His Wicked Seduction novel Chapter 71

Thoughts drifted through the murky waters of Lucien's mind, jumbled and hazy. Horatia's soft smiles and shivery sighs, Cedric's haunted stare as he raised a pistol at him.

His eyes wouldn't open and he couldn't move.

"Lawrence, try this," a feminine voice said.

Something sharp penetrated Lucien's nose and shot straight to his brain. His eyes flew open and he surged upright, a pounding headache and pain in his side nearly making him cry out. Smelling salts. One never got used to them.

Lucinda and Lawrence along with Sir John all stood watching him, eyes wide and worried.

"Cedric!" he shouted. Fear for his friend exploded into him as he remembered the duel. He was alive? Where was he now? His bedroom.

"Easy, Lucien, he's fine." Lawrence tried to still him with a firm hand but Lucien knocked it away. One thought formed more clearly now. He'd been too damned distracted to pay attention until now.

"Let me up, damn you! Where is Cedric? Where's Horatia?" He fought to be free of the tangling bed linens and fell to the floor. Pain tore through his head and he felt a large bandage bound around his head where the bullet had struck him. Sir John gripped his good arm and hauled him up onto his feet, angling him back towards the bed.

"You need to rest, Lucien," Lawrence said.

Lucien cursed and clutched a hand to his head but kept walking towards the door.

Avery and Linus ran into the room from the hallway.

"The gardener's cottage is on fire!" Avery shouted. "We need to get buckets and water. Everyone come with me to the kitchens."

"Has anyone see Horatia?" Lucien bellowed as everyone rushed towards the kitchens.

"No..." Audrey came running to him, breathless. "Her room was empty but there was this." She pressed a scrap of paper in his hands and he hastily scanned it.

"She's been kidnapped!"

The words on the page confirmed his worst fears. Horatia had been taken as bait to lure either him or Cedric to the cottage.

"Damn, we may be too late! Tell the others!" Lucien took off at a run. He had to get to the cottage! He nearly fell down the stairs in his haste as people were rushing past him to find buckets to fill. When he burst out into the gardens he saw inky black smoke in the distance.

"Please be alive," he breathed as he raced towards the cottage. The question he couldn't answer was who had done this? It had to be someone on the staff, he knew it. No stranger had appeared out of nowhere, this was the act of someone who'd waited in the shadows for the right moment.

When Lucien was within twenty feet of the cottage he saw the house's new footman exiting from the front door, forcing Cedric in front of him with a pistol aimed at him. Gordon tripped and the two men struggled before Cedric fled back into the burning cottage.

The footman stared at Lucien. "I thought you were dead, Rochester. Good for you." Lucien took a step forward, intending to restrain the fiend, but Gordon raised a finger on his good arm. "Your friend went back inside to rescue your lady love. I didn't come here to kill him, but the fool will likely die all the same. What do you think?"

Gordon sidestepped Lucien and walked on past, but Lucien didn't care. Cedric and Horatia were inside the burning cottage. He plunged inside the smoky interior without a second thought, dropping as low as he could, and covering his face with his blood soaked shirt.

"Cedric! Horatia!" he shouted.