You have to save them.”

She folded after that pronouncement, and Con grabbed her, easing her down to sit on the stairs. “Here, put your head down. Just breathe. Slowly now.”

Steps pounded down the long stretch of the gallery, and Reed burst into view, his face almost as drained of color as his wife’s. “Anna! What happened? What’s the matter?”

Reed leaped up the stairs, pulling his wife into his arms and cradling her against his chest. Con stepped back. “Reed, she was saying—I think she’s having one of her visions.”

One of her visions?

Con’s words didn’t seem to shock Reed, who only cursed and continued to stroke Anna’s back. “It’s all right, sweetheart. Everything’s fine.”

“No!” Anna pulled back. She had regained some of her color and her eyes were no longer wild, but she was clearly distressed. “You have to find them. You have to—”

“Who?” Con asked, his voice sharp. Lilah could see that his body was suddenly coiled tight as a spring. “Who is in trouble, Anna?”

“All of them!” She looked from her husband to Con and back. “The duchess. Kyria. Olivia. All of them. They’ve been kidnapped!”

CHAPTER FOUR

CON WHIRLED AND ran from the house. Lilah followed right on his heels. Signaling a hack, he ran out into the street and jumped into it before it completely stopped. Lilah climbed in after him. Con cast a glance at her, and for a moment Lilah thought he was going to protest her presence, but he only turned and called out an address to the driver.

He looked nothing like he usually did, his eyes as fierce as they were normally laughing, his mobile face stern and set, his body taut. He had undergone the same transformation two months ago when he had raced to free his twin.

Lilah wanted to ask him about Anna’s bizarre pronouncement. Anna seemed the calmest of all the Morelands, but nothing could have been madder than her staring eyes and terrifying words. Yet Con and his brother Reed, while alarmed, had not appeared surprised. Moreover, it was clear that Con believed what she said, dashing off immediately to his mother and sisters.

But that was absurd. Wasn’t it? Anna couldn’t have actually seen something happening in another place. No doubt Lilah and Con would arrive at their destination to find the women unharmed and exactly where they were supposed to be. They would all laugh over it. “Anna must have had a nightmare. It was her headache. One often has strange dreams when one is ill.”

Con shook his head. “She saw it.”

That was nonsense of course, but she didn’t want to argue when he was so worried. “Why would anyone want to harm the duchess?”

He cast her an eloquent glance.

“Well, yes, the duchess could have antagonized a number of people over the years, but surely not enough to harm her.” Lilah frowned. “Do you think the police arrested the suffragists? For simply standing in front of someone’s house?” She realized that now she was talking as if it had really happened.

“Lord only knows what they were doing. But no, I doubt it was the police,” he replied grimly.

The carriage had been traveling at a fast clip but now, after careening around a corner, came to an abrupt stop. Lilah looked out the window and saw a number of women milling about in the street in front of a stately residence. Signs were tossed here and there, and everyone was talking excitedly. A policeman was arguing with one of the women, and several other women were clustered around something on the sidewalk. Was that a body?

Con let out an oath and threw open the carriage door, running to the constable. Lilah cast another quick glance around as she stepped down from the vehicle. She could see none of the Moreland women.

“Here, now!” The cabdriver protested at Con’s abrupt departure without paying him.

“Stay here,” Lilah ordered crisply. They would need transportation home as soon as Con found his family.

She caught up to Con at the side of the policeman. He was barking questions at the man. “What the devil happened here? Where is the duchess?”

“Wh-who? I don’t know, sir! I just arrived.”

The woman who had been talking to the constable, a solid woman dressed in the style of the rational dress movement, let out a snort. “You’d do better if you tried listening, young man.”

“Mrs. Ellerby.” Con moved to the woman’s side.