by Maren Smith
Behind me, Victoria shouted, “NOW look at what you’ve done! Get after her, you idiot! Do you think I want to be a cripple all of my life? GO!”
Feet came running after me, but I did not look around. Shoulders hunched, fists clenched, I stormed into my room, turned, and slammed the door just as hard as I knew how. Unfazed, Hawkhaven pushed it open again before the reverberations of my temper even faded away. The man had absolutely no respect for a good grump.
“Ella.”
“Get out!” I shouted.
He came in anyway. “I will not let you quit,” he said bluntly. I caught a glimpse of a warily curious Bess coming up the servant’s staircase just before he softly shut the door again.
“I will not stay here and let you spank me each time you are taken by the whim!” I snapped back. Grabbing my carpetbag, I threw it on the foot of my bed.
“I apologize for my actions,” he said quickly.
“You’ve said that before!” Refusing to be mollified, I began throwing and stuffing what few things I had scattered about the small room back into my bag. I grabbed my hairbrush off the night table and the better of my two dresses which, having been washed the night before, had been hung on a line by the window to dry. It was still damp, but I didn’t care. I stuffed and shoved it into my carpetbag. Turning in a full circle, I searched for anything else.
Hawkhaven braced himself in the doorway. “I don’t want you to go.”
“Well, then we have a problem,” I snarled as sweetly as possible. “Because I am not going to stay!”
Stomping to the trunk at the foot of my bed, I yanked it open and reached for the only thing inside: his pocket watch, wrapped so carefully and protectively in a handkerchief. The handkerchief was mine; I stuffed it into my carpetbag with the dress. The watch I threw at him. “Here!”
Hawkhaven made a startled attempt to catch it as it glanced off his chest, fell through his fingers and bounced across the floor at his feet. He hardly looked at it.
“I stole it from you,” I snarled. “The only thing I’ve ever done worth being spanked over. So, ha! Put THAT in your pipe and smoke it!” Yanking my apron off, I threw that at him, too.
This, he made absolutely no attempt to catch, and it fell on top of the watch. “We need to talk.” He held up his hand, still bright red from spanking me. “Calmly, if we can.”
“Ha!” I said again, and tried to get my sloppily packed carpetbag to close. After four furious seconds of struggling, I gave up and just grabbed the handles. Stomping towards the door, I ordered him, “Move!”
He didn’t budge, and I wasn’t anywhere near big or strong enough to force the issue.
“Fine!” I snapped around and stalked to the window.
“Don’t!” Hawkhaven said, his tone clearly stating he’d taken all he would out of my temper. “It’s a twenty-foot drop to the ground. You’ll break your leg, and then I’d have to spank you all over again.”
I snapped back around so fast I nearly knocked myself out the window. Throwing my bag on the floor, I shoved my sagging sleeves up past my elbows again, balled my hands into fists and took a stance against him. “Either you get out of my way, my lord, or I swear I will make you.”
He looked at me much the way Goliath must have stared at David. A cheering thought, really, seeing as how that had turned out so well.
“And here we are, at fisticuffs again.” Heaving a heavy sigh, Hawkhaven shook his head, but then he unplugged himself from the doorway. He came slowly towards me, stopping only when a mere foot’s empty distance separated his chest from my ready fists. He looked down at me with an almost tired resignation; I glared, my mouth a tightly compressed line, my muscles locked to give as good as I received.
He lulled me with a long moment of immobile silence, and then… well, I had no idea men could move so fast. He grabbed both my wrists before I could even blink and held on tight to me while I shrieked and struggled myself into futile acceptance. His grip was unbreakable; I wasn’t going anywhere.
Panting, seething, frustrated, without any other choice, I stopped fighting and glared at him. He wasn’t even winded.
Without a word, Hawkhaven transferred both my captured wrists into the grip of his left hand. He held me effortlessly while I threw myself into another brief but just as ineffective flurry of struggling. Only when I again grew quiet and still, did he pointedly take hold of my thumb and repositioned it from the side of my fist to the underneath. “When you go to hit someone, keep your thumb under your knuckles. Otherwise, you’ll break it.”
I wilted.
Without letting me go, he softly asked, “What can I do to make you want to stay?”
“Swear you will never—and I do mean never—spank me again.”
“No,” he quite simply replied. “But I will promise to never do so again in the presence of someone else.”
“That’s not good enough!”
“It’s going to have to be. Besides, where will you go?”
“As far from you as I can get!”
“Not if I refuse to let you from the house,” he replied. “Happily—in my case, albeit sadly in yours—that’s one of the benefits to having money. I could keep you here indefinitely, and the only person in the world who would object would be you. And Victoria,” he added, after a moment’s contemplation. “But she doesn’t count.”
He tried to smile, but I was having none of it.
“You are as spoiled as she is!” I spat. “Both of you are too stupid to know that in this world no one gets everything they want! Not me, not you. No one!”
“Why not?” he countered. “What do you want? Tell me, and I’ll give it to you.”
“You are the devil; I’ll not sell my soul so cheaply!” One last jerk, and I won my freedom from him, but only for a moment.
In a wink, he stepped in front of me, blocking my way to the door again. “I’ve already said I’m sorry, Ella, what more can I do to appease your temper? I never should have spanked you in front of Victoria. I never should have spanked you at all. You were only trying to help; I see that now. But pause a moment and consider how it looked from my standing. You were sitting on my crippled, baby sister, choking her ankles while she screamed in agony! God only knows there are times I would like to strangle her myself, but for you to do so was completely inappropriate. You are her companion. You’re supposed to care for her.”
“I was—”
“I know you were,” he interrupted soothingly. “I know that now, at any rate. But perhaps before you begin any volatile new therapies that might easily be mistaken for physical violence… perhaps you could warn me first? Maybe even give me a chance to plug wax in my ears, because really… those screams were enough to scare the dead.”
He was dreadfully annoying when he was right.
“Please, Ella. My lovely Ella.” His hands caressed my arms, rekindling remnants of last night’s dreams. “Please. Tell me you’ll stay.”
My anger faltered. I’m not sure what irritated me more, his charming smile or my wishy-washy resolve.
“Don’t call me that,” I huffed, petulant, already knowing that I had lost. “You have just made my bottom very sore. I’m not your lovely anything right now.”
“Give it time,” he cheerfully prophesied.
Scowling, I snatched my carpetbag off the bed and threw it back into the trunk again. I all but slammed the lid; I was so frustrated with myself.
Knowing he had won, Hawkhaven bent to press a chaste kiss to my forehead. “Thank you.”
Damn the man for having a smile that would melt a girl’s insides the way he did mine. “You should go,” I said, thoroughly disgruntled with myself. “People are talking enough as it is.”
He obliged me, as his smile clearly said. But at least he left.
Thoroughly irritated with myself now as much as with him, I flopped down to sit at the edge of my bed. Unfortunately, the instant my bottom met the mattress, I was reminded of just how sore he’d made me. I sucked a sha
rp breath, vaulting immediately back to my feet once more.
“Oh!” I caught my backside in very tender hands, closing my eyes as I groaned, and then my temper exploded all over again. I grabbed my pillow, strangled it soundly and then flung it back on the bed. Stamping my foot in absolute vexation, I swore, “Bollocks!”
I only felt marginally better.
Chapter Nine
Victoria was beastly when she was bitter, but somehow being eager made her worse. As big a fight as it was to get her to move her legs in the first place, it was ten times more difficult to get her to stop even after she had exercised herself into a state of near exhaustion. No one could fault her for trying, though. She threw everything that she was into the effort to stand, but after four years of lying bedridden, try all she might, it wasn’t going to happen in less than a day. And I was never so grateful as when the day grew late, night fell, dinner passed, and Victoria finally decided to go to bed.
Once she was settled in comfortably among her pillows, a candle within easy reach and a book to read until she was weary enough to sleep, I shuffled my way back to my room. Picking my apron up off the floor, I groaned when I saw the watch. I had forgotten all about it.
Apparently, so had Hawkhaven.
Bending down just to pick it up was almost painful, but I snagged the chain between two fingers and groaned as I straightened up again. Rubbing the small of my back, I shuffled to my trunk and dropped it into my carpetbag.
My shoulders, back, and arms were actually aching when I lowered myself to sit on my bed. For a moment I just sat there, not moving, knowing I should put a brush through my hair, but completely unable to summon the energy. Even knowing the mane of tangles I would have to contend with when I awoke in the morning, I was just too tired to do anything more than slip off my uniform and crawl beneath the cool sheets.
I sighed as one by one, my muscles began to relax. As I lay there, the feathered length of my lashes just dropping drowsily to brush my cheeks, I thought I heard Victoria’s muted voice cry out, “No, I can’t!”
A very selfish part of me wished I could just bury my head in my pillow and pretend I hadn’t heard a thing. But fast on the heels of her protests came a man’s low tones, words spoken so softly that I couldn’t make out anything he’d said through the wall. Reluctantly, I opened my eyes.
“No,” Victoria said again, and wincing a little at the soreness in my limbs, I propped myself up on my elbows, turning my face in the darkness towards her room, and listened.
“Yes.” Now, that I heard quite clearly and it wasn’t Hawkhaven’s voice.
Shortly after dinner, Hawkhaven’s friend, the constable, had arrived at the front door. As far as I knew, both men were still ensconced in the study, drinking, playing cards, and talking about whatever it was that men discussed when women weren’t present.
There was only one other man I could think of who would be in Victoria’s room this late at night: Mr. Cufflink.
Pushing back the blankets, I crawled out of bed. Dressed in only my nightgown, without even a wrap to pull around me, I crept from my room. I had a moment of torn indecision as I wondered where to go, towards Victoria’s room to my left or the stairs to my right.
What if I was mistaken? If Hawkhaven was in that room arguing with his sister, then my running downstairs to alert the nearest passerby of an outside intruder, would make me look very silly. Even worse, it wasn’t outside the realm of possibility that I had dreamed the voices. As I stood hesitating in the hallway, I couldn’t hear any voices at all. Hesitating, I glanced towards Victoria’s door. At the very least, I ought to be sure of what I was going downstairs to report.
I had never been very good at listening at keyholes. Unfortunately, tonight did not prove the exception to the rule. I had barely reached the door and was just crouching down to peek through the keyhole when I stepped on a loose board. I closed my eyes, my shoulders sagging in defeat a bare instant before the door flew open. It was at once gratifying and dismaying to realize I had not been dreaming the voices. Nor was the man in question Hawkhaven. Instead, I found myself staring up into the dark, angular face of a complete stranger. A gentleman, obviously, and not a happy one at that. He glared down at me, his black eyes narrowing, the fiercest of scowls digging deep furrows around his mouth.
“Who—Oh!” I shrieked when he grabbed me by the scruff of my nightgown, yanking me into the room with Victoria and himself.
He slammed the door. Throwing the lock, he tucked the key into his coat pocket before jerking me around and knocking me bodily back against the thick wood panels. I cried out when the door latch dug into the small of my back, but even that small sound was strangled into silence when his hand locked around my throat and squeezed. “In my house, servants who listen at doors are whipped!”
“Albert, no!” Victoria cried. Stranded on her mountain of pillows, she could do naught but yell at us from her bed. “That’s Ella! She’s the one who’s going to help me walk again!”
Before my eyes, the dark stranger went from angry to coldly enraged in less time than it took for me to blink. He yanked me clean off my feet and shook me like a rag. In a voice that boomed, he scolded me, “What right have you, charlatan, to raise her hopes that way? Do you think she has not suffered enough?”
“No! Don’t hurt her! Please!” Victoria began to cry. “Please, if you love me, don’t hurt her. I want to walk again, Albert. I w-want to w-walk!”
If anything, her pleas made him all the angrier.
“See what you have done!” For a brief instant my feet touched the floor when he released my throat. I stumbled backwards, coughing and gasping, but his fisted grip on my nightclothes kept me upright and before I could take my first unhindered breath, the flat of his other hand slapped me sharply across the cheek and mouth.
He knocked me all the way down. My head smacked against the floorboards. My own teeth cut into my cheek and lips, filling my mouth with the cloyingly metallic taste of copper. I spat out the welling blood rather than swallow it, and the whole room spun dizzily before my eyes. Blackness edged in around me. Oh, how the temptation to give in to it teased me, but Albert’s low hiss in my ear drove the darkness back.
“For your sake, I hope you can do as you promised her. Because if you can’t, I will make your death as miserable as you have just made my life.” He pushed back from me, climbing slowly to his feet. “Get up.”
My head still spinning, I covered my aching mouth with my hand to catch the dribbling blood I couldn’t force myself to swallow. Slowly, I pulled my legs under me to stand, but when I wobbled unsteadily, Albert lost what little patience he had. Grabbing the back of my dress, he hauled me roughly to my feet and shoved me onto the bed next to Victoria.
“She complicates matters,” he said, glaring at me.
“No.” Victoria reached out to take my hand. “She only reinforces what I’ve been saying. We don’t have to elope right now. Let’s wait. I-I want to wait.”
“Wait?” Albert laughed harshly. “Wait for what? Do you honestly think your brother will ever change his mind about me? If he refuses my suit while you are bedridden, there is no way in hell he will ever accept it if you—”
Her eyes grew large and wounded. “If?”
“I mean when, when you begin walking again. Tory, my love,” Albert went to kneel at her side, stealing her hand from mine and giving me a contemptuous look that had me scooting all the way to the foot of the bed. “Do you love me?”
My mouth throbbing, blood dripping slowly between my fingers, I could only watch in dismay as she nodded. “You know I do.”
“Then trust in me.” He bent to kiss her fingers, and then stood up. “We will have to leave most of your things behind, but I promise you, love, when I take you home, you’ll never want for anything. Whatever your heart desires, I’ll buy it for you.” He marched to the wardrobe. Swinging open both doors, he pulled out a shawl and heavy dress, stockings and shoes. As he turned, his eyes fell on the jewelry box
on Victoria’s dressing table. He got that too, as well as the silver brush and matching gilded mirror. As he brought his bundle to the foot of the bed, he asked, “Tory, my love, where is your luggage?”
“I-I don’t know. But Ella just arrived. She would have a bag of some sort, I’m sure.”
Every muscle within tensed when Albert’s dark stare locked on me. “Well?”
“It’s a small bag,” I whispered.
He came around the bed with all the focused intent of a charging bull. Letting go of my throbbing mouth, I jumped to my feet when he reached for me, but he caught the back of my neck anyway. “Let’s go get it then.”
Frightened, I let myself be steered back to the door without a single protest. What should I do, try to run? With his tight grip on my neck, it wasn’t likely that I could break away and, even if I did, I doubt I’d get very far before he caught up with me again. What else was there? Screaming the house down came to mind, but with all the screaming and howling Victoria and I had engaged in over the last few days, even if someone should hear us, would anyone come to investigate?
Taking the key from his pocket, he growled, “Whatever you think you’re going to try, don’t. You might be able to get away from me without serious injury” —his voice lowered for my ears alone— “but just think what I’ll do if you can’t.”
I waited by his side while he opened the door, hardly daring to move even just to breathe or to swallow. I still tasted blood in my mouth, but the bleeding had almost stopped. Mostly now, my mouth just hurt and my stomach was starting to feel queasy.
Holding tight to me, Albert peeked out into the hall, glancing quickly down both directions before opening the door further. His hand on the back of my neck, he steered me out into the hall. “Which way?”
I pointed to my room and he walked me to the door. Just as we reached it, I thought I heard footfalls on the stairs. Albert’s hand on the back of my neck became a vise. He shoved me into the room and quickly, quietly shut the door, cloaking us in absolute darkness. Leaning against the door, he pulled me tight against him and covered my mouth with his hand. My lips throbbed and burned, particularly when I felt the sudden sweat of his palm stinging into the cut from his blow.