Annie Burrows - In Bed With The Duke

‘For that alone I should break them. How dare they assume any such thing?’

And that was another thing. He had a vested interest in clearing his own name, too. Now that she’d heard the lengths to which he’d gone to right the wrongs being done to the women at that mill, she felt much better about going to the house of which he’d spoken. They would need somewhere to go and hatch their plans for...not revenge. Justice. Yes, it was only justice she wanted.

‘So you will help me track them down and make them pay?’

Make them pay? ‘I most certainly will,’ he said.

He would set his people on their trail. He would tell them it was their top priority. From what Prudence had told him so far, he wouldn’t be surprised to learn they’d actually been heading for Liverpool. Possibly with a view to leaving the country altogether, if her uncle had actually swindled her out of all her money. On the off-chance that the case was not as bad as all that, he’d make sure his staff found out everything about their business dealings, too, and gained control of any leases or mortgages they had. He would throw a cordon around them so tight that they wouldn’t be able to sneeze without his permission.

And if it turned out that they had stolen Prudence’s inheritance, and hadn’t had the sense to get out of the country while they could, then he would crush them. Utterly.

Just then the door opened and the landlord came in.

‘Next coach’s due in any time now,’ he said without preamble. ‘Time for you to make off.’

Gregory deliberately relaxed his hands, which he’d clenched into fists as he’d been considering all the ways he could make Prudence’s relatives pay for what they’d done. ‘Bring me the reckoning, then,’ he said. ‘I am ready to depart.’

He turned to see Prudence eyeing him warily.

‘Hand me my purse, would you, niece? It’s in my pocket.’

She continued to stare at him in that considering way until he was forced to speak to her more sternly.

‘Prudence, my purse.’

She jumped, but then dug her hand into one of the pockets of the jacket he’d lent her. And then the other one. And then, instead of handing over his purse, she pulled out the stocking he’d thrust in there and forgotten all about. She gazed at it in bewilderment.

Before she could start asking awkward questions he darted round the table, whipped it out of her hand and thrust it into his waistcoat. And then, because she appeared so stunned by the discovery of one of her undergarments that she’d forgotten to hand him his purse, he decided he might as well get it himself.

It wasn’t there. Not in the pocket where he could have sworn he’d put it. A cold, sick swirl of panic had him delving into all the jacket pockets, several times over. Even though it was obvious what had happened.

‘It’s gone,’ he said, tamping down the panic as he faced the truth. ‘We’ve been robbed.’

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