by B L Bierley
Pauline nodded and was suddenly intent on hurrying away. As if she expected to witness someone committing the act of cutting a purse, she clutched the reticules tightly to her abdomen as she moved through the walkway.
Bliss watched her scurrying up the path without a backward glance and walked resolutely over to a bench to the left of the walkway backed against a curious line of thick vegetation.
Bliss spread her shawl over the dirty seat and sat lightly on the edge. She waited just a few heartbeats before a figure cast a long shadow over her.
“Lady Bliss, fancy that we should meet,” Lord Westford said smoothly. Bliss didn’t raise her eyes.
Don’t waste a minute, do you? She thought bitterly.
Her answer was void of emotion.
“Hello, Lord Westford. I’m waiting for my maid to return with some refreshments. Pity you didn’t arrive sooner! I could have directed her to fetch you an ice as well,” Bliss replied with what she hoped was a normal voice.
“I don’t think you really want to play this game with me, Lady Bliss. Why don’t you and I take a turn in the trees over there? I think you know what is coming. I’d rather not have witnesses to the event.” Lord Westford’s civil tone was gone.
The icy edge of his words was nothing to the steel muzzle of the gun he now had pointed at her from beneath a riding cloak folded over his right hand. Bliss noticed the Blunderbuss gun and matched it to the scene from her vision. She stood carefully and left her shawl behind as Lord Westford hurried her to stand to his left.
He kept the gun hidden as he offered her his opposite arm. Bliss forced herself to loop her hand through his elbow and walk with him. His grip was firm and his breathing slightly forceful even though they hadn’t accelerated their walking pace.
Once they cleared the edge of the woods, Lord Westford threw off the cloak and showed her the weapon menacingly.
“Make any sudden movements and you know I’ll put a bullet in your heart. No doubt you’ve seen it already, so you wouldn’t dream of doubting it. Now I want you to walk ahead of me, very slowly. Stay beyond sight of the walk until I tell you to stop!”
His tone was sharp as he nudged the small of her back with the flintlock pistol. Bliss began to walk in her usual gait, watching her step to keep from falling and startling him. One false step and her fate would be altered in seconds.
They reached an area where the trees began to thin. Lord Westford told her to stop and stand aside. Bliss could see the darkened hallway vision in her head. Lord Westford reached down into the leaves.
At first Bliss was thinking he was about to drown her in a well. The idea that killing her was his only intention nearly made her give way with her panic, but she forced her eyes to stay focused as Westford lifted what appeared to be a trap door into a dirt cellar, the dusty room.
“This is a secret storage room. Climb down the stairs and sit in the corner. If you attempt to run or to escape before I get down the stairs I’ll make you sorry you were ever born,” growled Lord Westford.
Bliss felt slightly ill at going into the darkened space in the ground, but when she reached the bottom step she found the darkened hallway leading to the dusty room. In the distance, she could make out the flicker of a candelabrum.
“What do you want from me, sir?” Bliss asked calmly as soon as Lord Westford joined her in the darkened passage. He was gripping her left shoulder and pressing the gun flush with her spine as he steered her. Bliss didn’t put up an ounce of resistance. She stepped up to a chair in the room and waited.
The room was crowded with crates of artwork. Bliss noted several other things that didn’t fit with the storage of artwork. She saw trunks overflowing with expensive looking decorations, fabrics and jewels. Rolled Turkish carpets leaned in each of the corners. She noted a small sarcophagus filled with golden doubloons on one of the far shelves.
Additional weapons, swords and knives were displayed like a macabre arsenal around the shelves and on the table. If she was skilled at defensive battle, she might have considered going for one of the swords or knives. Lord Westford must have seen her gaze.
“Don’t even think about it, girlie! I have a loaded gun. You wouldn’t even get a finger on those swords before I split your pretty skull in half! Sit in that chair!” he growled as he pointed the gun directly at her face and then at the chair. Bliss sat carefully down, staying forward on the hard wooden seat.
“Let’s tie those hands up to keep you from thinking anymore stupid thoughts about the swords.”
Westford yanked her arms back around the chair’s back. He tied her wrists with very thin, coarse rope. He pulled several sharp yanks in the knots to set them. Then he walked around to face her, making a point of gazing at her breasts with lewdness in his eyes and a smirk showing his vulgar appreciation of her form. Bliss fought back a shudder of revulsion.
“Now, pretty one, let me tell you what you can do for me. Tell me enough, and I’ll promise not to lay a finger on you until you’re ready,” Lord Westford whispered in throaty, honeyed tones that suggested his intent more clearly than words. Bliss looked at him squarely and waited.
“I want to know about futures, you see. And I believe you are the one to give me what I want. Investment futures, product futures, scientific futures, anything that will get me the most money! I expect a grand windfall for all this trouble, too! I’ve kidnapped an heiress, not a penny dove! So I need to insure that my efforts and the risks were not taken in vain. So you tell me what you know and we’ll bargain afterward.” With his words the ultimatum was clear.
He would kill her when she couldn’t be of further use to him. But it was the use she dreaded more than her actual death. Bliss knew exactly what he meant by “bargain.” He intended to ruin her before he killed her, but he could do it in ways that would either be more or less traumatic depending on his whim.
In her head she also saw several ways he could end her life once he made a decision to do so. Some were more torturous and painful—stabbing her, shooting her, beating her to death with his fists. Others were swift and would end her pain quickest—a quick beheading with a razor sharp sword, strangling her with a thin strip of metal about a foot long, and her least favorite option of them all—drowning her in the river.
Fortifying her resolve, Bliss made her next move carefully.
“What if I tell you that I have no idea about anything of the sort? I’m not usually privileged to visions about the material possessions of life. I’m usually more in tune with relationships and people. My views are more about people than things. What if I tell you that I know nothing that will help you? What would you do?”
Bliss kept her questions calm. She wasn’t really baiting him, she just knew that their connection wasn’t strong and to tell him accurately about his future she would need to know more about him. And she had no desire to get better acquainted.
“I’ll tell you what I’ll do. I’ll take your pretty little head off! You have no idea who you’re dealing with girl! You aren’t the first of your kind I’ve ever known. And when my cousin wouldn’t tell me what I wanted to know, I put him at the bottom of a pond and left him there to rot!”
“Why would you do that, sir? It obviously didn’t help you find out any information,” Bliss interjected quietly.
Lord Westford paused to lift an executioner’s sword and weigh it in his hand. He laid the blade down picking up a heavy claymore next. He seemed to find the greater heft more to his taste.
“No, he merely told me before I killed him that he knew nothing, same as you, and that the only future he could see involved a woman with a similar gift. You have to imagine my surprise when I detected your little slip at dinner the other night! I take it your companion knows nothing of your talents?” He turned to stare at her in challenge.
“Dr. Benchley is doubtful of anything not explained by facts or sciences. He chooses not to believe because it makes him doubt his teachings or fear the ways of God. That is not important, though. What yo
u want from me is probably less available than it was from your cousin, you know. And you got nothing from him who knew you fairly well, I gather?”
Her question seemed to make him pause to consider what she’d told him. Bliss knew it would take all of her willpower not to break down under the strain of this captivity. The only thing keeping her from losing the tenuous control was the fact that she knew enough of what was going to happen to forego the worst of the scenarios.
Still, Westford’s behavior was erratic. At any moment the scene could alter on his decision. Bliss focused on keeping him calm. Lord Westford suddenly began to laugh with dark humor.
“I may not have gotten any useful information from him, but I got my paltry title which helped me make some headway to having what I really wanted. Married a girl with a sizeable dowry, and now I have a lot more influence. And my position as curator of the museum gives me access to things other people aren’t privileged to touch much less smuggle in or out of the country for grand sums!
“But I need to know how to make it grow. I want to see the wealth getting bigger. Tell me what I need to invest in. Tell me what is going to be a big money maker in the near future!” he demanded in a desperate tone.
“You won’t live long enough to see any industries of wealth, I’m afraid,” Bliss remarked as he finished his demands. He turned sharply to look at her face. Bliss didn’t flinch.
“Explain that to me. Is it because you are lying or you honestly don’t think I know about progress? There are new things coming to life every day in the world. Some of them are extremely valuable if you know enough to invest in the ones which will be in the highest demand. Like pineapple farms or new developments in weapons or the manufacture of textiles! All these things had to come from somewhere!
“And the people needed money to get their ideas started! I want to be able to push a new invention into being and make money when it grows in demand! So you are going to tell me what’s coming.” Lord Westford maintained his calm show until his monologue was done. Then he turned to face Bliss, his face so close she could smell his hair as he shouted so loudly that he made her eyes water, “TELL ME!”
“Lord Westford if I knew anything I would gladly tell you the best economic marketing buys for the next forty years. But I’m afraid it doesn’t work like that. Your cousin, bless his soul, wasn’t lying to you.
“I don’t have any information unless the person involved has some sort of connection to me. Now, if you want to know about anything related to my family, I’ll be most happy to give you every detail I have,” Bliss replied coolly.
She knew getting upset or crying wouldn’t help her. He would instantly tire of her theatrics and kill her to avoid the noise. Bliss waited for his next move.
“You think I don’t know anything! Stupid girl. You predicted the soup! You forget I know that! I saw your little umbrella trick, too. Somehow you knew it would rain, so don’t lie to me,” he countered in a deadly tone.
“I knew those things because they connected to my future. I would be eating the soup, and I would be getting wet if I didn’t have my umbrella. I could predict those changes. But if someone designs an invention somewhere unconnected to my life, I have no way of knowing about it until I see it.” Bliss told him simply.
This made Westford very angry. He pulled his right hand up toward his left shoulder and drew it swiftly across her right cheek. Bliss hadn’t expected it because it was a split decision made by a madman. It nearly unseated her.
She felt the sting of her cheekbone as the flesh began to bruise, her inner cheek cut on the edge of her teeth leaking a metallic rustiness onto her tongue. With her hands tied, Bliss also struggled not to fall over. Her fear was what might happen if she hit the crate sitting nearby and lost consciousness.
Rather than help her, Lord Westford simply looked at her with a sneer. He pulled a watch from his pocket.
“It’s already after five. I’ve got to get back to the office and make a few appointments before I head home. You are going to stay here and try to think of something useful for me. And you’re to keep quiet. If I get any word of anyone reporting strange sounds from the woods, I’ll beat you to death and leave you in this room until the maggots run me out,” he said darkly.
Bliss was unable to avoid the creeping feeling and involuntary shivers running down her spine.
Lord Westford took another length of rope and secured her bindings to the hard ladder back of the chair. With two more pieces he had tied her ankles tightly to the forward legs of the chair. Then without warning he extinguished all the candles but one, which he took from its base and held in his fist. Bliss knew he was doing this to prevent her from escaping by burning off the ropes. She had a brief flash of being able to do it. He left her there in the dark, slamming the door and locking it thus securing her prison as he went.
Seated in the black darkness of the room, Bliss contemplated scooting the chair over to the table and using one of the swords to free her hands. But in two of the visions she cut herself in such horrible ways that she was unable to use her hands to pick the lock on the door and bled to death.
In the third version of her possible escape she managed to get the ropes severed without injury, but before she was able to unlock the door, Westford discovered her mid-attempt. His behavior was so horrific upon discovery that Bliss immediately abandoned the idea in order to banish the vision from her mind before the images were burned permanently into her memory.
So instead of attempting the escapes, Bliss was forced to sit quietly and wait for time to pass. She spent the hours playing through what happened in the park and at Whisper Chase after her disappearance was discovered. She could sense their panic on her behalf and hoped that her clues were vital enough to do the trick.
Chapter Nineteen
Pauline, Bristol, April 1811
It was difficult to work for someone like Lady Bliss. The girl knew how to make people do things without them realizing! Pauline was mumbling mild complaints as she trudged over the gravel walk toward the street closest to the museum.
She searched through three odd characters before she found a vendor that actually had an ice block and lemon sweet water. When she had paid for the small cones of waxed parchment, she had to walk quickly back through the clusters of people before the melting ices dampened and destroyed their receptacles.
She reached the bench and found no Bliss, merely her shawl laid over the stone seat. Pauline sat and held the cones out over the grass and waited. She nibbled a bit of her ice as she sat knowing Lady Bliss wouldn’t care a whit if she finished hers before it melted.
Worry became tangible as the distressed maid visually searched the areas of the park. She saw no one who looked familiar. Bliss wasn’t usually one to wander away unless something alerted her peculiar senses where she felt she could help.
Pauline continued to wait for nearly an hour before becoming more than a little agitated. The second cone, Bliss’s ice, melted so far as to be nothing but a damp, sticky wad of fragmenting parchment and wax. Abandoning her post for only as long as it took to find a rubbish bin, Pauline returned and used a handkerchief to wipe the sticky lemon/sugar residue from her hands.
New panic was beginning to bloom in her chest. Bliss never stayed gone for long without either sending someone to report on her whereabouts or coming back in person as soon as she was able to get away.
Suddenly it dawned on her what might have happened. Lady Bliss was a wealthy heiress to a substantial family fortune. Perhaps some highwayman had recognized her sitting alone and abducted her!
“Oh, no!” Pauline fretted aloud. Then she shook herself.
It was silly and nonsensical, running off without first searching the area. Taking the shawl over her arms to hide the reticules, Pauline began to walk the grounds of the park in search of her missing mistress. She asked a few people of her class if they’d seen anyone fitting Bliss’s description. None of them had seen her.
For another half hour Paulin
e continued to walk the grounds. She wandered into the museum, looking through the rows and shelves of displayed history to see if Bliss had gone in and uncharacteristically forgotten about her.
When she completed the circuit, she asked the desk clerk if he had seen a woman fitting Bliss’s physical characteristics. The young gentleman said he’d not seen any blonde haired women that day.
Hyperventilation soon began to take over Pauline’s breathing. She knew it wouldn’t help her cause to swoon, however, so she asked the young clerk where she might find a constable or a guard to assist her in searching for her missing lady.
The young man offered to help as the museum would soon close. He told her he would continue to look for the woman and ask a few people who were regularly in the vicinity while she ran to King Street to fetch the constable. Pauline thanked the man and began to run.
Her first true obstacle in the search came in the form of the constable himself. The man asked her to state her business as a finely dressed young woman alone carrying two reticules was highly suspicious. Pauline was so winded she could barely make coherent sentences at first. She forced her lungs to breathe deeply for a full minute and then began to explain.
“Sir, begging your pardon, I’m looking for my mistress. She was supposed to be waiting for me at the museum park, on the fourth bench on the far side of the park, sir. I returned with ices she sent me for and sat on this shawl, which belongs to her, for near on hours without seeing her.
“I searched the grounds and the museum and asked the desk clerk to keep looking. But I am very afraid she’s been taken for ransom, sir. She’s a very wealthy heiress. Her name is Deanne Bliss Porter, Lady Bliss Penwood. She’s the second eldest daughter of the family, sir, and recently debuted. Her family is from Cardiff. She’s staying with her honorary aunt and uncle here in Bristol. Please, sir, can you take me there? Lord Osterburg will want to be included in the search. He’s quite fond of his niece!”
Pauline’s pleas came out in a heady rush of new terror. Both the Osterburg’s and the Penwood’s would be angry and devastated if anything happened to their beloved Bliss!