‘How did you find me?’ asked Deborah, once they had all got into the cab. ‘Did you have to pay a ransom? That man said you owed him money—’
‘Lampton owed him money,’ said Robert curtly as the Earl and the Marquis settled on the seats opposite them. ‘And it was Lampton who told me where I might find you.’
The coach set off with a jolt that flung Deborah back into the cushions. Robert steadied her, then moved away swiftly. So swiftly that she had to turn her head away from him to hide her hurt.
‘Your man may be handy to have about in a tight spot, but he is no coachman,’ observed the Marquis, grabbing hold of the strap.
‘You are a handy man to have in a tight spot too,’ said Deborah, turning wide eyes upon his saturnine features. ‘I must thank you for what you have done today. Both of you,’ she added, addressing the Earl.
‘I am merely returning a favour Captain Fawley did, not so very long ago, for my own wife,’ the Marquis replied coolly.
‘Think nothing of it,’ added the Earl. Then, turning to Robert, he drawled, ‘I had no idea taking you into my home would provide me with such adventures.’
They kept up a constant barrage of inane observations, reminding her again of a pair of naughty schoolboys who had just got away with some prank. It didn’t take her long to work out that much of the badinage was intended to distract her, for which she was grateful. The last thing she wanted to do was break down in front of two such aristocratic males and, judging from the way neither of them could quite meet her eye, the sight of a female in tears would make them extremely uncomfortable too. And she had felt very inclined to burst into tears when the cab had set off, signalling her ordeal was at an end.
The Earl and the Marquis helped her out of the cab when it stopped in an alley at the back of Walton House. Contrary to her expectations, there was a flight of steps leading to Robert’s back door, which they reached by crossing a paved yard. There was even a sign on the door, bearing his name, and a doorknocker in the shape of a lion’s head, as though this were a private, rented apartment, rather than an integral part of Walton House.
The Countess was waiting for them. The moment she saw them, she leapt to her feet, her eyes widening in horror at Deborah’s appearance. Her next action was to snatch up a blanket from the sofa on which she had been sitting, hurry to her side, and drape it round her, shooting just one reproachful look at Robert as she did so.
‘Nobody must see her looking like this,’ she exclaimed. ‘What were you thinking?’
‘Of getting her out of that place, primarily,’ Robert snapped back. ‘But at least I took the precaution of smuggling her in by the back door. Nobody knows about this dreadful business,’ he said to Deborah. ‘We have managed to hush it up. I was sure you would not want to distress your mother. So whenever enquiries were made as to your whereabouts, I said either you were indisposed, or out shopping, depending on who was doing the asking. Now I suggest you go upstairs with Lady Walton, who will see to your immediate needs.’
It was as if he could not wait to be rid of her, she thought, glancing at his set features.
Strangely, her earlier desire to weep had frozen solid under the blast of his coldness. She could feel it, a tangible presence, just under her breastbone, as though she had swallowed a lump of ice. It was amazing, she reflected as Lady Walton led her up the stairs, just how much strength pride could lend to legs that she had thought too weak to carry her one step further.
‘You will feel better for a bath and something to eat,’ said the Countess, ushering her into her pretty, feminine sitting room.
‘Will I?’ She shook her head, wearily. She had not been able to forget for one second, even through all her other terrors, that her husband was about to embark on an affair with another woman. So far as he was concerned, she could not have got herself kidnapped at a more inconvenient moment. He must have had to go to a great deal of trouble to effect her rescue, when he would much rather have been planning…
Feeling a wave of faintness overcome her, Deborah dropped on to the nearest sofa, bowing her head over her knees.
‘Here, here!’ The Countess knelt at her feet, holding up a teacup and saucer.
‘I thought you never took tea,’ Deborah attempted to joke weakly, as she gratefully took the hot, sweet drink.
‘Oh, no, I hate it. But you English love it, and say it is restorative, and you look as though you need to be restored. Did they not feed you? Oh, pardon! I am not supposed to pester you with questions. Robert said you would not want to talk about it.’
Getting to her feet, the Countess went to the fireplace and tugged on the bell rope.
‘Please to come into my bedroom, Deborah. The maids will bring up water for a bath, but I am sure you will not want them to see you…’ She trailed off, her eyes darting to her face, and then flinching away.
For the first time, Deborah wondered what her face looked like. It ached all over, so she supposed it must be bruised. Draining her cup to the dregs, she followed the Countess through into an opulent bedchamber. The bed was hung with velvet curtains, the carpet was a soft swathe of blue that invited a woman to sink her bare feet into it, and there were bowls of fresh flowers upon several of the little tables that dotted the room. She could smell them, above the stench of imprisonment that clung to her clothes. Everything looked so clean, and so delicately feminine, that Deborah felt as though she were polluting the place just by standing there in all her grime and disorder.
The Countess darted out, upon hearing the maids clanking about with cans of water in the dressing room, and Deborah took a moment to go to the dressing table and peer at her reflection in the mirror. Her face was swollen almost out of recognition. She had a black eye that would not have looked out of place on a professional boxer, and a crusted scab over her eyebrow. Her hair on that side of her face was matted with blood from that cut, and her mouth… She touched it gingerly with the tips of her fingers. Her lower lip was puffy and scabbed from that initial, casual cuff.
Absently, she reached under the sleeve of her dress, to scratch at one of the fleabites on her wrist, then suddenly she was tearing off her filthy clothes. By the time the Countess returned to tell her the bath was ready, Deborah was crouching naked before the fire, holding her petticoat in the flames with a poker.
‘It has to be burned,’ she explained, when Lady Walton looked at her in amazement. ‘All of it. Right down to my shoes.’ It was the only way to stop the fleas from getting into the carpets and curtains. When the Countess made an involuntary movement towards her, she held up her hand to ward her off. ‘No, I must do this myself!’ She did not think she carried any fleas on her person, but she did not want to take the chance of passing them on, if she had.
As she stood up, she noticed that her knees were badly grazed, though she could not remember exactly when that had happened. It could have been when she had fallen to the cobbles, when the burly man hauled her out of the cab. Or later, when she had been forced to her knees in the cell after they cut off her hair. By the way the Countess had been glancing at her back, then looking hastily away, as though something distressed her, she guessed she had bruises all over her.
The Countess proffered a large towel. ‘Your bath is ready,’ she said, her eyes full of tears.
‘Oh, yes, how I need one,’ Deborah agreed. She had been in the same clothes for she knew not how many hours. Fear had made her sweat profusely during several thoroughly unpleasant incidents. That cell had been filthy, the men who had manhandled her had left their rank odour in her nostrils… Was she just imagining it, or was it really there? And then, of course, she had attempted to wash her cut in ale. She must smell like something out of a tavern.
Though a bath in water, no matter how deliciously scented, would never erase the imprint of ugliness and evil from her mind. She had seen another face of human nature these past few days, and she already sensed the experience had left an indelible stain on her soul. As she sank gratefully into the perfum
ed water, she murmured, ‘I wonder if I will ever feel completely clean again.’ Then, concerned lest any of the fleas should have taken up lodging in her hair, she slid beneath the surface of the water, immersing herself in the hope she might drown them.
* * *
Robert sat on the sofa, an untouched tumbler of brandy in his hand, staring blindly at the floor between his boots. He did not think he would ever get the image of Deborah, cowering on that filthy straw mattress, her face all over bruises, her dress soiled and torn, out of his mind. He had wanted to go to her and carry her out of that foul cell, wrap her in his arms and tell her he would never let anyone hurt her ever again.
Instead, he had to endure the humiliation of letting others fight for her freedom, and accept that he would never be able to lift her in his arms and carry her anywhere. When she had got into the coach, and he had seen the bruises on her neck, it had been all he could do to restrain himself from marching straight back into that warehouse and shooting the brutes where they lay on the floor.
He had been angry enough at the thought of Deborah being taken, imprisoned, and perhaps frightened. But to see what they had done to her…blacked her eye, split her lip, half-strangled her…to have left such marks on her body attested to a level of violence that told its own story. There was only one reason why men held a woman by the throat, punched her in the face and tore her gown.
How many of them had raped her? How often? She had been in their clutches for a night and the best part of two days. He groaned, leaning his forehead on his hand to hide the tears, which were stinging his eyes, from Linney’s notice.
It was all his fault. He had never considered what repercussions might rebound upon her when he had been making his plans to best Percy Lampton. Not that he could have foreseen she might have suffered this level of brutality. But nor had he taken any steps to ensure her safety, when he should have known… He thumped his thigh with his clenched fist.
It had all got completely out of hand. This feud with the Lamptons had gone too far! Because of his obsession with them, Deborah had suffered the most terrible fate that could befall a woman.
It was not the men who had raped her that should be shot, it was he. He had brought her to this.
He had crept in to her bedroom, and stood over her, just filling his eyes with the sight of her, once Heloise had come to tell him she had fallen asleep.
‘She must have been exhausted,’ Heloise had said, as they had climbed the stairs, side by side. ‘I wondered, after all she had suffered, and considering the pain she must feel, if I would need to give her something to help her sleep, but almost before she had finished her bath, she was struggling to keep her eyes open. And she told me she had hardly slept at all…nor does she seem to know what day it is, for it was so dark in the cell….’
He had not been surprised to hear she had fallen asleep so quickly. She had obviously exhausted her meagre reserves of strength trying to fight off those men. Her whole body had been trembling with the effort it had taken her just to get up off that filthy floor.
Heloise had gone on to tell him how Deborah had burned her clothes, saying she would never feel clean again, and his heart had sunk to his boots.
She had begun to tactfully withdraw from the bedroom, intending to leave him alone with his wife. But he prevented her. Their marriage had faltered to the degree where the last thing she would want, if she should wake, was to see him looming over her. It would be like waking from one nightmare into another. He stood, ramrod straight, cursing himself as he looked down at her battered face.
She had not bothered to plait her hair neatly for bed. It spread in damp tendrils all over her pillow, making her look very young and vulnerable.
He longed to reach down and take one of those locks of damp hair in his fingers, raise it to his lips and kiss it. He had dreamed of her hair, the night she had been away from him, the few times he had managed to doze off. He had dreamed he was running his fingers through it, as she lay beside him, smiling up at him with the sleepy satisfaction he had sometimes had the privilege of imparting to her face. But then her image had shimmered, and dissipated like mist on a breeze. He had leapt out of bed, run to the door, and, shouting her name, run out into the street to search for her. But that mist closed in, blinding him, and as he batted it from his face with his hands, he would wake, sweating and shaking, to the harsh reality of his life. He had lost the hand, the one he had dreamed was filled with the silken texture of his wife’s hair, in a makeshift hospital tent outside Salamanca. Nor would he ever leap, or run anywhere, ever again. But that loss was as nothing compared with the pain of knowing his Deborah was gone, and he did not know how to get her back.
She should have a decent husband, one who could protect her, not a useless cripple, who drew danger down on himself and those around him!
Most of all, she should have someone she could turn to, someone who could hold her in his arms and comfort her, not a man whose touch could only add to her distress.
He ached for her isolation. Yet he knew there was nobody she could talk to about her ordeal. It would be like living it all over again. As a soldier, he had encountered women who had been brutalised by French troops, and the last thing any of them had wanted was to have anyone so much as mention their violation.
Eventually he had retreated to his rooms, though he knew he would not sleep tonight. Knowing she was upstairs, and safe, should have brought relief. Instead his agony was redoubled by the knowledge that, if she had not hated him before this, she surely would do now. She was more lost to him than ever.
Bone weary, he sank on to a sofa with a glass of brandy. It had taken hours of painstaking searching through Hincksey’s known haunts before a handful of guineas had brought them the information he needed.
‘Want to know where Hincksey would hold a woman?’ the denizen of Tothill Fields had leered. ‘Same place as he always takes them, to break them in, I’d wager.’
When Robert had seen her in that place, he had wanted to howl with rage and pain. His Deborah, his beautiful wife, defiled by those brutes! And all he could do was stand there, and look at her, knowing that if he once knelt down on that floor, and took her in his arms, he would have broken down completely. But there was no time for such self-indulgence. Hincksey had left only two men to guard her, but he was the head of a criminal gang, whose members ruled the area they had infiltrated. All they had on their side was the element of surprise. They had to swoop in and get her out, fast.
Walton and Lensborough had both agreed, having seen the state of her, that there should be no trial. Though kidnapping alone was a hanging offence, bringing the villains to trial would mean Deborah would have to give evidence. She would have to relate all that had happened.
All of it.
And though if ever two men deserved to hang, it was those brutes, he could not expose Deborah to the shame of having all society knowing what they had done to her.
Once she had recovered enough to travel, he would send her out of London.
She was too straightforward a person to want to have to make up some tale about how she had come by her facial injuries. So she could not go to The Dovecote, where the servants, who had no idea how they ought to behave towards their betters, would all expect some kind of explanation. No, it was better that she stay among people who knew what had happened, and could help her to come to terms with it.
He knew Walton wanted Heloise to travel down to Wycke for the birth of their child. Nobody would question it if Deborah went with them. What could be more natural than for a lady to want her sister-in-law to be with her for the lying-in? Everyone knew Heloise had no other female relatives in England.
Deborah could avoid having to answer any questions that might arise from her inability to go out of doors until the bruises healed. He had his own suite of rooms at Wycke, to which she could retreat should she wish for privacy. And female company, in the form of Lady Walton, should she need to confide in someone.
It was the
best he could do for her.
* * *
‘How are you feeling today?’ Heloise chirruped brightly, coming in behind the maid who bore her breakfast tray.
Numb. She felt numb. She just could not dredge up any sort of emotion at all. It was as if all her capacity to feel had frozen solid.
She assayed a polite smile and replied, ‘Oh, much better, thank you. I slept so well.’
It had seemed unreal, when she had woken earlier, to find herself in this beautifully soft bed, with its crisp, clean sheets and velvet hangings, in a room that smelled of flowers. And to be wearing another of the Countess’s scandalous nightgowns.
She had reached out for Robert, during the night, but of course, he wasn’t there. And then she remembered that she would never wake up next to him again. For a while, she had found it hard to breathe. It felt as though a great weight was crushing her. But slowly, slowly, as she had lain on her back, gazing up at the pleated velvet canopy, listening to her breath going in and out, in and out, the numbness returned. And she welcomed it.
She endured the day as well as she could, replying with politeness to all the Countess’s attempts to draw her into conversation, meekly eating what food was set before her and then getting dressed, when a selection of clothing was brought upstairs for her from Robert’s rooms. She refused the offer of a visit from a doctor. She was sure her physical injuries were only superficial. Bruises always faded in a day or so.
The Countess finally left her alone when she claimed she still felt exhausted, but, though she lay down on the bed, sleep was far from her.
Why had Robert not come? She knew he did not care for her, but could he not at least have pretended? Just this once?
Though why should he, when he had warned her, from the very start, that he would not pretend anything he did not feel, or use soft words when blunt ones would serve his purpose much better?
Captain Fawley's Innocent Bride Page 21
