The Earl's Captive

by Lorna Read

  It cost a lot for her to say these words, angry as she was with his unreasonable behaviour, but it was the truth. She couldn't imagine ever making love with another man. Nobody would be able to stir or satisfy her so. And nobody could be more interesting, unpredictable, ever-changing, or more loving and caring towards her, apart from at this very moment.

  He looked away, ignoring her passionate confession.

  “Rory,” she begged, “please believe me, I didn't flirt with that stuck-up booby. It was all in your mind. I couldn't help it if he looked at me.”

  “Oh, stop whining, woman, you're making my head ache. Just be quiet, will you?”

  Lucy flinched at his unkind, uncharacteristic words. This wasn't the Rory she knew. There seemed to be some bitterness, some canker inside him that was gnawing and disquieting him and forcing him into irritability. There was nothing she could do to make him reveal his thoughts, but she wished that he trusted her enough to share his worries with her. Was it a gambling debt, maybe?

  She shifted uncomfortably on the hard bed and gazed out of the window to distract herself from the uncomfortable silence in the room. She couldn't believe that her marriage was going wrong already, after five short weeks. All those people walking by outside, going to visit friends, family, lovers, or strolling in twos; none of them looked as if they were burdened with as many problems as she.

  All at once, Lucy caught sight of a familiar yellow coat and sent out a silent prayer for Rory not to turn round and spot his imagined rival. She dared not breathe until the young nobleman disappeared out of sight behind a line of carriages.

  Behind her, Rory heaved a sigh, and the bed creaked as he stood up. He caught her shoulders and turned her round to face him, then planted his lips on hers. Lucy's spirits rebelled. How could he expect her to make love when he had made her so unhappy? Did he have no sensitivity at all? Now, if he were just to apologize, beg her forgiveness, tell her he loved her …

  Lucy had never refused Rory before, but now something inside her bridled at the thought of this man who had caused her so much upset, satisfying himself inside her body. She craved some time alone; time to think, time to forgive.

  “No, Rory,” she said, the words choking in her throat. “No!”

  She flinched at the look of hot fury that flashed across his face.

  “What do you mean, 'No'? You're me wife and I'll have me husband's rights. Some men would take the strap to you for this!”

  Tears sprang to her eyes and his face softened. “I'm not going to force you,” he said. “All I'm going to do is ask you to see reason, girl, and give yourself to me. Now. Come on, Lucy.”

  He tugged at her arm and she pulled away, cramming herself into the corner of the room nearest the door. His face reddened with anger. She knew he was going to beat her.

  Sobbing, Lucy sank to the floor, hugging her knees against her chest, rocking, bending her head so that he couldn't slap her face or, worse, kick it. His moods were like gusts of wind, shaking her, blasting her so that she felt dizzy and drained. If only she could read him like she could read horses. Even with a skittish horse, you could predict its moves and react accordingly, but not with this man. He was as tempestuous as a storm-tossed sea.

  She heard the door slam and looked up. He was gone.

  Chapter Nine

  Lucy awoke to find the skin on her face dry and tight from crying. She felt exhausted and emotionally drained. A wave of loneliness surged through her as she scanned the room and found it empty. Her side of the bed was rumpled but the other side was smooth, the sheet and pillow cold to the touch. She felt certain that Rory had not been back.

  Pulling aside the fraying curtain, she saw that people were already going about their daily business in the damp street, their collars pulled up around their necks to protect them from the dank, curling fingers of the November mist. She was empty, numb, with no tears left to cry – and yet, looking back, their argument had seemed so trivial, a mere tiff over an imagined glance, a jealous fancy. Surely he wouldn't leave her because of it? It wasn't as if he had caught her in another man's arms.

  Maybe he had gone off gambling somewhere, or had got drunk in some other inn and was even now sprawled on a bench or a pile of straw, sleeping it off. Reason with herself as she might, Lucy still felt a quiver of apprehension as she slid her stiff limbs off the lumpy straw mattress, splashed some ice cold water over her face from the cracked stone ewer on the table and prepared to go below in search of Pat and Smithy.

  She remembered the horse that had to be delivered that morning to the man who was the cause of her marital trouble, and wondered who had taken it. The main room of the inn was empty of guests. A little girl was cleaning out the ashes from the grate and a man was whistling cheerfully as he wiped pots with a wet, grubby cloth. Lucy approached him, described her companions and asked if he knew of their whereabouts.

  “The big feller? The one with the black outfit to match 'is teeth? Oh aye, I've seen 'im all right, and little old granddaddy, too – a right case of consumption, if ever I saw one.”

  He paused, wrung out the tattered cloth and put it down on the wooden bar top. He was a small, fat, bald man with bright red cheeks and narrow, cunning countryman's eyes. He continued, warming to his subject.

  “I remember Samuel Smethwick. A good man, Samuel, but never strong, reet poorly 'e always were. Now, 'e grew thin and pale and coughed a lot, like that man o' yorn, coughed pink froth with blood in it, 'e did. Went on for 'baht a year, it did …”

  Lucy was fretting with impatience, but afraid to butt in and annoy this man who was obviously determined to tell his story, in case he refused to give her the information she so badly needed. So she curled her toes tight inside her boots and steeled herself to look interested.

  “One day …” His slow, monotonous voice seemed to chew forty times on each word before spitting it out. “One day, 'e were walking down the 'igh Street, like, when all of a sudden 'e coughed and a great fountain of blood spurted out of 'im, whoosh, all over the white cloak of this fine lady who was walking past. Drenched in blood she was, like a lamb at the slaughterhouse.”

  He paused and chuckled at his own wit. He had obviously related his gory tale many times before and he had Lucy trapped, shuddering, mentally urging him to get to the end and answer her questions. “Oh, ho-ho, it were a reet funny sight, 'er face all green, like, and 'er lovely clothes all covered in …”

  Lucy tried not to listen. “When we buried 'im, 'e were bleached out like there weren't a drop of red blood left in 'is veins. All grey and sunken 'e was. 'Orrible.”

  He looked at Lucy with a satisfied smirk, which promptly dissolved as he realized that she wasn't about to scream or grow pale like other ladies he'd told his gruesome tale to. He picked up his cloth again and started banging the pots around.

  “Ahem.” Lucy cleared her throat loudly. to regain his attention. “My friends. Where are they?”

  He made a vague gesture which seemed to indicate that she should go out of the door and turn left. His directions led her to a rough wooden shed round the side of the inn. There was something about the deep rumbling noises coming from within that sounded very familiar. Ducking into the doorway, she peered into the gloomy interior and, once her eyes had accustomed themselves to the dimness, she made out the recumbent forms of several men, sprawled in careless attitudes on the heaps of straw that covered the rough earth floor.

  One was Pat, without a doubt; his snores led her eyes straight to him. The giant was flat on his back, his cavernous mouth open, an empty beer tankard still clutched in his hand. Curled in a fetal position next to him was Smithy. Was Rory with them?

  Silently, hardly daring to move in case she wakened anybody and incurred their ale-induced wrath, she inspected each figure in turn. One, whom she at first thought was Rory on account of his blue shirt and shock of dark hair, sighed and turned over and revealed himself to be a much older man.

  Perhaps he had taken the horse to Darwell Manor. Th
ere was only one way to find out. Making her way to the field behind the inn, where they had left the animals in charge of a watchman, stabling being at a premium on a fair day with the winter weather setting in, she took stock of the animals present.

  They were all there, including the chestnut mare with her falsely bloated stomach. Lucy's heart gave a little lurch. She had no idea what time of day it was and Philip Darwell didn't look like the kind of man who should be kept waiting.

  She hurried back inside the inn and enquired the time of the pot-washer.

  “Seven, miss,” he replied.

  She knew the use of the word 'miss' was a deliberate insult, implying that she wasn't a respectable married woman staying there with her husband, but a whore who had been picked up and passed off as a 'wife'. However, with so many more important matters on her mind, she couldn't afford to enter into an argument to defend her virtue.

  She decided to come straight to the point.

  “My husband, Rory McDonnell, a young man with a beard and one gold earring. Have you seen him?”

  “Your husband?” sneered the man. A shifty look passed across his puffy features. “Nay, can't say I have. Must have got up early and gone out for a walk, like, after a night with a hot little lass like you!”

  His revolting leer made Lucy's stomach heave. She found herself cursing Rory for forcing her to lead the kind of life where she was expected to mingle with scum like this man. Rory should be here beside her, standing up for her, hitting this rogue in his foul mouth and teaching him how to behave in the presence of ladies.

  And then she turned and saw him – and he saw her. They both stood frozen like statues, he in an attitude of guilt, she in one of horror, disappointment and anguish. He was coming out of a room behind the bar, buttoning his shirt and adjusting his britches, while the naked form of the plump girl, her big, flaccid breasts dangling like lumps of uncooked dough, was clearly visible behind him.

  Lucy tried to speak but her throat had closed up. She felt a clammy perspiration break out on her face and hands and her legs began to tremble. She heard the naked girl gasp and saw her push Rory out of her room so that she could close the door on Lucy's accusing eyes. Slowly, like a man in a trance, Rory moved towards her, refusing to look at her. Then, without a word, he broke into a stumbling run and bolted out of the door into the street.

  On an impulse, not knowing what she would do or say, Lucy dashed after him, hearing the snigger of the pot man following her. Rory was running blindly, like a frightened animal, blundering into people and knocking them aside. Curses rang after him, then stopped as the jostled passers-by halted to watch the chase.

  “Go on, lass – you'll get him,” chuckled one old man as Lucy raced past, her skirts bunched up in her hand to prevent herself from tripping.

  But it was no use. Rory was too quick for her. He vanished up a side street and she was left panting, leaning against a wall, wishing she could die right there, on that chill November morning, with nothing left in the whole world worth living for.

  For a while, she remained there, head down, sobbing, but eventually the damp mist penetrated her clothes, setting her shivering and forcing her to start walking to warm her body up, although every step seemed useless progress to nowhere.

  Suddenly, she remembered the horse, and the fifty guineas to be collected from Philip Darwell. She would have that money! Rory had cheated her, left her homeless and penniless. Pat and Smithy would be all right. They had the other horses which, although they could never fetch such a mighty sum, would at least allow them to carry on eating and travelling. She was the one who was in desperate need, and surely they would forgive her, if ever they found out the true facts?

  As she made her way back to the inn, her arms wrapped round herself for warmth, she thought of her parents sitting round a roaring fire – her father who, for all his faults, was a loving, clever man; her faded, adorable mother; her pet cat, Ha'penny; Emperor; the clean, vibrant smell of the stables … Her heart reached out in longing for the nostalgic familiarity of all she had left so many miles behind.

  Rory's face swam into her mind and, with a huge effort, she pushed the vision of him aside. She had trusted him, loved him, offered him her whole life if he wanted it, and he had chosen to reject her in the vilest way, by preferring the company and body of a grubby, coarse, alehouse whore to her own.

  Oh, if only she wasn't tied to him by the bonds of marriage! He had captured her, forced his will on her. How could she have been so gullible as to believe he wanted her for a life-long companion? Why could he not simply have ravished her and left her to wander on the moors, with her innocence gone, but her body, her mind and heart still intact and free?

  Pausing to check that she could still hear Pat's thunderous snores, Lucy opened the gate into the field and nodded to the young lad who stood guard over the animals. He knew she was one of the group who had left them there the previous day and he helped her to saddle up the chestnut, stretching the girth with difficulty over her rotund belly.

  “Got to ride her gently, eh?” he remarked, with a knowing look.

  “Yes, I'll do that,” she murmured, so preoccupied that she was hardly aware that she had spoken.

  Her mind was in a turmoil, in the midst of which only one thing stood clear – that she must take this horse to Darwell Manor and collect fifty guineas. And then? With that large sum jingling in her purse, she could go anywhere, do anything and she would start with buying her own horse.

  Money and horses… That was all her life seemed to revolve around. It had been that way ever since she was a child, as far back as she could remember. Money and horses, and the unpredictable, unreliable ways of men.

  As she took hold of the mare's bridle, she noticed the gleam of her makeshift wedding ring. A thick, choking lump of tears gathered in her throat as she looked at the gold hoop which had once adorned Rory's ear. In a surge of fury, she snatched it from her finger and hurled it into the field.

  As she goaded the mare out into the lane, she saw the boy scrabbling among the grass. Let him sell it if he wants to, she thought, it's far more use to him than it is to me. The gold band had always felt temporary and meaningless, like the mockery of a marriage it symbolized. Now she had lost both, but she did not feel in the slightest bit free or light of heart as she set out in the rain in search of Darwell Manor.

  Chapter Ten

  Theodore, the ninth Earl of Darwell, raised his head weakly from his pillows when he heard hooves clattering into the courtyard. One yellowed, emaciated hand, bearing a heavy gold ring with the family crest engraved on it, stirred on the sheet, then reached waveringly towards the bell rope.

  He pulled and a tolling sounded in the servants' quarters but, seeing that Darwell Manor was now reduced to a complement of three, a cook, a general housemaid, and a butler, who were all busy fulfilling the tasks of at least fifteen, nobody answered the old man's call.

  “Damnable business,” he muttered to himself, “damnable.”

  What made it worse was that he knew it was entirely his fault, and his alone, that the Darwell family were reduced to such penurious straits. The death of his young wife many years ago had turned what were formerly pleasurable activities, lightly partaken of, into a way of life. Drinking and gambling were the pastimes of many a gentleman of leisure, though few were as over-indulgent as Theodore Darwell, who had allowed both his fortune and his health to waste away until now there remained only the merest vestiges of either.

  “Eleanor … oh, my dear, beautiful Eleanor,” mumbled the old man, allowing his filmy eyes to fill with tears. “You could have been such a comfort to your dying husband.”

  “Nonsense, Father!” rang out a cheerful voice. “You're not dying. Imbibing too much, perhaps, but your guts must be so well pickled by now that they'll find you in your grave two hundred years from now, looking as if you had just gone to sleep.”

  The old man's lips tightened in petulance. The one thing he couldn't bear was for anyone to r
emind him of his own mortality. Why wouldn't they let him achieve the one thing he wanted, which was to slide into the past and live alongside his memories?

  “Do something for me, m'boy. Fetch me m'porter.”

  A deep sigh issued from his son, Philip, who was standing framed in the doorway. He looked at his father with a stern yet indulgent expression, as if about to remonstrate with a mischievous child.

  “Now, Father, you heard what your physician said. Not more than two glasses may pass your lips in a day and, to my knowledge, you've had three already. Who do you think you are – King George?

  “He may have the money to drink all day and eat pheasant and swan all night, but may I remind you, dear Father, that our cupboard is bare. When I heard your bell ring, I thought, 'Has Father found a ruby in the mattress? A store of doubloons in the panelling? Then I thought, 'No such luck, he just wants a drink.' ”

  Philip Darwell found his father exasperating and foolish. He had cursed him many times for losing the family money by allowing himself to be cheated by bastards like George Hardcastle of Rokeby Hall, who, Philip knew for a fact, carried a pack of marked cards always about his person. Yet he was sympathetic, too, sorry about the lonely life Theodore had led for so long, grieving so much over his lost Eleanor that he could not bring himself to marry again.

  Philip had been brought up by a series of governesses and tutors, until the Earl had decided it was less costly to send him into the army for a spell. He had soon become a popular cavalry officer and his good judgement of people had led to several shrewd business deals which brought in enough capital to keep himself in clothes, pay the servants' wages and buy his father's beloved porter, though there wasn't enough left over to stop the walls of his ancestral seat from crumbling into disrepair.