Ashcroft mustered an objection but only managed another pathetic whimper before he drifted off again.
He endured a painful earthquake as his torturers picked him up. Good God, did they think he was a sack of potatoes? He tried to summon a demand to be gentle, but no sound emerged.
Merciful blackness descended.
When he surfaced, he managed to unglue his eyelids. At least he knew where he was now. He lay on his library sofa in London. Apart from a fire and one lamp, the room was dark.
How had he got here? He’d been…
Memory crashed over him like a huge wave of cold, filthy water. He recalled everything in exact detail. He’d been in Surrey discovering just what a fool Diana had made of him. He’d learned his parentage and heartily wished he hadn’t. He’d fought off an army of Samson-like domestics.
Which explained his current agony. If not his current location.
A face swam toward him out of the gloom. “My lord, can you speak? What happened? We thought you were in the country.”
His brain sluggishly sifted the words, slowly made sense of them. Identified the speaker. His butler bent over him with a troubled frown on his distinguished face. Behind him hovered two footmen.
Burnley must have given his brutal minions orders to dump Ashcroft on his own doorstep. A message in itself. Clearly he wanted his son well away from Cranston Abbey.
And Diana Carrick.
Ashcroft winced and closed his eyes again. Against all logic, losing Diana hurt worse than his physical injuries. Deliberately, he concentrated on his aches instead of his disastrous amours. He dreaded to think what a mess he was in. The violent pain when the men had lifted him indicated it was more than bruising. He guessed something was broken. Perhaps several somethings.
His recollection of the brawl was painfully vivid. For a while, he’d been angry and heartsick enough to give as good as he got. But eventually numbers had prevailed. Dear Papa’s henchmen packed a hell of a punch. Nor had rules of gentlemanly conduct restrained them.
He recalled brief flashes of consciousness through the ensuing hours. He remembered Burnley’s thugs slinging him into a cart. He’d surfaced in snatches to indescribable agony as the cart trundled to its destination.
Ashcroft House in London, hours away from Cranston Abbey. He must have been out of it for a considerable period of time. Was it even the same day?
“My lord? Can you hear me?”
Devil take his butler, there was no need to shout. He tried to speak but only managed an inarticulate grunt. He was alert enough to hear the consternation in the man’s voice when he turned to the footmen.
“Hurry. Fetch the doctor. His lordship’s been set upon by footpads and looks likely to die.”
Likely to die?
Hell’s bells, he refused to turn up his toes. His demise would make things far too convenient for his papa and that treacherous jade.
In spite of the pain, in spite of the beckoning blackness, he cracked open his eyes. This time, he squeezed out something approximating a sentence.
“Won’t…die.”
Damn Diana Carrick and Edgar Fanshawe. Damn them to hell. They thought they’d vanquished Tarquin Vale. He’d show them how wrong they were.
He was going to live. He was going to make their lives a misery. Dying was too easy. He meant to trouble that vile duo for years yet.
Diana stood in Burnley’s rose garden, surrounded by the flush of late blooms. The south façade of Cranston Abbey stretched before her, golden and glowing in the sunset. Ostensibly, she was here to decide when the roses were due to be prepared for winter. But as usual these days, her mind wasn’t on the task.
Two months had passed since that horrific day when Ashcroft discovered her perfidy and marched away, his green eyes glazed with hurt and anger. She thought her heart had broken then.
In the endless days since, she’d learned a heart could break over and over.
He hadn’t contacted her. How could she expect he would? He must hate the mere sound of her name.
For her sanity’s sake, she tried not to dwell on those weeks in London. But she couldn’t help remembering the touch of Ashcroft’s hand and the sound of his voice. The expression in his eyes when he looked at her, as though she were the most glorious creature he’d ever beheld. The desperation in his body when he’d thundered into her. The naked emotion on his face when he lost himself to passion.
She was strong, she didn’t think of him often.