The Twisted Tale of Stormy Gale

by Christine Bell

  Sitting up as much as the chains would allow, relieved to see I still had my clothes on, I scanned the room. I nearly passed out with relief as I spied my carpetbag in the corner. OK, at least there was a chance, albeit a small one, that he hadn’t looked through the bag yet. To my everlasting shame, I realized that I owed Bacon an apology. Obviously the Loony Duke was a formidable foe if he had outfoxed me too.

  Poor Bacon. He was probably waiting for me all night at the room and worried sick. Not only that, but if I couldn’t escape, he’d be stuck here forever without a TTM.

  I tried to focus, calling upon my steely time-pirate resolve to figure out how to get myself out of this mess.

  First things first, I needed to free myself from the chains. I pulled my shackled arm until the chain was taut and I could I trace it back to its origin. Drat! It was anchored by a thick iron plate on the wall behind me. Less than optimistic, I grabbed the chain just above my wrist with my free hand and gave an experimental tug to see if there was any give to the plate or the chain. My suspicions were quickly confirmed. It was as strong as, well, iron, and I stood no chance of breaking it.

  I held out my wrist, turning it this way and that, trying to see how much room there was between chain and skin. While I was able to move it around, there was no slipping free from it.

  I moved to swing my legs over the side of the bed but was stopped short by the yank of a chain on my ankle. Fanfuckingtastic.

  Stringing a litany of curses together in frustration, I began plotting my revenge on Leister while scanning the space for anything I might use as a weapon. The words died on my lips as I truly looked at the room for the first time.

  The walls were adorned with various lengths and sizes of whips, chains and cat-o’-nine-tails. A rack along with branks, an iron bridle of sorts to hold one’s head immobile, sat in one corner of the room. A chair with leather straps at the arms and feet sat in another. A torture chamber. I was in a bloody torture chamber. Footsteps rang outside the doorway and I froze. Sick with dread, I started to shake. Tears sprang to my eyes.

  Stop it, you stupid girl! I bit my lip hard and took a deep breath. I’d promised myself sixteen years ago that I would never allow anyone to make me feel helpless, afraid or weak again. On a dime, my terror turned to anger. If he was going to try to break me, it was going to take a lot more than intimidation.

  Bring it.

  A lock tumbled and the door swung open. Leister stood with a key in one hand and a tray of tea in the other, a grim expression on his face.

  I glared at him, furiously blinking back the unshed tears

  “I’ve brought some tea,” he said, closing the door behind him.

  “Why, thank you,” I cooed, voice dripping with sarcasm.

  “No need to be tart. I’m the one who was wronged here, you know.”

  “I don’t know what you’re referring to, but whatever your plans are with me, skip the tea and get on with it. But know this sir—whatever sick thrill you get out of torturing people, you won’t get it from me. I won’t make a sound.” I lifted my chin and turned away, attempting to project an air of disinterest. In truth, I didn’t want to face him, but I didn’t want to look at anything else in this room of horrors either.

  Something sounding like a strangled chuckle issued from his side of the room and I turned a suspicious eye on Leister, but he remained stone-faced under my scrutiny.

  “Before we begin with the torturing, why not have a little talk first, eh, Dorothy?”

  As serious as his face was, and as angry as I knew he was, my Spidey senses were telling me that he was tweaking me somehow. No matter, because, despite my brave little speech, I was all for stalling the torture portion of our show, so I assented with a nod. “So talk.”

  “All right, then, I’ll start.” He set the tea tray down on the night table and moving to sit on a velvet-covered chair a few feet from the bed. “Why were you trying to poison me?”

  “I wasn’t trying to poison you. I was trying to make you take a nice little nap, is all. Obviously that much is true, since you switched the cups and I’m still alive after drinking it. What tipped you off?”

  “You weren’t exactly subtle about it, now, were you? I had no idea until I started to feel odd, drowsy, much more so than I should have after a few cups of wine. Once I noted that and how focused you were to see what else I had to wager, I started paying close attention. The wine had tasted a little strange after you had come back from closing the tent flap and refilled the glasses. When we kissed, I switched the glasses, figuring if I was wrong, then there would be no repercussions. If I was right, well, I would have caught a rat.” He shook his head in disdain. “And look what the cat dragged in. But I’m not the one under scrutiny here. Why did you feel you needed to knock me out?”

  I had already decided that sticking with half-truths was the best way to go. He wasn’t stupid, so there was no point in trying to pretend I wasn’t guilty of something. I just had to throw out a big, fat red herring so he wouldn’t figure out what, exactly, I was guilty of.

  “To rob you,” I told him truthfully.

  It may have been a trick of the light, but for a moment he looked a little sad at my admission. I pressed on. “Do you know how difficult life for the less privileged can be? As a duke you can have no real idea what it’s like to want, to go without.” I was ad-libbing now and less than thrilled with the results. Effective? Possibly. Way too revealing? Probably. Painful? Definitely.

  “So you’re a down-on-your-luck fortune-teller with an American, British and I don’t know what kind of accent, who decided to rob the Loony Duke. Is that it?”

  “Pretty much.”

  “All right, even if I believed that part, which I don’t, you were winning every game we played and had already won my watch and my purse. Why the laudanum? What were you going to do, take my clothes and leave me naked in the tent? Surely I would be found, and you would be hunted down. And you had already succeeded in robbing me. It makes no sense.”

  I pondered his remarks and opened my mouth to speak, only to have him save me the trouble.

  “Unless, of course, you wanted to steal something particular. Is that the case, Dorothy? Do I have something you want?” he asked, his voice almost a whisper.

  The blood rushed from my cheeks as I realized, more due to his tone than his words, that he knew. Dammit, he knew.

  It was showtime. Taking a deep breath I worked up some tears, satisfied as they scalded a path down my face. I let out a loud snuffle for good measure, “M-m-my br-br-brother lost a g-g-game of cards to you a fortnight ago. And w-w-when he did, he lost our father’s timepiece. It was a f-f-family heirloom and I n-needed to get it back,” I wailed between Oscar-worthy, body-racking sobs. Again, pretty close to the truth, way closer than I liked, but I was out of ideas. Maybe he’d feel sorry for me.

  “Bacon is your brother?” he asked, disbelief coloring his voice.

  “Yes.”

  “You look nothing alike. He is a flaming redhead.”

  “Well, he takes after our mother, you see. And she was a bit of a tramp, if you must know. So we’re only half brother and sister.”

  I began to sob anew, hoping he would feel guilty for forcing me to divulge another painful “family secret.”

  Unmoved, he barked, “Stop that, this instant.”

  I did.

  He stood, moving until he stood over the bed, peering down at me. “You’re a good actress, I’ll give you that.” He shook his head in disgust. “Must be hard on your lovers. How could they ever know when you’re telling the truth? Poor bastards.”

  “I have no lovers. There’s just me and Bacon. He’s all I have now, and I need to get back what you stole from him. Take the watch, take the money. I just need the timepiece. If you believe nothing else that I’ve told you, believe this—it is a matter of life and death.”

  That was as honest as I could possibly be without revealing the true nature of the TTM.

  “Now, that,
I do believe. Let’s lay our cards on the table, shall we?” He reached into his waistcoat pocket and pulled out a disassembled TTM and a pair of alternate perception goggles. My TTM and my APGs.

  Bile rose to burn my throat. He’d already gone through my bag, and now we were sunk. He had it all, and Bacon and I had no way to get any of it back. The wormhole would be closing within the next forty-eight hours and we would be stuck here, possibly forever. Not to mention, the duke had all the pieces to my TTM including the mercury pin, and once he compared it to Bacon’s, he would easily be able to reverse engineer the thing and put mine back together into a usable, working time machine.

  I scrambled, and went for a Hail Mary, knowing it was a long shot, “If you do not release me this instant, I am going to scream my head off until someone comes. Everyone already knows you are a loon, and now you have kidnapped and chained a woman to your bed. Don’t think your meaningless English title will save you here. This is America, dude. You will hang for this!” I bellowed.

  He looked at me, a rather bored expression on his face. “The staff was given a two-day holiday and won’t be back until late tomorrow. The estate lies on fifteen acres of land and the next house is a mile away, and town is another mile from that. Scream until your heart is content. No one will hear you.

  “And as for kidnapping, everyone at the fair saw us leave together. Granted, you were slung over my shoulder, but everyone assumed you’d had too much to drink. I left to a chorus of boisterous encouragement. As I laid you over the top of my horse, I gave your bottom a hearty slap and let everyone know that you wouldn’t be sleeping for long.”

  He continued on. “It’s not often that people take the word of a fortune-teller seriously, and regardless of my alleged mental incapacity, I’m still a nobleman. No, you are well and truly stuck here, and the sooner you accept it, the sooner we can move on to more important things. Like you telling me how to work this thing.” He shook the pieces of the TTM lightly in his hand.

  “Work it?” I cocked my head to the side, treading carefully.

  “Work. It. How do you make it go? I have studied the gears and the hands intensively since having acquired Bacon’s. It’s genius, truly genius, but I haven’t yet been able to make it work. There’s something missing. Once I sit and put yours together, I’ll find it. It would be much easier on the both of us if you just tell me.”

  A little thrill coursed through me at his words. So maybe he hadn’t found the tiny mercury pin at all. It was hidden in an inside compartment of my carpetbag and was small as a matchstick, so it was certainly possible he’d overlooked it.

  I buried my relief, affecting a concerned expression. “I don’t know what you mean. I’m afraid you may be having one of your loony spells. These are a pair of timepieces, albeit very expensive timepieces, that mean the world to my family and have been passed to my brother and me. They were given to our great-great-great-great grandfather by Leonardo Da Vinci himself. We were in a very bad way financially and had sold them to a buyer in France. We’d been traveling to deliver them when you stole them from my brother. Those pieces are all that stand between us and complete financial ruin. Are they important to me, life or death? Yes. But beyond that, this talk of making them work, I don’t understand.” I eyed him pityingly.

  “Don’t look at me like that,” he said, his voice icy. “And I suppose the goggles are just newfangled eyewear, then?”

  I didn’t respond, still staring at him, nonplussed.

  “Have it your way, then, wench. You can stay here until you decide to tell me. I have spent my life trying to figure this out, and the answer is at the tip of my fingers now. Believe that I will not easily let it slip away from me.” He turned to go, then stopped. “I must know, though, why do you keep saying that I stole it?”

  “Bacon told me. He wouldn’t lie to me.”

  “Hmm. Well, in this case, I’m afraid you are incorrect. I won the item in question during a card game. Whist, if you must know.”

  “Yes, he told me that. But he also said that you tricked him into betting it. And that you cheated at cards to win it. To my mind, that is no better than stealing.”

  “Not quite. It would seem that your brother is just a terrible card player. There was no need to cheat. I won fair and square. I do admit, however, that when he began drunkenly waving the timepiece around, I was determined to win it from him. I would have stolen if I had to.” His tone was matter of fact.

  “Why?” I wanted to bite the word back. Some part of me, deep down, knew that his answer was going to change everything.

  “Why? So I could find you, Molly.”

  I suppose I should have been grateful that there was nothing in my mouth, but my “glass half-full” mentality flew out the window as I began to hyperventilate for the second time in twenty-four hours.

  How could he know? How could he possibly know? My lungs burned and my head spun as I tried to regain some control. Easy, slow, long breaths.

  Okay. So he knew who I was. Maybe Bacon had somehow slipped up in conversation? That had to be it, how else could he know? No one else in the world knew.

  “Molly?” The duke’s voice penetrated my fog.

  “Don’t call me that,” I responded dully. My breathing had become more regular, and rather than embracing the panic, I had retreated into a numb shell of denial. I was totally adrift, clueless and hating every second of it.

  “I know you’re confused right now. But I need you to look at me. Do you truly not remember me?” His voice was gentle, so gentle.

  I lifted my gaze to meet his, and looked at him hard. Surely I would remember such a handsome face. Such warm chocolate eyes, such lovely dimp—

  Blood rushed to my ears as my brain finally located the file, locked away, deep, deep down in the dungeons of my past. In my mind’s eye, I saw a much younger, almost gangly version of the man in front of me.

  I’d met him when I had just turned thirteen, not long before Gilly had taken us. He had been a teenager then, and his face hadn’t grown into those large, soulful eyes yet. His gait had been awkward, like that of a colt not used to its legs. A loaf of bread under an arm, a kind smile ever present, he would come and give us street kids a coin and food. He would tell us a funny story and talk with us like we mattered. And although he looked sad upon leaving, he never treated us with anything but dignity and respect, never eyed us with pity or disgust.

  On the rare occasion that I allowed myself to hope and dream during such a hopeless time, I invariably hoped and dreamed of marrying a man like him. So when he asked me my name, I’d told him the truth. And in that other life, my name was Molly.

  “Master Dev?” I asked in shock, startled to feel the warm splash of genuine tears against my shoulder.

  “Yes Moll, it’s me.”

  “How…” For once in my life, words escaped me. How had he known it was me after all these years? I’d been just a child. There were so many questions. I didn’t even know where to begin.

  He sank down on the side of the bed, the last remnants of anger leaving his face. God, how could I have forgotten that face? I had adored that face. It was one of the few in my childhood that, upon seeing me, would alight with a smile rather than twist into a snarl of fury. He held his hand out to me now, one of the few hands that had ever reached out to me in kindness rather than to administer pain.

  Exhaustion, despair, relief and fear coalesced and, falling forward, I pressed my head against his big, warm shoulder and began to sob in earnest.

  Chapter Four

  I don’t know how long we sat there, but the afternoon light was fading by the time I stirred against him. I lifted my face to his and tried to figure out what the hell to do. How do you continue to lie to someone who has shown you such kindness? Yet my allegiance had always been, had to be with Gilly, and I promised him that I would never tell. There were so many questions I needed answered, too. How had Devlin found me, or even known it was me when he did? More importantly, why had he even been loo
king?

  He stared back at me, lifting a hand to my hair and tucking it behind my ear. Leaning close, he pulled my face to his and said, “I missed you, little one.” Then he laid the softest of kisses on my lips.

  It was as though a dam had burst within me at that touch. I grabbed the back of his head with my free hand and brushed my lips against his, nipping at his lower lip. His response, a delicious moan, told me everything I needed to know. With my heart in my throat, I said, “I need you, Dev. No more questions, no more lies. I’m so very raw right now. I just need to not think. What do you say to a truce? Just until morning.”

  “Truce,” he replied, giving me a wicked grin that I needed so very much at that moment.

  He traced my lips with his finger, and I bit it gently. I struggled to move closer to him, but the jangle of the chain stopped me short.

  “Wait. Why all this?” I gestured to the creepy stuff all over the room. It was just to satisfy my curiosity by that point. Now that I knew who he was, I knew for certain he would never hurt me, or anyone else, for that matter.

  Dev chuckled, although for some reason it sounded a bit forced. “This room was here when I moved in. The gentleman that lived here before me had odd collections of things in every room of the house. I just hadn’t gotten around to emptying this room out yet. When I…took you, I thought it would be the perfect spot to put a little scare into you. That, and it’s the only room with shackles.” He gave the offending chains a rattle. “Now, to address that issue.” Reaching into his pocket, he pulled out the key.

  He unlocked my wrist first, then slid down to unlock my ankle. I felt the chain fall away, then the heat of his breath, the brush of his lips. I squirmed in delight as he kissed and nibbled on my ankles, moving his way up my calf. His fingers traced a devilish path on the soft skin on the back of my knee as his mouth continued its journey to my thigh, bunching my skirt higher as he went. I forgot to breathe as he pressed his lips against each of my hips in turn.