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“God confound clever females!” Leo jammed the pistol back into his belt and gave chase. Now he could see that her mount, rather than racing off to her stable, had wandered quietly back to her mistress. Had it not kicked a stone in its path, he might never have known it was there. The aggravating wench had simply waited her chance to make a run for it.
And she was fast. For a girl. But there was nothing wrong with Leo’s legs, and a girl in a riding habit was at a serious disadvantage. She had pulled the skirt up to her white thighs, but the train caught on every rock and bit of vegetation. Still, he barely caught her just as she seized the reins of the mare and was trying in vain to reach the stirrup of the sidesaddle.
She turned and struck at him, but he had expected no less and was ready for her. In a heartbeat he had locked his muscular arms around her from behind and lifted her off her feet. Her heels kicking against his shins made little impression on his booted legs. Fortunately, she was a tiny thing, and the back of her head slammed into his chest rather than his chin. A very game quarry!
“Miss Hathersage! Miss!” He leaned away from another crack of her head against his collarbone. “Ow! Damnation, woman, will you be still for a moment?”
Evidently not. She started squirming, desperately trying to wriggle out of his hold. Very well. If he could not subdue her with reassurance, he could resort to threats. He shifted his hook until the point of it just barely pricked her side. She stilled as if frozen in place.
Leo lowered his voice. “Be still or you will skewer yourself.”
“You bloody bastard!” She gasped for breath.
“No, although you are not the first to make that charge.” Her defiance made him grin. “But, tsk-tsk. Such unsuitable words from such pure lips.”
“Cad! Blackguard!”
“Those allegations are closer to the mark. However, we have little time for character assassination.” He cautiously allowed her feet to settle to the ground, carefully ignoring the sensation of her warm, firm body sliding down his.
Yet there was no denying the feelings invoked from the softness of her breasts against his arm. Leo forced the excitement of the chase and its incipient arousal back. He could not afford distractions of that sort. Not now.
Not ever.
She did not renew the struggle, so apparently the hook had done its work. It usually did. The mere sight of it terrified brawny men, let alone a girl barely out of the schoolroom. Perhaps he was a cad.
Her chest rose and fell in panicked breaths. Suddenly she took a longer breath and an ear-assaulting scream cleaved the quiet of the hillside. Leo jerked his head—and his ears—away from her.
“Good Lord, girl! Do not do that again. You will deafen us both.” He jiggled the point of the hook ever so slightly to enforce this message. “No one is near enough to hear you. Save your breath and pay attention.” He paused for a heartbeat to gather his thoughts before continuing.
“Your curiosity has come very close to killing the kitten, Miss Hathersage. I cannot allow you to recount today’s experience to anyone. But neither do I wish to kill you to prevent it. In that I differ from the others in this venture. My associates would have done it in the blink of an eye.”
The quietness that settled over her told him that she understood that assertion and the implied threat. She was giving him her full regard, trembling a little in his arms.
“Hence, I must constrain you to come with me for a time. What I am to do with you, I have no notion, but we will contrive something. Please believe that I intend you no harm.”
She cried out and started to twist toward him, felt the prick of the hook, and checked. Leo sighed. “And I can see that you will not come compliantly. Therefore, as much a I regret it…” Leo pulled a leather thong from his pocket.
“No!” Suddenly she was struggling again, forgetting the hook in her panic.
“Damn it, woman! You’ll hurt yourself. Don’t you know when you are outgunned? Be still!” Leo looped one of her arms with the hook and forced her slender wrists together until he could tightly grasp both of them in his powerful right hand.
In spite of her frantic attempts to pull away, he looped the cord around her wrists and tied it with the agility of much practice, using the hook as a second hand.
Leo caught the reins of the mare and guided it close. Thanks be to his lucky stars that the bay was more docile than the lady. Since the hook prevented his lifting her by the waist, he grasped one of the girl’s arms under the shoulder with his good hand and, slipping his other arm under her knees, attempted to wrestle her onto the sidesaddle. She refused to help him at all.
Her privilege, under the circumstances, but he was losing precious time. He must be away before her household missed her. “Miss Hathersage, please put your knee over the horn.”
Her mouth firmed into a hard line and her chin went up. “I’ll be damned!”
In spite of his frustration, a chuckle escaped Leo. “If you do not, I shall be forced to tie you facedown across the saddle.”
He allowed her to contemplate traveling in that position for a moment. He was fast becoming exasperated enough to do it.
At last, she sighed, and he detected a defeated whisper, “Very well.”
Yes, he definitely was a cad.
Fearing that she would try to slide off the horse, even with her hands tied, he used a second lash to secure her neat ankle and nicely rounded knee to the stirrup straps. That should make her fast.
He guided the mare back to his own mount and climbed into the saddle. Leading the bay and her passenger, he turned and started back up the hill.
“Do you have a name?”
The question, coming from behind him, startled him. “Yes, Miss Hathersage, I do. However, I fear I cannot share it with you at this time.”
“You have the advantage of me, sir. What should I call you—other than those very appropriate sobriquets?”
He turned and gazed at her for a moment, then in spite of the troublesome situation, burst into laughter. “I believe, Miss Hathersage, that under these circumstances you should call me Lord Hades.”
Lord Hathersage was at his wit’s end. His adored wife had been having one fit of hysterics after the other for the last two hours. Nothing he said comforted her. He groped for words that might not set off another outburst, but was quickly disappointed. She spun away from the window out of which she had been staring and flung herself onto a settee.
“How could she do this to me?” His lady dabbed at her eyes and took the tiniest whiff of her salts. “She knows I worry about her—riding off who knows where by herself. Not even a groom in attendance. What people say of her I shudder to think.” Suiting the action to the word, her ladyship shivered delicately, the creamy skin of her shoulders shimmering under her gossamer shawl.
Ignoring this distraction with the ease of long practice, his lordship chanced a cautious intervention. “Now, now. Demetra, my dearest…”
His dearest Demetra rolled on without pause. “But will she stay home just because I ask her?” She jumped to her feet and stamped her shapely foot. “Nooo! I am only her mother. If she had any respect… She will ride in the sun and get those horrible freckles. If she had any consideration for me, she would at least wear a large hat! How I am ever to interest a husband in her I have not the slightest notion. She comes in with her hair looking like a birch broom in a fright! And in the eyes of all, I have failed.”
For once his lordship’s patience with his adorable wife cracked just a hair. His lady tended to forget that Peresphone was his daughter, as well as hers. He had been astride a horse for many hours of the late afternoon, searching unsuccessfully for his lost child.
They had found not a trace of her, save for the prints where her horse had jumped the wall. Even now his men rode the hills with torches while he did his best to console her mother.
“Come now, Demetra. How can you concern yourself with that inconsequential drivel now? Phona might be lying somewhere—hurt or…”
“Oooh!” His wife threw herself facedown on the settee. “How can you be so cruel? You know I cannot bear to think of anything so terrible.”
Lord Hathersage beat an immediate strategic retreat. He sat beside her and gathered her into his arms. She sobbed against his cravat.
Tears coursing down her cheeks, she choked out, “Oh, George, I couldn’t bear losing her.”
His lordship swallowed a sob of his own. “We will find her soon.”
Lord Hathersage wished that he felt as sure as he sounded. Reason counseled that, had she been injured, they would have found her by now.
In spite of a tendency to indulge both his wife and his daughter, he was not an unworldly man—and certainly not a poor one. He recognized full well that everyone knew Phona stood to inherit his quite astonishing fortune.
And he knew what that meant.
How could he tell his poor, distraught wife that her daughter had been abducted?
The Hades reference could hardly be missed by anyone who had coped with the name Persephone Proserpina Hathersage for twenty years. And it told her a great deal about her escort. In spite of the fact that he looked like every child’s image of a wicked pirate, the man must be well-educated.
How else would he know that in the Greek tale, Hades, Lord of the Underworld, figured as the abductor of Persephone, the daughter of Demeter?
Which also meant that, in addition to knowing that she was the daughter of the Hathersage house, he knew her full name. Which, in turn, must surely mean something. But what? Phona had certainly never met him before. She could hardly have forgotten a man who looked like that.
A chill ran over her.
Could she possibly escape him? At the moment Phona could not see how. She was rapidly becoming more and more disoriented. Dusk had begun to fall, gathering in the crooks and shadows of boulders, trees and crevices. Nothing looked familiar. Soon it would be dark, and she would never be able to find her way back.
Hades, on the other hand, clearly knew exactly where he was going. They had been riding steadily for hours, winding through the protection of small gorges and woodlands, never in sight of a trail, let alone a road. Obviously he had a destination in mind.
Phona cleared her throat. “Lord Hades? Where are we going?”
He twisted his broad shoulders toward her. “My apologies, Miss Hathersage. I fear I cannot tell you that.”
What else did she expect? “Is it much farther?”
“Yes. I am afraid so. Are you tired?”
“A bit.”
“You certainly should be, after that engagement. We will rest presently.”
Phona made another try. “Where are we now?”
“In Derbyshire.”
A decidedly unladylike snort escaped her. “I knew that much!”
“I was certain that you did.”
The wretch! She could hear the smirk in his voice as he turned back to watch his path. She’d be damned if she spoke to him again!
The intensity of running and fighting with her intimidating adversary had faded, giving way to a discouraged weariness. Phona had been able neither to outrun him nor to outsmart him. She had been overpowered and dumped unceremoniously on the rocky ground twice each. Her neck ached from lying as if broken.
She could not slide off her mount and try to run without being dragged by the leg, and as he had so annoyingly pointed out, no one would hear her if she shrieked like a banshee.
As the warmth of the sun faded, she began to feel cool. Sweat from the chase had dampened her clothes and now sucked the heat out of her battered body. Dear heaven, she hurt all over.
Try as she might to suppress it, Phona shook with fright, fatigue and cold. How could she not be afraid? She could not get away from him, had no idea where he was taking her.
And what did he intend to do with her?
A knot began to tighten in her stomach. Surely, had he planned to kill her, he would not have taken the trouble to subdue her. But she could hardly afford to underestimate a man who called himself Hades.
Her captor had not yet deliberately hurt her, but he might prove more cruel than he now seemed. Phona knew a man might mistreat a woman in any number of ways.
Perhaps that was why he had taken her.
Chapter Two
When the sun had sunk completely and the lavender twilight had faded to black dark, Hades stopped in the shadow of a small wood and dismounted. He untied the thongs from her leg and helped her slide off her mare. Her legs wobbled from the long ride, and he steadied her with his good hand and led her to a boulder where she could sit.
“We will stay here and rest the horses until the moon rises. It is too dark to continue safely. Are you hungry?”
For a moment Phona’s pride forbade her to answer. However, second thought made her realize that she could not allow herself to become weak with hunger. Now that he brought it to her attention, she felt starved.
And she had another problem.
She would have to speak. “Yes, I am, but I also need to…” She stopped in midsentence, the heat of a blush suffusing her cheeks, and gestured with her bound hands and her head toward the bushes.
“Ah.” Lord Hades gazed at her consideringly. “Of course.” He came to where she rested on the rock and knelt on one knee in front of her. He looked so intently into her eyes that Phona’s face got even hotter. She studied her hands.
The man put a finger under her chin and lifted it until he could see her face in the faint starlight. “Do not mistake this for an opportunity to escape, Miss Hathersage. If I am forced to, I will keep watch on you every second. Do you understand?”
Phona pondered that declaration for a moment. She turned her head away from his scrutiny. “Sir, you are no gentleman!”
She thought she heard a wry amusement in his voice. “I believe we have already established that.” The humor faded. “Miss Hathersage, I would give you all the privacy you need, if I could be sure that you will not try to hide or run away. You will not succeed, but I fear that if you try, you will get lost or injured. This is not safe county.”
Every fiber of Phona’s being longed to make the attempt, but her aggravatingly practical nature told her that the man was absolutely correct. And absolutely serious. He would watch her while she… Intolerable! Reluctantly, she nodded.
“Do you give me your word?” He continued to study her eyes.
Phona sighed and nodded again. “Very well. Word of a Hathersage. I will not use this as an occasion to escape.”
Hades considered for a moment, then he nodded in turn. He obviously had not missed the qualification. But the assurance sufficed for now. With a few deft motions he untied her wrists. “Don’t go far.”
Little danger of that! The short trip into the dark bushes proved quite enough to make flight far less tempting. Mysterious small creatures rustled in the leaves, and she could imagine spiders as large as her hand dangling from the tree limbs.
She stumbled over every rock. Definitely not the time to try to lose Hades and make her way home. As soon as she could, she scurried back to where she had left him with the horses.
She found him rummaging in a saddlebag. He indicated with a motion that she should again sit and then followed her, carrying objects unrecognizable in the dim light. He made himself comfortable beside her and began to unwrap something from the folds of a white napkin. Phona’s mouth started watering at the smell of a meat pasty.
Hades broke off a generous chunk and handed it to her, placing the remainder on the rock between them. “Plain fare for a lady, but sustaining enough.”
“Thank you.” She took a hearty bite and chewed appreciatively.
He broke a bite from his portion and popped it into his mouth, watching her from the corner of his eye. When he had swallowed, he took a swig from a jug which he had placed on his other side.
Phona eyed it enviously. The day and the pasty had left her very dry. He had almost set the bottle down again when he turned suddenly to glance at her. “Are you thirsty? I have only ale, and I doubt that young ladies care much for it.”
“I have never drank any.” She considered the jug. “But I am exceedingly thirsty.”
“I doubt you will find it to your liking, but you are welcome to have some.” He paused thoughtfully. “Just don’t have too much. It will go straight to your head if you have never drank it.” He handed her the bottle.
Phona sipped cautiously—and made a terrible face.
The man laughed. “As I thought.”
