"I'm taking you home."

Chapter Twenty-eight.

Antonia bent low over her horse's neck and urged him to greater speed. As if Achilles knew how desperate her mission was, he didn't trouble her with his usual tricks.

Her belly churned with sick guilt. She should have realized Ranelaw would pull some chicanery. He'd even warned her he seduced her to get to her cousin.

Oh, he was fiendishly clever.

And infected with a depth of wickedness she still scarcely credited.

As she raced toward the highway, Antonia was vaguely aware of eyes turning in her direction. A woman riding headlong through London was bound to arouse curiosity. She'd eschewed her disguise. Spectacles distorted her vision and what did she care if people saw her face? She was retreating to Somerset once she'd recovered Cassie.

Ranelaw wouldn't slow his pace until he reached safe haven. If she was right, that was his estate in Hampshire. She'd sent Bella and Thomas, the head groom, together on the road north to Scotland. Just in case Ranelaw intended marriage.

Her deepest instincts told her Ranelaw meant only seduction.

She prayed one of her guesses of route was correct. If she caught up with Ranelaw before nightfall, she might still prevent disaster.

Common sense insisted Ranelaw could take Cassie anywhere. She might be locked away somewhere in the capital. He might plan to whisk her across to the Continent, beyond reach of family and friends.

At least Antonia was certain that Cassie wasn't in Ranelaw's London house. She'd called there before leaving Town, wasting precious minutes while a supercilious butler insisted His Lordship wasn't home. When she finally gave up, she waited in the street and caught a maid on her way out. After a shilling changed hands, the girl was happy to confirm Ranelaw hadn't been home all afternoon.

As she galloped for the coast, clouds of dust clogged Antonia's nose and mouth, irritated her eyes. She ignored the discomfort and urged Achilles to greater speed.

She hoped Ranelaw didn't steal a willing captive. His tawdry attentions had dazzled Cassie, but surely the girl would resist elopement. Once she'd have been certain, but Cassie had changed so much during this London season, Antonia couldn't be sure she wasn't Ranelaw's coconspirator.

Antonia's lips firmed with determination. It didn't matter whether Cassie went willingly or not. If she had to haul her cousin back to London screaming, she'd do it. Ranelaw's vile scheme wouldn't prevail.

He'd taken her for such a fool. As a crippling tide of personal betrayal rose, she fisted her hands on the reins. Furiously she stifled hurt and outrage. Later she'd berate herself for her part in this disaster. Now she needed to be ice, ready to wrest Cassie from her kidnapper without hesitation.

She'd passed the occasional vehicle, mainly lumbering farm carts or speeding stagecoaches. It was the dead time of the afternoon. In an hour or so, traffic would thicken.

When a light gig approached from the opposite direction, she hardly paid attention, apart from automatically acknowledging the horseflesh. She was her father's daughter that far. Traffic heading for London was of no interest. Her only concern was carriages traveling toward the Hampshire coast.

Only when she was almost upon them did she realize she'd intercepted her quarry. Shock made her rein Achilles in so roughly that he curveted and neighed his displeasure.

Ranelaw must have recognized her much earlier than she recognized him. He already drew the smart little carriage to a halt with a flourish that made her want to murder him.

Right now, everything made her want to murder him.

She tamped down her rage although her belly clenched with the impulse to hurt him as he'd hurt her. She needed control. Above all, she needed to win.

"Lady Antonia," he said with a nonchalance designed to irk. He doffed his hat and bowed as if they met in Hyde Park instead of on this deserted stretch of road. "What a pleasant surprise."

Lady Antonia.

He'd discovered who she was. Dismay gripped her. Although it hardly mattered now, she supposed. As Miss Smith or as the aristocratic if tarnished Lady Antonia Hilliard, she was capable of foiling his plans.

Ignoring Ranelaw, she glanced across to where her cousin huddled against the seat. "Are you unharmed, Cassie?"

The girl managed a shaky smile that conveyed relief and gratitude in equal parts. "Yes."

Briefly Antonia closed her eyes. "Thank God." She slid to the ground and looped the reins over her arm.

"You must have ridden like the devil," Ranelaw remarked in a conversational manner that made her skin prickle with temper. He clearly intended to carry this off in high style. "But of course you're an accomplished horsewoman. Old Aveson's daughter would hardly be anything else."

He sought the advantage by revealing he knew everything. It was too late. After today, he was nothing to her. If he lay bleeding in the street, she'd kick him in the teeth, then walk on.

Without turning her back on the gig, she reached into her saddlebag and drew out the pair of pistols she'd loaded before leaving London.

"I see you're taking the melodramatic route," Ranelaw said dryly.

He didn't betray a morsel of fear. Of course he wouldn't. She'd been mistaken in so much, but she'd never mistaken his overweening pride. She could shoot him where he sat and he wouldn't utter one word in his own defense.

"Get down," she said in a hard voice, pointing the guns at him.

"Toni, I'm so glad you-" Cassie shifted but Antonia waved her back into her seat.

"Not you. The toad next to you."

Ranelaw's lips curled in a derisive smile, as if she behaved like a troublesome child. "And if I don't, you'll shoot me? Doing it too brown, Antonia."

She cocked the right pistol, her aim perfectly steady on his head. "No court in the land would convict me of your murder."

He didn't budge an inch. "You're taking your woman scorned act to an extreme, my love."

Cassie's gaze sharpened on her. No chance now of hiding that she and Lord Ranelaw had indulged at the least in a flirtation. He'd used her Christian name and the my love emerged too naturally. For all that it was a foul lie.

What matter? Let him expose her sins. She didn't care as long as Cassie was safe. "Get down," she repeated.

"Or what?"

"Or I blow your lying face off," she said stonily.

Her heart should be flint when she looked at Ranelaw. That's what she wanted. Why couldn't she achieve it? Anger still twisted her belly and blocked her throat. But as she stared at this tall, powerful man with his glinting dark eyes and ruffled gold hair, her principal emotion was regret.

Not regret that he'd misled her, however much that rankled.

Instead a new, chilling emotion turned her blood to icy sludge. Briefly he'd made her believe in everything vivid and sweet. Passion and tenderness and laughter.

And it was all false.

Under that beauty lurked vast ugliness. He turned the world to night.

At this moment, she could kill him without a moment's remorse. She regretted that too. Because four days ago, she'd almost convinced herself she loved him.

"You wouldn't," he said with utter certainty.

She didn't bother answering. Instead with cold purpose, she pointed the gun at one of the finials on the seat behind his shoulder and pulled the trigger. A puff of sawdust replaced the delicate scrolled carving.

She jerked with the recoil, her ears ringing. Cassie screamed and cowered away. Achilles tossed his head and neighed, but he was trained to withstand gunfire and he didn't bolt. The carriage horses whinnied and reared in the shafts but settled at a sharp word from Ranelaw.

He didn't move although his shoulders tensed into a straight line. "You missed," he said with another of those devil-may-care grins.

"That was merely a warning," she said coolly. "I'm a crack shot. As you said, Lord Aveson's daughter wouldn't be anything else. And I have a second pistol."

His mouth tightened and she recognized the instant he decided it wasn't worth calling her bluff.

Cassie watched her with round-eyed shock, as if she'd never seen her before. Antonia cast her a faint smile meant to reassure, but the girl's tension didn't subside. "Cassie, hold the reins."

She kept the loaded gun raised as Ranelaw leaped from the carriage with a breathtaking physical ease that, in spite of everything, made her heart lurch. Yet again, she marveled how outer magnificence disguised such corruption.

Keeping the gun leveled at Ranelaw, Antonia moved to tie Achilles behind the gig. She stepped up into the carriage and took the reins from Cassie.

"It's all right. Nobody will even know this happened," she said in a low voice.

Ranelaw regarded her with an unwavering light in his eyes. Once, she would have imagined his expression conveyed admiration. Now she couldn't rely on anything she saw.

Pain battered at her shell of control. After she got Cassie home, she'd yield to disappointment and rage. First she must banish the snake from her Eden.

"Do you indeed mean to shoot me?" Ranelaw asked as if her answer made no difference either way.

She glanced to where he waited. "I should." She paused. Harder with every second to muffle devastation. But she would. She would. "I will if you ever come near Cassie again."

The rogue had the gall to smile. "What about you? Can I come near you?"

Antonia's lips flattened as she battled the urge to scream. "Only if you want a bullet in your black heart, my lord."

Last time they'd been together, she'd called him Nicholas. She wouldn't call him Nicholas again. She wished with all her soul that she'd never met him.

Even through defeat, he retained his confidence. "Won't you leave me the horse? You've made your point."

"You have your life. Be grateful you've kept that much. The long walk is an opportunity to contemplate your sins, my lord. I suggest you start. It will be dark in a few hours."

"Toni, he only took me because Papa ruined his sister," Cassie said urgently.

Antonia's gaze didn't flinch from the man who had held her close through a night of fiery ecstasy. "Your innocence in exchange for his sister's?"

Ranelaw didn't answer. Perhaps he was wise enough to realize any excuse Cassie offered him was no excuse at all.

"His sister had a baby who died," Cassie said. "It's so sad."

Antonia didn't shift her focus from Ranelaw's deceitful face. Her voice was steely. "Even if it's true, it means there's no difference between the Marquess of Ranelaw and Godfrey Demarest. They both destroy anyone who interferes with their selfish pleasure."

Through cold numbness, she felt a distant satisfaction when he paled. She waited for him to argue, but he remained silent.

Nausea rose, soured her mouth. She couldn't bear to look at him any longer. She urged the horses on and bowled down the road without a backward glance.

Ranelaw stood unmoving under the sweltering sun and watched the gig speed away. He was under no illusions that Antonia would relent and return for him. He was under no illusions how close he'd come to a bullet between his eyes.

Dear God, he wished she had shot him.

It would save having to recognize the complete mull he'd made of everything. Only at this moment did he realize just what he'd done, how irretrievably he'd shattered all hope of happiness, how he deserved to stew in his own bitterness for however many empty years the Deity allotted him.

Yes, a bullet would be welcome right now.

Antonia Hilliard was the most magnificent creature he'd ever beheld. There was nobody to match her.

And he, sodding useless fool he was, let her slip through his fingers like a handful of sand on a windy beach.

He'd had glimpses of her quality. She'd fascinated him as no other woman. She'd infuriated and challenged and enticed him until he couldn't think straight. Hell, she'd made him forget the revenge that had occupied his last twenty years.

How stupid he was not to treat her with appropriate caution from the first. How stupid he was not to realize that the plain woman in the ugly dress was his destiny.

He'd never believed in love. He'd never seen much evidence of it. But as he stood, beaten and humiliated for all his jaunty confidence to Antonia's face, he recognized that love did indeed exist.

He'd been madly, hopelessly, inescapably in love with Antonia Hilliard for weeks. Probably from the first moment he'd seen her, when she'd snarled like an angry sheepdog at a wolf. He'd only tumbled more deeply in love since.

She was his beloved, his soul mate, his other half, his fate. All those mawkish, sentimental words people chose to describe that one person who lent the world meaning, who set the heart beating, who gave the sun a reason to shine.

He wasn't a poet, even an inept one like Benton. But he couldn't doubt what he felt.

He loved her.

And she loathed him.

Through a radiant night, she'd offered herself to him with an open joy that made him feel like a god. That in itself should have been clue that this liaison was a universe removed from his usual flirtations.

Now she never wanted to see him again.

That knowledge was a knife twisting in his guts. He closed his eyes and sucked in a shuddering breath as grim truth seeped into his bones.

Never, never, never.

He'd never see Antonia again. She would never cry out as he took her. She would never rest replete in his arms. She would never kiss him. She would never talk to him.

How tragic that the great rake, the Marquess of Ranelaw, found himself mourning the absence of a woman's conversation. She'd taken the rough, unpromising substance of his soul and molded it into something new.

The agony was she wanted nothing to do with her creation.

She was strong and she was adamant, his darling. He'd spent his life coaxing women into doing what they shouldn't. He'd treated those women like children, easily placated with toys like jewels or flattery. He didn't fool himself he'd worm his way back into Antonia's good graces with gifts or charm. Her soul was granite, not wet straw like most of the people he knew.