“Be a man now, Harold. Tell us where he’s going so we can stop him. He needs to be stopped.”
“You’re going to kill him aren’t you?”
Darius was slow to respond, to nod his head. He didn’t have to say it out loud.
“The Persephone. He’s headed for the Persephone. He will take Eliza out and marry her aboard ship, consummate, and then sail back into port. The children are the leverage he needs to make her go along with it all.”
“He’s her guardian. He can’t have married her anyway.” The Persephone? It was there in port? It was the ship he had been looking for but also so worried to find. “Are you sure the ship he’s taking them to is the Persephone?”
Harold nodded, his chin dropping to his chest. “Mr Smith took it after our father fled with the cargo.”
“And those on board? The crew?” A vicious lump rose in his throat but then raised voices from the tap room of the inn took his attention. He left Harold even though he longed to stay, to discover the truth, even though he already knew what happened to sailors once they’d been overrun. He reached the top of the stair just as a stranger started to ascend.
When the newcomer finally looked up, he stopped, faltered, backed down a step. More than a dozen of Darius’s men took up the top landing, all with weapons in their hands. “What the hell is going on here?” the stranger asked.
“Who are you?” Darius called to him, while reaching for his pistol. The confines were too close for swords if he fired his only bullet.
“Harry Bower. I’m the magistrate. We don’t need trouble here, good fellows. If you go now, without a fight, you won’t be stopped.”
Confusion set in. “No, Sir Percival is the magistrate. We saw him only this morning.”
Harry Bower’s lip curled and the sinking feeling Darius had had on and off for the last two weeks grew heavier in his gut as he asked, “He’s not the magistrate is he?”
“Hasn’t been for three years. Old codger lost his position and half his mind. Would someone like to tell me what is going on here?” Harry asked.
“No time,” Darius said, renewed fear and anxiety coursing through him as a plan came to mind. He gestured over his shoulder to three of his men. “Get Harold—he has to come with us.”
They jumped to do his bidding, groans coming from the wrecked room making Harry climb two more steps. Darius shook his head and raised his gun. “We are going to walk out of here. Wickham will return to pay for his damages so you can tell the innkeeper to relax.”
“The Earl of Wickham? Oh my God,” he breathed when he saw the mess that was Harold as he emerged, draped over two men’s shoulders, barely standing on his own feet.
“You need to move now, Mr Bower.”
Darius began walking down the stairs, his men at his back. Harry gulped, still clearly unsure where to look or what to do. Then he gave a nod and retreated, moving right out of the way when the heavily armed party took their leave.
“He can’t ride like this,” Baggens said once they’d gained the yard.
Darius couldn’t afford to wait for a carriage to be brought around—the innkeeper would have more than likely denied them one anyway—and they would lose precious time. Wickham would need to stop, to change horses and let the children have breaks. They could ride on another way, overtake the carriage and get to the Persephone before his father did. “He’ll have to. He can ride trussed up on his stomach or on his arse—it’s up to him.”
“I can ride,” came Harold’s weak reply. “I can. You’ll need me to get to the ship. To get to Smith.”
Darius gave a nod and the two sailors holding him helped him onto the horse with Baggens. There was no way Darius was going to let him travel on his own. Despite his words, his brother was more than half-dead. He may not even make the entire journey.
Desperation made his heart race but he had to take a moment to think. Wickham couldn’t marry Eliza himself, he was her guardian and it would take time to prove their match one of love before anyone would let him marry her. They had the ship so they could sail out to international waters and the ship’s captain could marry her to… To whom? Then it became blindingly obvious and his stomach roiled. Sir Percival or Mr Smith. It had to be one or the other. God. A corrupt ex-magistrate or an underhanded, underworld murderer of the ton’s indebted sons. He couldn’t let either of them touch Eliza. She was his and only his.
Eliza was right when she’d complained about the men of England. They did take whatever they wanted, innocents be damned.
If this Mr Smith character did indeed have the Persephone under his control, Darius wouldn’t bother trying to take it back; he didn’t have the manpower or the time. He would burn her to the waterline with Mr Smith, Wickham and Percival on board. They could all go to the devil as far as Darius was concerned. He’d have no issues sending them there himself.
Chapter Thirty
If the truth were to be admitted, Darius had no idea where to start. By the time they made London’s outskirts, all in the party were weary, filthy and hungry. They’d barely stopped for more than a few minutes since they’d left. Their horses were going to drop dead at any minute with their riders still in the saddles.
Wes spoke up. “Are we headed
