Hold Me Close Read online

  For the moment, getting Brayles and his weapons out of the manor house was her priority. She wasn’t a good liar, but luckily, telling the truth was the quickest way to ensure he left.

  “The ledgers are not here,” she said, firmly. “We moved all Christopher’s private books and papers to the dower house six months ago, so the steward could have this room to conduct estate business until the new earl comes to Grantleigh Hall.”

  Brayles stared at her again, then nodded, apparently seeing the sincerity in her eyes. “I know the place,” he said. “Barely a mile down the river road from here. And you shall accompany me, my lady. No doubt you know the location of the keys which will admit us?”

  “In the parlor,” she said. “I keep them in my writing desk.”

  Waving for his sister to follow, Brayles took hold of Julia’s upper arm, and shoved her roughly into the hall, propelling her into the parlor with such force, she nearly tripped and fell into the huge traveling trunk that still lay open on the floor.

  He skirted her around it, pushing her towards her own dainty desk, which was tucked into a corner near the hearth.

  In the edge of her vision, she caught sight of the heavy iron poker propped against the mantle piece. If she could get hold of it, maybe…

  But Brayles poked her hard in the ribs with the mouth of the pistol, keeping her too close to the desk to have much chance of reaching for it.

  “Hurry,” Brayles said. He turned to Abigail. “Sister, get the girls up as quietly as you can. The carriage awaits us at the end of the drive. Never mind our baggage. Do you hear me, Abigail? We’ve clothes enough for the sea voyage in the coach, and all our gold and silver. I shall buy you a whole new wardrobe when we get where we’re going.”

  “Yes, George,” Miss Brayles said, with a surprising note of irritation in her voice.

  “Have the coachman drive out to the main road, to the stand of willows just before Seaton Bridge. If he pulls under cover of the hanging branches, you won’t be seen in the darkness. Promise me you’ll do just as I say. The dower house isn’t far from there. I will not be long.”

  Miss Brayles nodded then, and slipped from the room, quiet as a wraith.

  Even as Julia unlocked the drawer and reached inside it for the ring of dower house keys, she cast an arch look in Brayles’ direction. “I thought your carriage had broken down.”

  “Our coach is waiting for us outside, quite undamaged.” Brayles sounded smug. “We never meant to go to Edgerton Park. Ironically, the one man who believed Holsworth’s accusations was my own brother, the viscount. He wished to keep it quiet, of course—he couldn’t bear the thought of my being arrested. Not for my sake, but for his own. He’s the one who ordered me to the new world, where my shame, should it be exposed, could do less harm to the Edgerton title.”

  Lord Edgerton. Good lord, what time was it? Would the viscount have received the message she sent him by now, telling him of his brother’s visit and asking if his brother’s claims were true? If he knew what kind of man George Brayles truly was, surely he’d realize she was in danger.

  Again, a powerful longing for Holsworth seized her. If only she hadn’t sent him away today, he’d be here now, he’d protect her now. Her mind filled with the image of his face gazing up at her as he knelt before her in the hothouse room—only yesterday night, though it seemed a hundred years ago—and even now, she felt his tenderness, his kindness, his concern washing over her, wrapping about her like a cloak.

  I’ve always loved you, Julia.

  Why had it been so hard for her to let him say that? Why had she reacted with such pride, such ladylike rigidity, regarding it as an assault on her honor?

  Good God, everyone kept telling her that Christopher would only want her to be happy, and here she’d thrown away the best chance of happiness she could imagine.

  It would have been so easy to love him, too.

  “Hurry!” insisted Brayles again, giving her ribs another jab.

  “I’m trying!” she said, making a show of digging in the drawer, as if the keys were not exactly in the rear right-hand corner where she always left them.

  Brayles clearly thought himself clever, but his intellect seemed none too powerful to her. And he was obviously preoccupied with his many grudges against men he blamed for his struggles. If she just kept talking to him, probing a little at those sore spots, the distraction might use up enough of his brain capacity to give her some small chance to outwit him.

  She wiggled her hand about in the drawer, rattling the quills and stubs of sealing wax to make it sound as if the drawer were a disorganized jumble. “So,” she remarked as she did so, “you will be a dutiful younger brother, and go to the New World as you are bid?”

  Brayles actually chuckled. “Oh, I’ll go. But not where I am bid. A boat awaits us at Seaton harbor, to take us to a larger ship. We’ll be out of the country before the sun has fully risen, off to Bermuda, maybe, New Orleans, perhaps. I’ll decide that as we go. I don’t intend to be found.”

  She blinked up at him innocently. “Then why must you get the ledgers back?”

  “My brother may care only about the Edgerton title, but I care about my personal good name as well. Who knows? The current viscount has no son, and two of my older brothers have no children at all. I’m the youngest of us. Perhaps one day, the title will pass to me. If it does, I should like to be free to make my return to England again.”

  “No doubt,” she said, and blundered about in the drawer a few moments more.

  “Damn it!” he said, losing patience with her. “The keys!”

  All right. That was apparently enough provocation for now. She let her fingers close around the keys and then turned back to Brayles, holding up the jangling ring, hoping he’d be absorbed enough in the sight not to notice she’d left the desk drawer open. Lady Eleanor and the housemaids knew her habits well—if any of them noticed it, they might realize where Brayles was taking her.

  It didn’t give her much hope, but it was something.

  Brayles snatched the keys into his own fist and, to her surprise, looked down at them for one unguarded moment—and that was her chance.

  She dove to her right, grabbed the iron poker and then swung it with all her might against Brayles’ back.

  He went sprawling into her desk, and she tried to dash around him, but he was quicker and stronger than she thought. He righted himself before she was even halfway past him, grabbed her violently by the wrist with one hand and swung his other arm through the air, bringing the butt of the gun down hard between her shoulder blades.

  She pitched forward, arms wheeling, and crashed atop the open trunk, bruising one forearm on one edge of the metal rim, and all but cracking her rib cage as she landed full force on one brass-reinforced corner.

  Brayles’ fist seized her by the back of her robe and hauled her about so she sat on the floor, and he crouched beside her with the barrel of the gun digging into her forehead. She squeezed shut her eyes, sure the smell of sulphur as the gunpowder ignited would be the last sensation she ever had on earth.

  “Don’t!” hissed Brayles, his voice furious. “Don’t try to cross me again!” But he didn’t pull the trigger. Instead, he hoisted her to her feet and strong-armed her out the front door onto the drive, now burying the pistol cruelly against her already aching ribs.

  They didn’t have far to go. Down the drive beyond the boxwood hedge, a tall male servant was waiting, holding a horse harnessed to a small curricle, its lanterns shuttered. Brayles shoved her into the servant’s burly arms while he climbed into the driving seat, then signaled for the servant to pass him up to her, as casually as if she were a satchel. “Help Miss Brayles and the girls out from the house,” he commanded, the servant, “and be quick about it. No noise.”

  “You don’t want someone to go with you, sir?”

  “No. I can handle the lady, and we’ll travel faster alone. Just do as you’re told, and be sure the coach stays hidden by the Seaton Bridge until I
arrive. And don’t let my sister press you to carry her trunk back out from the parlor. It’s played a useful role in our little charade, but now she’ll have to sacrifice it. You made a racket like a herd of elephants when you brought it in, and we can’t risk that noise again now.”

  “Yes, sir,” the servant said.

  And then, with the reins in one hand and the pistol in the other, shoved tight against Julia’s side, Brayles urged the horse into motion, and they were riding down the gravel path that led to the river road, which they’d follow to the dower house.

  The air was surprisingly brisk for springtime, the wind high and wet with the scent of the rain, and she shivered in her thin nightclothes. All the leaves of the trees were whipping about, showing their pale undersides, and she supposed another shower might break before they reached their destination.

  She had little time to think, or formulate another plan. Brayles knew the lay of the land, and between the moonlight and the glow of the lantern he’d uncovered once they were well out of view of the house, he made good time, even when they left the gravel path and turned on to the muddy road.

  The sense of unreality that had gripped her ever since last night returned in full force. Before it seemed possible that they had traveled a mile, they’d arrived at the dower house, and Brayles was steering her inside. The place looked like something from a dream—dark and still, the furnishings all draped in white linen meant to keep off the dust. The breeze followed them through the door, stirring the air, making the white coverings flutter, and the light of Brayles’ lantern cast strange deformed shadows on the walls.

  This place was to have been her home once the new earl found himself a wife. How drear and drab and lifeless it had seemed. How horrible the prospect was of being walled up here forever.

  Though she supposed she would never have to live here now.

  Surely, Brayles did not intend to let her live at all.

  She hadn’t really wanted to admit that to herself until now, but if he had any hope of preserving his good name going forward, he couldn’t afford to leave her as a witness to his crimes. He’d admitted his guilt to her, kidnapped her, assaulted her with a weapon. His own brother the viscount might be content to cover up his villainy, but the Countess of Grantleigh could not be expected to do so.

  So the Countess of Grantleigh must die.

  Dread poured through her. And a terrible, surprising sense of loss.

  For so much of the past eighteen months, in her mourning for Christopher, she’d thought often of what it would be like to simply leave this world and follow him. It was not in her nature to do such a thing deliberately, but the prospect hadn’t frightened her. She’d imagined it as a relief.

  But not anymore. Suddenly, she wanted very much to keep living.

  She wanted life.

  And she wanted Holsworth. Desperately.

  Of course, Brayles didn’t care in the slightest what she wanted. “Lord Grantleigh’s papers,” he insisted. “Where did you put them? Lead me there. And don’t try any more tricks.”

  “The library,” she said. Resignedly, she led the way to the back of the modest house, into a room little bigger than her parlor at the Hall. Bookcases lined the walls, their contents, too, draped in protective white linen. But she’d been meticulous in caring for Christopher’s books, and she knew exactly where all the notebooks and ledgers had been put.

  There was a whole shelf of such things—and she did remember half a dozen that were filled with columns of numbers and unfamiliar names, in handwriting that was neither Christopher’s nor his steward’s, on paper thicker and more yellow than the familiar British make. When she was packing everything away, she hadn’t thought much about them. Christopher had documents and manuscripts of all sorts which made no sense to her.

  But these were certainly the ledgers Brayles was looking for.

  She pushed aside the linen draping, and pulled the books from the shelf one after the other, her hands shaking.

  “Put them on the table there,” said Brayles. “And page through them for me. Show me the start and ending dates.” He held up the lantern for light, but stood back warily, keeping the pistol trained on her chest.

  She flipped through the pages, pointing out dates and Brayles’ name whenever she saw it.

  One volume after the other, until she reached the end of the stack.

  “Good,” he said, satisfied. “That will be all of them.” Careful to keep his eye on her, he pulled a linen drape from the nearest chair and tossed it into her arms. “Now bind them all into a bundle with that, and tie it up tightly.”

  Her mind gone empty of everything but despair, she made quick work of the job, and soon the ledgers were wrapped up as securely as a swaddled baby.

  She swallowed against the tension in her throat. “You will keep your word now, as a gentleman?” she asked him, sliding the bundle in his direction. It seemed utterly unlikely that he would, but perhaps his training as a gentleman would kick in if she asked. “You will let me go?”

  “Do you doubt me?” said Brayles, sounding genuinely offended. “I wasn’t lying, Lady Grantleigh. I will return you to your home, and then be on my way.”

  She nodded, trying to look as though she believed him. But his coach would be waiting for him by the Seaton Bridge, and Grantleigh Hall was back in the other direction.

  He stepped closer, smiling down at her in a courteous manner, and took her chin between the fingers of his free hand, tipping her face up towards his. “You should be glad I’m an honorable man, my dear. Look at the two of us, alone here together, and you as lovely as you ever were.” His gaze suddenly narrowed, and heated. “If I weren’t an honorable man, I’d have you now, on this tabletop, wouldn’t I, and take my pleasure any way I liked. I’m certain I’d enjoy it.”

  Her eyes widened in horror.

  “However,” he said, releasing her chin and stepping back. “I won’t touch you. I recognize that you are a lady, one whose husband never did any harm to me. In fact, he proved extraordinarily valuable in keeping me out of trouble, didn’t he?” Brayles smirked now. “Such a very noble, trusting man he was, Lord Grantleigh.”

  Blind anger swelled up instantly, irresistibly, and she flew at him without thought, pounding him with her fists. “You bastard! You blackguard! You have no claim to decency, and no right to speak my husband’s name!”

  Brayles was driven backwards for a moment by the sheer fury of her blows, but he was bigger and stronger than she was, and before she could cause him any real harm, he seized her arm again, rough enough to bruise her, and threw her back against the shelves. The sharp edge of his hip shoved into her belly, trapping her against the boards, and the pistol pressed into her hair.

  She closed her eyes again, waiting for the crack of the gun, expecting to be dead in a heartbeat.

  But Brayles didn’t shoot. He kept her pinned there for several seconds, his breath harsh in her ear, the fingers that squeezed her flesh shaking with his anger. “Hush, girl,” he hissed. “That’s quite enough. I’ve been more than decent toward you, but if you attack me again, I’ll decide you’re not a lady after all.”

  She let out a sob. What difference did it make?

  Fighting back her tears, she tilted her head back as best she could and looked him straight in the eye. “You know if you harm me,” she said, keeping her voice low and forceful by pure act of will, “Holsworth will find you. You’ve never been able to hide from him, have you? He swore to my husband that he would protect me, and if you don’t let me go, he’ll hunt you down, even if it takes until his dying day. Knowing how he deals with his enemies, I doubt it will take him anywhere near that long.”

  Brayles listened, his jaw slowly dropping. Uncertainty flickered in his eyes. Yes, the thought of Holsworth coming after him did frighten him.

  His fingers eased their hold on her arm, though he didn’t release her entirely. He pulled her away from the bookcase, and whirled her around to the table again. He thrust his chin
at the bundle of ledgers. “You’ll carry those,” he said, in his sneering voice. “It’ll keep your arms busy.”

  All right. So at least he wasn’t going to kill her here. She gathered up the bundle, and he pushed her ahead of him again, back outside, where a drizzle had begun to fall. For a moment, she considered running. But she’d never been very fast, and Brayles’ legs were far longer than hers.

  And she knew he could do worse things to her than put a bullet quickly through her brain.

  Her hoisted her up onto one side of the curricle, the ledgers still in her arms, and then clambered his way back into the driving seat. With a crack of the whip, he brought the horse around, and they headed down the short driveway to the river road again. She closed her eyes, hugging the ledgers to her chest for whatever comfort they could provide, and prayed against all odds that somehow she would get out of this alive.

  But the moment they reached the road, Brayles wheeled the curricle to the right, not the left. As she’d predicted, he was heading away from Grantleigh Hall, in the direction of the river road that would lead to Seaton Bridge.

  Surely Brayles didn’t plan to take her with him all the way to Bermuda or New Orleans or wherever else he planning to go. And he couldn’t leave her in Britain, where she’d tell everyone the truth about him.

  This length of the river road was dark and wild and little traveled. It featured an ample supply of ridges and cliffs and drop-offs down into the water, where a body might never be found.

  She wanted to weep. Christopher, she thought.

  Holsworth.

  What could she possibly do? Try to leap from the vehicle before Brayles had time to shoot her? Try to bring Brayles rolling down with her, hoping he’d break a limb or his neck without the same happening to her?

  She stared off hopelessly into the night, willing some miracle to occur.

  The drizzle was thickening now into rain, and they’d reached the narrow part of the road, where thickly-wooded hillside sloped up sharply to the left of them, pockmarked with boulders, and the ground fell off perilously to the right, where anyone who strayed even slightly from the road risked pitching fifty feet down to the river roaring along beneath them.