The Seduction

by Julia Ross

  He walked blindly through Bracefort's house, ignoring the naked women, the couples copulating in the hallways. The thought flitted vaguely through his mind that this was the longest he'd gone without sex for ten years. He dismissed it, concentrating only on Juliet. He did not love her, but he was damned if he'd see her incarcerated for life as a lunatic!

  "You are to be congratulated, sir, on your narrow escape," a man's voice said.

  For a moment, Alden's rage was so intense that he could have murdered with his bare hands. Instead he raised both brows and stared back at Lord Edward Vane.

  "From what, sir?"

  The duke's son burst out laughing, two patches dancing on his cheeks. "From any deeper entanglement with sweet Juliet, of course. She has gone mad. Did you know?"

  It took every ounce of self-control, but Alden shrugged. "Really? Ι fail to see, sir, how that doleful fact concerns me."

  Was Lord Edward disconcerted, even for a moment? "Faith, sir! You truly are a coldhearted dog."

  Alden gave the duke's son a careless bow. "Hearts, sir, were never at issue. Ι trust Mr. Hardcastle and his mad wife may dance along merrily enough together?"

  He managed to walk away. He even stopped casually in the hallway to exchange a lewd joke with Trenton-Smith, who appeared to have forgotten their small misunderstanding over the man's unholy sister.

  At last Alden walked out into the stench of London streets and called for a sedan chair. If he was to best Lord Edward in this, he must overcome his murderous rage - the impulse to drive too fast across the board. Winning had never before been this important, and this time the checkmate must be absolute. The chair jolted along the cobbles. Alden leaned back and forced himself to think, to concentrate on a gambit for victory. He had no legal or social justification whatsoever to interfere in what they had done to Juliet. She was another man's property. Doctors had declared her insane.

  Ariadne, the king's daughter who led Theseus out of the labyrinth after he killed the Minotaur, only to be abandoned on the isle of Νaxos by the hero she had rescued.

  If he was to save her this time, it meant disappearing into the labyrinth himself.

  JULIET SAT IN STONY SILENCE AND STARED AT THE SOUP. TINY black specks floated among the brown chunks of mutton. She did not think they were edible. In fact, she very much feared the specks had once enjoyed individual lives of their own. Nevertheless she dipped her spoon into the liquid and swallowed. The woman in the next room had been refusing food. They had tied her hands and legs to force a physic down her throat. The woman had retched and screamed for an entire night.

  Juliet ate the soup.

  The room was tiny, little more than a cell, somewhere near the top of a large house. Light filtered in through a barred window high up on the wall. She had no idea what kind of house, because they had arrived in the dark and she had been bound and gagged.

  A madwoman! Since then this little space was all she had known. It held a bed, a wooden chair by a shelf against the wall, and a chamber pot. The bed was equipped with large leather straps. There were, she was sure, worse places to house a lunatic. At least she had her own room and the public did not pay a fee to look at her.

  A woman in a white apron came and took away the bowl. She was sandy-haired, no longer young, with a fearful look about the nostrils, as if she had never received quite enough air.

  "Excellent soup, Mistress Welland," Juliet said. "An imaginative recipe. Ι am glad to know that Lord Edward is getting his money's worth."

  "Any more talk like that and it’ll be the gag," the sandy-haired woman replied. "Or the dark cell. Ι have my orders."

  The dark cell was, Juliet had learned, a place in the cellar with no windows at all, where lunatics could be left for days at a time in pitch blackness. Confinement was considered therapeutic. At least as long as she stayed in this room, she had daylight.

  "My apologies, ma'am. Your chef would grace the king's own kitchens, of course."

  Mistress Welland shouted. Footsteps pounded in the corridor. Two men burst into the room and grasped Juliet by both arms, dragging her from her chair. The woman thrust a rag into Juliet's mouth and tied it behind her head, while the men strapped her down to the bed.

  "You're not to be allowed to pretend to be a lady! That's the conditions!"

  Helplessly Juliet shook her head as straps and padlocks snapped into place. She must try to think about something else. Α hay meadow, sweet and bright in the sunshine. Her arbor, draped in white muslin and moonlight. The cluck of chickens as they scratched and dusted in the shade. Her cats: Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego, named for the men of faith who had been rescued from a fiery furnace by an angel. Not a man. Not a man with hair like a summer day and a dastardly way with women.

  Yet, she had the rest of her life to do nothing but think. Alden had tried, in his own way, to behave with honor. He had touched her to the soul. Why had she let them part with harsh words? Why hadn't she tried harder to understand? Now it was too late.

  THE STUDY IN LORD EDWARD'S TOWNHOUSE SLEPT QUIETLY enough. The house sighed occasionally, as if the furnishings relaxed in their own secret slumber. His face blackened with soot, his hair covered, Alden sat for a moment on the windowsill and contemplated the dark room. This was where he had lost Gracechurch Abbey in a game of cards, where he had wondered how he could be so foxed on so little wine, where Lord Edward had no doubt slipped him some concoction to blur his judgment: all to make Juliet suffer.

  The card table drowsed, its treacherous surface dumb. The side table stood empty and voiceless. But something in this house must be forced to talk: to give up its secrets and tell him where Juliet had been taken.

  Alden slipped silently into the room. He believed that the duke's son was out, but the house was full of servants. If he was discovered, he might be slain before he could prove his identity and attempt to laugh it all off as a joke between gentlemen. Smiling a little at the splendor of the risk, he opened the shutter on his lantern and began to search.

  He was methodical and thorough. When he found locked drawers, he took keys out of his pocket and unlocked them. How fortunate that the duke's son had chosen to visit a particular courtesan who had also in the past favored Alden! Lovely Clarinda Kennedy had agreed, with a little persuasion, to steal the keys from Lord Edward's pocket. While the duke's son spent the rest of the night enjoying her delectable services, Alden was getting copies made.

  Now desk drawers willingly surrendered to his skilled hands. In absolute silence, lit by the steady beam from the lantern, Alden studied papers and receipts. He learned what Dovenby had meant about Lord Edward's empire of investments. He skimmed letters from abandoned women. He found a copy of the agreement that the duke's son had drawn up to include George Hardcastle in his business schemes. He did not discover where they had taken Juliet.

  Closing the shutter on the lantern, Alden stepped into the hallway. Α few moments later a stair sagged under his weight, shouting its complaint. He froze for a moment, but no doors opened. No servants came racing with cudgels and pistols. He walked into Lord Edward's bedroom and took out the replica keys once again.

  Drawers slid open. Dressers revealed neat stacks of shirts. Nothing! Why would Lord Edward write down where he had sent her? He had no doubt washed his hands of her, content in the knowledge that Juliet was locked away forever. Alden almost wished that the door would open and the duke's son walk unsuspecting into the room. He could very easily justify murder.

  Sick at heart, Alden went to the window and looked out on the moonlit chimneys of London. The quiet scene was a lie. Beneath those roofs men and women schemed and cursed and caroused, battling fate or their own damnable nature, fighting to survive in a world that seldom cared whether they lived or died. It had been his life since he had come back from Italy - a meaningless pattern of coldhearted risks. Now he didn't give a damn if he never saw London's hells and coffeehouses again.

  Closing his lantern, he turned and strode back through Lord Edward's chambe
r. Α shaft of moonlight streamed across brocade hangings and the small table beside the bed. The white wax of a half-burned candle gleamed in a gilt candlestick, a leather-bound book beside it. Alden stopped and looked at it. Within three strides he had opened the book. Several sheets of paper lay folded inside.

  His pulse beat hard as he opened the lantern shutter and read the crabbed writing. Not directions to where Juliet had been taken. She was mentioned nowhere on the tattered sheets. But if he could only find her, this information might free her yet.

  "YOU MUST NOT ASK FOR BOOKS OR WRITING MATERIALS," Mistress Welland said. "You can't read or write. Such mad questions will only overheat your brain. You are to be gagged whenever you say such things. If you persist, you’ll be put in the dark cell."

  Juliet stared up at the high window and said nothing. She didn't even dislike Mistress Welland. At least as long as she was there, the men wouldn't touch her. Juliet listened to the click of her shoes as the woman crossed the room. Keys rattled on the ring at her waist.

  Α man's voice sounded from the corridor: Bill, one of the attendants.

  For a moment, Juliet lay absolutely still, barely daring to breathe. Don't leave, ma'am, I pray! From the bed she couldn't see the door, because her head was trapped in a kind of wooden cradle. She had been strapped down once again, because she had been pacing the room. They said it was the repetitive, senseless motion of a lunatic.

  The keys clinked. The woman's footsteps receded down the hallway. But the man's heavy tread turned back into her room. Juliet closed her eyes and swallowed hard as his breath wafted over her face.

  "You’re a pretty trollop, Polly," Bill said.

  She lay rigid, trying not to flinch, but she knew what was coming. Α fumbling at her clothes. Hands on the neck of her dress. Coarse fingers thrust down the front of her bodice, curdling her blood, corrupting every bright memory.

  "Do you like that?" Α rough fingertip felt for her nipple. "They say you can't get enough of a man. Shall Ι come back tonight?"

  Α woman's scream pierced the air. Bill cursed. Juliet heard the grate of his nailed boots, before the door slammed shut and the key turned in the lock. Α hideous stain seemed to have soaked to her bones. He had not visited her at night yet. But of course it was only a matter of time. Then, perhaps, she truly would go insane.

  ALDEN LINGERED FOR Α MOMENT ACROSS THE STREET FROM Hardcastle's house - a small row house in a respectable merchant neighborhood, the address Robert Dovenby had given him - to watch Juliet's husband leave for the day. This was where George had brought Juliet after they left Gracechurch Abbey. This is where doctors had examined her and declared her a lunatic.

  They had used the affidavits from Kate and Tilly, of course, and twisted her behavior into more condemnatory evidence. Perhaps she had been drugged, to appear almost senseless when examined. Alden hoped so. He hoped the hell she had not been conscious when they put her through that. Yet she must have woken up and found herself imprisoned, with nothing but the shrieks and wails of madwomen for company.

  He clenched both fists. Pray God she was incarcerated only with women!

  "Here, you! Move about your business!"

  Α man in a white wig and blue coat waved his stick in Alden's face. In that first split second, Alden almost gave away the whole game, then he remembered. He was dressed like a tradesman's servant, a man who put his back into his work. To be certain his true identity could not be detected, he had found himself a genuine job, where he ate, slept and drank with the other men. He could not remember ever being this dirty in his life.

  Alden slouched, tugged at the lock of hair over his forehead, stepped into the gutter, and adopted a scurrilous accent. "Beg pardon, sir. No harm meant."

  The gentleman pushed past him without a backward glance.

  Alden adjusted the heavy load on his shoulder and dodged through the carriages and horsemen thronging the roadway. It had taken two weeks to get to this point: to be welcomed and trusted in the kitchen of Hardcastle's house, while his network of agents scoured the lunatic asylums and madhouses of Britain. To no avail. No Juliet Seton or Lady Elizabeth Amberleigh or Mrs. George Hardcastle was recorded as a patient in any of them. Nothing was left but this - how well he had charmed George's servants.

  Ignoring the front entrance, Alden thumped down the stairs to the servants' portal below the street. The door opened to reveal the face of a kitchen maid.

  "Delivery." Alden gave the girl a wink.

  "Well, don't just stand there," the maid answered. "Bring it in. But mind you don't mark up our clean floor, else Cook’ll have my hide."

  Alden grinned and gave her another wink. "Then Ι' d better take my boots off."

  "And that's not all you'd like to have off, Ι reckon!" The girl blushed scarlet.

  He laughed, bent his head and stepped through the doorway. Setting down his burden, Alden caught the maid around the waist, tipping up her face with one finger under her chin.

  She gazed into his eyes in open adoration. "You villain! I’ll lose my place!"

  "No, you won't, Emmy! Not like I've lost my heart."

  The girl closed her eyes for his kiss. He made it slow and thorough. Her limber little hands stroked his back. He thought with dismay that she must be a virgin. The latch rattled. The maid leaped away and smoothed down her apron. Her eyes shone.

  Cook bustled into the kitchen. "Brought my beef, you rogue?"

  "And your five chickens and the goose. But you can only have 'em in trade for a kiss and some of your apple pie, Cook."

  The older woman took a good-natured swipe at his head, but Alden kissed her, too, before they all sat down at the kitchen table. Α few moments later he wiped the crumbs from his mouth with his shirt cuff, while the two women devoured him with their eyes.

  "So what's the latest gossip?" he asked.

  "Ι told you the mistress was taken off for a lunatic?" Cook's voice dropped to a conspiratorial whisper. "Well, now! I've found out where!"

  His heart missed a beat. It was everything Alden could do not to grasp Cook by both plump shoulders and shake her, but they mustn't know that he cared.

  "Have you now?" he asked. "To the backside of the moon, most like!"

  Emmy screeched with laughter. "Ι told you she was mad, didn't Ι? The master brings home his wife that ran away from him five years ago and she won't let him touch her."

  He winked again. "You wouldn't bar the bedroom door against me, now, would you, Emmy?"

  The girl blushed and giggled. Alden knew she would give him her virginity and her heart as eagerly as she swallowed her pie. He felt almost ashamed as he squeezed her fingers under the table.

  Cook stood up to poke the kitchen fire. "Who ever heard the like? To refuse his marital rights to a handsome young gentleman like Mr. Hardcastle!"

  "Only goes to show she was crazy," Alden said, though he could have bedded Cook herself when he'd first heard it: Juliet had locked her door against her husband at night. It was one bright candle burning in his storm of black rage.

  "Well, that's neither here nor there now, is it?" Cook rattled the poker. "Harry Oldacre down the road knows Tim Roland, like Ι told you, as works on occasion for Mr. Grimble. Mr. Grimble's ostler is friends with a fellow named Dave Peck, who has a sister called Meg. Well, guess, now!" She turned and waved both hands, the pots on the wall in imminent danger from the poker. "That same Meg is kin to the coachman that came to take the mistress away. Harry told me the whole story."

  "It'd better be a good one!" Alden curbed his impatience and grinned at Emmy.

  Cook sat back at the table. "The mistress asked the coachman to let her off in the middle of nowhere. She said she had to stop for a call of nature and instead took off into the woods like a March hare, throwing out shreds of cloth as if she were trying to leave a trail. Poor mad thing. They tied her hands after that."

  He didn't know if he could bear it. They had tied her hands! Yet, clever Juliet, she had first done something to make the coachma
n remember her.

  "So where did they take her?" Emmy asked.

  "To a place in Wiltshire-Blackthorn Manor, it's called. Of course, it's not Mr. Hardcastle as is paying for it - it's that lord as came here and oversaw her being taken away."

  "Never heard of it, nor your fancy lords," Alden said, choking down his rage. "And what's more, Ι don't care." He let go of the maid's hand and stood up. "Here's what Ι care about: I’m going away, Emmy. Remember my brother's little farm in Devon, the one Ι told you about? He's asked me to go there and help out, like Ι said he might. I’m off tomorrow. No more town deliveries for me."

  "Off tomorrow?" The maid's eyes swam with tears.

  He leaned down and kissed the top of her little linen cap. "Don't fret for me, now, will you?"

  Emmy pushed him away and stood up. "Fret for the likes of you, a butcher's fellow! I’ll have you know that Harry Oldacre asked me only yesterday to walk out with him on my afternoon off."

  Alden picked up his basket and swaggered to the door. "Then it's good-bye, isn't it? Thanks for the pie Cook. Don't work for any more lunatics, will you?"

  He dodged out of the doorway as Cook tossed a cabbage at his head. Emmy's sad little sobs followed him all the way up the stairs. He would make sure that the girl received a surprise message in a couple of weeks: a distant relative, perhaps, someone she'd never heard of, who had left her a small legacy. Emmy wanted to leave domestic service and have a little shop of her own. Perhaps Harry Oldacre would like to be a part of that bright new future.

  "YES, MY LORD," Α MAN'S VOICE SAID. "WE COULD INDEED, most certainly. Blackthorn Manor would be honored to help in the case of Your Lordship's sister."