A Night of Forever

by Bronwen Evans

  “No,” Isobel said, hugging Sealey closer. “He doesn’t know anyone here except me. He’s terrified. Leave him.”

  “I don’t think you’re in any position to dictate terms,” Victoria said. “However, I do promise you he won’t be hurt.”

  As though Victoria had proved herself trustworthy. “Do you really expect me to believe your word?”

  Her stepmother lifted a brow. “When have I ever lied?”

  “When you told the magistrate the fire was an accident.” It was out of her mouth before she could stop it. “You and I both know Taggert told you it had been deliberately lit.”

  Victoria’s smile faded, and the amicable mask slipped. “Dufort,” she said softly, “take the boy upstairs.”

  “No!” The little boy clung to her as if his life depended on it. “No, don’t let him take me away. Please.”

  Isobel’s anger flared, but there was little she could do. If Dufort had to pull Sealey out of her arms, the child would get hurt.

  Where was Arend?

  “Don’t cry, sweetheart.” She stroked his hair back. “Look at me. Go with Mr. Dufort for the moment. As soon as I’ve talked to Lady Victoria I’ll come and find you.” But her heart was heavy, and her words felt hollow.

  Dufort wasn’t rough or harsh, but he was uncompromising. Isobel couldn’t bear the sight of the little boy’s tears and outstretched arms as he was taken from the room.

  “You’ll pay for this,” she told Victoria when the door had closed on his pitiful wails. “What are you going to do with him?”

  Victoria rose and moved over to the sideboard where a decanter and glasses stood. “You should be more concerned about what I have planned for you. Brandy?”

  Isobel shook her head. She didn’t trust any drink Victoria might offer.

  Victoria laughed. “Oh, my dear. You are far too clever to have been born a female. However, if I wanted you drugged or poisoned, Dufort would hold your mouth open while I poured it down your throat. Care to change your mind?”

  It galled Isobel to do so, but she was thirsty, and if she was to escape with Sealey, she needed to keep her heart and strength. “Thank you, yes.”

  Victoria poured brandy into two snifters and brought one to Isobel. When Isobel took the drink, Victoria returned to her seat, took a sip of the liquid, and swallowed. “See? Quite safe.”

  Isobel followed suit, letting the brandy warm her belly as she tried to select a sensible strategy. “I understand how Sealey might be useful to you. I don’t understand why you need me.”

  “Really?” Victoria tilted her head slightly. “I thought it would be obvious. I need you because the Libertine Scholars are men who should not be underestimated.”

  If Victoria was afraid, she had good reason. Isobel had every confidence that Arend would find and rescue them.

  “Why? Why attack these men? Why harm an innocent child?”

  Victoria straightened in her chair and smiled, wide-eyed and delighted. “How marvelous. They don’t trust you. If they did, you’d know why.”

  That her stepmother knew the truth made Isobel cringe. “Well, I don’t, so why not tell me?”

  Victoria lifted her snifter in a toast. “Why not?” She sipped from the glass. Lowered it. “My plan is moving along very nicely. With Arend in my custody—”

  The snifter fell from Isobel’s fingers. “No.”

  “Yes. So occupied with his seduction of sweet, innocent Isobel last night in my stables, he did not hear Dufort and his men until it was too late.” She waggled her finger. “You made it far too easy.”

  She would not break down, not in front of this woman.

  “You don’t believe me.” Victoria rose and came toward her. “You will. Dufort is going to reunite you and Arend very soon. But not for the purpose of carnal pleasure.”

  She cupped Isobel’s face in one palm. “You’ll see Arend, because I intend to kill you and frame him for your murder.” Sickened, Isobel jerked away. Victoria merely laughed. “What fun it will be to see him hang for a crime he did not commit.”

  How ironic. She was nothing to Arend except as a means to spy on Victoria. She was nothing to Victoria except as a means to kill Arend. Neither cared if she lived or died. No one cared. She was on her own.

  But if she was going to die, she refused to die in ignorance. “You still haven’t told me why. If I’m to die, I should at least learn the truth.”

  Her quiet words seemed to reach Victoria.

  “Perhaps so.” For a moment her stepmother appeared to be staring into the distance. Then she blinked. “I had designed my revenge against Arend before I knew you. It’s a pity, really, because you’re not what I expected.”

  Isobel was still struggling with that strange statement when Victoria sighed and moved to stare out the window.

  “Arend has to suffer the most,” she said, “because his father’s crime against me was the worst. He might not have touched me that night, but he left a young girl of thirteen in the hands of monsters. He knew what those men would do to me, and wanted no part of it, but he still left me there.” Her last words were an agonized wail.

  Sickened, Isobel covered her mouth. “They raped you?” Her stomach revolted at the thought. “I’m so sorry.” She hesitated before adding, “But that was not Arend’s fault.”

  “Someone has to pay.” The vulnerability on Victoria’s face was replaced by cold determination. “The Libertine Scholars will pay. You are simply a casualty of being your father’s daughter. The sap I blackmailed into marrying me. Your father had lost so much money, the hole he was in was so deep, that he’d lose everything. So to keep this secret he married me.”

  “He’d never be party to this evil. Is that why you killed him?”

  “True. Your father had no idea of my lofty plans. He merely thought I wanted his title.”

  Isobel’s soul lightened. Her father hadn’t helped Victoria.

  “Then, the moment I met you, my plan for Arend came together: to make him believe that you are an accomplice in my villainy, and to have him kill you.”

  Kill? No, she thought. Arend would never—

  “Well, to be fair,” Victoria said, “help him kill you. And when it’s proven you had nothing to do with my evil deeds, they will hang him. Most of the ton dislikes or fears him. They will grasp any excuse to rid themselves of a Frenchman with an English title.”

  Isobel felt light-headed, and not because of the brandy. “You’re mad. No one will hang him when they realize you’ve played a hand in my death.”

  Victoria shrugged. “No matter.” She moved back toward the fire. Held her hands out to the warmth of the flames. “Perhaps even better is that he’ll have to live with the guilt that he killed an innocent woman. That will destroy him.”

  Before Isobel could form a reply, the door opened and Dufort returned. He nodded, and Victoria seemed to understand his silent message.

  Dufort turned to Isobel. “Come.”

  Isobel waited, but when Victoria did not contradict his command she rose and smoothed her gown, wondering how a woman should address her murderer.

  “While I truly sympathize with your pain, I cannot for the life of me see the justice in making the sons pay for their fathers’ crimes. As for me, I shall never forgive you for killing my father. If you succeed in killing me, I promise I’ll haunt you from my grave.”

  Victoria inclined her head. “Brava. I’ll say goodbye now, as we shall not meet again. Tomorrow Dufort will take you to your fiancé. Unfortunately, he will not be happy to see you.”

  Her smile turned truly evil and a chill invaded the room. “You will have brought him proof of the child’s death—an ear, to be precise—along with the implement used to remove it. They will be found on your body near to where they will find Arend. Dufort has made sure the other Libertine Scholars think you were complicit in Arend’s abduction and Sealey’s death. They will hold you accountable for both incidents.”

  Isobel only realized she had moved when
her palm connected with Victoria’s cheek. “I won’t let you kill an innocent child.” It was all she had time to say before Dufort hauled her off her feet and slung her over his shoulder.

  “Little bitch!” Victoria seized her by the hair and jerked so hard that Isobel’s neck felt as if it were about to snap. “I hope my plan succeeds. I hope they hang him. I hope his neck doesn’t break. I hope his death is slow and agonizing, and I hope he feels every minute of it.”

  Tears filled Isobel’s eyes from the pain in her head and in her heart, but she refused to say a word.

  Finally Victoria shoved her away. “Get her out of my sight.”

  —

  Isobel paced her upstairs room all afternoon. Alone. She had no idea where Dufort was keeping Sealey, or even if the little boy was still alive. He couldn’t be dead. He just couldn’t be.

  By twilight, her head was pounding and her stomach had tied itself into knots of worry and fear. Her attempts to find a way out of the room had only proved that the windows were bolted shut and the door locked.

  Finally she slumped exhausted onto the bed. Impossible though it seemed, she must have slept, because she awoke with a jolt to the sound of a gunshot. And to darkness.

  She leaped from the bed and over to the window. The second bullet smashed the glass and missed her head by a breath. Shaking with both joy and terror, she dropped to the floor and crawled toward the door.

  It had to be Coldhurst and the others. It had to be a rescue. They’d come for Sealey. If only she could get out of the room and find him…

  She reached the door. Carefully she raised herself to her knees and peered through the keyhole. There was no key in the lock. Perhaps she could push something into the hole and break the lock. But what?

  A metal poker by the fire was her only choice. Keeping low to the floor, Isobel crawled to the fireplace, seized the poker, and returned to the door.

  Her attempts to force the lock were not quiet. She had been working at it for several minutes, trying to break it open, when heavy footsteps pounded up the stairs and along the hallway to her room.

  Hope and fear bloomed in her chest—rose and thorn. Was she about to be rescued? Or attacked?

  She stepped back behind the door and raised the poker above her head.

  When the door flew open and Dufort rushed in, Isobel swung the poker at him with all her strength. But her strength was not equal to Dufort’s. With one large arm he blocked the poker. Then, before she could even scream, a giant fist came rushing at her face.

  Chapter 10

  Arend now understood what pitch black truly meant. He wasn’t blindfolded. He blinked, and so knew his eyes were open, but he could not see a thing—not even the tip of his nose.

  He didn’t need his eyesight to know where he was, however. The rock that dug into his back, the dust that made it difficult to breathe, and the distinctive smell of coal told him he was underground.

  In a coal mine.

  The back of his skull throbbed like hell, his head swam, and nausea pitched and rolled in his stomach. His mouth was so dry he could barely swallow.

  He’d managed to prop himself upright against the rock, but although his captors had left him unbound, he was as much in prison as if he were behind bars. Even if he could move, he didn’t know which way to crawl. In the complete blackness he could be moving deeper into the mine. Worse still, he could fall down a shaft. It didn’t matter at the moment, as his legs didn’t seem to want to move.

  “Fool,” he whispered into the stale, dust-laden air.

  It was true. There was no one to blame for his predicament but himself. For the second time, he’d let a woman’s beauty distract him and never even heard his attacker coming.

  In South America, he’d believed Daniela loved him when all she’d wanted was the location of his diamond mine. His stupidity had cost his best friend his life and destroyed what little faith in human nature Arend had left.

  And then he’d seen Isobel.

  He tried to laugh, but all he managed was a dry, scratchy croak.

  Bloody Isobel.

  All she’d had to do was bare her breasts, and he’d salivated over her like a randy dog. She’d played him like an expert. But then, she’d learned from the best—her stepmother. Once again, the hunter had become the hunted.

  When would he learn that beautiful women were dangerous, untrustworthy, and without any sense of honor? In their hands, beauty was a weapon as deadly as any pistol. Besides, any woman who wanted him had to have an ulterior motive, because…well, just because. Why else would she pursue him? Not for his pleasant disposition.

  He closed his eyes and cursed himself to hell.

  A moment of self-pity was all he was allowed. He had no intention of visiting hell until he died, and he wasn’t dead yet.

  He had no idea how long he’d been unconscious in the mine, but judging by his thirst and hunger it had been a couple of days at least.

  His friends must already be looking for him.

  However, one lesson he had learned well was that it was best to rely on no one but himself. With that in mind, he got slowly to his feet, feeling his way up the wall and expecting at any moment to hit his head on a support.

  But, to his surprise, he was able to stand upright. He was in a main shaft, then. While he stood there in the darkness waiting for the dizziness to ebb, he heard something in the silence that was, at this point, worth all his diamond mines combined—a trickle of water.

  The sound focused his energy and lifted his spirits. If he had to, he’d drag his sorry arse to its source, even with a thumping head and an injured leg.

  He returned slowly to the ground and, feeling his way ahead like a blind man, crawled cautiously along the rough ground on hands and knees.

  The sound of water got louder. It also sounded like less of a trickle and more of a flow. In spite of his raging thirst he forced himself to continue his slow, steady pace. The last thing he needed was to go too fast and fall down a shaft now.

  When his groping hand splashed into a puddle he wanted to shout in victory. When he tasted the liquid and found it to be not only water but fresh, he cupped both hands, filled them, and forced himself to drink slowly.

  Nothing had ever tasted as good.

  He’d survived longer than a few days without food before. Water, however, was a different matter.

  Having replenished his body, Arend leaned back against the wall next to his water supply. He had no idea how long he would be here or if anyone was coming back for him.

  How ironic. A man who lived his life filled with darkness might just die in it. He’d never feared death. Death was simply the unknown, and he thrived in the unknown. The unknown protected all his deep, dark secrets.

  When he had returned from Brazil, he had left those secrets in that silent darkness and started his life again in the light. The light of wealth. The light of acceptance. The light of equality. The light of friendship.

  Hadley in particular almost worshiped him because he’d struck out on his own and come back rich beyond imagining. As a second son with his way to make in the world, Hadley had immediately wanted to jump on a ship and set sail. If not for his brother’s need for Hadley’s help to maintain the family’s estate, Arend was sure, Hadley would have done so.

  If his friends knew how Arend had earned his passage to South America and how he’d come to find the diamond mine, any hero worship would be over. They had lived with terrible fathers and the way they’d been reared was far from perfect. But they had never experienced true poverty or the contempt it brought. They had never been desperate to keep up with friends who could spend how they wished. Their charity was hard to swallow.

  Even thinking about the past made him shiver. Then he realized it wasn’t only his thoughts that gave him a chill. His breeches were wet and his jacket was only keeping him moderately warm.

  His heart started to speed up.

  The cold held both threat and promise. The threat was the chill could
lead to illness, but the promise was that it meant he was not very deep underground, for the deeper underground one went, the hotter it became. If he could work out which direction would take him to the surface, he might yet be able to escape.

  If he could think over the pain in his pounding head. If his brain would offer a solution rather than just sitting uselessly between his ears.

  Focus, he told himself through gritted teeth. So he focused. On sunshine. On green grass. On fresh breezes…

  Arend still saw nothing, but suddenly he found he could sense distance. Sound told him how close he was to walls, how far the rock was above his head, the size of the tunnel he was in. He felt the ground under him. Each tiny rise and fall—

  He stiffened. The slope of the ground. Could the slope of the ground tell him which way was up?

  Any gradient was slight. It was too dark to get a visual study of the ground. The only way to get the information he needed was through touch.

  Once again he stretched out prone on the dirt. Ignoring the thumping headache, he let his mind empty of everything but the sensation of the ground beneath him and his connection to it.

  The inclination of the ground suggested the way he was facing was up. It was obvious, however, that he’d have to crawl further to get a feel of the slope.

  But what if he lost access to his water source?

  He decided to risk it. But first he removed his jacket and shirt, and then tore the white fabric of the shirt into thin strips. He could knot the strips to give them some weight and use the material as a marker so he could feel his way back to the water if he needed to return.

  He put his jacket back on, and then continued his excruciatingly slow crawl along the ground, leaving knotted strips of cloth behind him like breadcrumbs in a child’s fairy tale.

  It was slow work, as he had to be careful not to fall into any open shaft in the ground beneath him. His excitement grew as it became obvious the ground was sloping upward.

  Unfortunately, he didn’t get very far before exhaustion swamped him. His lack of food and the head injury were taking their toll. At that moment a kitten could beat him in a fight.