by Sandra Dubay
The coachman came abreast of Bertran as Justin disappeared into the darkness.
"Resurrection men," he muttered knowingly. "Mark my words."
''Resurrec? Body snatchers, you mean?" Bertran was appalled. It was common knowledge, of course, that such dastardly men provided medical schools with ill-gotten cadavers needed to fill the needs of research and dissection laboratories, but surely such a horrible fate would not come to Miss Dyanna!
The coachman shrugged. "It 'appens. But they might only be grave robbers. Was the lady wearin' jools?"
"She has pearls," Charlotte told him. "Ear-drops. And a diamond necklace."
"Not any more, I reckon," the coachman said grimly.
"I'm going to help his lordship," Bertran told them, pulling on his own coat and taking up a second pistol. "They may be desperate men."
"Hurry! Hurry, please," Charlotte begged. "Don't let them touch Miss Dyanna!"
The chapel was dark and deserted when Justin reached it. In the shadowy depths, he could see Dyanna's coffin still lying on its makeshift bier.
He scowled, wondering if he could have been mistaken after all. Had he, in his grief, been deluded? Were his senses so addled that he had begun to see things that were not there? It seemed so.
With a heavy sigh, he turned toward the door. Then he stopped. Something was not right. He looked back toward the altar, staring for a long, puzzled moment before the realization struck him.
The black coffin lay as he'd left itwith one alteration. The lid, which he'd not been able to see sealed shut and which he'd left propped against the bier, was now firmly atop the oblong box.
Striding to the bier, he twisted viciously at the latches that secured the top to the black lacquered casket. One after the other, he freed them. When at last the final latch had given way, Justin flung back the lid. Inside, carefully spaced along the satin interior to provide the necessary weight to give the illusion of a body, were wet and shining stones, apparently brought from the rubble outside.
"Damnation!" he thundered.
Whirling, he ran for the door, nearly colliding with Bertran at the doorway.
"She's gone!" he shouted. "They've taken her!"
Together the men scoured the wet ground for some sign of the direction the villains had taken. In the mud and sodden grass they found evidence of booted feet. Bending low in the darkness, they followed the tracks, moving off into the night through the dripping undergrowth.
"Milord," Bertran hissed when they'd gone some distance. "I hear them!"
Justin paused to listen. Over the noise of the downpour, he could hear voices. His hand slipped inside his coat and wrapped around the butt of his pistol. Bertran, at his side, did the same, but Justin shook his head.
"Once we've caught them," he told the valet, "I will hold them and you must go for help."
"But if there are several, milord," Bertran protested, "might it not be wiser for the two of us to herd them all back to the Hall?"
Justin considered it. Truth to tell, he did not greatly care what became of the men. They were animals, scavengers who preyed upon the dead. They deserved to be shot, in his opinion, but the law did not agree. Though English law could, and did, hang children of seven or eight for a single act of petty theft, a body snatcher was merely imprisoned. A dead body, unlike gold or silver, was not regarded as an article of great value.
"Let us just get Dyanna back," he told the valet. "If one of them attacks, shoot him. Otherwise, do nothing."
As they came closer to their quarry, Justin realized that the men had stopped. Their voices were raised. They were quarreling.
"The doctor'll pay a pretty penny for this one," one of them was saying. "She's a little beauty, and fresher'n the others. We might get eight or ten pound for 'er from the right man."
"She's quality," a second voice pointed out. "It's not like the others. She ain't a drunkard or a whore or a derelict. It ain't like she won't be missed by anybody."
"We put the stones in the box. They'll never know the difference."
"But supposin' they do? Just take the necklace and the earbobs, I say, and be done with it. Leave the body if you don't want to risk takin' it back, but"
"Shh! I hear somebody! There's"
Justin stepped out of the undergrowth, his pistol drawn. At the sight of the long, gleaming barrel fixed on them, the two men shrank back.
"I ought to shoot you where you stand," he snarled, stepping over Dyanna as she lay on the sodden ground, the rough, dirty blanket thrown back, the rain pouring over her, soaking her to the skin. "Filth, that's what you are. You deserve to hang."
"Please, m'lord," the taller, dirtier of the two begged. "We got to eat, you know, and bodies, they ain't no use to no one ceptin' the doctors. We got to make a livin'."
"You make a living selling the flesh of other human beingscondemning them to dissection in some surgeon's theater. You"
"My lord" Bertran hissed from behind him.
"Not now," he snarled, not taking his eyes from the two body snatchers. "Stay were you are, damn you!"
"Milord!" Bertran said again.
"Damn it all, man, I said not now!" Justin waved his pistol at the two men, who were stumbling backwards, their eyes wide with horror, their mouths twin open in shock. "I said hold your ground!"
But the two men, disregarding Justin's orders and the lethal weapon trained on them, whirled in the mud and stumbled off into the darkness.
"What in the hell?" Justin began.
"Milord!" Bertran cried.
"What is it, man!" Justin turned. "You were supposed to help"
His words died, strangled in a throat suddenly choked with shock and amazement.
On the ground, her clothes sodden, her hair hanging in lank, dripping rivulets, her face awash with the chilling raindrops that made her shiver, made her teeth chatter, Dyanna was half-sitting, half-leaning in Bertran's arms.
Her hand, atremble, was raised to her head; her fingers, bloodless, white, and icy-cold, probed the bruised cut that had caused her death-like unconsciousness.
His heart pounding in his chest, Justin came to her and knelt in the mud beside her. As his eyes searched her face, the droplets that ran down his cheeks were not entirely composed of rain.
"Dyanna," he whispered, still unable to believe the evidence of his own eyes. "Dyanna. Can it be? You're alive?"
"Whowho were those men?" she whispered. "What am I doing here?"
"Those men were body snatchers. They stole you from the chapel."
"Body snatchers? Chapel? I don't understand."
Justin smothered a smile; he felt almost giddy with relief. "The chapel at McBride Hall," he told her, pulling off his coat to wrap around her. "We were going to bury you tomorrow morning."
"Bury me? Bury me!" She shrugged out of the coat. "But I'm not dead!"
"But Dyanna, we thought . . ."
With Bertran's help, she struggled to her feet. "You were going to put me down there in that cryptalive!" Her eyes were wide with horror. "You fiend! You inhuman fiend! I hate you! I'll hate you until I die! Why couldn't you have left me alone? Why couldn't you have let me marry Geoffrey!"
His face stony, his voice as cold as the chilling rain that drenched them all, Justin rose and said, "I wish I had, Dyanna. Then I would be well and truly rid of you!"
Turning on his heel, he strode off into the dark, rain-washed forest, leaving Bertran to help Dyanna back to the Hall.
Chater Twenty-Three
The great black traveling coach rumbled through the countryside once more, resuming its travels, albeit at a far faster pace than when it had been part of the sad little funeral procession. Inside, Dyanna reclined on one of the wide, tufted velvet seats. Wrapped in a fur rug, she tried to concentrate on the book in her lapa novel Justin had procured from someone in the village near McBride Halltried, without much success, to ignore Charlotte's stares. The maid gazed at her raptly, as if she had indeed arisen from the dead rather than merely from unconsci
ousness caused by the blow to her head.
"Dyanna? Are you getting tired?" Justin asked, drawing his mount abreast of the coach window. He sat the great, thundering horse as if he and the beast were one, but Dyanna was in no mood to admire him.
"I'm fine," she snapped. "No thanks to you."
"You'll feel better after you've rested. I want a doctor to look at you once we're back in London."
"London," she muttered as he disappeared, dropping back to ride beside Bertran behind the coach. "Back to DeVille House. Back to watching the world pass by from the window."
Sighing, she returned to her book. She was over-dramatizing her plight and she knew it. But for the moment she enjoyed wallowing in the luxurious depths of self-pity. She'd forgotten for the moment how relieved she'd been to see Justin galloping toward her, rescuing her from a marriage she'd come to want desperately to escape. She'd forgotten that if it hadn't been for Justin, she'd be at Patterton Park at that very moment, at the mercy of Geoffrey's whims, under the censorious eyes of that domineering, critical mother of his. She would have been listening as they planned the restoration of their crumbling estate, watching as they plundered her inheritance to restore Patterton Park to its former glory.
All she knew at that moment, as she rode through the mauve and blue twilight toward
London, was that she was being returned to the silken prison from which she'd escaped only days before. DeVille House. She would be safe there, within those beautiful walls, safe from scheming fortune hunters like Geoffrey Culpepper. Her inheritance would be securebut what of her heart?
Leaning forward on the seat, she looked out through the small, oval window in the back of the coach. Justin was there, riding beside Bertran. His strong, handsome face was set in grim, hard lines. His brown coat still bore traces of her bloodstains left there when he had carried her from the road's edge to the rectory where, according to what Charlotte had told her, the village doctor had pronounced her dead.
Dyanna gazed at Justin. He held the reins in his gauntleted hands with such assurance. The powerful, plunging animal beneath him was completely in his command.
A shiver coursed through her. Her senses, too, were in his command. A look from those gleaming, golden eyes could shatter her composure. A touch of his hand set her senses awhirl. The feelings he evoked inside her made the dreamy, romantic sentiments that passed for love in the novels she read seem pale and insipid. It frightened her to be so much in his thrall.
Inevitably, she took refuge in her daydreams, but even there, he haunted her. The masterful, handsome heroes of her fantasies all seemed to have Justin's face now. When they spoke, it was in his voice. She could not escape him, it seemed, in reality or imagination.
She was jerked out of her reverie when the carriage slowed and turned, passing beneath a stone arch barely wide enough to accommodate the massive bulk of the coach. Dyanna looked out the window and saw a pretty, vine-covered, half-timbered building. Above the door, a sign proclaimed it to be The Black Swan.
Dismounting, Justin came to the coach while Bertran went inside to order accommodations.
"It's getting dark," he told Dyanna as he opened the door. "We'd better stop for the night."
Drawing her pelisse about her, Dyanna waited until Justin had drawn off his riding gauntlets, then took the hand he offered to steady her as she descended from the coach.
Inside the warm, fragrant inn, where the smells of food cooking in the kitchen and being served in the dining room welcomed them, the hostess hurried up to them.
"Give you good evening, my lord," the rosy-cheeked, aproned woman said, bobbing a curtsy. Her wide, dark eyes lingered on Dyanna. who leaned on Justin's arm as they stood in the darkly paneled hall. "Oh! Is milady ill? I can send my boy to fetch a doctor, milord.''
"The lady is fine, madam," Justin replied. "She has been ill. What she needs most now is rest. And perhaps something hot from your kitchen."
"Right away, my lord," the woman promised. "I'll show you to your rooms at once."
Supported by Justin, Dyanna mounted the stairs. She felt weary; the lingering aftereffects of her ordeal seemed to have robbed her limbs of their strength. She leaned heavily on Justin as they climbed the steep, curving staircase.
At the top of the stairs, Justin paused and looked down into Dyanna's half-closed, fatigued eyes. With a gentle smile, he slipped an arm beneath her knees and lifted her. Then, as if carrying nothing more substantial than a down pillow in his arms, he followed the Black Swan's hostess to the rooms Bertran had bespoken for his master and his master's ward.
"My best room, my lord," the hostess said proudly as she stood back to allow Justin to carry Dyanna into a pretty chamber in which the four-poster was hung with pale spring-green brocade.
"Will the lady need help?" the hostess asked, watching as Justin carefully set Dyanna in a chair near the fireplace where a low fire had been kindled.
"Her maid will be along," Justin told her.
"Perhaps if you could see to supper? Nothing elaborate, something warm and simple."
With another bobbing curtsy, the proprietress left the room, passing Charlotte who carried both Dyanna's carpetbag and her own.
"She's almost asleep," Justin told the maid. "Get her into her nightgown and see if you can persuade her to eat something before she goes to sleep. The hostess has gone to fetch something for supper."
"Justin?" Dyanna murmured, as Charlotte coaxed her to her feet and began unfastening her gown.
"His lordship has gone to his room, I believe, miss," Charlotte told her. "I'm to help you into your nightgown. Supper will be here directly."
"I'm not very hungry." Dyanna's voice was muffled as Charlotte pulled her nightgown over her head and tugged it down into place. "But I'm suddenly so tired."
"It's not surprising after what you've been through," Charlotte decided. "And now, having to go back to London . . ." She shook her head mournfully. "And where, I'd like to know, is poor Lord Geoffrey?''
A knock at the door came as a welcome interruption for Dyanna, who had no desire to hear Charlotte prosing on and on about poor Lord Geoffrey. She remembered all too clearly Geoffrey's face as he revealed the truth of his supposed love for herit was not Dyanna who was so irresistable to him, but her fortune.
"Please answer that, Charlotte," Dyanna asked coolly. She smiled politely as the door was opened and the inn's proprietress carried in a tray filled with wine, rolls, and steaming, fragrant stew.
"I hope this will please you, milady," the woman said, her envious eyes taking in every detail of Dyanna's flowing nightdress and wrapper of delicate lawn frothed with lace at the hem and banding the bottom of the satin-bowed, elbow-length pagoda sleeves.
"I'm sure it will," Dyanna told her. "Thank you, Mrs?"
"Lambton, ma'am. If there is anything else . . ."
"I will send my maid with a message if there is anything I require," Dyanna assured her, ignoring Charlotte's look of chagrin at the thought of being sent downstairs like a lowly page.
"Very good, ma'am." With a last look at the beautiful young girl she thought must surely be wife to the handsome lord who had carried her upstairs, Mrs. Lambton started for the door.
"Mrs. Lambton?" Dyanna called as the door started to swing shut behind the woman.
"Milady?"
"Did my lord bespeak a room for Charlotte as well?"
Mrs. Lambton's reply drowned Charlotte's soft gasp of surprise and dismay. "He did, milady. Two doors up the hall on this same side. He said he did not know if you would wish your maid to stay with you or not, so he asked for the room to be sure."
"Thank you, Mrs. Lambton."
It was not until Dyanna sat down at the elegant little table and unfolded her napkin that she raised her eyes to meet Charlotte's hurt stare.
"Am I not to stay with you tonight, miss?" she asked plaintively. "What if you are ill in the night? What if you cannot sleep? What if?"
"Oh, do hush," Dyanna insisted. "You will be t
wo doors away, Charlotte. If I need you, I can call you." She sighed, seeing Charlotte's expression of woe deepen. "Oh, come and sit down. We'll have supper before you retire."
By the time their supper had been eaten and the dishes removed, Charlotte had made Dyanna feel sufficiently guilty that she allowed her to turn down her bed and brush her hair for far longer than it required.
"That is enough," Dyanna said at last, gently but firmly taking the silver-backed brush from the maid's hand. "I am very tired, Charlotte. I want to sleep now. I will see you in the morning."
"And you will not hesitate" the maid began.
Dyanna interrupted her wearily. "I will call you immediately if I need you," she promised.
Reluctantly, Charlotte left and Dyanna, relieved at last to be away from the maid's smothering concern, walked to the windows where the pale green draperies had been drawn against the night drafts that found their way through the window.
Her hands trembled as she drew her lawn wrapper tighter around her. She heard the door behind her open once more and scowled, thinking the maid's persistence was bordering on insolence.
"I said I would call you if I needed you, Charlotte," she said, an angry edge to her voice.
"It is not Charlotte," Justin said.
Turning in a swirl of lawn and lace, Dyanna found Justin standing just inside the door. Her sea-blue eyes met his gleaming golden gaze and were captured in their Fathomless, captivating depths.
"I came to see if you were all right," he told her. "And to say good-night."
Dyanna nodded, her loosened, flowing hair shimmering like spun silver in the candlelight. "I am well," she replied. "Thank you."
Smiling, Justin toyed with the unbuttoned cuff of his rolled-up sleeve. He felt suddenly awkward, gauche as a schoolboy. "Well, I suspect you'd prefer I left so you can go to bed."
Dyanna hesitated. No! she wanted to cry. No, stay with me. Hold me, tell me that you followed me to Derbyshire, took me back from Geoffrey, because you love me and not merely because in the eyes of the law you are my master.
In the end, she only nodded. "I am rather tired," she murmured, eyes downcast.