“My lady …!”
The door was jerked open, A man stood in the aperture, one hand holding the door wide, the other grasping a pistol. Even Isabella gasped. Jessup squealed, and shrank back against the rolled squab. The dense blackness of the night outside shrouded all beyond the intruder in mystery. He stood, large and menacing, in the wavering pool of light that spilled from the coach. Masked and hooded as he was, Isabella could not distinguish a single feature, not even so much as an ear. All she could tell was that he was a man of some girth, not fat but solid and square-built, and his eyes, glinting through the slits in his mask, were a hard, flat brown.
“Lady Isabella?” He was looking at her as he spoke, his voice as hard and flat as his eyes. Isabella felt the sudden, sharp bite of real fear. He knew her name. But how could that be …?
“Here, this is all I have.” She forced the words out around the sudden dryness in her mouth, thrusting her reticule at him at the same time. “Take it and be gone!”
“Nah! You’ll not be rid of me so easy-like, my lady.”
His accent was sharp and unfamiliar to her ears, not the well-modulated syllables of the well-bred nor the soft Norfolk burr she’d grown accustomed to since her marriage. But she had no time to ponder his origins. Despite his words, he snatched the reticule from her hand and stuffed it into a pocket well hidden by his enveloping cloak. Then he looked at her again. Though she could see nothing save his eyes, she gained the impression that he was grinning. An evil grin …
For a long moment they stared at one another. Isabella’s heartbeat quickened, and she felt her stomach clench.
“Jessup, give him the jewel case.”
If her words were sharp, it was because it was all she could do to keep her voice from shaking. Jessup blanched as the man’s eyes slid around to her, but she reached into the little hidey-hole in the upholstery for the leather-bound case.
“Here ’tis.” Jessup’s voice was scarcely more than a squeak as she thrust the case at the man. He took it in his left hand, hefted it.
“ ’Tis a rich prize,” Isabella said steadily.
The man nodded. “Aye,” he said, apparently impressed by the weight of it. Then he shouted over his shoulder to a henchman, tossed the jewel case to him, and turned his eyes back to Isabella. She had to fight not to shrink away from his gaze.
“You have it all now, so you may take yourself off.” Her voice was surprisingly steady.
“Nah.”
To Isabella’s horror, he reached in to close a large, meaty hand around her upper arm. He dug his fingers into the soft flesh beneath her sleeve, hurting her and not caring if he did. Isabella knew in that moment that there was to be no speedy end to this nightmarish encounter, after all.
“Unhand me!” she cried, truly frightened now, beating at his arm with her free hand. She might as well have beaten her fist against an oak tree for all the effect it had.
Jessup screamed and cowered back in a corner as her mistress was dragged from the coach.
Only the hand on her arm kept Isabella from falling headlong into the muddy road. Her shoes sank deep and her skirt trailed in slimy ooze. The cold needles of an icy rain beat down on her uncovered head, wetting her to the skin in a matter of moments. An equally cold fear chilled her heart.
As she found her feet, Isabella was just able to make out three or four shadowy forms on horseback milling around the coach. Searching further, she discovered Will Coachman and Jonas, bound as neat as Christmas geese, lying in the tall grass at the side of the road. They were uncovered and, if left to lie thus in the rain for very long, would be in grave danger of contracting an inflammation of the lungs, or worse.
But at the moment Isabella harbored fears of a far more immediate danger, to herself as well as her servants. No highwaymen who chanced to rob a coach at random would know their victim’s name—nor would they go to the trouble of tying up her servants. Stomach churning, Isabella reached the inescapable conclusion that her coach had not been chosen at random. These men had a purpose.…
“What do you want from me?” she demanded, her voice suddenly grown hoarse. Freezing cold from fear as much as from the rain, she turned and swept the dripping tails of hair from her face, looking up at her captor with what dignity she could muster as she struggled to quell a burgeoning panic. Her fright was rapidly assuming monstrous proportions. Instinctively she fought to remain calm. It was the only defense she had left to her.
He laughed, the sound coarse, and shoved her brutally on the shoulder, spinning her around, making her stagger and nearly fall. Then he caught one wrist, dragging it behind her back to yank her upright. Isabella cried out as he caught the other one, too, and bound them both with a leather strap. In the next instant a sour-smelling rag was tied roughly over her eyes, blinding her. Terror brought a bitter taste surging into her mouth. Whatever these men intended, it was not simple robbery.…
With her eyes rendered useless, her hearing was suddenly more acute. Over the sounds of the rain and the wind she heard a rhythmic splashing that warned of the approach of horses. At least two …
“What do you want?” she asked again, her nerve nearly broken. A grunt was her only answer. There were presences around her, horses and men; she could feel them, hear them.…
Without warning she was spun around. Isabella cried out, staggered. Her cry was cut off by a wad of dry cloth thrust between her teeth. Her head swam sickeningly as in the next instant she was lifted off her feet to dangle head down over a man’s shoulder. Instinct warned her to lie perfectly still as he strode away with her, one arm holding her about the thighs. In the background, Jessup’s screams as she was dragged from the coach were abruptly silenced by what sounded like a blow. Such or worse would be her own fate if she gave her captor any trouble at all, Isabella sensed. Struggling mindlessly would avail her nothing. Better to remain calm so that, if an opportunity presented itself, she could use her wits to escape. To give way to the panic that threatened to overwhelm her would be useless.
With no care at all for her delicate bones or tender skin, Isabella found herself tossed facedown over a saddle. The leather creaked as a man mounted behind her. Isabella turned her head from the smell of wet horse and wet leather, her cheek resting against the beast’s soaked, heaving side. Then, with a surge of muscles, the horse was off, bounding over the ground in great jolting leaps.
Held in place as she was by the man’s hand on her back while her head spun sickeningly and her stomach churned, the truth of the matter occurred to Isabella in a blinding flash: for whatever purpose, she had just been kidnapped!
II
A
fter a bruising ride over rough terrain, the horses—for her hearing told her that there were other horses and riders with them—at last stopped. The man behind her swung down, as did the others, she thought. The rain had stopped, but the smell of it was everywhere. The cold grew worse as the clock approached what must have been midnight or beyond.
With about as much care as if she had been a sack of grain, Isabella was lifted down from the horse and hefted over a man’s shoulder again. Wordlessly he carried her inside what she assumed to be a house from the countless smells that assailed her nostrils as she passed out of the cold: cooking spices and peat-fueled fire, dust and tallow and a faint mustiness overlying all.
“Ye ’ave ’er, then?” It was a woman’s voice, coarse and low.
“As ye see.”
“Good, good. My, she be a wee little thing, ain’t she? Not dressed as fine as I thought, for a countess. Ye sure ye got the right one?”
“She be the countess, right enough.”
“Take ’er up, then. I got the room ready.”
Isabella was borne up a steep, narrow flight of stairs. Its dimensions became painfully obvious to her because her head banged against the wall several times during the ascent. When he reached the top he took only a few steps. There was the sound of a door opening, and he walked through it. Without warning, Isabella felt herself falling, to land on her back on a prickly, straw-stuffed mattress. She cried out at the unexpectedness of it, the sound muffled by the gag.
The woman
tch-tch
ed
.
“No more need for that, is there? There’s none to ’ear ’er no matter if she screams. No need to suffocate the poor thing.”
The man apparently shrugged, because the gag was fished from Isabella’s mouth. Her lips and tongue felt dry and swollen. Her jaws ached. She closed her mouth, swallowing painfully, even as she was flipped over onto her back and her hands were untied.
“She’s wet through. I s’pose she’d be glad to get them clothes off ’er.”
“I don’t see as it makes no difference whether she’s wet or not.”
“Ain’t you that ’as to nurse ’er if she sickens, is it?” the woman retorted.
“Do what you want,” the man replied, clearly indifferent.
“Besides, them clothes might look right nice on me.” The woman reached out to finger Isabella’s skirt. “ ’Tis good cloth, it is.”
The man snorted. “Aye, and you might just get the dress on, too, if you was to split yerself in ’alf!”
The woman gave an indignant cry. There was the sound of a slap, and half-playful wrestling. Isabella, her hands free, turned over cautiously, hoping they were too intent on themselves to notice her. Instinctively one hand rose to her blindfold.…
“Nah!” The man’s hand knocked hers away, the blow so hard that her fingers went numb from it. Then his hands were on her shoulders, shaking her. “You try that again, lady, and I’ll beat you clear to London and back. You understand me?”
“I—I understand!”
He stopped shaking her, pushing her back down against the mattress instead.
“What are you doing?” Isabella could feel him leaning over her, and her heart stood still. He said nothing in reply, but caught one wrist and lifted it high above her head. Isabella felt a rope pass around her wrist, and realized with a sinking feeling that she was being tied to the bed frame.
“But ’ow am I to get ’er dress off, then?” The woman sounded disappointed as Isabella was secured wrists and ankles.
“That’s your affair. But you’re not to untie ’er without me ’ere, understand? If she was to get loose, it would go ’ard with you.”
“Don’t you threaten me, you—”
“Understand?” His voice was suddenly cold. The woman quieted.
“Aye, aye then. I understand.” She sighed. “I s’pose I could cut the dress off ’er—but what good’s a cut dress?”
“You’ll ’ave to cut it to get into it anyway,” the man said without sympathy. The pair of them sounded as if they were moving away from the bed. Isabella heard the creak of floorboards, followed by the sound of the door being shut and the click of a key in the lock. She was left alone in the dark, bound hand and foot to a bedframe that her fingers told her was made of solid iron. She was wet through, shivering with cold, and more afraid than she had ever been in her life.
What was to come to her now?
III
A
s hours of captivity turned into days, physical misery was as constant a companion to Isabella as stark fear. She was untied twice a day, and permitted to remove her blindfold to use a chamber pot in relative privacy. She was left alone in the room for this business, while one of her captors—she thought it was always the same man, the one who had carried her inside that first night—remained in the hall just outside the open door until she was finished. When her blindfold was retied (which Isabella did herself on the man’s orders) he would come back in, and thrust a piece of bread and sometimes a bit of fish or game into her hand. Isabella would eat standing up, wolfing the food down so as to have time to finish. Then she would be permitted to drain the water from a mug, and retied in the same position as before. Her muscles screamed a protest each time, but she did not. The man’s brutal indifference gave her the feeling that he would have no compunction about clouting her over the head, did she give him any cause.
The room where she was being held was tiny, furnished only with the single iron bedstead, a rickety candlestand and a washstand with a pitcher and bowl, which she was never given the opportunity to use. Everything from the cobwebbed ceiling to the dusty plank floor was filthy. Under other circumstances, Isabella would have cringed at the idea of lying on the grimy mattress. It was bare of any bedding save the tattered quilt, gray with age and dirt, which they threw over her for warmth. Despite its condition, the coverlet’s protection was welcome against the icy nights passed without a fire lit in the blackened stone hearth. Shivering, glad of the bedding that would have revolted her under any other conditions, Isabella knew that she had more things to worry about than the possibility of nits. Like her life …
The woman—Isabella had overheard one of the men call her Molly—ordered Isabella out of her dress the first time she was untied, thus for Molly neatly solving the problem of whether or not to cut the much-admired cloth. Isabella protested timorously that she had nothing to put on instead, and after a moment was tossed what, from its width and lack of length, was one of Molly’s own gowns. It was of coarse kerseymere, in a truly dreadful shade of brown, and was so large it could wrap around Isabella twice. She looked at it in revulsion, but from her position in the hallway Molly warned that Isabella would be forcibly stripped if she did not obey. Horrified at the prospect, Isabella quickly took off her clothes—Molly wanted “every blessed stitch”—and donned Molly’s scratchy, dirty gown. It barely covered her calves, but in every other respect was so huge and shapeless on her that Isabella could have been any size beneath it. Molly was clearly a female of ample proportions. Isabella was allowed to keep her half-boots—Molly apparently had no hope of squeezing her feet into Isabella’s narrow shoes—but that was all. Even her stockings were taken from her! Scantily clad as she was after that exchange, Isabella suffered even more from the cold than she had before.
Once Molly got her hands on Isabella’s clothes, she seemed to lose all interest in her. Sometimes Isabella was aware of her presence as she performed some task in the room, but the woman never approached Isabella nor spoke to her directly. Isabella came to believe her primary purpose was to cook for the men, and care for their needs in other ways. Ways which Isabella tried not to think about. Although her fear of being intimately attacked by one of her captors receded as days passed without it happening, the possibility remained always in the back of her mind. If the other woman was there to take care of the men’s carnal needs, Isabella could only be thankful for her presence.