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that felt like steel bands, a brick wall of a chest at her back. Marguerite opened her mouth to scream, but managed only a brief shriek. Her cry was quickly cut off as a wad of fabric found its way in her open mouth. Speech was useless.
    Something was thrown over her, sealing her in like a great cocoon. Caught, trapped, swathed in darkness, she kicked and clawed at heavy fabric, afraid she would be smothered.
    “You’re certain she’s one of them?” A man’s voice growled, velvet smooth despite the bite of his words.
    She froze at the sound of it, a chill slithering through her and coiling around her heart.
    A female voice, rushed and whispery as crackling parchment, quickly assured him. “Yes, yes, she’s one of them. Now take her and go. Go before someone comes.”
    Then the thick voice returned, intruding in her dark, frightful world. She felt his face press close beside her head, imagined she felt his breath against her cheek.
    “Hold silent and do not struggle. The sooner we’re free of here, the sooner I’ll lift this blanket from you. I’ve no wish to frighten you, nor is it in my practice to harm women. Understood?”
    She nodded fiercely, anything to breathe again, to be rid of the suffocating fabric.
    “Ash, be gone before someone comes. I’ll not lose my post for you, no matter how far we go back.” It was the whispering female again, a maid no doubt hired to assist the villain who dared to sneak into her father’s household and make off with her. Marguerite could almost laugh—or weep—at the irony of it. Her first day as Jack Hadley’s daughter—in a sense—and she suffered abduction. Why?
    “Agreed then? You’ll behave?” her assailant pressed.
    Behave? Like a good little victim? Her temper simmering, she nodded yet again. Spots had begun to flash in and out before her eyes. She’d promise anything to be free of the smothering fabric.
    Then his head moved from beside hers and she was swung up into his arms. The blanket shifted, loosened, freed more air near her nose, and breathing became easier. She had a sense that he must be very tall. It felt as though the ground loomed far below. She grasped what she could of him through the unwieldy volumes of the blanket shrouding her, praying she wouldn’t fall.
    They moved quickly. Before she knew it, cold, wet air curled around her dangling ankles and she knew they were outside. Panic rose in her chest, clawing through her. His footsteps fell louder, as though smacking on hard cobbles. She was free of her father’s house. The very thing she had wished for moments ago, only not in such circumstances.
    Beneath the many folds of her shroud, she worked her hands up and tugged the gag free. “I’m afraid there’s been a dreadful mistake.” Her voice was still muffled, but she felt certain he could understand her.
    He ignored her and continued to move with hard, jarring strides.
    She didn’t allow his silence to defeat her. “I’m no one—nothing—to Jack Hadley. Whatever you hope to accomplish in seizing me, you will be sorely disappointed.”
    “You’re one of his daughters,” the deep voice rumbled low. A statement, not a question. She bit back the denial. His inside source, the maid, had him quite convinced of that truth, so there was no sense denying it.
    “Scarcely so. I’ve never even met the man. I only called upon him today after receiving his summons to meet my half sisters. I was leaving, never to return—”
    “Like I said, Jack Hadley is your father. That’s all that matters to me.”
    She felt the tension in him as he uttered this, in the hard body holding her, so strong, so big, so … male. He enveloped her, carried her without the faintest hitch of breath.
    He was a laborer. He must be. There wasn’t an ounce of softness in the frame that held her so closely.
    With a few more jarring steps, they stopped. She heard the squeak of a carriage door and then she was dumped unceremoniously upon soft squabs. As the door