by Anne Gracie
And women must wait. Whoever wrote that didn’t know how very difficult waiting was. Action was so much easier.
* * *
• • •
Lily lay half dozing in the dark, waiting for her next opportunity.
Twice more they had stopped to let her relieve herself, and each time, Lily pretended to be more affected by the drug than she was. The third time, as Lily was stuffed back into her prison, she managed to wedge a fold of her cloak between the catch and the hook.
She held her breath, waiting for him to jerk open the lid and pull away the cloth impeding the catch. But nothing happened. He hadn’t noticed.
The coach set off again, swaying and jolting along the road. Eventually Lily worked up the courage to push ever so slightly against the roof of her prison. It lifted.
And again, Nixon noticed nothing. He was taking her helplessness for granted.
Despite the cruel bite of the gag, Lily smiled. She was still trapped in the dark, still bound and gagged, still battling the effects of the drug, but she was no longer locked in. She could push the lid up, and the knowledge gave her a fierce surge of hope.
She just had to wait for the next posting inn or some other chance to escape. The journey to Scotland took several days. An opportunity was bound to arise.
* * *
• • •
“I have heard a whisper!” Aunt Agatha announced. There was a short silence. She raised her lorgnette and examined each of them one by one, with unnerving thoroughness. “Well?”
Emm sent a warning glance to Rose and George. “What have you heard, Aunt Agatha? The ton is full of whispers.”
“Where’s the other gel?”
“Lily? She’s indisposed,” Emm said.
“With what?”
“A cold,” said Rose.
“A sprained ankle,” George said at the same time. She glanced at Rose and said, “A cold and a sprained ankle.”
Aunt Agatha gave them both a withering look and rolled her eyes. “I thought as much. What is going on, Emmaline? And don’t prevaricate, for as I said, I heard a whisper.”
Emm sighed, accepting the inevitable. “Lily has gone missing. We think she’s been abducted.”
“Why did you not immediately inform me?” the old lady said crossly.
“We thought the fewer people who knew, the better.”
Aunt Agatha snorted. “I am not people! I am family! And if one of my family gets herself into trouble—”
“Lily did not ‘get herself into trouble,’” Rose snapped. “She was abducted! Through no fault of her own!”
Aunt Agatha gave her a thoughtful look and said in a surprisingly mild voice, “When did she disappear?”
“The same night that duke of yours didn’t turn up at the opera,” George said.
The old lady narrowed her eyes at George, but didn’t rise to the bait. “And who, outside the family, knows she is missing?”
“Nobody. Cal has gone to France because that’s where we think she’s been taken. But he also sent some men to search for her on the Great North Road, in case his information was wrong. But they’re men he’s worked with before, in whose discretion he trusts.”
“Sylvia knows Lily went missing,” said Rose. “And the Mainwarings.”
“But we’ve told them all Lily was just feeling ill and went home early without telling us,” Emm said. “Lady Mainwaring was glad to hear it—sorry for Lily’s indisposition, that is, but reassured that it was nothing more serious.”
Aunt Agatha swiveled in her seat and directed the lorgnette at Rose. “And this Sylvia person you mentioned?”
“Sylvia Gorrie, a former school friend of the girls’,” Emm explained.
“No friend of mine,” Rose muttered.
“Cal thinks Sylvia’s cousin abducted Lily,” Emm continued. “He questioned Sylvia on the night Lily disappeared, but she knew nothing about it and seemed more upset that her cousin had left without notice and owed money to her husband. She did call here the next day to inquire after Lily, and I told her that Lily wasn’t missing at all but had left the Mainwarings’ because she’d been feeling ill.”
“With a sprained cold,” Aunt Agatha said acidly. “So nobody else knows?”
“No.”
“What about the servants?”
Emm shook her head. “I don’t believe they would talk, not about this.” She’d spoken to them and had been assured of their discretion. Of course, what people said and what they did wasn’t always the same.
“Well someone must know something, because, as I said, I heard a whisper.”
“What exactly did you hear?”
The old lady made an impatient gesture. “Nothing solid, just the hint of a rumor about ‘one of the Rutherford gels,’ and the suggestion that she’d run off with a man.”
“Lily would never—” Rose began.
“Pish tush, gel, we know that. But the whisper is out there and we need to do something about it.” Leaning heavily on her silver-topped ebony cane, she rose to her feet. “Off you go, gels, and fetch your hats and coats. We’re going for a drive.”
“I don’t want to go out,” Rose said. “I want to stay in case there’s news—”
“The best you can do for your sister is to appear in public as usual with nothing to worry about except that your sister has . . .” She thought for a minute. “The influenza, something serious, not a sprain or a cold. In fact, it would look better if you came to stay with me, Emmaline, to protect your child. And you gels will come as well, for fear of the infection. It will strengthen the story.”
“It won’t. I’d never leave my sister if she was ill,” Rose declared.
“I’d stay too,” George said. “I never catch colds or the flu—I’m as healthy as a horse.”
Aunt Agatha closed her eyes briefly. “Such a vulgar metaphor, Georgiana. Health is a desirable state for a young lady, but when you invite people to compare you with an animal . . .” She gave a pained shudder.
Emm laid a calming hand on George’s arm and said firmly, “Nobody is moving anywhere. I told Cal I’d wait here, and so I will—we all will. But fresh air and a public family outing in the park is an excellent idea, though perhaps the girls could accompany you on horseback—with their groom in attendance, of course.” She gave both girls a speaking look.
Better for them not to be stuck in a barouche with their aunt. They were so tense and worried about Lily that Aunt Agatha’s pronouncements, which rubbed them up the wrong way at the best of times, would today be like a flame to a tinderbox. She glanced at Rose. Or gunpowder.
“Now, Aunt Agatha, while the girls are changing into their habits, how about a nice cup of tea?”
* * *
• • •
Lily came awake with a jerk. Against all her resolution, she’d dozed off. Something had changed. What?
And then she realized. The carriage had stopped. Someone shouted. She couldn’t make out what, but a moment later Nixon shouted back. “In this weather? Damned if I will!”
She cautiously cracked the lid of her prison open a sliver.
Another shout. The coachman. She couldn’t hear it all, but it sounded like he wanted Nixon to get out and push. The coach was stuck in mud. Nixon refused again, this time in even worse language.
The coachman’s voice sounded suddenly loud and close. “Want to wait until help comes, do ya? With that special cargo of yours tucked away? Risk ’em finding her, will ya?” He must have climbed down.
There was a short silence. Lily held her breath. Nixon swore again, then ordered the driver to do the pushing, while he led the horses.
She heard the door close, then the voices came again, muffled, as if from a distance. Nixon and the driver were out of the coach. Now was her chance. Heart thudding, braced for the lid to be slammed back down on her, she
raised it, inch by inch. And breathed again.
The carriage was empty. She scrambled out, then peered carefully out the window. She could hardly see a thing—it was raining—but from the shouts exchanged, it seemed Nixon was up ahead with the horses and the coachman was on the other side of the coach, stuffing bracken and gorse under one of the wheels.
Lily threw her cloak over her—thank goodness it was a dark color—stealthily unfastened the door, then leapt from the coach and ran into the low scraggly vegetation that stretched for miles on either side of the empty road. Her only hope was to lie down in it, go to ground like a hunted hare, and hope they wouldn’t see her.
Half a dozen steps later she found herself falling helplessly, landing facedown with a hard splat. She lay, winded for a few moments, her lungs straining for air, her brain racing, trying to make sense of what happened.
She was in some kind of hole . . . no, it was a ditch, running parallel to the road. Her breath returned in a rush. Keeping her head well down, she lay in shallow, freezing, stagnant ditch water, gulping lungfuls of cold, bracing air, trying to marshal her drug-hazed wits.
Had she made any noise when she’d fallen? She couldn’t remember, but a small scream or exclamation seemed likely. Had they noticed? Or had the gag muffled any noise she’d made? She peered cautiously over the lip of the ditch, through the meager cover of the vegetation that lined it.
In the driving rain she could barely make out the shape of the coach. She squinted through the gloom, hardly daring to breathe.
Nixon and the coachman continued shouting instructions—and abuse—back and forth. Lily breathed again. They hadn’t noticed her escape. Yet.
With some difficulty, for her wrists were still bound, she pulled her cloak over her head. Thank goodness she’d worn it to the Mainwarings’ rout instead of the cream silk and taffeta one. The dark blue velvet would at least hide her, if not keep her warm and dry—between the rain and the ditch water, she was drenched to the bone. And somehow, wet or not, the heavy weight of the velvet was comforting.
The Mainwarings’ rout. It seemed an age ago. Was it only last night? Or the night before? She didn’t know. The drug had stolen time.
Released from the tight constriction of her prison, she could raise her bound hands enough to scrape her gag off. Thankfully, she gulped in fresh, damp air. Her wrists were still bound tightly, but she could breathe and she could run.
Bending low Lily half crept, half crawled along the ditch, praying she wouldn’t be noticed.
A loud shout almost stopped her heart. She froze, expecting any moment to be roughly seized and dragged back to the coach, but nothing happened. Eventually, unable to bear not knowing, she peeped over the side of the ditch.
Through the veil of rain, she saw Nixon climb back into the carriage and the driver take his seat and gather up the reins. The carriage moved slowly away. She watched breathlessly until it breasted a slight hill and disappeared.
She forced herself to wait—what if Nixon decided to lift the lid and check on her?—but after a few agonizing moments Lily decided she could delay no longer. She clambered out of the muddy ditch and began to run.
Chapter Four
Her mind was all disorder. The past, present, future, everything was terrible.
—JANE AUSTEN, MANSFIELD PARK
“Woman on the road up ahead, sir,” Ned Galbraith’s coachman said through the communication hatch. “Looks like she’s in some distress.”
Ned glanced out the window. There was nothing for miles, no sign of habitation. “Alone?” It was not unheard of for women to feign distress as a trap for unwary travelers. They’d stop to help and the female’s colleagues would emerge from hiding and rob them.
“No place to hide that I can see,” Walton agreed. “A poor spot for an ambush, I reckon.”
Ned sighed. “Very well, let’s see what—”
“Another coach just came over the rise.” Walton’s voice rose with excitement. “Looks like they’re trying to run her down—and bloody hell, sir, I think her hands are tied!”
Ned poked his head out the window. Sure enough a bedraggled-looking female was running unsteadily toward his coach, waving her arms frantically—and yes, they were bound at the wrist. Another carriage was bearing down on her, the driver whipping at his tired-looking horses.
She looked terrified.
Ned didn’t wait; he swung down from his slowing carriage and ran toward the woman. At the same time a dark-haired man jumped from the other carriage and seized her in a rough grasp.
“Help!” she shrieked, struggling to pull herself free, but she was no match against his brutal strength.
The man growled something Ned didn’t catch and dragged her back toward his carriage.
“What the devil is going on?” Ned picked up his pace.
“None of your damned business,” the man shouted over his shoulder. “Go on your way.”
“He’s abduct—” Her captor jerked her hard and she nearly fell.
“My wife is not herself,” the man began. “She’s a drunken bedlamite.”
“Not his wife.” She fought him, clumsily, using her tied hands like a club. “Drugged. He drugged me!”
“Shut up!” The man hit her hard across the face, and she reeled, almost collapsing, just as Ned reached them.
He grabbed the man by the collar and jerked him back hard, twisting it so that the fellow almost choked. Releasing the woman, who fell to the ground, he turned on Ned with a savage snarl. “I told you—”
Ned punched him hard in the face. He didn’t know whether these two were married or not, but whatever the circumstances, no woman deserved that kind of violence. He said so.
The fellow staggered back, blood spurting from his nose. “Listen, you bastard, I can treat her how I want. She’s my wi—”
“I’m not his wife, sir, I prom—Mr. Galbraith? Oh, it is you! Oh, thank God!”
Ned started. She knew his name? Distracted, he glanced down at her but before he could make out her features under the smears of mud, a heavy blow knocked him sideways.
He staggered and turned. The fellow’s coachman raised a cudgel to hit him again. Ned kicked out and caught him in the leg. He fell to one knee, just as his master attacked.
Ned punched him again, a blow to the gut, then another to the jaw that knocked him cold. The driver staggered to his feet and came at him. A pistol shot stopped the driver in his tracks.
Ned’s coachman stepped forward. “I got two of these beauties.” He gestured with the pistols. “Make another move and you die.”
“Thank you, Walton.” Ned probably should have used a pistol in the first place, but truth to tell, he didn’t mind a brawl on occasion. It reminded him who he was. He helped the girl to her feet. She was a mess, drenched and filthy, her face dirt-streaked—or was that a rising bruise?—and her clothes bedraggled and caked with mud.
He gave her face a searching glance. Nope. No idea who she was.
She gave him a shaky smile and clung to his arm, determined but wavering, as if unsteady on her feet or ready to swoon. She was soaked, shivering. The thought had crossed his mind initially that she was some country wench, taken up for a nasty kind of sport, but her sodden cloak was velvet, and the few words he’d heard her speak were unaccented, educated.
And she knew his name. “Who are you and how do you know my—” He broke off, thrusting her behind him as the man he’d felled lurched to his feet and came up swinging.
Ned hit him again, and he crumpled. Ned shoved him with his boot. “Take your master and go.”
“The girl—”
“Stays with me.”
The driver hesitated. The girl clutched Ned’s coat. “Pass me the pistol, Walton,” Ned said calmly. “These two were undoubtedly born to be hanged, but—”
“No need for that, sir.” The driver back
ed away, his hands raised in placation. “I don’t want no trouble. Just a hired driver, sir, nothing to do with me what he was plannin’.” He hooked his master under the armpits and dragged him back to the carriage like a sheep about to be shorn. He bundled him inside, climbed up on top, turned the carriage around and drove away.
As the coach disappeared over the horizon, the girl sagged against Ned. “Thank God you came along when you did, Mr. Galbraith. If he’d caught me again . . .” She was shivering uncontrollably. Cold or reaction. No doubt a bit of both.
He pulled a knife from his boot and cut through her bindings. “Who are y—”
“Sorry,” she gasped, and bent and retched, a thin stream of bile that just missed his boots.
When she finished he handed her his handkerchief. She wiped her mouth and handed it back. He received it gingerly, gave it a distasteful glance, then dropped it in the mud. “Let’s get you into the carriage.”
She took a few wobbly steps, then stumbled. “I’m sorry. The drug . . .” She reeled.
Ned scooped her into his arms and lifted her into the carriage. She was drenched right through. Her soaked clothing dampened his clothes. And she stank. Of dank mud and ditch water, of vomit and animal manure and God knew what else.
She slumped onto the seat and almost fell as the coach jerked into movement. She looked up wildly. “Where are we going?”
He’d been heading to Fountains Abbey, near Ripon, to a house party there. It wasn’t far, but he certainly wasn’t going to arrive at Fountains in the company of a damp and bedraggled damsel in distress. A sure route to scandal that would be.
No, he’d have to return her quickly and quietly to wherever she came from. “London?” he suggested, and she sighed in relief.
“Oh, thank goodness, yes, please. They’ll be so worried about me.”
He knocked on the roof, gave Walton their new destination, then turned back to the girl, intending to question her, but her shivering had worsened. And her stench was slowly filling the carriage. First things first. He had all the time in the world to ask her questions, but he was damned if he’d travel another mile with a half-frozen woman who stank like a midden.