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“It is a bitter fate when a man discovers too late that love is his strongest armor and his deepest wound.”

Impressions of England by an Unrepentant Foreigner

Creeping dread was making her hands and feet both numb and tingly as the wagon passed through the gates of Elmstead. Her earlier fears had been realized. Just outside of Edgware, MacNaby had directed her to bring their vehicle to a stop within a copse of trees and ordered her to remove her shoes and stockings.

That in itself had caused a surge of panic, but it had turned out he had merely wanted them to tie her wrists and ankles so he could send a message back to London. She had lain in the bed of the empty wagon, a tarp beneath her shivering body, and stared up at the sky without seeing a thing. Lost in her thoughts, she had begun to contemplate the worst outcomes.

She could be killed!

Her chest rose sharply as if she had lost her breath, thinking what it would feel like to have a musket ball pierce her chest or head. Would she die immediately or slowly in abject pain?

After about five minutes of panic, she had realized there was an alternative outcome. What if she survived unscathed, but Marco was killed in her stead?

Despite her will to remain composed, tears had eked out the corners of her eyes to run down her cheeks, the icy weather affixing them painfully to her skin rubbed raw by the incessant and brisk breeze.

How would she live with herself if she were the cause of his death?

Why had she sent Claudette Dubois away?

Did she wish for Marco to arrive to rescue her, or would she rather he remained safely in London to leave her to her fate?

Sheer relief had made her head giddy when MacNaby had returned to untie her and instructed her to drive them to Elmstead. At least she had some measure of control back with the freedom of her limbs restored.

As they drove between the archway of elms, Molly pressed her lips together against the cold and flinched when the wind gusted sharply against her face. Teeth chattering, her skirts offered little protection against the elements that swept beneath them, she tried to think what to do.

Considering the possibility of Marco’s arrival to rescue her made her fairly lose her mind at the thought of him lying dead on the floor while she sobbed and lamented her role in his demise. The thought of his handsome face stilled by the pallor of death, innocent of any wrongdoing other than a happenstance of birth, was nauseating.

She supposed, as a member of the weaker sex, she should accept her role in this terrible comedy of a tragedy. But she could not bring herself to act the damsel in distress. She would have to risk the ire of her captor because failing to act, failing to prevent Marco from being harmed because of the deluded phantasies of a dead woman, was too awful to consider.

She would have to risk debating with the butler. If the words of great orators could echo through the millennia, surely she could convince one misguided man to abandon his murderous quest, especially when the originator of that quest was no longer in this world to urge him on.

If she failed, if he hurt or killed her, she would enter through the gates of midnight with her honor yet intact.

Molly brought the wagon to a halt in front of the manor, which loomed eerily in the silence, framed by the iron gray of twilight. It had seemed so inviting on their last visit, but now, under these grim circumstances, it leered with a menacing air in the half light, its darkened windows like the gap-toothed smile of a cackling hag.

There was a caretaker when the manor was closed up, but it was an old man who could not help her, even if he was somewhere inside. Molly could count on no one other than herself.

Fortifying her courage, she inhaled deeply to steel her nerves. “You have hurt no one yet, Mr. MacNaby. It is not too late to repudiate Lady Blackwood’s request.”

The butler growled in outrage, turning an angry face to glare at her with madness lurking in his eyes. “You know nothing of what you speak! If you do not hold your tongue, Miss Carter, I shall bind your hands and gag you to force some quiet!”

Was there a special place reserved in hell for him? He who had allowed the vibrant Molly to be left defenseless? Would his departed father be disappointed in him to learn of his failure if he were to visit from the afterlife?

A lurch of the carriage brought Marco back to the moment as he stared out at the gathering darkness, and he slipped his fingers into his pocket to press against the gold watch. His thoughts returned to how his father had been disowned by his grandfather because of his father’s desire to wed his mother. How Peter Scott had left everything he knew, everyone he knew, to return to Italy with Mamma. How he had married her, given up his life in England, to do right by her. In comparison, Marco had weakly vacillated between returning to Florence and committing to the Blackwood title. His final conversation with Molly in the formal drawing room had been to inform her that she should not get her hopes up.

Now she was a hostage at Elmstead. She might die at the hands of a madman, a madman who had taken her as bait for Marco, and she would believe she died in place of a man who had not held her in sufficient esteem to make her his wife.

The very concept made his gut coil and writhe in protest, but what did his regrets matter when it was Molly whose life was in the balance? He would pass forever into Dante’s City of Woe if he were to fail her now.

Was she terrified? Did she know he would come for her? Did she blame him for putting her in harm’s way? These were all questions that plagued his thoughts because he had too much time to think, and they could do nothing effective until they reached the manor.

“Molly ha grande coraggio.” Angelo’s voice interrupted his spiraling thoughts.

Marco scowled, barking back before he could stop himself, “She should not require great courage. She plays no part in this.”

“Starà bene quando la raggiungeremo.”