“You’re right. Your Lord Appleton has always led a charmed life. He’s everybody’s friend. Except mine. He took great pleasure in competing against me—and always rubbing my nose in my inferiority. Fencing. Riding. Even mathematics. Did you know he and his friends had an unflattering name they called me—behind my back?”
“He never mentioned any such thing in my presence.”
“They referred to me as The Penguin,” he snapped viciously.
“Then why is your argument with him and not with his friends?”
“I loathe Appleton more. He didn’t think I was good enough to even introduce to his precious sister. He gave me the cut direct at Almack’s.”
“But why do you hate me?”
“Because I wish to deprive Appleton of your fortune. I want to see him grovel before me. I want him to beg me for money, beg for me to give him back the deed to his house.”
Her fortune? Did everyone in Bath know she was her father’s heiress? How she wished she had been born a pauper. “You know not Lord Appleton if you think him capable of groveling in front of anyone.”
She was on a precipice between life and death. He would undoubtedly murder her. Would he slit her throat?
How could she get away from this man? These streets to which he was directing her were as dark and empty as Bath before dawn. A pity no one could help her.
What did she have to lose? When she approached the next intersection and he instructed her to turn left, she slowed the phaeton. Then she leapt onto the street, but she lost her balance on landing and fell, her knee grinding into the cobbles. Oblivious to the pain, she sprang up and started running. Even though she tried to run faster than she ever had in her life, she resembled a cripple hobbling from a burning building.
The thud of his leap from the vehicle followed, and as fast as she tried to run, he was gaining on her. She must run to the public house she knew to be two streets over. She had to go where there were other people.
Blood pounded in her head. Her lungs felt as if they would explode from the exertion. Her legs felt as if she were plowing through mud. And her knee throbbed with every uneven step. As hard as she tried, she couldn’t outrun the killer who was on her heels.
Then she saw the light illuminating the tavern’s sign some hundred yards ahead. Her salvation.
Faster and faster she ran. Now the Crow and Anchor was only fifty yards away, then twenty, and then the vile man raced up from behind and knocked her to the street.
* * *
Appleton had left his London house before dawn. He wanted to be in Bath before dark. He wouldn’t have a moment’s peace until he saw for himself that Dot was safe. He’d tortured himself worrying about her.
He was convinced that Henry Wolf was responsible for Ellie’s death, and he was reasonably certain that he now knew why. It sickened him to realize that indirectly he had contributed to Ellie Macintosh’s murder. Now all the pieces of information had merged into a complete narrative.
Because of his hatred for Appleton, Henry Wolf wanted to ruin him. He must have paid Ellie handsomely to drug Appleton and see to it that he not only lost his ability to reason but also all his worldly riches.
Wolf also wanted Annie, lovely Annie from an aristocratic family, to be his bride. That sickened Appleton almost as much as worrying about Dot.
Then, to complete his fiendish plan, Wolf had to kill Ellie because she was the only one who could reveal the depths he’d sunk to in order to ruin Appleton. Wolf wouldn’t be able to count on her continuing to conceal their cheating scheme. Rightfully so. She’d already regretted her actions. Had she, perhaps, threatened to disclose his scheme to ruin Appleton?
During the long, grueling journey back to Bath, Appleton pondered Wolf’s meeting with his sisters. Could Annie’s tongue have slipped, allowing Wolf to know that her brother and Dot were investigating Ellie’s murder? One little slip to the vile man would have been enough to put Dot’s very life in jeopardy.
And I’m not there to protect her. He vowed that when he returned to Bath he would march her to the church and marry her. As soon as he revealed to the magistrates the identity of Ellie’s killer.
He hoped to God his worry was all in vain. He hoped that when he arrived at their house, Dot and her father would be enjoying a quiet game of chess.
At no time in his thirty years had he ever felt more certain of impending danger than he had since he’d left Dot. Dear, sweet, loving Dot.
It shamed him now to recall how ambivalent he’d been to all her fine attributes when he’d first met her. Now that they’d grown close, he’d come to love everything about her.
That ridiculous affinity of hers for cats he now found endearing. It was only one facet of her loving nature. She had demonstrated how well she would fit into his family. She and Annie were already like sisters. She was also a fine daughter, and she would be an excellent wife.
His chest expanded when he thought of her becoming a mother, a mother to his children. She would be a wonderful mother. He swallowed hard, his very heart aching for this to come to pass.
Please, God, allow her to be safe.
When he had offered for her, he had not then known how fortunate he would be to have her for his wife. Why did it have to take this separation, this paralyzing worry, for him to realize how very dear she had become to him? Now he knew that he could have looked the length of England, from the moors of Yorkshire to the white cliffs of Dover, and he could not have found a finer woman than Dot to wed.
He would have been bored to
