by Jackie Ivie
The door closed, taking the light with it. Elise snuggled down into Barrigan’s feather mattress and fell asleep again to images she’d never tell a soul about.
“Elise?”
The drunken whisper filled her bedchamber, arousing her instantly. “Are you awake, my love?”
“Get to your own rooms, Roald. Let me be.”
“Not this time, my fine lady. Oh no, not this time.”
The bed gave slightly as he fell onto it. Elise struggled out the other side simultaneously. Her limbs weren’t awake yet, and the clumsiness was hampering her search in the dark for her dressing gown before she gave it up. It was delaying her too long.
“Elise? Wait! Damn!”
He swore and lunged at her, trapping her with fistfuls of her cotton nightgown in his hands. Elise pummeled him and swung her face away from the kiss he was trying to give her.
“No, Roald!” She screamed. She felt the nightgown ripping from her shoulder as he tossed her to the bed.
She was hitting at him and struggling, and he acted like it was nothing.
“I’ve dreamt of this moment, Elise! You’ve . . . no idea.”
His open, wet mouth landed on her collarbone and a shudder of revulsion filled her, draining her strength for a moment. It was getting dim. She saw him as a darker blackness than the room as he lifted himself above her. Then she was swinging at him again.
“Stop that! I won’t hurt you. I only want to love you. You’ll enjoy it. I promise. Now stop! I’m going to make love to you, Elise. Then I’m going to marry you! And then we’re going to spend the Wynd fortune!”
She heard his clothing rustling through her frantic breathing as she inched her way from him to the headboard, and then to the lamp. She’d noticed how heavy and awkward it was earlier. It was all she had. They’d been stupid. They’d locked Roald’s door, but she hadn’t been safe. They hadn’t locked the other door.
“All I ever wanted was for you to love me, Elise. I swear it! I’ve waited, postured, and pleaded. I can’t wait any longer. Tonight, I’ll force you, by God!”
He was shouting it as he fell onto her legs. Elise slammed the lamp onto him. He didn’t know what hit him. She pitched the lamp from her with both hands, and then had to contend with his weight. There was warm, sticky liquid everywhere. She seemed to be covered with it. It got worse as she pushed and struggled to get free. The thump as she fell from the bed was loud. Then she was on her feet and she was shaking. There wasn’t a sound from Roald.
“Oh my God! I’ve killed him!” What started as a whisper, ended in a shriek as Elise wrapped her arms about herself and continued, “What can I do? Where can I go? Think, Elise, think!”
She could leave. She could get a groom to saddle a horse and race for London. No, that wouldn’t do. She had to find Daisy. She had to have help to escape. It’s all she could think of. She’d have to run. There was too much blood in her chamber. She didn’t need to see it. She could still feel it on her nearly everywhere.
“Oh, God, help me. Help me!”
She was whispering the prayer over and over as she went through the connecting door into Roald’s chamber. She didn’t think beyond her objective, and she didn’t question why. She had to get to Daisy.
She knew where the servant’s quarters were, although she’d never been there. The hall was empty and frighteningly dim, with soft, yellowish light glowing slightly from each oil globe. Elise stumbled once, and then forced her body to hold the shock inside where it wouldn’t show. She wasn’t going to be able to save herself if she gave into hysterics. She took a deep breath and ran to the door leading to the stairs that the servants used. She opened it.
Then a large body was there, blocking her, and arms wrapped about her torso as she was lifted. Elise was struggling and pummeling again, and for the same reason.
“Stop that, Madame! Stop!”
A door was kicked open, and Elise was shoved into the light of an unfamiliar bedchamber and lowered onto her feet, although he kept her locked in his arms. Elise’s heart was beating so loudly and in such a disjointed rhythm, it was hampering her own breathing.
“What the devil is this?”
Elise’s heart ceased pounding and felt like it moved to lodge in her throat as she recognized MacGowan’s voice.
“I caught her running the halls. In this.”
“Just this?”
Elise forced herself to turn her head. The duke hadn’t been sleeping. He’d been sitting, contemplating a deck of spread cards, and he was wearing a red, green, and black plaid robe that actually reached the floor when he stood, knocking over his chair.
Then he was looming, all towering strength and anger. Elise actually hugged into the man still holding her.
“What have you got to say for yourself?” he asked in an ugly tone.
Elise turned around.
“What the hell?” he burst out.
“I—” Elise opened her mouth, but little more than that came out.
“What happened?” He was asking the man holding her.
“I told you, Your Grace. I caught her at the servants’ stair, like this.”
“You’re both covered in blood. Explain. Now!”
“I did as you said. I watched. She was out, like you said she might be. I caught her.”
“Then, whose blood—?”
“Roald,” Elise answered, interrupting them as they just got louder and louder, with angry words that seemed to swirl above her head.
“Easton?” He lowered his head and asked it, and nothing about him was soft or caring, or anything other than intense and brutal and frightening.
She nodded. She didn’t think her voice would work.
“What happened? Quickly! I can na’ do something about it if you doona’ tell me.”
“I—” Elise stopped; a sob stilled her voice as trembling overtook her for a moment. She watched his face harden further. “I...I have killed him. Dearest God ... I’ve killed him.”
“What? Why?”
She watched him shove the robe off, imprinting a large, extremely defined masculine span of chest and belly onto her eyes, and then he was shoving his arms into a black coat. Then he was covering the whole with a black cape and lifting the hood to shadow his features. Elise wondered stupidly, if he was trying to disguise himself. It wasn’t going to work if he was. There wasn’t another on the estate his size.
“Where is he?”
Fresh tears obliterated everything for a moment, then they cleared as she blinked them into existence down her cheeks. His features may as well be carved from stone, she thought.
“Well?”
She was surprised at herself, and for good reason. She hadn’t been so naive since she’d been sold into wedlock. Surely an attack like Sir Roald had perpetuated was reason enough to defend herself. What had she been thinking to run as she had?
She willed strength into her legs, but they just shook more as she tried to stand upright. Everything wavered for a moment, then cleared. It was as crystal clear as everything had been since she’d met him.
“He’s ... in my chamber. In—in my bed.”
That reply got her MacGowan’s enlarged nostrils, heavier breathing, and a snarl, too. Elise opened her mouth and kept talking.
“He ... came to me! He wouldn’t leave. I—I didn’t mean it to happen, I swear it!”
“There’s naught that happens about you that you dinna’ plan, down to every excruciating detail.” He lifted his gaze from where he’d pinned her in place to speak again to the man at her back. “Was there anyone else about, Mick?”
“I dinna’ see another. She was alone.”
“No one about? No witnesses?”
“None.”
“You were at your post all eve?”
“Aye.”
“Then how did he get in?”
“Stop this! You don’t understand!” Elise burst out, stopping the arguing male voices that just kept getting louder and louder. “He tried to—! He—!”
&n
bsp; “Yes?”
She had his attention again, and for the life of her she didn’t know why she’d wanted it. There wasn’t a soft bone anywhere on his body. He reached out and lifted the front of her nightgown where it was torn, then put it back on her shoulder, where it stayed plastered to her with the adhesive of drying blood.
“He wanted to—! He ripped my gown!” She was shaking and sobbing and stammering. It surprised her that he understood.
A nerve in his jaw tensed out one side, defining the strength and shape of it, as well as every bit of his disgust. Elise recoiled from it.
“Doona’ you dare leave these chambers.”
“But I—” she began.
“That’s an order. Mick?” He was looking over her head again.
“Your Grace?”
“Get cleaned off. Burn those. Get that off her, too. Call the guard.”
He was leaving. Elise watched as the door opened in seemingly slow motion, before slamming shut with a precise cannon-like boom of sound that should have reverberated everywhere, but rather felt like it throbbed in waves to penetrate to where she was still, miraculously, standing.
“You heard him. Gown.”
Elise stumbled out of the strange enclosure of Mick’s embrace. Her legs were just as insubstantial and weak as she’d suspected. She went to her knees, and the jolt scraped skin that had never felt the like. Mick didn’t move.
“You heard him. Gown,” he said again, with the exact same inflection in his tone.
“I don’t obey him,” she replied to the Aubusson carpet at her nose. That was odd. She had fallen inches away from padded luxury.
“You will. You heard him.”
“Stop saying that!”
“Then give me your gown.”
She shook her head, denying every blush that heated everywhere on her.
“I’m to take it from you. You heard him.”
“You wouldn’t dare.” She whispered the words to the floor.
“Don’t make me prove it, lass. Gown.”
“Is ... there a privy closet?” she asked.
“Yonder. Lift your head. Get me the gown. You heard him.”
If he said that one more time, she was going to scream all her vexation and anger, rage and shock at him. Elise bit her tongue to still it. Then she stumbled to her feet again. She shouldn’t need the hint. Colin’s bedchamber had the same arrangement as her own.
She forced her legs to get her around the wooden slatted divider that screened the water closet.
“I’ve na’ got all eve. We may be caught before I can get them burned. Hurry, lass. Hurry.”
Elise’s hands belonged to someone else, as did the entire episode. She couldn’t believe the last half hour of her life. She’d killed Roald, and then what had she done? She’d managed to involve the Duke of MacGowan. And then what was happening? He was hiding the crime.
Elise’s hands shook before her eyes as she squelched the screams that came from being a party to what Colin MacGowan was doing. But what else could she do? Wait for the discovery of the body? And then her blood-stained body in the duke’s chamber? What could everyone say had happened, but a lover’s spat? Or even worse, a fight over her?
“Doona’ make me come in there,” Mick said.
Elise gripped her hands into fists, cracking the dried blood, and tried to control her own body. It wasn’t possible. Everything on her looked to be a dried reddish color. Horror overwhelmed her. I’ve taken a life! She gagged on the recurrent thought.
“I doona’ hear any cloth moving.”
“I’ve got to get clean.” Elise stopped her own throat’s motions, swallowed, and then managed to whisper the words.
“I doona’ hear any water, either.”
Elise grabbed the pitcher. She spilled water onto the walnut-grained cabinet as she poured. The empty ewer tipped over when she set it down. She ignored it.
She spilled more water onto the wood as she shoved her hands into the bowl. She didn’t care. Elise splashed water again and again onto her face, chilling her and making it difficult to breathe. She felt for Colin’s soap and started scrubbing. She couldn’t seem to get clean no matter how much soap she used or how many times she rinsed. The soap slipped from her hands, and Elise’s tears started up again as it fell into the water.
Oh, dear God, I’ve murdered a man!
She wiped the moisture from her face roughly with a towel. The tears wouldn’t stop, no matter how she sponged at them. Elise buried her face in the towel. She’d killed Sir Roald. She’d broken the number one commandment. There was no penance for that There was no going back. No salvation for her. Ever.
She recognized the horror in her eyes when she moved the towel away and looked at herself in the mirror. Her mouth fell open to scream, but no sound came. Her nightgown gaped to the waist, and more of Roald’s blood was staining her bared breasts.
She started ripping the gown from her, and the more of it she got off, the more she ripped and pulled and cried.
“I did warn you, lass.”
The hulk of a man was in the space with her, his mouth a slash of a line, his teeth clenched, and his face averted. Then he helped, lifting her out of the mass of cloth at her feet, before setting her back onto them.
Then he was gone, his head bowed, and his back hunched as he backed from her. Elise heard his steps, then the door, and then complete and absolute silence.
Chapter 7
There was a stag head mounted above Colin’s unlit fireplace. Elise studied it when she wasn’t tossing playing cards onto the table in front of her. The stag’s eyes were on her. They had been all night.
She knew the duke had been gone for hours. The clock, out in the hall, chimed every quarter hour. According to that clock, it was nearing four in the morning. It would be dawn soon, and still Colin hadn’t come with further information for her. That didn’t bode well.
Her hands wouldn’t warm. No matter how much she rubbed them together, she couldn’t keep them warm. She’d had the same trouble with her feet, until she’d rifled through the duke’s armoire and found two pairs of socks. He wasn’t going to like that, she supposed. He probably wouldn’t like the fact that she was wearing his cast-off dressing robe, either. It was made of a fleece-type material softer than any fur. It was also patterned in red, green, and black plaid, as was most of his wardrobe. There was an embroidered crest of the MacGowans on the right front yoke. Elise felt the weight against her skin like a rock. There was probably real gold in the thread. That would explain the weight and rigidity of it, and why it chafed her breast every time she moved her arm.
She wondered what he was doing and how he expected to get away with it. Was he hiding the body, adding his sin to hers? How were they supposed to explain that? Sir Roald Easton couldn’t just disappear. He’d be missed by someone who cared. Surely there was someone, somewhere, who cared for him. Elise was ashamed to admit that she didn’t even know if he had family who would care.
Was this another lesson she needed to learn? Was the duke, even now, awaiting the arrival of Barrigan’s constable to have her arrested? And why won’t my hands warm? she wondered.
Elise had been watching the wrong door. She had no warning as the ornate chamber door opened and the hulk of man that was Colin MacGowan entered, attired in yet another plaid dressing robe that reached to the floor.
“Forgive me, darlin’. I could na’ prevent this.”
Elise’s eyes went wide at the endearment, her hand went to her throat, and she pushed away from the card table to stand. It gave her a little courage as four men followed on the duke’s heels. Elise met the Viscount of Beckon’s gaze for but an instant; she ignored Lord Barrigan and his watchman. She put her full attention on the rotund figure of a man she recognized as a constable.
At this hour of the morning, the man already looked overworked in his rumpled greatcoat and unshaven cheeks. Then she realized he probably hadn’t slept. He’d spent his night gathering evidence to arrest her. Elis
e didn’t have to ask it. The man seemed emblazoned with it.
From the back of her mind, she registered that the clock was chiming the hour of four. If she’d known the duke was bringing a roomful of observers, she’d have prepared herself better. She’d have been wearing something more suitable than Colin MacGowan’s plaid robe and two overlapping argyle socks on her feet. This was not how the Dowager Duchess of Wynd’s social prominence was supposed to end.
The entire sequence of her thoughts took but a fraction of time. Elise kept her head at an arrogant tilt and put as much disdain in her eye contact with all of them as she could. At the final chime of Barrigan’s clock, she moved from behind the table. She watched dispassionately as Colin seemed to follow her direction to walk across the Aubusson rug to her.
Then he reached out, and with one arm pulled her so completely against his side, she felt melded to it. Both her arms came out instantly and defensively. She put one hand at the small of his back, wrapping her fingers about his belt, and the other hand went to his chest to steady herself. She had no choice but to look up at him. His eyes shoved green sparkles at her.
And from what sounded like very far away, she heard him say, “I told you, gentlemen, that it would na’ be necessary to disturb my wife.”
The shock stilled her in place, and the weight and intent of his arm guaranteed it as he tightened his grip, lifting her slightly from the floor, where she hovered on tiptoes. The hand at the small of his back went into a fist about his knotted belt to stabilize herself.
“We know, Your Grace, but there’s still some questions.”
Someone was talking. Elise could sense it, but she couldn’t fathom what was said or who said it. All she could see was Colin’s jaw as he faced them, and all she could hear was the breathing of the man it looked like she was clinging to. He said something else, and all she heard was the rumble of sound through his body. She frowned, and for some reason he looked back down at her.
“You ... you told them—” Elise stammered, but he was interrupting her before she finished.
“Aye.”
One word, and then he was grinning down at her, dissolving the floor, the walls, and every person in proximity, and making everything very, very cushiony and warm and protected feeling. Elise’s eyes widened and her mouth dropped open.