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by Mary Balogh
Thank goodness, she thought, and her hands began to tremble despite the strong hold she kept on them, and her breathing became erratic again—thank heaven that Christina had been sent on to the church early. Thank heaven she had been safe inside. If she was safe. Perhaps they had taken Christina first, before her. But no, she thought, closing her eyes and concentrating on not vomiting. No. They would not take two. Besides, if they had already taken Christina, there would have been a commotion outside the church when she arrived.
No, it was just her. They had taken only her, and Christina was safe. Elizabeth repeated the fact over and over in her head to calm herself. She must remain calm. She had already screamed and struggled and pounded against the door and the panel of the carriage.
She would not give them the satisfaction of witnessing any other displays of panic or fear. She would be icily calm when next they opened the door.
But her nerves were put to severe testing over the next several hours. It was true they were taking her outside the city. She realized that before the first hour had passed. But how far? How far? Surely no more than a few miles if her father was to be communicated with that day and if an exchange of money and her person were to be made within the day. What would happen about the wedding? she wondered. Would the church and the vicar be available again the next day? Would all the guests come again? Would the wedding breakfast be irrevocably ruined?
How far were they taking her? She realized that in her present situation every minute must understandably feel like an hour, but even so those minutes or hours became interminable. Surely they must have traveled a sizable distance from London. She began to feel chilly. And hungry, though the thought of food made her feel bilious.
And physically uncomfortable. She tried to keep her mind off her discomfort, but on what else could she latch it?
And then finally the carriage slowed and stopped. She clasped her hands in her lap and stared straight ahead, waiting for the door to open, not sure if her relief was stronger than her fear. But she would not show fear. She would die rather than do so.
She braced herself for a sight of that towering dark figure with his frightening mask. But it was the tough little coachman who opened the door finally. She turned her head to look at him disdainfully. But he did not signal her to descend as she expected him to do.
“We are at an inn, ma’mselle,” he said in a French accent that was too thick to be feigned. “I shall bring you food and tea, but you must not scream, s’il vous plait, or otherwise try to attract attention.” He shrugged apologetically. “My master would not like it, ma’mselle, and ‘e ‘as a gun.”
“I need to stretch my legs before I eat,” she said icily.
“Ma’mselle.” Again that apologetic shrug.
“I have needs more important than hunger,” she hissed at him.
She saw comprehension dawning in his eyes and willed herself not to flush. He closed the door, presumably so that he might consult his master on whether she might be allowed to relieve that need.
Elizabeth could feel fury building inside. How dare they subject her to this humiliation! And why were they stopping at an inn? How far were they taking her?
“Where are we going?” she demanded when the door opened again.
The little coachman shrugged. “You will be permitted to enter the inn, ma’mselle,” he said. “I shall accompany you inside. But you will please remember the gun and that I ‘ave a ruthless master. If you try to beg for ‘elp, ma’mselle, someone else may get ‘urt as well as you.”
“Help me down.” She stretched an imperious hand from the carriage. She had untwined the flowers from her hair some time before. Even so she felt quite inappropriately dressed for a country inn. She did not know the inn, she saw in a quick glance around when she was standing on the cobbles of the inn yard, or the road.
She could not guess where they were. And there was no sign of the masked man or his gun, though his horse was being brushed down.
Her stomach churned at the sight.
It was very tempting over the next five minutes or so to scream or to somehow try to attract attention to her plight. She might write a note, she thought when she was alone, and slip it to the innkeeper or a barmaid as she left. But she had neither paper nor pen and ink.
Besides, the chances were strong that none of them could read. It seemed somehow bizarre to be inside a place as public as an English inn and be unable to draw anyone’s attention to the fact that she was a captive, being taken somewhere against her will at gunpoint.
Bizarre but true.
The coachman had something over his arm, she half noticed when she joined him again in the taproom. She did not observe what it was until he handed it to her when she was inside the carriage again and he was about to leave to fetch her her food and her tea. It was a cloak. She reached for it with inner gratitude. The interior of the carriage was chilly since no sunlight was allowed to warm it.
And then she felt more chilly than she had felt throughout the hours of the journey. It was her own cloak, the one that had been packed on top of the trunk that was to accompany her on her wedding journey. That trunk had been in her dressing room when she had left for St. George’s.
Elizabeth clutched the cloak in her hands and fought panic again.
What was going on? Where was she being taken that was so far from London that they had to stop at an inn to eat? Where were they going that necessitated her trunk being brought with them? How soon was she to be ransomed? Or more to the point, and more frightening, how long was she to be held? And why?
She had calmed herself by the time the door opened again and the coachman set a large tray on the seat opposite her. She neither looked at him nor spoke to him. She sat looking quietly down at her hands until he had shut and locked the door again. A long time passed before she could persuade herself to eat or drink.
Christopher had forgotten just how far it was from London to Devonshire. Especially when one was forced to travel without stopping. It was bad enough to have to stop at an inn every few hours to allow Elizabeth to eat and to relieve herself. He certainly could not risk stopping long enough for her to sleep. And so after their evening stop Antoine handed her a pillow and two blankets and she was left to sleep inside the confined space of the carriage as best she could while they traveled on into the night. And on through the next day.
Apart from the one scream and the struggle outside the church she did not once have the hysterics or prove to be a difficult prisoner. Indeed, if Antoine was to be believed and his own brief glimpses of her, she behaved with quiet dignity—even when it must have become obvious to her that this was no ordinary kidnapping for ransom.
She must have changed, he thought. The old Elizabeth would have panicked and had the vapors long ago. The old Elizabeth would have gone all to pieces. She did not look different. He had been too busy with his dangerous task in Hanover Square to observe her closely at the time, but nevertheless, he realized as he rode beside the carriage during all the hours that followed, he had seen and felt and even smelled a great deal more than he had realized at the time.
She was still as slender as a girl and still as shapely as that girl had been. Hauling her up onto his horse’s back had been a far less difficult task than he had expected it to be. And her hair was still as soft and as honey blond as it had been—and her gray eyes as dark and as large. She had smelled of lavender, as she had always used to.
It was only after she was out of his arms and inside the carriage that he felt himself shaking with the realization that she was Elizabeth, that he had seen and touched her again, that he had put an effective stop to her wedding, that she was his, in his power, at his mercy.
He shook and felt cold despite the April sunshine. The night in London and the early morning had been incredibly busy while he and Antoine put into effect the hastily concocted plan, acquiring horses, a carriage, and suitable clothes, packing their own belongings, effecting the daring visit to the Duke of Chicheley’s
house to collect Elizabeth’s trunk ready for the wedding journey—or so Antoine had said, posing as a servant of Lord Poole.
And now suddenly, before Christopher could at all reflect on the plan, it was accomplished. He had Elizabeth shut up inside the carriage, and he was taking her with all speed to Penhallow.
Christ, he thought as he rode beside the carriage, what had he done? What was he going to do with her once they reached Penhallow? And how would she react? With hysteria and tears and vapors when she saw who her captor was? With disgust and hatred?
Certainly she was not going to fall into his arms or stay willingly with him. He was either going to have to keep her there a prisoner or else he was going to have to bring her back again on this long journey with nothing whatsoever accomplished.
And what did he want to accomplish anyway? He hated her, didn’t he? Or if hatred was too strong a word, contempt surely was not. He despised her. He wanted only to force the truth on her face to face so that she would know finally that the fault for everything that had happened was hers. Though that was at least partly unfair. The fault for what had happened was someone else’s. He had not yet discovered whose, but he intended to do so.
But he had not intended to go about it this way. How could he expect her to listen to him now when he had kidnapped her outside the church where she was to have been married and carried her a prisoner half across the country?
He had better let her know who her captor was before they reached Penhallow, he decided late on the afternoon of the second day when they were a mere few miles from home. He was reluctant to face her, but it was better to do it on the road than in his home. He rode forward to talk with Antoine, who was perched up on the box of the carriage guiding the horses, though he looked as tired as Christopher felt.
“Stop when we get to the other side of the crossroads ahead,” he said. “I’ll tie up the horse behind and travel the rest of the way inside the carriage.” He tried to make his tone casual and matter-of fact.
Antoine tossed his head backward in the direction of the carriage.
“Take your fists and your wits with you, m’sieur,” he said. “That one is a sleeping volcano.”
Christopher smiled a little grimly. A volcano? Elizabeth? More like a little clinging violet in all likelihood, he thought.
Fear came and went in waves as did anger and impatience and discomfort and tiredness. Mostly she wanted an end to the journey so that she might at least find out exactly where she was and why she had been brought there. Uncertainty, she found, bred fear. If she was to be ransomed, why was she being brought so far? If she was to be killed—sometimes there was blank terror at that possibility—why again was she being brought so far?
Strange, she thought several times during the day, her wedding and her wedding night should have been behind her by now. She should be Manley’s wife: Lady Elizabeth Hill, Lady Poole. She wondered how he was feeling now. Was he worried for her safety? Was he searching for her? And what about her father? And Martin? Martin would be frantic. And he would be searching. He would leave no stone unturned in England to find out her whereabouts. There was comfort in the thought. Martin would find her.
And how was Christina reacting? Had she been told the truth? Or would they have invented some story to explain Elizabeth’s failure to appear in the church and her failure to appear afterward? Christina, she thought, and she closed her eyes and swallowed several times. She would not cry. Nothing could make her cry. She never knew when the carriage was going to stop and the little French coachman appear at the door. She would not risk being seen with wet or red eyes. She would not give them that satisfaction.
Well, she thought wearily, she had spent long years growing up, learning to face herself and reality, learning to take charge of her own life, learning that she and no one else must decide its direction.
Learning that if she did not come to depend upon herself, she could depend upon no one else. Except Martin, of course. She could always depend upon Martin, though even on him she would not lean any longer. It was not fair. She had learned through long years of suffering to be her own person. And now she was to be put to the test. She could not at the moment decide her own destiny, it was true. But she would not panic or grovel or plead.
She swallowed as the carriage slowed. It must be late afternoon again. A late tea? An early dinner? She waited for the door to open and the coachman to appear. She prepared her usual look of disdain.
But a few minutes later she felt rather as if a large fist had hit her hard low in her stomach and robbed her of breath. It was not the coachman who opened the door and came right inside the carriage to sit down opposite her and look at her silently from steady blue eyes.
Nor was it the masked man who had snatched her up outside St.
George’s. Oh, yes, it was he certainly, but he no longer wore either the hat or the mask. Only his own long, thick dark hair.
“Christopher?” Her lips formed his name though she heard only a whisper of sound.
The carriage began to move again.
He had changed. His face, always narrow, always unsmiling, always a little frightening to her eighteen-year-old eyes now clearly showed the sharp angles of jaw and cheekbones and looked harsh and implacable. His aquiline nose looked more prominent than it had used to look. His fair skin was now darkly bronzed. His shoulders beneath his cloak, always almost thin, were now anything but. The slender, serious, sometimes morose boy had become a man.
She did not consciously notice the changes. She was too deep in shock. But part of her mind noticed them. And yet he was Christopher. Unmistakably Christopher. The man she had expected never to see again. The man whose name she had blocked from her mind on her wedding morning. Yesterday.
“You are surprised?” he asked her.
His deep voice was firmer than she remembered it.
She stared at him as if paralyzed. “What do you want with me?” she asked him at last. “Where are you taking me?”
“You must wait for your answers, Elizabeth,” he said. “We are going to have a confrontation at long last. Think about that if you wish.”
He said no more but merely stared at her, his eyes intent, his lips compressed. And she felt all the old fear robbing her of breath, though the fear then had been occasioned by the fact that she was eighteen years old and he had appeared splendidly handsome and mysterious to her and she had been afraid that she would never be able to pierce his reserve and touch his heart. She had been afraid that he felt nothing for her, a fear that events had confirmed all too painfully.
Now the fear was of his strength and his silence and his piercing blue eyes. And of the fact that she was his prisoner on her way with him she knew not where. And for a purpose she did not know.
But he had gone to Canada and had settled there. What was he doing back in England?
Fear mounted in the stretching silence so that she wanted to give in to panic, to beg him to let her go, not to hurt her. Under his steady scrutiny she felt herself reverting to the old Elizabeth almost as if he had her under some spell and seven years had rolled away.
But she was not the old Elizabeth. And she was not in his power even if she was his prisoner. Only her body was in his power. Even that was a terrifying thought. But he could not touch her. He could not touch the real Elizabeth. She must remember that. No matter what, she must remember that. He had destroyed her once so that she had not wanted to live. She had pieced herself back together again over long and painful years. She would not give him that power over her again.
“It takes two to have a confrontation,” she said. “Perhaps you would like to think about that, Christopher. I have nothing whatsoever to say to you.”
He continued to look at her for a while until he lowered his gaze to his hands and contemplated them, a brooding look in his eyes.
And she realized something suddenly. He had sat down not quite opposite her, but in the corner farthest from the door he had entered, while she sat next to it. And
he had closed the door quietly behind himself. It was not locked.
She would not be able to get away, of course. The coachman would stop the carriage and they would both be after her almost before she could touch the ground and regain her balance. The chances that there would be other people in sight to witness the fact that she was a captive were very slim. But it would be a gesture. A gesture that needed to be made. She had been his abject victim in the past. She might still be his victim, but she would never again be abject. Never.
She waited for a few moments to steady her breathing, to let her eyes rest on the handle so that she knew exactly how it would feel in her hand. And then she lunged at it, wrenched the door open, and flung herself out almost before Christopher’s head could snap up, startled.
He cried out, as did the coachman, and he was out of the door after her long before Antoine could drag on the ribbons and pull horses and carriage to a noisy and ungainly halt.
But Elizabeth heard none of it. She landed in the fairly soft dirt beside the hedgerow that bordered the road, bruising herself very little despite the fact that she was unable to keep her feet but sprawled full length on the ground. But her head landed with a dull thud on the squat and solid milestone that happened to be planted deep in the soil at just that spot.
Chapter 4
To many Britons with their love of formal and classical elegance, Penhallow would not have appeared beautiful at all. The house was built in wild countryside very near the coast of Devonshire. It looked much as it had looked for several centuries, like a medieval manor that was not quite a castle. Low round towers, a square gatehouse with narrow slit windows and a rounded arch leading through to the courtyard, gray stone walls liberally covered with ivy: it was not one of the showpieces of England.