Gillian felt like kissing him for saying such a nice word. Home. “That would be excessively kind of you, Sir Hugh, but I’m afraid I’m going to have to stay. You see, the magistrate will be sure to want to know how I came to kill an earl…”
Sir Hugh peered down at the recumbent figure. “Dead, is he? Shame, but still, I’m sure it was an accident. He did kidnap you, after all.”
“Kidnapping or not, I don’t believe I should leave until I’ve spoken with the authorities,” she said with a reluctant look toward the inn. She had no desire to see the gallows, let alone make use of them.
Sir Hugh pulled his lip in thought. “I have an idea. I have a house not far from here — an hour’s drive at most — I’ll leave word inside as to your whereabouts, and you can come along and have a rest until Weston arrives.”
“Noble is coming?” Suddenly the situation didn’t seem to be quite so terrible. Surely he would be able to help her out of this horrible mess. “Is he right behind you?”
“No, he had to tend to some business first. I’ll just go inside and leave Noble a message where we’re going, and then we can be on our way.”
Looking back on the day, Gillian realized she should have been suspicious about Sir Hugh’s antics when he insisted on leaving the body of Lord Carlisle lying in the courtyard, but she had wanted to be away just as badly as Sir Hugh seemed to, so she accepted his explanation that the innkeeper was sending for a doctor before Carlisle was moved.
She also felt she should have seen signs of Sir Hugh’s madness before it became disastrously evident, but she hadn’t. She rode along with him, pleased with her savior up until he escorted her into a darkened bedchamber.
“Thank you, Sir Hugh,” she said politely, wishing he would leave her so she could tidy herself up. “I’m sure this will be most…oh, my. What…er…what exactly is that?”
“What?” Sir Hugh asked politely as he slid the bolt home in the door and began to light candles.
Gillian pointed at the raised circular platform. “That. That large thing, just there, taking up most of the room.”
She began to feel something was very, very wrong.
“Ah, that.” Sir Hugh came up behind her and put a hand to her back. “That is a little something I devised myself. A modified Catherine wheel. Notice that it spins.”
Gillian noticed that, just as she also noticed the four leather straps and what looked suspiciously like dried bloodstains. She tried not to sound scared to death when she spoke. “Ah. It’s…most ingenious, Sir Hugh.”
He smiled. Gillian’s stomach dropped into her boots. She was looking at a madman; she knew that just as well as she knew her own self.
Sir Hugh laughed. “Mad? I don’t believe so, my dear, although I should by rights be after suffering what your husband has done to me.”
Gillian took a step backwards. “Noble is your friend, Sir Hugh. He’s been your friend for many years.”
“Friend,” he snarled, stepping toward her. “Enemy, my dear, my bitterest enemy. Did you know he stole the fair Elizabeth from me? She had been promised to me, you see, by my papa. But then Noble came along, and suddenly he had to have her and no one else.”
Gillian stepped back again, but the madman followed. “If she was in love with him…”
He snorted. “She didn’t know how to love anyone but herself, the coldhearted bitch. No, first he took my Elizabeth, then he took my land.”
“Your land?”
A tic started beneath the baronet’s left eye. He rubbed at it absently as he spoke. “The solicitor blamed the gaming debts, but I know the truth. Weston bought him out, forced him to sell my land, my inheritance, forced me from my birthright!”
Gillian gasped as Sir Hugh screamed the last word. He was staring past her, his fists working, his face livid and twisted with hate. “He had everything. He had it all, handed to him by his dear papa, but still he had to take what was mine. Everything, he took everything.”
Suddenly his hand lashed out and he grabbed her by her arm, tugging her forward until she could feel his heated breath on her face. She tried to turn away from the horrible sight of his face tortured and knotted with madness, but he pulled her even closer.
“I showed him, though, didn’t I? Poor Hugh, nothing but a wastrel’s son, they all said, but I proved them wrong, didn’t I? Didn’t I?”
He shook her with the last words.
“I—”
“I did, I did and you know it! I even did away with that grasping, greedy bitch Mariah when he came close to tracking her down.”
Gillian stared at him with blank horror. He killed Mariah? Simply to keep her from speaking to Noble? She swayed for a moment, feeling as if she was going to be sick with the realization of just how mad Sir Hugh was.
“You cold bitch, you never did want me to succeed at anything either!” he snarled in her face. “I knew what you had planned, you know. I knew how you plotted with McGregor to have me shot in place of Weston.” Sir Hugh barked a short laugh. “I thought you’d learned your lesson the last time, but I see I shall have to punish you yet again, my dear Elizabeth.”
Gillian tried yanking her arm away from the baronet but wasn’t prepared when his fist shot into her face. Her knees buckled and she fought to catch her breath as mind-numbing pain radiated out from her jaw. She shook her head and tried to keep her heaving stomach contained but ended up retching onto the carpet. When she was finished, Sir Hugh yanked her to her feet and threw her onto the wooden platform. She was too dazed and stunned by the pain to do more than struggle feebly.
“What do you think?” Lord Rosse asked, watching through the window as their carriage raced down the drive toward the house. “Are you sure Carlisle was telling the truth? That Tolly’s brought her here? He wasn’t in any shape to know what he was about, what with that big dent in the back of his head.”
“He knew what he was saying,” Noble said grimly. He flexed his fingers. If what Carlisle said was accurate, Gillian was utterly without resources, believing the baronet to be her friend, not a deadly enemy. He just hoped he got to her in time. If not — he couldn’t face that thought. “Tolly fooled him just as he fooled me.”
Rosse shook his head. “Carlisle believed everything Elizabeth told him?”
“Yes,” Noble said, leaning forward in an effort to urge the carriage faster. “He believed every last damned lie that fell from her treacherous lips. She had to have something to explain to her lovers about the marks made by her sick games with Tolly — who better to blame than her own dear husband?”
Before Rosse could speak, the carriage rolled to a stop, and both men were out and leaping up the stone steps to the door. Noble pounded on it, demanding entrance. Rosse reached around him, tried the doorknob, and threw the door open.
“You’re such a gentleman,” he told the Black Earl as Noble shot him a surprised look. They pushed their way into the small hall. A scared-looking footman was just scurrying off into another room, but Noble was on him in two steps.
“Where is she?” he roared, almost deafening the poor witless man. “Where has he taken her?”
The man’s mouth opened and closed, but no words came out. Noble shook the smaller man and demanded to be told where his wife was.
“Here, let me have him, you’re doing more damage than good,” Rosse said, pulling the man out of his enraged friend’s hands.
“Where has your master gone? Is he upstairs? Is he in the house? Where is he?”
The man blanched and shook his head. “I don’t know. I don’t know where the master is.”