Stephanie Laurens - Beyond Seduction

“You don’t know me yet, but you will.” His gaze on Ben’s face, Dalziel waved to the stairs. “Let’s go up to the library and you can tell us all-all the gory details of your kidnap, confinement and escape.” Effortlessly, with no more than a look, he drew Ben to him and turned with him to the stairs. “Have you breakfasted yet?”

“No.” The thought of food brought Ben up short; he started to turn to Madeline.

“No matter. Gasthorpe-you’ve met the redoubtable Gasthorpe, haven’t you?”

Ben shot a shy grin at Gasthorpe, who had shut the door and was now waiting by the side of the hall for his orders.

“Gasthorpe,” Dalziel continued, with just a touch on Ben’s shoulder steering him up the stairs, “will bring sustenance suitable for your years. You can eat while you set your sister’s mind at rest.”

Ben glanced back at Madeline, but seeing her following in his wake with Gervase beside her, meeting her encouraging if misty-eyed smile, he grinned, looked ahead, and happily trooped up the stairs.

When they were all in the library, comfortable in armchairs set about the hearth, while Ben wolfed down the cheese and ham sandwich Gasthorpe had provided, Gervase caught Christian’s eye and saw his own bemusement reflected there. It was patently clear who had elected himself Ben’s interrogator.

For one moment, Gervase wondered if he should resent Dalziel’s claim, but he wanted Ben to look upon him as an unthreatening, always trustworthy friend, and acting as an interrogator, even in relatively mild fashion, wasn’t a good way to nurture such a connection. So he sat back and watched, quietly fascinated, as his ex-commander displayed a side of himself none of his ex-operatives had imagined he possessed.

Sitting opposite Ben, who was ensconced in the chair between Madeline’s and Gervase’s, Dalziel exuded the sort of blatant confidence guaranteed to fix a boy’s attention; the command that confidence concealed was subtle, yet still there, giving his performance a near-irresistible edge.

He waited with feigned patience until Ben had finished the sandwich and drained his glass of milk before commencing, with an easy, encouraging smile. “Now-let’s start from when you were sitting on the bench outside the inn in Helston. The man who approached you-what did he say?”

Wriggling forward in the chair, Ben dutifully replied, “He asked how to get to the London road. He said he had to meet a man with a carriage there, and was lost, and time was running out. He offered me a shilling to show him the quickest way.”

Ben colored and shot a glance at Madeline. “I know I shouldn’t have taken the money, but it wasn’t far, and it was daylight and people were about.”

Madeline reached out and touched his hand.

“Indeed,” Dalziel said, his tone even. “So you’ll know not to do it next time. So you showed this man to the London road, then he picked you up and slung you in the carriage.”

Ben nodded. “It was a big black traveling carriage-it had four horses.”

“And they tied you up and gagged you and whisked you off to London.”

“Yes.” Ben paused, then volunteered, “But they didn’t hurt me or anything, not even when I kicked their shins.”

Dalziel nodded. “They were under orders to keep you hale and whole.” He paused, then went on, “So they brought you to London, to some place in the slums.”

“Was that the slums?” Ben glanced at Gervase, who nodded. “It was awfully dirty.”

“I expect it was,” Dalziel allowed. “You reached there early this morning, and they kept you there, but not for very long.”

“They’d told me in the carriage at the start that they were just fetching me for some gentleman who wanted to ask me something. I couldn’t understand why I had to go to London, but they said they didn’t know what he wanted to ask-they were just carrying out his orders and doing what he told them. They told me he wasn’t one for explanations.” Ben paused, then slid his hand across the chair’s arm to grasp Madeline’s. “They told me if I knew what was good for me I’d tell him what he wanted to know, and quickly.” He looked at Dalziel. “They weren’t joking-I think they were trying to warn me.”

Dalziel raised his brows. “Sometimes one finds honor among thieves. So…they took you to meet the man this morning.”

Ben nodded. “They stayed with me in a smelly room through the night, then after ten o’clock this morning-I could hear bells pealing the hours-they said it was time to go and meet him.”

“Where did they take you?” The tension in Dalziel’s voice was hard to detect, but there.

“It was only downstairs. To another room-I didn’t see it because they blindfolded me, but it seemed cleaner.”

Dalziel exchanged a quick glance with Gervase. It sounded like a brothel-a cleaner room downstairs for meeting “guests,” a room that would have been deserted in the morning. Dalziel looked at Ben, and repeated, Gervase suspected for Madeline’s benefit, “You were blindfolded, so you didn’t see the gentleman-the one who questioned you.”

Throughout, Dalziel asked few questions. He made statements, told Ben’s story, and left it to Ben to correct or expand.

Ben shook his head, brow furrowed as he recalled. “He was a gentleman-he spoke like us.” Head on one side, he looked at Dalziel. “He sounded a lot like you.”

Dalziel slowly nodded. “A gentleman of the ton, a member of the aristocracy-that’s who we think he is. As you say, one of us. So he spoke with you-what did he say?”

“He told me that if I answered his question, he would order the men to take me into the streets a little way away and let me go. That I would be free to return to Cornwall and my family, as long as I answered his one question-he warned me he’d know if I was lying.” Ben blushed.

Dalziel smiled. “So you answered his question, and told him that you and your brothers found the brooch you gave your sister for her birthday on…which beach?”

Ben frowned at him. “How did you know that was what he wanted to know?”

“Because he’s a traitor I’ve been chasing for some time. And your sister and Crowhurst here realized it was something to do with the brooch.” Dalziel paused as Ben mouthed an “Oh,” then prompted, “So…which beach did you send him to?”

Ben shifted, then looked at Madeline. “I did lie-I didn’t want him finding our treasure, if there’s more of it buried in the sand, and I didn’t think you’d mind if I lied to him.” His jaw firmed. “He was a bad man, stealing me away like that.”

Madeline smiled, and squeezed the hand she still held. “It was perfectly reasonable to lie to him.”

Reassured, Ben looked at Dalziel. “I told him we found the brooch in Kynance Cove.”

Gervase caught the look Dalziel sent him, the faint lift of one brow. “It’s on the other side of the peninsula from Lowland Point-the beach where they found the brooch and where Charles and Harry are keeping watch.”

“Will they notice if our quarry heads down to this other beach?” Dalziel shifted forward, preparing to rise.

Gervase shook his head, doing the same. “It’s nowhere near. Our man could take a small army down to Kynance Cove and only a few farmers-”

“Shush! Wait.”

He broke off; glancing around, he saw Madeline waving them to silence.

Her gaze was fixed on her brother. “Ben-why Kynance?”

Ben squirmed, shot a glance at Dalziel-who reacted not at all-then glanced at Gervase, before looking back at Madeline. “Because it’s the cove the wreckers use. Not just to hide their stuff-there hasn’t been any this season-but their boats are in some of the caves, and they meet there, too.”

He drew in a breath, then looked at Dalziel. “I sent the man there because he was a bad man, and anyone with him will be bad, too, so if they’re going to stumble across any of our people, it ought to be the wreckers-they’re even worse.”

Dalziel was still for a moment, then he looked at Gervase. “You really have wreckers down there?”

Gervase felt his face grow blank as he envisioned what might occur. “Oh, yes.” He refocused on Dalziel. “It could be a bloodbath.”

Dalziel considered, then raised his brows. He looked at Ben; his lips curved. “A trifle bloodthirsty, perhaps, but overall that was very well done.”

Ben looked relieved; he turned to Madeline and grinned.

Dalziel rose, as did Gervase and Christian; he smiled genuinely, with the air of a wolf in fond expectation of his next meal. “So all that’s left is for us to fly down to Cornwall, and trap our fine traitor at Kynance Cove.”

Madeline had had more than enough of being jolted about in a flying carriage. The one aspect that made this second breakneck journey infinitely more bearable than the first was Ben; he was lying curled up on the seat, his head in her lap, dozing as they raced along.

It was now midmorning; as before, they’d traveled through the night, stopping only to have fresh horses put to. Gervase, Ben and she were traveling in the lead in their hired carriage, with the same two Cornish coachmen on the box. Christian and Dalziel were following close behind in a well-sprung carriage with the marquess’s coat of arms blazoned on the side.

That, and the unvoiced rivalry between Christian’s coachmen and their two coachmen had, more than anything else, contributed to their remarkable pace. They’d left London within an hour of Ben revealing all; now, not even twenty-four hours later, they were nearing their goal.

Madeline saw a familiar landmark flash past. “We’re nearly into Helston.” Looking across the rocking carriage, she met Gervase’s eyes. “Where should we head first?”

His lips curved, more in reassurance than a smile. “I told the two maniacs up top to go straight to the Park. They know the way.”

She nodded and looked out of the window again, conscious of a strange urgency building-to reach home, to confirm that Harry and Edmond were there, unharmed, that no action had taken place while they were away. An underlying itch to make sure all in her domain, all those she cared for and thought of as in her keeping, were safe, that everything was as it should be.