by Maren Smith
I squeezed my eyes tightly shut and tried not to make a sound. In the dark, I felt Albert turn his ear towards the door. I couldn’t hear a thing other than my own ragged heartbeat, but I knew when the danger of discovery had passed when the rigidity of his muscular frame at my back slowly relaxed. After a long moment, he let me go.
“Get the bag.”
His hand forever at the back of my neck, I stumbled towards my trunk on rubbery legs. He moved with me when I bent to open it and lifted out my worn carpetbag. I shivered when I felt his free hand glide down in the darkness over mine. He opened the carpetbag, then I heard the whisper of cloth as he unceremoniously dumped my things out on the floor.
“Where’s your uniform?” he asked.
“Hanging by the mirror, sir.”
“Light the candle.” He released my neck and I crept along the bed to my tiny night table. My hands shook so badly that it took four attempts before the wick caught and a thin yellow glow grew to light my room. Rubbing my hands on the skirt of my nightgown, I turned to face him again.
His eyes wandered over me, drifting down the length of me to my fretful hands and then back up again until the blackness of his clashed with my eyes. I shivered as he stared into me, not moving, not speaking, until finally a corner of his grim mouth lifted in a kind of smile. “I am going to let you in on a little secret. Just so we know one another. Just so we are clear.”
He took a single step towards me, the echo of his boot on the floorboards so threatening and I couldn’t help but shrink back.
“I love Victoria,” he said, but that odd half-lilting smile tugged again at his lips and he followed his devotion with a slightly sarcastic chuckle. “Rather, I love the dowry that will undoubtedly come with her. Hawkhaven is many things, but he does dote upon his baby sister. Personally, I don’t care if she ever walks again—few men are willing to be tied to a cripple, even one with as large a dowry as is attached to my Tory.” Albert gently tapped his temple with a long forefinger. “They lack vision.”
I bumped into the wall when he took another long, slow step towards me. My legs shaking, my heart pounding, I could only watch him smile that twisted, caustic smile as he closed the distance between us.
“So, you see,” he offered the vaguest of shrugs, “whether she walks or not hardly matters. What does matter is that we marry and remain together long enough to make an annulment socially impossible. Since keeping her happy will also keep her wanting to stay with me, and since walking will make her the happiest of all, you will ‘help’ her with that. She must be convinced absolutely that you are doing everything possible to make her wish come true, but know in the back of your mind that if you succeed before I have secured her fortune, I will hurt you in ways you can’t possibly imagine.”
He was toe-to-toe with me, breath to shaky breath. I couldn’t even make myself nod, but he took my trembling as acquiescence.
He reached up to take a wisp of my hair in his fingers, stroking it gently. “I suppose if you think yourself very clever, you might take it into your head to tell Victoria all I’ve said. When you do, she will then confront me, and I will be momentarily thwarted until I can make her believe differently. But have no doubt, I am the man she loves and she will, eventually, take to heart whatever I tell her. Love is awfully convenient that way. And then, of course, I will have no choice but to teach you a very painful lesson for meddling.”
His eyes again found mine. Black and cold, they bored into me. Not for the world, could I make myself move. A twist of his lips qualified as another smile. Releasing my hair, he stroked the side of my cheek with the backs of two fingers. He traced the broken, bloody skin of my swelling lips where he’d struck me, and then caressed the finger-sized bruises on my throat.
“On the other hand,” he mused, his hand traveling slowly down between my breasts. “You could prove yourself cooperative, giving me no reason to be… unkind.”
There was nothing erotic in what he did to me, but when his fingers passed over my breast, the soft peak stiffened to his touch. My stomach churned when he cupped me, squeezing without hurting. His palm felt warm, and I felt sick. I turned my face away when he breathed my name.
“Oh, don’t worry,” he told me, passing his thumb back and forth across the taut tip of my nipple. “Pretty as you are, I have no immediate interest in exploring all that unknown territory beneath your well-patched skirt. Still, it would be good for you to know that with me provocation and interest are one and the same. So, do us both a favor and do not provoke me.” He squeezed my breast gently one last time, his fingers plucking lightly at the tip as he let me go. In a gesture that I had only ever before equated with fondness, he chucked me softly beneath my chin and then backed one step away. “Get dressed. Attracting attention is not in my best interest, and where we are going, a naked maidservant will definitely attract attention.”
My knees buckled, I shook so badly. Reaching out, I snagged the sleeve of my uniform, pulling it off the laundry line. Albert allowed me nothing, not even the illusion of modesty that turning his back would afford while I dressed. Then, with his hand again on the back of my neck and my carpetbag gripped tightly to my chest, we walked back down the hall to Victoria’s room.
“What are you going to do?” she asked, her wide blue eyes darting back and forth between Albert and myself. To meet them and not blurt out what he intended would have been like a lie; I stared fixated at the floor.
“Pack her things,” Albert told me, and I immediately moved out of his grasp to obey. “We are going for a ride.”
Victoria blinked, her eyes owlish as she stared at him in disbelief. “What do you mean? Where are we going?”
“If ever you loved me,” he told her as he bent down to gather her into his arms, “then trust me now. What I am doing is for the best of us both. You’ll see that in time.”
“But I can’t go,” Victoria protested, and then began to cry. “Albert, please be patient. Can’t we wait just a little while longer? I want to stand next to you at our wedding. I want to dance in your arms.”
“You know as well as I, if we wait until you are walking, your scoundrel brother will marry you off to someone else. He has never had your best interests in his heart.” The look Albert gave me—as if daring me to add to the conversation—made me shiver. “Don’t forget the jewelry. We may have to live off that until Hawkhaven comes to his senses.”
The box was too big for my bag, so I emptied the drawers, one right after the other, on top of her clothes.
“But… b-but Ella!” Victoria wailed as he carried her to the open window.
“Calm yourself, my dear,” Albert soothed. “Your companion is coming with us. She will have you walking by our first anniversary, and we will dance in each other’s arms every year thereafter. Isn’t that right, Ella?”
Unable to meet either of their eyes, I grabbed up the carpetbag and hugged it to my chest.
“Window,” he told me, and I went. “Toss the bag down to the ground, and climb out onto the trellis.”
“You can’t carry me out the window, Albert,” Victoria said, a real thread of fear lacing through her voice. “I’m too heavy. You’ll drop me!”
“I’ll put you over my shoulder,” he assured her, coming up to the window behind me. “I won’t drop you. Your companion, however, I will throw out onto the ground next to the bag if she doesn’t get her scrawny arse over the windowsill and down that trellis. I don’t repeat myself, woman. Do as you’re told.”
With shaking hands, I gathered up my skirts. I could feel Albert’s eyes gliding over me as I bared my legs nearly to my thighs and draped the excess fabric over my arm to keep from stepping on it. As I swung my leg out the window and found my footing on the ivy-covered trellis, I discovered height was not my best friend in all the world. Pulling myself all the way out of the window, I shivered as I looked down between my hands and my slightly splayed feet four rungs further south. It was a very long way to the ground.
Havin
g shifted Victoria from his arms to his broad shoulder, Albert bent down to glare at me through the window. His black eyes hardened. “Move.”
I clung to the trellis, my hands sweating, my legs shaking, barely able to breathe. I tried to step down, but my feet ignored the command. I clutched and re-clutched the hidden ladder, terrified to death of falling.
Albert disappeared briefly back inside the window, and when he again emerged, it was arm first with a gun clasped firmly in his hand. He put the round gaping hole of the muzzle right up to my forehead.
“I said, move.” Those cold black eyes held all the pity and mercy of stone. If I hadn’t already been clutching the wooden rungs with a death’s grip, I might have fallen backwards off the ladder when the icy metal touched right between my eyes.
Hanging over his shoulder, Victoria tried to lift herself up to see over his shoulder. “What’s happening? Is Ella all right?”
“She’s fine, my love,” Albert said, unwavering, unblinking. “She is merely realigning her priorities.”
He was right; I was more afraid of being shot. I made my feet move, first one rung and then another, the ivy rustling and the trellis creaking under first my weight and then the additional burden of both Albert and Victoria. Expecting the rungs and ivy to snap apart at every step, I was never so grateful as when I reached the ground.
I stumbled back away from the house the closer he came to the ground. My foot hit the carpetbag, almost tripping me. As I bent to pick up my bag, the reflection of light on the ground caught my attention. I raised my head to see a well-lit window on the ground level, not fifty feet from the ivy trellis. The curtains were drawn, but I knew the masculine shadow that moved across the cloth.
My heart pounded at my temples. It was right at the back of my throat, the urge to cry out for help, but that urge was quickly smothered when Albert reached the ground. He did not right Victoria in his arms, but caught the back of my neck again and directed me into the darkness, away from the house.
It was foggy again, though not as thick as the night I had arrived, and still I failed to make out the shadow of the waiting carriage until the lights of the house had already been swallowed by the mist behind us. I heard the snort of the horses first, followed by the low voice of the coach driver as he soothed them. His hand on the back of my neck, Albert propelled me forward, until the mist gave way and the black bulk of the carriage came gradually into focus.
“Oh, thank goodness,” Victoria gasped when the driver jumped down to open the carriage doors for us. There were blankets and pillows already waiting for her inside. As Albert set her down on one of the two seats, tucking the blankets in around her, she rubbed at her stomach. “I’ll be so glad when I can walk and never have to be carried like that again.”
He smiled, all charm and kindness. “I know.” He reached up to brush back her hair. “Tory, we’ll have to ride most the night to get as much distance between us and your brother as possible, but if it becomes unbearable, you have just to say the word. I promise, we’ll find a place to stop, all right?”
When he leaned in to kiss her, she cupped his face with both hands and I heard the soft moan of desire escape the back of her throat.
If ever I was to escape, now would be the time. I glanced back over my shoulder, but there was only fog, vaguely lit by a partial moon. Which way was the house?
The kiss ended, and I quickly faced forward again when I heard Albert backing out of the carriage. He took the bag from my hands, laying it in the carriage on the second seat. Shying from his touch, I tried to follow it inside, but he took hold of my arm and stopped me.
With his back to Victoria, his body shielding what he did from her sight, he pulled me just close enough to say, “I recommend you work a little harder at not provoking me. So far tonight, all you’ve done is irritate me.”
I swallowed hard. “Yes, sir.”
Dragging me around to the front of the carriage, he all but tossed me onto the seat next to the driver. I grabbed the hard wooden bench with both hands, staring out over the horses’ rumps in shock as he climbed into the warm coach with Victoria. When Albert knocked upon the roof, with a click and a slap of the reins, the carriage began to move.
It would be morning before anyone even knew we were missing.
Chapter Ten
After six hours of riding in the open fog, I was dripping I was so wet. My hair hung in icy tendrils about my face and neck. My dress felt waterlogged it had absorbed so much from the damp air, and it clung to the curves of me as if it were another skin. I was so cold. My teeth chattered uncontrollably, my nose ran endlessly. Invisible pins and needles pricked my fingers until my eyes teared, and I just couldn’t keep from shivering. Albert’s driver, a kindly man named Shaver, took pity on me and even passed me his coat. But still I shook, I could not get warm.
Two hard knocks on the carriage roof behind us nearly jolted me right off the driver’s seat. Shaver caught my arm before I fell, and Albert’s rough voice snapped out, “We’ll stop at the next inn.”
I was so grateful, I nearly wept with relief when I saw small village lamps on the road up ahead.
“W-w-where ar-are w-w-w-we?” I chattered to Shaver when we pulled up next to a roadside inn.
“Corby,” he told me, reining in the horses. “Ten more miles to the church.”
Hawkhaven would never find us. I bit my lip to keep from crying all over again.
I couldn’t even get down from the driver’s seat by myself. Shaver opened the carriage doors for Albert, and then came back to help me. His hands at my waist felt so very warm, even through my clothes.
“Make yourself useful.” Albert pushed the carpetbag at me. Unable to get my numb fingers to open, I caught the bag in my arms and hugged it to my chest instead. Drips of water ran down my icy face, shaken loose from my hair when Albert grabbed the front of my uniform and yanked me bodily closer. The mass of himself blocked my view of Victoria, inside the carriage still, and I’m sure blocked her view of me as well. “Until I tell you differently,” he ordered me, his voice soft and low, “consider yourself bound to me by invisible threads. If you dare take more than two steps from my side at any point tonight, I will make you regret whatever misbegotten urge spurred your conception.”
My eyes on the ground, I stayed exactly two steps to his left.
“Oh,” Victoria groaned when Albert lifted her out of the carriage. “I am so sorry.”
“It’s all right,” he soothed, his tone and words by no means matching the fierceness of his eyes.
“I wish I could ride longer. All that jostling.” Her head on his shoulder, she hugged his neck. “I feel bruised all over.”
“We will have more pillows in the carriage tomorrow,” he promised. The hard look he gave me said clearly I could consider that job mine, and that I had best guarantee his promise became fact. Where in the world I was expected to get the new pillows from, I just don’t know. Weary as I was, I felt the hot bubble of tears gush to my eyes as the dismal prospect of my spending the rest of the night sewing loomed up before me.
Waking the innkeeper, Albert purchased the use of two rooms until morning. Both were tiny, not much larger than my room back at Hawkhaven, and certainly not meant for someone of Lady Victoria’s status. And yet, she offered not a single word of complaint. Rather, when Albert laid her upon the lumpy bed, she sighed as if it was the softest mattress she had ever felt beneath her.
“Make your mistress comfortable,” he told me, but made no move at all to leave the room and allow us that privacy.
With cold, near-useless hands, I fumbled to remove Victoria’s shoes and covered her with the blankets. The mattress felt like straw. I could only hope there weren’t fleas or lice, but Victoria obviously had no concerns on that regard. She was asleep before I backed away from her bedside.
“Blow out the candle,” Albert ordered from the doorway where he stood waiting.
I bent to obey, but then lingered near her bedside, reluctant to do any
thing more than turn myself around and look at him.
Tilting his head to one side, he came the closest to a real smile that I had yet seen from him. “Oh no, my girl,” he breathed with a laugh. “I have no intention of spending what’s left of this night, lurking under the window, while you work up the nerve to escape. You’ll stay with me, where I can keep you firmly in my sights.” He inclined his head, indicating that I precede him further down the hall. “After you.”
On shaking legs, doing my best not to touch him, I tried to slip past him, but his hand closed on the back of my neck.
“You’re very cold,” he noted, as he walked me down the hall. “Wouldn’t that be a pity, to have you catch your death on the eve of your lady’s marriage? Where we could expect to find another lady’s companion out here, I just don’t know. I suppose there’s simply no help for it. I’m going to have to warm you up again.”
My legs balked at the threshold of the second room, but he pushed me in ahead of him anyway, despite my faltering steps. There was only one bed. That was the first thing I noticed. The second was that he closed and locked my only avenue of escape behind him.
“Take your wet clothes off,” Albert said, as he slipped the key into his pocket. Then and only then did he release his hold on the back of my neck. “Then get into bed.”
I would rather be murdered and thrown from the window. “No.” I turned to face him, my legs trembling as I backed away. “N-no… I won’t.”
“I will rip them off you,” he said bluntly. “You can make the rest of the journey tomorrow naked, for all that I care.”
A spark of anger flared inside me, warming through the ice of my skin as I glared at him. “That would attract attention,” I said, trembling and taking another defiant step back.
