by Mary Balogh
The Duke of Chicheley was beside himself with impotent rage, for there seemed to be no way of tracking the man or men who had abducted his daughter. He hired some Bow Street Runners and raged at their failure to turn up the kidnappers within the first day.
Lord Poole was in a taking. Sympathetic as everyone appeared to be to his plight, he could not shake from his mind the impression that he was being laughed at.
“It was damned poor timing,” he grumbled to Martin when the latter called on him at his town house on Berkeley Square. “Why could they not have taken her the day before? And why right outside the church? You may depend upon it, Honywood, that they wanted to embarrass me. And what better way to do it?”
Lord Poole made no effort to find Elizabeth even though he seemed to feel that he was responsible for her disappearance. He left that to her family. Meanwhile he pondered ways of restoring his self-esteem. And ways of promoting his own flagging political interests.
Martin had been able to settle to nothing since watching helplessly as a masked man had ridden off with his stepsister. He paced endlessly at home. He called on Lord Poole frequently on the chance that perhaps a message had been sent there rather than to Grosvenor Square. Several times he felt on the edge of panic. For if three days had passed and there had been no word, perhaps she was dead. Or perhaps she was a victim of those traders in beautiful white females to the East. He forced that particular thought from him as blessedly unlikely-Elizabeth was twenty-five years old.
Only one’ thought consoled Martin during those dreadful days. If she came back— when she came back—she was going to be suffering from her long ordeal. One could only imagine the indignities to which she might have been subjected. The chances were strong that she would no longer wish to marry Poole or that he would no longer be willing to marry her. That at least was a pleasing prospect.
She would be his again, Martin thought. His to comfort. He would take her back home to Kingston Park and live there quietly with her until she relaxed and grew contented once more. Perhaps she would never grow restless again after this. Perhaps this time she would have learned once and for all that the world beyond Kingston had nothing but pain and heartache and indignity to offer her.
Perhaps this time she would be content to stay for the rest of her life.
But first of all she had to be found. She had to be returned. And that fact would set him to pacing again and to feeling close to panic again.
At the end of the third day he went alone into the library and sat down behind the oak desk. Merely waiting was accomplishing nothing, he realized. And in all likelihood the Bow Street Runners would come up with no news more satisfying than that Elizabeth had disappeared off the face of the earth. They would not have a motive for finding her stronger than money. Martin had a stronger motive.
He loved her.
Panicking would not find her, he told himself. And waiting patiently for her kidnappers to communicate with him was likely to make him an old man. If she was to be found, then he was going to have to do it himself. And yet it seemed a formidable task. Perhaps an impossible one.
What questions could he ask himself? Who had taken her? A masked man. There was nothing to be gained from that fact. There was no clue as to the man’s identity. Where had she been taken? It was impossible to know. Somewhere inside the city, perhaps, or somewhere outside. There was no lead there. Why had she been taken? It was impossible to know. And yet Martin’s mind paused on the question. If there was one area in which guesses—educated guesses—might help him, this was the one. Why had she been taken? What were the possible motives?
He listed them in his mind. Money. And yet after three days there had been no word from her abductor, no demand for ransom. It might yet come, of course, but it was no longer safe to assume that that had been the reason for the kidnapping.
What else, then? Embarrassment for Poole? Martin dismissed the idea without any great consideration. Poole had already been embarrassed by the news from Paris and its effect on the British people.
Love? Was someone so in love with Elizabeth that he would forceably prevent her marriage to someone else? It was a possibility.
She was a beautiful woman and she had had several suitors since her return to London. But was anyone that deeply in love with her, that desperate? Impossible. Martin would have known. He had gone everywhere with his stepsister since their return from the country, and she told him everything. She had no secrets from him. No, there was no one.
Revenge? But revenge against whom? Poole he had already ruled out. The duke? The duke undoubtedly had enemies, but any who would get back at him in such a way? It seemed very unlikely. Against himself, then? But Martin had no enemies. If revenge were the motive, it had to be against Elizabeth herself. But everyone loved Elizabeth. No one hated her enough to kidnap her. She had been in London for only a few months. Before that she had been at Kingston for more than six years, alone with him most of the time, and before that . . .
Martin stared fixedly ahead of him for a long time. But no, it was impossible. Atwell had gone to Canada, telling Elizabeth before he went that he would never return. Besides, the man was a coward. He had gone running at the first hint of trouble. He had not even waited for the full storm to break over his head. Perhaps he did not even know that there had been a storm.
No, it could not be Atwell. And yet, he thought as his mind was preparing to move on to another possibility, the Earl of Trevelyan had died a year or so ago, had he not? That meant that Atwell was now the earl and owner of Penhallow and his father’s fortune. Would he have come back for that? But if he had returned, would he not have stayed as far away from Elizabeth as it was possible to be?
No, Atwell was incapable of displaying the sort of courage the masked man had shown in abducting Elizabeth. He could have hired someone to do it for him, of course. Perhaps he had been waiting in the carriage that had undoubtedly been in readiness just beyond the square.
Martin sat at the desk for a while longer, trying to think of other possible motives for the crime. But there was nothing. His mind drew a blank. And so it returned eventually to the only possibility he had been able to think of, unlikely as it was to be true.
At least, he thought, it should be fairly easy to test out the theory.
If the kidnapper was Atwell, then he must have come to London either from Devonshire or from Canada. If he had come from the latter, then he must have arrived recently. It was early in the year for ships from North America. Besides, if he had been in London for more than a couple of days at the longest, then someone would have seen him and spread the word. Even an old scandal has the power to arouse a certain degree of gossip.
What he would do first, Martin decided, was send to find out what ships had come to London fcom Canada or America during the past week or two and what passengers they had been carrying. If that line of inquiry yielded nothing, then he would send someone to Devonshire to find out if Atwell, or Trevelyan as he now was, was in residence or had been until recently. The chances were, of course, that if he really was the kidnapper, he would have Elizabeth confined at Penhallow.
For a few moments Martin was on the verge of calling out his carriage and setting off for Devonshire himself without delay. But if his theory proved incorrect he would be wasting precious time by chasing false theories. He must have patience. Late in the day as it was—it was almost dinnertime—he summoned Macklin, his most trusted servant, and sent him to make some inquiries at the docks and wharves of the Thames.
Martin felt better than he had felt for days and ate a hearty dinner.
But he said nothing to the duke about his theory. If he was wrong, then he would merely make himself look foolish by explaining it. If he was right, then he wanted to be the one to discover Elizabeth and bring her back. He wanted her to owe her freedom to him. And so he hugged to himself the knowledge that perhaps, just perhaps, he was on the trail at last.
And yet the very excitement of the possibility bred its ow
n anxiety.
He missed her and he cursed the fact that always he had to vie for her attention, that he could no longer rely on the fact that they would always belong together as they had belonged when they were growing up. And the secret that only he knew and that no one else would ever know gnawed at him until he felt the familiar despairing fury.
It was spoiling his excitement, his hope that soon he would have her home again—not just home on Grosvenor Square, but home at Kingston, where she belonged. Where they belonged together; The fury was spoiling things, as it always did.
But there was no point in staying at the house every moment of the day and night as he had done for the past three days, he thought. The chance that a ransom note would be delivered now seemed very slim.
Waiting for one could only bring frustration. He was free then to go out, and perhaps by morning Macklin would have some news for him.
Martin looked in at the opera for a while, not to listen to the music or the singing, but to eye the dancers. But there was no one new, and he had lost interest in the only one he considered worth watching when he had discovered six weeks before—the night Elizabeth and Poole had announced their betrothal—that she dissolved too easily into tears.
He took himself off to the brothel to which he always returned, although he was constantly sampling new ones in the hope of finding one even better.
“Lisa,” he said to Madame Cartier, who always greeted her girls’ customers personally.
“She is busy, Mr. Honywood,” she said apologetically. “Will you wait? Or would you like to try Madeline? She is new and is proving very satisfactory. She is also blond, which is what you like, I know.”
Martin was always willing to try someone new. “Whips?” he asked.
“Anything,” Madame Cartier said, smiling graciously and leading the way upstairs and along the upper hallway, which was always surprisingly quiet. The rooms in which her girls conducted their business had been constructed with thick walls that let out almost no sound. “Madeline is very adaptable. ‘You will tell her whether you wish her to scream or endure in silence. She is quite capable of both.”
One reason Martin liked this particular brothel more than any other of its type was that here the customer was permitted to use the whips as well as have them used by the girls. Other establishments were too protective of their girls.
Martin opened the door indicated by Madame Cartier, stepped inside the dim room beyond, and closed the door behind him.
The girl was kneeling up on the bed facing him. She was naked.
Long blond hair covered her shoulders and draped over her heavy breasts. She smiled at him.
She was not unlike Elizabeth, Martin saw. Except that she was a slut and a whore. The fury he had felt at home earlier returned with greater intensity. He was instantly aroused. He turned to the row of hooks to the left of the door on which hung an assortment of whips and other flagellation devices. He selected a thin whip, the type he most favored, the type that would curl about the body. He would punish the slut with it, and then he would hand it to her and strip off his own clothes so that she could punish him.
His arousal became more painful. If she was good enough, the whipping would be sufficient and he would not have to soil himself with contact with her body. But rarely was it good enough. Usually he found himself grabbing the whip and hurling it aside and completing his own punishment inside the whore’s body. And so he would punish her in advance for her probable failure.
“Stay where you are,” he told the smiling girl, wrapping one end of the whip about his right hand and walking slowly toward the bed. “Scream if you will, but no one will rush to your rescue. You deserve what you are about to get, don’t you?”
“Yes, sir,” she said, still smiling, and reaching up one hand to move all her hair forward over her shoulders before resting both palms on the bed in front of her and dropping her head forward. “I’m a bad girl, sir.”
Martin looked down at her exposed back. At least she had the grace to admit her evil. But there were red marks already on her back to show that there had been other customers, that repentance and punishment were merely ways by which she plied her trade. And to think that such a slut could dare to inhabit the same world as Elizabeth.
He bared his teeth and raised the whip.
Once the danger of Elizabeth’s abduction was in the past and the crisis of her unconsciousness over, Christopher began to ask himself why he had got into such a mess. Why had he kidnapped her in the first place? If the accident had not happened, what would he have done with her? He really did not know the answers to his own questions. And what was he to do with her now? End the fantasy?
Live it out until she regained her memory? What if it never came back?
“I want to leave this room,” she told him two days after she had regained consciousness. She was out of bed, wearing one of her own robes over her nightgown, her hair loose down her back. She was standing at the window and had turned to look over her shoulder when he opened the door. She was smiling. “But I am afraid to. I would instantly get lost. Is it not absurd?” The slight breathlessness in her voice told him that she was a little frightened. But she was putting a good face on her terror.
“Are you well enough?” he asked.
“I still have a slight headache,” she said, “though the lump has almost gone. All the other bruises are not troublesome. I am restless. Show me the house, Christopher? Perhaps something will spark a memory. This is a rather lovely valley. What is beyond the hilltops?”
He crossed the room to stand beside her. The top of her head, he noticed with an unexpected rush of familiarity, reached his chin. If she tipped her head sideways, it would nestle comfortably against his shoulder. He could remember that as a fact.
“Coarse bare grass,” he said, “and some gorse bushes. A few stray sheep. We are very close to the sea here.”
“We are?” She looked at him in amazement. “But I might have guessed it. I have been watching seagulls flying overhead. Oh, Christopher, what is it like?”
“High cliffs and golden sand,” he said. “It is windy and wild and wonderful.”
“Take me to see it,” she said, looking up at him sideways from beneath her lashes. It was another characteristic expression of hers that he had forgotten. “Not today, but perhaps tomorrow or the next day. Will you? And will you show me the house today? Please? Am I being a nuisance?”
“A nuisance?” He set an arm about her shoulders and drew her against his side. And sure enough, she turned her cheek and nestled it against his shoulder. He swallowed. It would be so easy to forget, so easy to be enticed by an old dream. “How could you be a nuisance?”
Before he could stop himself he fell into an old pattern of behavior.
He rubbed his cheek lightly against her hair and then turned his head to kiss her cheek. Soft and warm.
“I’ll get dressed, then,” she said eagerly. “I’ll ring for Doris. Will you return in half an hour?” She flushed and laughed. “Maybe I do not usually send you away while I dress, do I? But forgive me. I feel shy.”
She lifted her face for his kiss, and he set his lips against hers and lingered there rather longer than was good for him.
“What do you want to see?” he asked her half an hour later when he found her ready and waiting for him in her room. She looked delicate and beautiful in a sprigged muslin dress—part of the trousseau she had bought for her honeymoon with Poole.
“Everything,” she said. “But is the house too large for me to see everything at once?”
“I’ll show you the larger apartments,” he said. “Just as if you were a traveler and wanted to see only the more magnificent parts of the house.”
“Very well,” she said gaily, linking her arm through his. “I am a visitor to these parts and a stranger to this house. You must give me the grand tour.”
He took her down the great staircase inside one of the towers, its broad stone stairs twisting downward, lit by the m
ullioned windows high in the tower.
“Sixteenth century,” he told her. “A little later than the hall and some other parts of the house. Doubtless this stairway replaced a very steep and winding one.”
“It is magnificent,” she said. “Like a castle. Is this a castle?”
“Not really,” he said. “More of a manor house. But of course the medieval occupants had to be ready to defend themselves.”
They passed through the stone archway at the foot of the stairs into the great hall with its tiled floor, its huge fireplace, its high oak-timbered ceiling and whitewashed walls hung with armor and weapons of various kinds.
“Oh,” she said, relinquishing her hold of his arm and turning about, looking first up to the ceiling and then at the walls. “This is where we live, Christopher? And I have forgotten it? Is this where your ancestors used to eat?”
“And live and sleep probably,” he said. “The medieval hall served all functions. The great table is now in the state dining room—not the one we use every day. And there are never state occasions here. But it is impressive to have state apartments.”
“Don’t we ever entertain?” she asked him.
“Not on a large scale,” he said. “This is a rather remote corner of Devonshire, remember.”
She pulled a face. “No,” she said. “That is one thing I cannot do. Remember?” And she laughed again. He could see that she was trying to make light of her affliction.
He took her into the great salon, never used in his father’s time, though he and Nancy had always thought that it would make a wonderful ballroom. But there had never been balls at Penhallow during their lifetime. The room was sparsely furnished, but the huge Dutch tapestries covering the walls, all of them depicting scenes from mythology, gave the room a wonderful magnificence. Elizabeth stood in the middle of the room and looked about her in awe.
“You see?” she said at last, when she realized that he was looking at her, not the tapestries, “I am suitably impressed as a visitor, am I not? It is all glorious and all totally unfamiliar.” Her smile slipped for a moment and she looked suddenly lost and a little frightened.