Snippets of the letter, impersonal in nature and yet just personal enough, worked their way through the haze of self-loathing clouding his mind. When he reached the final sentence, rage chased away all other emotions.
You will find all the reports in your study prepared… I cannot help but feel it would be in the best interest of all that I should leave tomorrow, returning to my home.
His blood boiled.
He crumpled the letter.
Over his dead, mangled corpse. She was not returning to her house, not with the men responsible for the Westminster bombings still out there somewhere. Perhaps looking for her. After all, she had seen their faces as they approached her. Only one man was in custody, and two had taken her. Even if the man arrested for the Tower bombing had been one of her captors, the other remained out there somewhere.
Without a thought for the consequences of his actions or a fear that he would be seen, he stalked from his chamber. In a dozen angry strides, he was at her door, and in another eight, he was standing over her bed, still clenching the letter in his fist.
“You are not going anywhere, madam,” he announced to the silent darkness. “You are going to remain here, where you are safe, and that is final.”
She said nothing.
The absence of electricity humming in the air whenever he was in her presence filled him with initial suspicion. He patted the bedclothes, finding them carefully drawn. Perfectly flat.
Isabella was gone.
Fear clambered up his throat. Surely she had not returned already? Or what if, worse, she had been taken again? Dear God, what if those villains had come for her? He stalked from her chamber, dread tangling around his heart like ivy, squeezing tight.
He would spend all night searching for her if he had to. He would stop at nothing.
Determined, he strode from her chamber, descending to the next floor. And that was when he noted the faint glow beneath the door of the library. He did not know how he had failed to see it when he had first entered, but he could only suppose he had been too caught up in the heaviness of his thoughts.
Hoping and praying she would be within, he jogged to the other end of the hall and threw open the library door. The hint of a small, flaxen-haired head was visible above one of the overstuffed wingbacks positioned near the hearth. As the door bounced off the shelving lining the wall, she jumped and stood, spinning about to face him.
She was clad in a dressing gown, the hem of a long, virginal night rail peeping from beneath. It was high-necked and prim, much as he would have expected. When she was his duchess, he was going to have her dressed in nothing but the most seductive silks and lace. No more buttons to her bloody chin, he vowed it. She was too beautiful to hide herself away beneath all those layers.
“Your Grace,” she said, her eyes wide.
This was not the response he expected from a woman he had made love to just that morning. The woman he wanted to make his wife.
“Benedict,” he growled, his ire getting the best of him. He closed the library door at his back with more force than necessary and stalked toward her, the offensive letter still crumpled in his hand. “What is the meaning of this, madam?”
“Forgive me.” Her voice was hesitant, quite bereft of her ordinary sangfroid. “I hope you do not mind my trespassing here in the library. I could not sleep.”
“I am not speaking of your presence in this chamber, Isabella.” He did not stop until he was close enough to haul her into his arms where she belonged. He resisted. Just barely. “I am speaking of this.”
He held up the crumpled remnant of the letter she had left him.
“An explanation.”
“No,” he bit out.
Her brows rose. “Yes, it is.”
“Perhaps, but not one I accept.” He strode past her, toward the fire crackling low in the grate, and pitched the letter into the flames. “You are not leaving Westmorland House tomorrow.”
Of course, there was still the matter of where she would be staying, after they were betrothed. Unless they married within the next few days. Yes, sooner would be better. Tomorrow, if possible.
He could have her in his bed instead of on a bloody desk.
“What happened earlier cannot be repeated, of course,” she said coolly. “It is improper for me to remain here after this morning’s folly.”
This morning’s folly.
He spun back to her. “The only folly is you leaving here. There is far too much danger. Today, bombs were laid in Westminster and the Tower of London. Only one dynamitard has been captured thus far. It is entirely possible, indeed quite likely, that the men responsible for today’s outrages are the same as the men who took you outside your house yesterday.”
“I am so sorry to hear about the bombs,” she said, sincerity lacing her dulcet voice. “Was anyone hurt?”
“Unfortunately yes, and some of them gravely.” He hated to think of the cost of these actions of political violence in the name of achieving Home Rule for Ireland. “I was unable to protect them, but I will be damned if I allow any harm to come to you.”
“Surely you can see the necessity of my leaving here at once. I have no wish to make things more difficult for you than they already are.” She was speaking to him as politely as if they were strangers.
As if he had not just been inside her that morning.
“There is only one necessity I give a damn about at the moment, and that is your safety,” he told her. “You are safest here.”
“On the contrary, here is where I am the most in danger.” Her
