Prologue

PROLOGUE

“ M ight I say, Lady Grace,” intoned the Duke of Hawkins in the tone of a man who considered himself to be bestowing a very great favor with his mere presence, “that you are looking quite pretty tonight?”

Grace pasted her Society smile on her face as she looked up at the Duke and?—

Oh. Well, he was attempting to gaze directly down the front of her gown. How lovely.

She ensured that her smile stayed fixed. “How kind, Your Grace,” she said with all the polish that a duke’s daughter had to offer—and that was a great deal of polish, indeed. She would hazard that not even her three closest friends would be able to tell, from seeing her expression, how intensely she regretted dancing with the Duke of Hawkins, who was not merely a profligate but one old enough to be her father.

Fortunately, he didn’t seem to need much else from her besides her simpering agreement.

He went on elucidating his ideas on young ladies these days , whom he evidently found to be inadequate.

“Nice to see a girl know her place, it is,” he proclaimed. “Not with all these ideas about what she wants from a marriage. What she gets is a man’s name and a roof over her head. In exchange, she provides the heirs. If those wallflower types could just accept how simple it is, they wouldn’t indulge themselves with all the sulking and hiding.”

Grace—who, for what it was worth, thought this man was talking utter nonsense, and who was friends with several perfectly lovely wallflowers, thank you very much—let his words wash over her like so much hot air. Her upbringing had taught her a great number of useful things, but one of the most frequently valuable was the idea that sometimes it was just best to let a man talk himself out.

Just because she knew this, however, didn’t mean she wasn’t grateful when the waltz came to an end, and she was able to get away from the odious fellow.

“Well,” she muttered to herself as she ducked and weaved through the throngs of partygoers. “Lesson learned, I suppose.”

This was, overall, how Grace was choosing to think of her debut season—as a quest to learn as much as she could so that she could understand gentlemen as a species before deciding which qualities she did or did not want in a husband. The only thing she knew for certain at this point was that the term species was correct as she often felt, when looking at the gentlemen of the ton, that she might as well be looking at one of those great apes that she’d recently seen in a traveling menagerie: they both had certain familiar features, but they remained utterly mysterious to her.

At least the gentlemen (unlike the ape, as its keeper had gleefully informed anyone who would listen) didn’t have the habit of flinging unmentionable things at the people in their path. Or…at least not physical things, she thought with a giggle. The Duke of Hawkins certainly hadn’t had a problem flinging his wretched opinions at her.

Most of the time, Grace found this investigation rather fun. She would flirt—just enough to enjoy herself but not enough that her father would rail about the risk to her reputation…or his. She would dance with as many people as she could. And then she would, with no detail spared, report it all to her three closest friends, Diana Fletching, Emily Rutley, and Frances Johnson.

But first, she needed some air. Something that would help her take the dance with that awful duke and turn it into some witty story for her friends’ entertainment instead of a tragic indictment of the sheer audacity of gentlemen.

“Good evening, Lady Grace,” said a shrewd-eyed older woman as Grace passed. The Dowager…something of something. Grace couldn’t recall. One of her elder brother Evan’s friend’s mothers.

“Good evening,” she said back, sending the woman the same smile she’d given to the Duke of Hawkins.

Grace didn’t need the reminder—she was a politician’s daughter through and through—but the woman calling out her name had given her one anyway: she was always being watched. Her Season of fun could vanish in an instant if her reputation carried so much as the faintest whiff of scandal.

Thus, her quest for a cool breath of air didn’t carry her all the way out to the veranda where ruination lurked at the hand of vicious gossips. No doubt some loose-lipped old biddy would simply love to crow that she’d seen Lady Grace Miller step out for a moment’s peace without a chaperone .

With an inward roll of her eyes at the absurd rules that young ladies were meant to follow, she instead stopped at the very cusp of the veranda, so she could feel the breeze through the open doors while remaining technically in the ballroom. It was the difference of half a step—but to the ton , that could mean everything.

Or it could mean nothing at all. For as Grace turned, eager to let the spring night caress the back of her neck, revealed by her high, pinned coiffure, someone reached out from behind and grabbed her .

Grace’s squeak of surprise was drowned out by the quartet striking up the first notes of the next dance—for years to come, she would rage over that moment, that last opportunity to call out loudly enough to draw attention before the gloved hand clapped over her mouth.

“Now, now, My Lady,” crooned a voice she couldn’t identify, low and mocking. “Don’t struggle now. Wouldn’t want me to slip.”

Grace’s heart stuttered in her chest as something cold and metal and sharp pressed into the side of her neck, just beneath her ear in the place where her pulse thundered against delicate flesh.

“Gently now, gently,” her assailant said, sounding practically gleeful. Her instincts screamed at her to do something—anything—as he drew her, step by step, away from the noise and light of the ballroom, deeper and deeper into the dark. But that cold pinprick reminded her that doing so would be very stupid, indeed.

So instead of fighting back—and yes, this would haunt her, too, during the long nights she would spend huddled in a space too small to be called a room, shivering too hard to sleep—she followed, meek as a lamb being led to the slaughter.

In order to keep his hand firmly on her mouth and the knife at her throat, her assailant had to press her head back into the curve of his shoulder. It made her position awkward, their movement together precarious. She was moving forward while arched half backward, not able to look down at her own feet properly as she was led down the veranda steps and across the lawn, which grew dark, then darker.

Despite not being brave enough to try anything, not with that knife a constant threat, fate intervened, however briefly, on Grace’s behalf. The dark garden path was uneven, Grace’s step unsteady. She tripped, stumbled, and fell. It was only by the grace of God that she didn’t get her throat slit on the way down. Even so, a small, sharp line of pain lit up where the knife had been pressed.

Grace ignored it. She was on the ground now, out of reach. This was her chance—her one chance. Her mind raced as she scrabbled backward in the dirt. She sucked in a lungful of air and let out a single, piercing scream?—

And then the villain tackled her, the dense, sweaty weight of him knocking the air from her. His gloved hands were merciless as they grabbed her, seeking her face, covering her mouth again.

“Shut your mouth, you bitch!” the man growled, all previous lilting mockery gone. He was furious now, and that made Grace’s blood run even colder. She bucked against him, but it was no use. She was corseted tight for an evening of dancing, not ready for a physical fight.

He lifted her slightly then slammed her back into the ground which was thankfully soft. Even so, the jostling motion made Grace go half limp. She couldn’t get a full breath, not with her corset and the man’s hand which partially obscured her nose, too, and she was starting to panic?—

He dragged her to her feet again, this time more carrying her than walking her, his movements rushed, his breath panting against her ear.

“I’m not about to lose my pay because you can’t cooperate,” he grunted.

They were nearing the mews now, and Grace could hear the soft whinny of horses. She could not get into a carriage—or whatever other dreadful conveyance this man had in his possession. She began to squirm in earnest, even though each movement made her ribs twinge. Wherever the man had put his knife, it wasn’t at her throat, and that was all that matters.

“Would you bloody stop it?” he asked as they approached a run-down hack, indistinguishable from any other in London. If the situation hadn’t been so dire, Grace might have laughed at his put-out tone, as if she were the one being unreasonable. “They’ve paid to get you back alive, so there’s no need for any fuss.”

There was a great need for fuss though the news that she was to be returned alive was, she supposed, positive. Telling her was a mistake on the man’s part, however. She fought even harder, knowing he would not kill her—and fearing what he might do to her before he returned her. There was a great chasm between “alive” and “unharmed” after all.

“Jesus,” he grunted. He wrestled her to the ground, pressing a knee to her back to keep her down while he forced a cloth into her mouth as a gag. She bucked against him, but he was too heavy, too strong, too well-prepared. As soon as the gag was in her mouth and he had the use of both of his hands, he bound her wrists then her legs, her efforts to kick him off hampered by her skirts.

Then, once she was bound and trussed like a prize pig, he hauled her over his shoulder and dumped her in the back of the hack, dropping her unceremoniously on the floor. Again, the air left Grace’s lungs in a whoosh of pain.

He looked down at her for a moment as she struggled into an upright position. There was only a dim light from the moon, but Grace thought, to her utter bafflement, that she’d seen this man at Society events. A Mr. something—not a lord, but someone on the fringes. Even so, he was not who she’d suspect as a kidnapping deviant.

“You’d best be worth the money,” he gritted out, shaking his head at her. “Bloody useless duke’s daughter. It’s time to be worth something for once in your life.”

And then he slammed the carriage door closed. She heard him jump up to the seat in the front; she only realized there was another driver when she heard the low murmur of voices. There was little more for Grace to do except lay there, bruised and terrified, as the vehicle bumped and rattled along for hours, each turn of the wheels taking her farther and farther from home—and from any hope of rescue.