Page 84 of The Countess Caper

She tried to kick him, but the very large footman sitting beside him stopped her. The force of it reverberated through her teeth. She sat up, vision blurring. “Are you resorting to abducting women now?”

“I would be nicer to me, were I you,” George said, moving away as if her very presence would sully him. “I hold all of the cards.”

“I hope I am sick all over your boots,” she muttered. Which was a distinct possibility. She did not feel well. The carriage wobbled, making matters worse. She swallowed thickly.

“Don’t you dare,” he said, sounding panicked for the first time.

“It’s your fault for drugging me,” she snapped. “Was that laudanum?” She hated laudanum. It made her head swim and her mouth feel woolly. She hadn’t touched a drop since she’d broken her wrist as a child. She took slow, deep breaths through her nose. It helped a little. “Where are we going?”

“Bath.”

“What the hell for?”

He clucked his tongue. “That is not how a lady speaks.”

“Oh, I do beg your pardon, you absolute jackass.”

She sat up fully, feeling a bit stronger. She eyed the footman. He was nowhere near as wide as Roarke was, but he did not appear even half as friendly. She was not going to be able to overpower him. If she went for one of her daggers now, he would no doubt beat her to it.

She pressed a hand to her temple, willing it to stop throbbing. It almost worked. “George, what could you possibly want with my father’s old watch? You already have everything.”

And how did he know about the women living in her house? She wanted to demand he tell her, but she wasn’t sure if it gave him all of the power. Though she supposed she had already admitted as much by meeting him in the first place.

“You really don’t know?” he asked, watching her with narrowed eyes.

She made a sound of disgust. “No, I don’t.”

“You hummed the little tune it plays at me at the Kensingtons’. Ridiculous couple.”

She felt rather protective of that ridiculous couple, and so she bared her teeth.

“I was humming to help me keep my temper,” she said. “Because you are an odious little cretin.” Her eyes widened. “You were the one who went through my room,” she realized. Is that what you were looking for? The watch? Why not just ask me?”

“I might have, but your mountain of a husband would not let me near you after the disgusting display with Beville.”

“You stole my dowry. I was barely allowed to pack my own dresses and a single toy when I was nine years old. The watch is all I have left.”

“I need it.”

“Why? Whatever for?”

“You’ll find out soon enough.”

“Oh, lovely. Are you trying to be mysterious now?”

“No more so than you, with your house full of fallen women and soiled doves.”

She pinched the bridge of her nose. “Oh, sod off.”

He stiffened. “Mind yourself, cousin.”

“Those women deserve your respect, if only because they have had to put up with spoiled, selfish, cowardly men like you their entire lives.”

George flicked his hand at the footman. “I do not like her manners.”

The footman leaned forward with the kind of excited gleam in his eye that made her sick to her stomach, even without the laudanum. He enjoyed this kind of bullying work. She knew it before he grabbed her arm, bruising the flesh almost instantly. Then he shoved her hard, so that her head hit the window. Pain lanced through her. She clenched her jaws against the roll of nausea.

“Now that we understand each other,” George said, wiping imaginary dust off his sleeve, “tell me about the watch.”