Damn it to hell.
Benedict ground his jaw. “No one I interviewed had either, and nor had any of the other detectives.”
He stalked the length of Isabella’s cozy salon, where the blasted book of poetry gifted to her by Lord Lambert still graced the table where she had last deposited it. Whilst the possessive part of his nature was gratified she had not been paging through it in a lovelorn frenzy, the rest of him had taken note and then moved to more important matters. Such as finding her before something happened to her. Before she was hurt, or something far, far worse…
Nay, he could not contemplate that. Not now. The mere thought of something happening to Isabella made his stomach clench and all the hackles rise on his neck. By only the sternest exertion of restraint did he refrain from casting up his accounts. His heart had been pounding like the hooves of a herd of spooked wild horses ever since Isabella’s maid had arrived at Westmorland House earlier that morning, announcing her mistress had been taken.
Because he had known then, just as he knew now, the villains responsible.
Isabella had been taken by the Fenians, Benedict had no doubt. And it was all his bloody fault. He had been so certain that beginning here, where she had first been abducted, would provide them the clues they needed to discover where she had been taken and why. But they were meeting with nothing save brick walls at each turn.
He turned back to the detective, a man named Livingstone, who was in his mid-thirties and had an excellent reputation. For this mission, Benedict had used his power as Special League leader to summon only the best. Special League agents were scouring London as well, visiting known Fenian haunts and stopping suspicious-looking vehicles, in the hopes Isabella would be found.
A hope that diminished with every passing hour.
“Have you a description of the men who took her?” he demanded.
Thus far, every detective’s gathered evidence had been the same: the men had seemed to be garbed in disguises, heavily bearded, hats pulled low. One had been portlier than the other. Aside from those slim details, they could have been any man in the blasted kingdom.
“The men were bearded. One wore a top hat. There was a taller man and a shorter man, with the shorter suspect much bulkier in frame,” reported the detective.
Just as Benedict had suspected.
His hands clenched in impotent fists at his sides. “That corresponds with what the other witnesses reported. Thank you, Inspector Livingstone—”
Before he could finish, the door to the salon flung abruptly open. And there, on the threshold, stood one of the half dozen Scotland Yard detectives on the prowl. At his side was a bedraggled-looking Isabella, clad in her customary black gown, wearing a pelisse but no hat, cheeks painted red from the chill January air.
She was alive, by God.
“Isabella,” he said, rushing forward without thought.
So great was his relief that he crossed her salon in three strides and hauled her into his embrace. His arms tightened around her and he buried his face in her cool hair. The familiar scent of orris root and clean, floral soap hit him.
“Westmorland!”
She clutched him back with every bit as much desperation, collapsing. He caught her, not giving a damn that they had an audience of two Scotland Yard detectives watching his unseemly display with startled expressions.
He had called her Isabella, he realized grimly, and he was now holding her like he was her bloody lover. Still, he could not bear to let her go.
“Leave us,” he ordered the detectives, not caring that he was shredding both their reputations in this moment.
He had thought he had lost her, and now that he had her, everything and everyone else could go to the devil. All he cared about was her.
She was shuddering in his embrace, though whether it was the lingering effects of the outside temperatures affecting her or fear, or something else, he could not say. He needed to be alone with her, to find out for himself just what had happened, to make certain those bastards had not violated her in some fashion.
The thought alone was enough to make him sweep her up into his arms. “Close the door behind you, and stand guard at the front and rear entries,” he ordered the detectives.
They heeded him, moving from the chamber and closing the door as he had asked. Benedict scarcely took note. Everything was a blur of color and sound. Isabella was his sole focus. He stalked to the nearest piece of furniture—a divan, as it happened—and settled upon it with her in his lap.
Her chilled face was pressed into his neck, and though her pelisse and gown were cumbersome, billowing over his trousers, he held her to him as tightly as he could. “What happened to you, Isabella? Tell me, sweetheart.”
The endearment slid off his tongue, natural and right. He would not call it back.
She did not appear to take heed, for she did not offer protest in her usual fashion. “I was terrified.”
For a woman ordinarily as opinionated and stern-minded as she, her pithy response gave him great cause for worry.
“What did they do to you?” he demanded, trying to expunge the fury from his voice.
The rage was not directed toward her. But part of him hungered to hunt down whoever had dared to take her and tear the bastards limb from limb.
“They hit me over the head,” she said into his neck. “When I woke, I was blindfolded, in a carriage.”
They had hit her over the head? He slid his fingers into her hair, gently probing for an injury. He detected a lump, but no lacerations. “Good God, sweetheart. Is it paining you?”
“It hurt like the devil when I woke, but strangely, it scarcely pains me now.”
He had seen similar instances in the past, amongst men who had witnessed violence or been victims of it themselves. Likely, the pain would return to her later. He would
