Page 57 of The Housebreaker's Assistant
That was an interesting fact…that Penny had no time at all to contemplate.
“Let me go and we’ll call it a good laugh,” he said, knowing there was no chance of his freedom coming so easily.
“He’s feisty,” Dalhurst’s friend said, inching closer. He grabbed Penny’s face and wrenched it up as he studied him. Penny gasped, and his entire body shuddered with remembered fear. “I have clients who like the feisty ones. They enjoy breaking them.”
The paralysis that gripped Penny nearly undid him. The time for fun and games was over. “Let me go,” he said as firmly as he could manage.
“I don’t think so,” Dalhurst’s friend said. He took a step that forced Penny to walk backwards.
“I swear, I was just looking for a bit of fun!” Penny called out as he was backpedaled toward the staircase that would take them down to the ground floor. With any luck, Greer would hearhim and know just how dire the danger had become. “I’ll leave here and never come back. You don’t have to worry about me.”
“What if I want to worry about you?” Dalhurst’s friend asked cradling Penny’s face lasciviously. “You’d fetch a pretty penny.”
Penny’s fear reached such towering heights that he nearly laughed. The surreal feeling of having a man with evil intent inadvertently call him by his nickname for the exact reason he’d earned that name, Pretty Penny, was bizarre.
“Hammond, you cannot be serious,” Dalhurst huffed, following as his friend, Hammond, reached the stairs and started to drag Penny down. “There isn’t time for this. You need to concentrate your efforts on moving Lord Fabian, not on acquiring a new bauble for your collection.”
“I can do both,” Hammond said. “My carriage is big enough for two bits of baggage.”
“Who are you calling baggage?” Penny snapped in mock offence. He needed to stop playing the fool and start working out a way to escape before the situation got the better of him. That was what had saved him as a lad, and it was what would save him now.
“Fetch Lord Fabian and bring him down to the courtyard,” Hammond said as if making a decision. “If you’re so reticent to have the boys here, I’ll take them to someone who will handle them more efficiently.”
“You’re not taking me anywhere,” Penny said, attempting to break away yet again when they reached the bottom of the stairs.
He made it as far as struggling out of Hammond’s grip, but the guard was still right there. He lunged after Penny and wrestled his arms behind his back.
“I’ll go get the other,” Dalhurst said, clearly not pleased with the turn of events.
Penny couldn’t decide if the man’s departure was a good thing or not as Dalhurst headed back up the stairs. Equallyunsettling was the appearance of the butler who had been so dismissive of him when he’d arrived the day before.
“I beg your pardon, sir,” the butler said, gaping at Hammond as if he wasn’t certain whether to treat the man as a guest or an intruder. “What is the matter here?”
“It’s none of your concern,” Hammond snapped. He then ignored the butler and nodded at the guard. “Take him out to the carriage.”
“Yes, sir,” the guard said, then jerked Penny forcefully in an attempt to get him to move.
Penny used the movement to pretend to stumble. He might not have been strong enough to fight the guard, Hammond, and the butler, but he could slow down his abduction.
“I was just playing around,” he insisted loudly, once again trying to signal to Greer, wherever he was, that he was still in the castle. “Just let me go and we’ll say nothing of it.”
“Would you like me to call for the constable, sir?” the butler asked.
“No!” Hammond barked with such ferocity that the butler leapt back, eyes wide.
For a split second, Penny wondered if the butler might be his greatest ally after all. The man did not appear to know what was happening. Dalhurst had mentioned the servants were unaware of the truth of what was going on.
Before he could do anything with that knowledge, Greer came bursting down the stairs, taking everyone unaware.
“What the devil?” Hammond demanded.
Greer went for him first, punching the man in the face and sending him reeling.
Both the guard and the butler were stunned, but Penny swallowed whatever shock he felt and lunged for Greer.
“The castle is under attack!” he shouted, mind spinning as he scrambled to come up with anything that might help them escape. “Call the constable!”
Blessedly, the butler darted down the hall and disappeared through a door that would, hopefully, take him to the servants’ hall. Whether out of fear or to send for help, Penny didn’t know and didn’t care.
