The fog vanished.
The man was totally naked.
Keep an eye out for THE DEADLIEST SIN by Caroline Richards, coming next month!
The air was like a heavy linen sheet pressed against Julia’s face, yet a cold sweat plastered her chemise and dress to her body. It was peculiar, this ability to retreat into herself, away from the pain numbing her leg and away from the threat that lay outside this suffocating room.
A few moments, an hour, or a day passed. She found herself sitting, her limbs trembling against the effort. Guilt choked her, a tide of nausea threatening to sweep away the tattered edges of her self-regard. Why had she ignored Meredith’s warnings and accepted Wadsworth’s invitation to photograph his country estate? Julia felt for the ground beneath her, flexing stiff fingers, a film of dust gathering under her nails. If she could push herself higher, lean against a wall, allow the blood to flow…
The pain in her leg was a strange solace. As were thoughts of Montfort, her refuge, the splendid seclusion where her life with her sister and her aunt had begun. She could remember nothing else, her early childhood an empty canvas, bleached of memories. Lady Meredith Woolcott had offered a universe onto itself. Protected, guarded, secure—for a reason.
Julia’s mouth was dry. She longed for water to wash away her remorse. New images crowded her thoughts, taking over the darkness in bright bursts of light. Meredith and Rowena waving to her from the green expanse of lawn at Montfort. The sun dancing on the tranquil pond in the east gardens. Meredith’s eyes, clouded with worry, that last afternoon in the library. Wise counsel from her aunt that Julia had chosen, in her defiance, to ignore, warnings that were meant to be heeded. Secrets that were meant to be kept.
She ran a shaking hand through the shambles of her hair, her bonnet long discarded somewhere in the dark. She pieced together her shattered thoughts. When had she arrived? Last evening or days ago? A picture began to form. Her carriage had clattered up to a house, a daunting silhouette, all crenellations and peaks, chandeliers glittering coldly into the gathering dusk. The entryway had been brightly lit, the air infused with the perfume of decadence, sultry and heavy. That much she could remember before her mind clamped shut.
The world tilted and she ground her nails into the stone beneath her palms for balance. She should be sobbing by now but her eyes were sandpaper dry. Voices echoed in the dark, or were they footsteps, corporal and real? Her ears strained and she craned her neck upward, peering into the thick darkness. There was a sense of vibration more than sounds themselves, hearing as the deaf hear. Footsteps, actual or imagined, would do her no good. She felt the floor around her, imagining a prison of rotted wood and broken stone, even though logic told her there had to be an entranceway. Taking a deep breath, she twisted onto her left hip, arms flailing to find purchase, to heave herself into a standing position. Not for the first time in her life, she cursed the heavy skirts, entangled now with her legs, the painful fire burning higher.
No wall. Nothing to lean upon. If she could at least stand—She pushed herself up on her right elbow, wrestling aside her skirts with an impatient hand. The fabric tore, the sound muffled in the darkness. The white-hot pain no longer mattered, nor did the bile flooding her throat. Pulling her legs beneath her, she dragged herself up, swaying like a mad marionette without the security of strings.
The silence was complete because she’d stopped breathing. Arms outstretched, her hands clutched at air. Just one small step, one after the other, and she would encounter a wall, a door, something. She bit back a silent plea. Hadn’t Meredith taught them long ago about the uselessness of prayer?
And then it happened. Her palms were halted by the sensation of solid stone. Instinctively, she stilled, convinced that she was losing her mind. The sensation of breath, the barely perceptible rise and fall of a chest beneath her opened palms. Where there had been black there was now a shower of stars in front of her eyes, a humming in her head.
And then she saw him, without the benefit of light or the quick trace of her fingers, but behind her unseeing eyes.
She took a step back in the darkness, away from him. The man who wanted her dead.
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Copyright © 2010 Amy J. Fetzer
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ISBN: 978-0-7582-6074-1
Damage Control Page 40