A Bride for the Prizefighter - Alice Coldbreath Page 0,130
yourself, my dear.” He turned back to the officers. “Pass me that glass!” he barked. “Can’t you fellows do something useful for once? Cursed nuisances!”
Mina took the handkerchief with thanks and gave way to an excess of emotion. She had been knocked unconscious, threatened, prodded, poked and manhandled. She had been in fear of her life for hours and had also been tied so barbarously her wrists were cut and gagged with a rag she could only hope had been half-way clean.
“There’s a poorly dear,” Mr. Tavistock murmured. “You cry it out. Good for you.”
Mina who had always despised herself for showing any weakness found this was all the encouragement she needed. She gave vent to her utter misery and despair for a good couple of minutes. During this time Miss Tavistock re-entered the room and joined the battle. Her sweet, kind face had transformed into that of a raging virago and she had swept the room of officers and banged the door in their faces, informing them she had re-sent for Doctor Hadley who would likely bring an action against them.
Mina allowed the Tavistocks’ kindness to wash over her as she drank a glass of water and took a slice of bread and butter. Miss Tavistock bathed her wrists and dressed them as well in bandages and by the time a tea tray had been brought in for her, they heard horses in the drive outside and a little maid ushered in a concerned-looking Jeremy in a many caped driving cape.
Jeremy took one look at Mina’s swollen face and bandages and hurried to kneel at her side. “But what is this, my dear Mina?” he asked in a voice of such concern that she went off again in a storm of tears. “This is not like you,” he said, a good deal shaken, clasping one of her hands. “What has occurred?”
“They’ve taken Nye away!” she managed to wail between sobs. “And put him in prison!”
“Some nasty smugglers abducted poor Mrs. Nye this morning and put her in a concealed passageway beneath our cellars, my lord,” Nellie Tavistock hastened to inform him. “Her good husband, Mr. Nye as is our landlord now, he bought them Riding Officers here and bade us cooperate fully. And now she’s been restored, what do you suppose those villains have done, but taken Mr. Nye up in chains!”
“Concealed passageway? Good God,” echoed Jeremy. He hesitated. “And the smugglers?”
“Reuben’s dead,” Mina sniffed. “At least he looked dead. And Gus Hopkirk was shot, but only in the shoulder.”
“Hopkirk, you say? Good Lord! He wasn’t a smuggler, was he?”
Mina nodded, her eyes filling with fresh tears. She turned to the Tavistocks again. “But where is Edward Herney, our tapster?”
“God bless you, miss, he’s sat in our kitchen getting the grilling of his life. They’re a-trying to pin the charge of smuggling on him too!” Miss Tavistock said with kindling anger. “And anyone with eyes in their heads can see he’s a good Christian lad with never a stain on his conscience!”
“Herney is no smuggler!” Jeremy said in shocked accents. “He was my second footman until last week!”
“Runnin’ amok, that’s what they’re doin’,” broke in Mr. Tavistock wrathfully. “Marching ‘round me house and tryin’ to clap everyone in irons! Why they’ll be after us next my dear,” he said turning to his sister. “Saying we were aiding and abetting criminals in our cellars!”
“I’d like to see them try, Amos!” his sister said indignantly.
“Jeremy.” Mina leant forward impulsively and took his hand in a firm grip. “You must help me.”
He glanced down at her bandaged wrist. “Of course, sister,” he said comfortingly. “You must not excite yourself, for you’ve clearly had an uncomfortable time of it. “
“Uncomfortable?” burst forth Miss Tavistock. “Someone beat her about the head so hard, it’s a mercy her skull wasn’t cracked!”
Jeremy straightened, a martial light gleaming in his blue eyes. He shrugged his cape onto the floor and flicked an invisible piece of lint from an impeccably cut sleeve. “I believe I will now see who’s in authority here,” he drawled, every inch the fifth viscount and Mina relaxed limply back onto the sofa.
*
Mina was taken up to bed shortly after by Miss Tavistock herself and shown into a handsome guest bedroom. She was swathed in one of that good lady’s tent-like nightgowns and a stone hot water bottle placed at her feet. Her head ached and her eyes were heavy from something a grim-faced Doctor Hadley added to a glass of water. He gave