She tried to turn toward the sound, but her neck felt frozen. For a heartbeat, she couldn't breathe.
Sweet God in heaven. Reality crashed over her like stones hurtling down the side of a sea-battered cliff. Her father had tried to strangle her!
Her gritty eyes opened, pierced by shafts of light from a candle pressed so close to her eyes she could smell the faint stench of her curls being singed.
She tried to struggle back, away from the light, away from that eerie voice. But there was nowhere to go. She was wedged tight against something cool, like marble.
She battled to focus her eyes, felt fingers trail over her face in a gentle caress.
Her vision cleared. She was in a stone room of some sort, a cold, nightmarish chamber. Crumbling bones, shoved from the daises on which they had once reposed, were now piled in its corners. Branches of candles were tucked hither and yon, a chair and table in the far corner, while a feather tick was crowded beneath a stone tablet that read "Adam d'Autrecourt, his noble head severed at Chartres..."
My God, it was a crypt!
At that moment, a figure blotted out her surroundings, the light illuminating the gaunt, cadaverous face of her captor.
The blue eyes that had been so vague before were now restless and moist and terrifying.
"Lie still and be a good girl, Jenny," he crooned. "Papa has prepared a poultice for that nasty mark upon your throat."
The tenderness in his tones made her skin crawl. She wanted to scream at him, curse him, wanted to beg him to let her go. She wanted to writhe away from his touch. Instead, she clenched her teeth, groping for a way to escape this insanity. She had to try to find some way to reason with this man, who still had such twisted, abiding love for her in his disturbing eyes.
Could she reach past the madness somehow? Touch that part of the gentle musician that still remained buried beneath years of horror? If she could, perhaps she had a chance.
"My throat hurts," she croaked. "Why did you hurt me, Papa?"
His brow puckered, and he tsked at her. "You have grown very unruly since you have been away from me. It is a father's duty to teach his little girl better manners."
"I could have died from what you did to me."
"Were you afraid, sweeting? Papa is very sorry. You needn't worry ever again. You see, I am quite accomplished with this rope. Just enough pressure, so, and you drift off to sleep. Of course, there have been times I have lost my temper and applied a trifle too much. Then all is lost. But I am very, very sorry when that happens."
Sorry. Lucy could picture with bone-chilling clarity this man weeping copious tears over her corpse.
"The first time I lost my temper was with my father, the day I discovered that you had been stolen away from me. Only my brother Edward mourned with me—always we had been close, so close. Granville, the eldest, would have flayed the skin off his own babe if the duke had asked him to. Jasper, the impotent fool, just laughed. And my mother, she was cold, so cold. But the duke..." His eyes glazed. "The duke said what he had done was no different than tying a rock to a mongrel pup's neck and flinging it in the river. How could I let him say such things? I had to make him see what he had done." A shudder worked through Alexander, his bone-thin frame rocked by the memory.
"I was so angry. But he said I was a weak fool. I would do what I was told and never speak a word of what he had done to you and Emily and to me. He started down the stairs, and I charged after him. I only wanted to grab him, stop him, make him listen. But he fell." Alexander's voice cracked just a little. "He fell down the grand staircase at Avonstea. And lay there, with everyone screaming, his blood flowing across the white marble. I tried to push the blood back in, told him not to die. But he wouldn't listen to me. He would never listen to me."
"I—I'm sorry. It must have hurt you very much."
"Hurt me? No. Edward is the one the duke hurt, all the time. He would beat Edward until the weak fool did what he wanted. He would send Edward away and make him do things, things Edward didn't want to do. When you were sent away, Jenny, Edward was gone, in the West Indies. If I had only been able to reach him..."
Lucy stilled as she saw him pick up the silken cord and twine it about his long fingers. Was he so lost in his memories that he was going to use it again? Wrap it about her throat as if she were his hated father? Jasper? His mother?
Lucy swallowed hard. "Papa, the duke was a very bad man. Good fathers don't treat their children cruelly. A loving father would never hurt... hurt—"
For a frozen instant her gaze locked with his, and what she saw there made her hands tremble.
"Did he teach you that? What a loving father should be? Did my Jenny learn that from her mother's lover?"
The nape of Lucy's neck prickled in instinctive warning. She tried to steady herself. "I wasn't talking about me. I was speaking about you, your father—"
"You didn't answer my question." Alexander's voice grew a trifle more strident. "Did that bastard who is making your mother a whore ever hurt you?"
"Of course not! He was the most wonderful father imaginable! He taught me to ride and to shoot and to climb trees. And he..." The words spilled out, until Lucy saw that white, cadaverous face, saw his mouth twist, his eyes narrow. Oh, God, she had made a hideous mistake. How could she have been so foolish?
"He was the most wonderful father, was he, Jenny?" d'Autrecourt queried softly.
Lucy swallowed hard. "I didn't have you. I dreamed about you all the time. Every time I touched the pianoforte, I wondered what you had looked like, how your voice sounded. Every time I sung my "Night Song," I—"
"But that American rabble who is lying with my wife, filling her up with his bastards—that man never hurt you?"
"No! He would never—"
"But I hurt you, didn't I, Jenny? I can tell what you are thinking. I took this cord and I wrapped it about your neck, and you cried out before I crushed the air from your throat."
"Papa, you don't want to hurt me, I know that. Please, we need to talk..."
Instinctively, Lucy tried to squirm away from the figure closing in on her, the silken cord ready in his hands. But she was helpless, so agonizingly helpless.
"I don't want to hurt you, Jenny," he crooned. "You see, it is lovely, this cord. Silk, so it cannot tear your delicate skin. Silk for Papa's Jenny."
He wrapped the cord about her throat again and delicately tightened it.
He had killed his father, had been waiting to share with her the twisted pleasure of murdering his own mother. It was only a matter of time before he would "lose his temper" and murder her as well.
She was going to die, Lucy thought wildly. Die, here, in this hideous place with its leering skulls and moldering bones, with this lunatic claiming that he was her father.
The cord tightened enough to make her choke, and panic infused her limbs. She couldn't keep from kicking out with her bound feet, catching her tormentor in the midsection, but the blow only filled his features with roiling confusion and hurt. For an instant, she thought she saw tears shimmering in his eyes.
"You are a very naughty girl to make me lose my temper," he whispered as she sunk into darkness. "Go to sleep now, before I am very sorry."
* * *
How long unconsciousness had claimed her, Lucy didn't know, but when she awoke, it was to stillness. For a heartbeat, she wondered if this was her father's punishment for "naughty girls," if he had abandoned her here in this stone tomb, fastened the door, and left her here to stare at the crumbling bones. She wondered if, in his madness, he would even remember that he had left her here, or if he would stay away so long that she would starve to death.
Panic cut deep. Even if he had only left on some errand, what if something happened to him? Some accident from which he never returned? Even if someone took him into their keeping, if Jasper found him or one of the other d'Autrecourts, would they believe any tale the man told of his prisoner? Would the d'Autrecourts care about her fate, or would they leave her here, gladly, their dark secret b
uried at last?
Jenny... dead at last.
No, Lucy berated herself, battling to stop the hysteria welling up inside her. She had to think! Had to keep her wits about her. She tried to lift her head from the slab of marble, her gaze catching on a small bone, perhaps a joint of someone's finger, still resting a few inches from where she lay. Horror clogged her throat, but she fought it, forcing herself to look about the room. A single candle, a whimsical rendition of the Three Graces dancing about its base, burned in a stone niche in the wall above the feather tick where Alexander lay sleeping.
If she could only get her hands free of the ropes and untie her feet, she could find some way to immobilize Alexander, then she could get away, she could escape. Harlestone was nearby. If she could reach the castle, no one could harm her.
Her gaze fixed on the flame, a smear of orange hope against the dimness. If she could hold her wrists above the flame, the ropes would burn, wouldn't they?
But could she make it that far without collapsing? Her muscles still screamed with pain. She felt clumsy and numb and awkward, and the slightest mistake would mean disaster.
Lucy swallowed hard, the sensation of her neck being crushed playing out again and again in her mind.
She wouldn't fail. She wouldn't make a mistake. She was the Raider's daughter, for God's sake. The Hawk of Valcour's bride. She was going to live, damn it to hell. She was going to survive if it killed her!
Her parched lips twisted a little at the grim humor. Slowly, she managed to get herself upright, her eyes fixed with deadly intensity on Alexander's face, searching for any sign of wakefulness.
Lucy slid from the dais to the floor, jagged pain slicing through her as she attempted to half crawl, half drag herself across the narrow room.
She was agonizingly aware of Alexander d'Autrecourt snoring softly on the feather tick, but her breath seemed to rush with a sound like a gale between her teeth, tiny gasps of exertion escaping from her throat. Even her heartbeat seemed to sound like cannon fire. Inch by inch she tried to reach the stand where the candlestick stood. Heartbeat by heartbeat, she listened, prayed, swore.
The skin on her fingers tore, to bleed on the coarse stone, the delicate fabric of her shirt ripped at the elbows, which she used to lever herself across the floor. Three times she collapsed, her whole body quaking, the room spinning, her heart pounding. It seemed an eternity before she reached the stand. But when her fingers touched the claw-foot leg of the small table, her hopes began to soar.
Slowly, she struggled to her knees and poised her hands inches from the flames.
Lucy's stomach churned at the sight of her fingers, swollen and tinged a grotesque blue from the cruel tightness of the bindings. And she wondered if she could bear the pain of her skin burning with the rope.
Sweat beaded her face, and she bit her lower lip to keep from crying out as she lowered the silk cords that bound her into the searing tongue of fire. Her teeth cut into her lip until she tasted blood, the stench of burning silk filling her nostrils, sickening her. Fire seemed to leap from the candlestick into her veins, racing up her arms so fiercely she couldn't stifle a tiny whimper.
With what strength she had left, Lucy tried to pull her wrists apart. Silent tears ran down her cheeks, and she tried to picture something beautiful. Valcour, flinging back his head and laughing...
Suddenly the rope snapped. Sensation surged into her hands along with the flow of blood. She screamed inside, a terrible, silent scream. She feared she was going to be sick. But she held on to the image of Valcour and all the laughter she was going to draw from those beautiful, too-solemn lips.
After a moment the whirling in her head steadied. With great effort, she managed to loosen the loops of cord that fastened her ankles together. Then, abandoning the lengths of silk on the floor, Lucy returned her gaze to the candlestick. All she had to do was to take it and strike Alexander on the head. She wouldn't hurt him any more than was necessary, only enough to immobilize him until she could get away.
With fierce concentration, she forced her fingers to close about the candlestick. She was so tired, so damned weak, her fingers refused to obey her commands. But she had to finish this—no one, not even the all-knowing Valcour, would ever guess where to find her.
Slowly, she moved toward the grotesque phantom who claimed to be her father, the possibility that this man was Alexander d'Autrecourt still filling her with horror and disbelief. When she reached the edge of the feather tick, she froze, something rustling beneath her. She glanced down to see sheets of music, scribbled music.
For one frozen moment, she hesitated, the candlestick poised above Alexander d'Autrecourt's blond head, the compelling strains of her "Night Song" whispering in her mind. A hundred dreams of the father she had lost, the fantasies she had spun haunted her, hurt her.
No, Lucy thought fiercely. No matter what this man said or did, Alexander d'Autrecourt was dead. The gentle boy who had saved her mother from a cruel marriage could never take the actions this man had taken, never terrorize or hurt or conjure up sinister plots. If this was indeed Alexander in body, his spirit had been buried long before, buried by the family who had tormented them both.
Lucy caught her lip between her teeth, trying to force herself to strike, mustering the will to do so. There was no choice, nothing else to do. He was insane. God only knew what would happen if she did not escape. Once this was over, she would find some way to help him. Make certain he was safe, taken care of.
The thought shattered, horror tearing through her as the heavy brass piece slipped from her numb fingers.
She cried out as a sharp edge glanced off of Alexander's brow, slicing a nasty gash in his pale skin. He bolted upright with a yelp of pain.
Desperate, Lucy grappled for the candlestick in an effort to defend herself, knowing in her heart it was too late.
Just as her fingers closed on the object, a booted foot lashed out, cracking into her hands. Lucy screamed as she crumpled in agony.
Alexander towered above her, blood trickling in a macabre pattern down his face.
"You tried to kill me." He said the words softly, so softly. "That was a very naughty girl."
"I was only trying to get away. Please, if you are my father, I—"
"Jenny, you are a most ungrateful child. You leave me no other choice."
"Choice?" Lucy echoed, more terrified than she'd ever been in her life.
With chillingly methodical movements, he burrowed under the feather tick, withdrawing a gold-mounted pistol and a dirt-encrusted spade.
"You are not to be trusted alone. I shall have to put you where you will be safe." He hauled her to her feet, dragging her out into the twilight. Storm clouds roiled in the heavens, like Satan wrestling the angels, and thunder rumbled in the distance.
Where was he taking her? It didn't matter, Lucy thought, a faint hope sweeping through her. If she could scream, someone might hear her. Someone might come to her aid. Some vicar must tend the graveyard. Some villager or farmer might pass by. Someone, anyone, who might help her.
Alexander refastened Lucy's bindings and then settled her on the ground beside the tiny grave.
"I have lived here from time to time for almost a year now," Alexander said. "This is where I packed the box to send to you in Virginia. Virginia! Imagine Jasper's stupidity in letting such information slip into my hands. He would jeer at me, and tell me that you lived at Blackheath Hall. Sometimes it was as if he knew I wanted to find you. He knew I wanted to escape, make things right."
Lucy shuddered at the knowledge that the evil man she had first seen in the gaming hell could somehow have provided the catalyst that had brought her here—one more cruel jest that had spun out of control.
"Do you know, Jenny?" Alexander said. "In all the time I have lived here, never once have I seen a living soul. Perhaps that is because I am supposed to be dead!" He laughed, a hollow, frightening sound. Then he took the spade in his hands, fierce concentration furrowing his blood-stained br
ow. Despair rocked Lucy as the shovel tore a fresh wound in the earth.
"Wh-What are you doing?" Lucy choked out.
"Don't you see?" Those eyes met hers, soulless, empty. "Jenny is dead. I must bury her beneath the roses."
Chapter 19
How deep did a madman dig a grave before he felt compelled to fill it with a corpse? Lucy stared at the top of Alexander d'Autrecourt's blond head with sick fascination, the man standing neck deep in the grave he was digging with such crazed precision. He had shaped the grave so carefully, uprooting the roses like a master gardener and setting them beside Lucy so he could replant them as "a blanket of blossoms for his darling."
Each chink of spade biting earth, each thud of the clods being flung into the growing pile of dirt beside the angel-carved tombstone signaled that she was one shovelful closer to whatever fate Alexander d'Autrecourt had planned for her in the twisted reaches of his mind.
Her hands writhed against the cords that bound her. And every time d'Autrecourt's face was angled away from her, she tore at the knots with her teeth, trying to loosen them. But they only snarled up tighter, cut even deeper into her burned skin.
There had to be some way to thwart him, something she could do. Suddenly the spade came flying up to land on the turf on the far side of the grave. Time had run out.
Lucy gave one last desperate twist of her wrists as Alexander d'Autrecourt pulled himself from the hole. Dirt clung to his clothing, his face so pale and deep with hollows that he seemed some ghoul come alive to stalk her from the grave.
She had to do something, think of something. If she could fool him, reason with him, play whatever insane game was running through the tangled labyrinth that had once been his mind...
Lucy shoved herself backward, the thorns of the roses Emily had planted so long before cutting into her skin as she collided with them. "No, Papa, you can't do this! Please, you have to listen—"
"I am going to put you in the grave now, Jenny," he said. "It is a very nice grave Papa has made for you."
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