“Mother!”
“Mama! I hope you don’t plan on saying anything of the kind to Lord Haddington,” Kitty cried. “It’s humiliating to think he’s suffering silently in dread, afraid to even face you lest you bully him into marriage.”
“Perhaps he needs a touch of bullying.”
“Mother, please,” she begged. “If Jack ever manages to reach the point of a marriage proposal, I’d like it to be because of me and not because my mother nagged him into it.”
“Really, Katherine,” Maggie sniffed. “I hardly think–”
Sung Li cleared his throat from the doorway. “Pardon me, missy, I don’t mean to interrupt, but two rather questionable persons are at the door to see you.”
Eve and Kitty exchanged puzzled glances. “Questionable?” Maggie queried. “What would a person of questionable appearance be doing at the door, asking for my daughter?”
“I don’t know, missy-ma’am, but they asked for Mrs. Hayes by name.”
“Did they provide their names?” Eve asked.
“They would not say, lady,” Sung Li informed them, “but they say only Lord Haddington sent them.”
Kitty again shrugged under Eve’s questioning eyes. “I suppose you should show them in, Sung Li.”
“Missy, I don’t believe…” The majordomo swallowed his protest. “Right away, missy.”
Moments later, two rough and, yes, very questionable looking characters came in to the room. They were dressed fashionably enough, yet the clothes fit all wrong and were definitely not their own. Their demeanors were shifty, their eyes dodging from side to side.
“Can I help you, sirs?” Eve asked, rising. Kitty and their mother joined her.
“You Miz Hayes?” the smaller, wiry fellow asked.
Eve kept her eyes focused on the men steadily, not betraying anything at this point. Something was definitely afoot. “Why do you want to know?”
He didn’t answer, but his eyes darted some confusion between her and Kitty. Since they were so similar, their confusion was understandable. The other burly, silent partner nudged him and nodded to Kitty, whispering in the other’s ear.
“Yer the one, eh?” The first man pulled a pistol from beneath his coat and advanced on Kitty. “If ye’ll just come wi’ me, lady.”
“What is the meaning of this?” Maggie wanted to know, as the women backed away as a group from the menacing pair.
“Just come with me, ma’am,” he said again to Kitty, waving with the pistol at her mother and Eve while his larger cohort approached.
“I will not,” Kitty replied as she continued to back away from him, knowing Jack had nothing to do with this.
A meaty hand grabbed her upper arm. “No!”
Eve and Maggie grabbed her from the rear to pull her away, only to be warded off by the evil looking pistol the big man produced.
“Come quiet like, or Meany here will be forced to hurt your friends,” the one who held her told her roughly. Seeing her hesitation, he nodded and the one he called Meany grabbed Maggie roughly, holding the pistol to her temple.
“No!” Kitty cried out at the sight of her mother in danger. She couldn’t let anything happen to either of them. Clearly, this evil pair would show no mercy or reluctance to harm a woman. “If I go with you, do you promise not to hurt them? Will you leave them be?”
“’Course, ma’am. Ain’t got no quarrel wi’ ’em.”
“No!” Eve ran to Kitty, gripping her hands. “You can’t do this. You can’t simply leave with them.”
Kitty squeezed Eve’s hands tightly, then released her, before glancing at her mother who was agog with shock and fear. The wiry fellow let go of her and pointed his pistol between them as he backed away. “I must. I’ll be all right. Won’t I?”
Her would-be captor grinned cockily. “Surely, we won’t be hurtin’ ye. Not unless ye gi’ us reason ta.”
“Well, then, I will give you no reason to. Let’s get along then, shall we?” With that, the two grabbed her and pulled her out of the manor, past the startled servants and into a waiting carriage.
“Sung Li,” Eve screamed the moment the door closed.
The old man appeared promptly, looking somewhat harassed. “Send for the earl!”
“Which one…?”
“Both of them. Now!”
Chapter 31
Love does not dominate; it cultivates.
~ Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
Kitty struggled to consciousness against the throbbing pain in her head. The blow the nasty one absurdly called Meany had delivered with the butt of his pistol after she tried to jump out of the carriage was pounding terribly. Trying to gain a sitting position, she realized she was bound hand and foot and gagged as well. As her head swam dizzily, she attempted to adjust her eyes to the darkness. She wasn’t in the carriage any longer, but rather in what smelled like a barn. Given the pile of hay she was lying in, perhaps a loft, but the darkness prevented her from seeing anything else. Using her bound hands, she tried to grope around her, hoping to find a pitchfork or anything else she might use for defense. Nothing.
She had no idea what was going on or why the pair of villains kidnapped her from her home. And now, she had no idea where she was. In retrospect, it might have been better to have sat meekly in the carriage and been aware of her surroundings than to have acted so rashly in her need to escape the carriage and lose consciousness in the process.
Sitting back in the hay trying desperately to think, she was startled when a door opened below, casting a dim light that allowed her to see just enough to confirm her suspicions before it closed again.
She waited in the darkness, wondering what was going on.
Moments later, the door was opened wide and a blinding light filled the room. Blinking rapidly against the sudden brightness, Kitty gasped in recognition at the man who appeared over the edge of the loft as he climbed the ladder. His face a collage of purple and yellow bruises, two scabbed cuts on his cheekbone.
“Finally awake. I regret my friends were so rough with you,” he commented, sounding very pleased. He moved to her and removed the gag.
“Freddie, what is the meaning of this?” Kitty eyed her now ex-husband with disregard. What had she ever seen in him? His hair was pale yellow, not at all the rich golden strands that shone in Jack’s dark head. This man was nothing but a washed-out version of the golden boy she once thought him. “Have you gone mad? You just can’t kidnap me like this.”
“I was most distressed to receive papers yesterday telling me we were divorced, my dear.” He paced before her, ignoring her outburst. “I still don’t understand why you did it. Why? I have loved you so desperately my whole life.”
“You don’t love, Freddie,” she spat out hatefully. “You obsess. You oppress, but you do not love. That mockery of a marriage was not love!”
“You just don’t understand!” he yelled at her. “And I don’t understand! How had it all happened so quickly? These things take time. I thought I would have time to win you back.”
“Win me back?” she muttered in disbelief, trying to work against the knots binding her wrists, feeling desperation creep over her in the face of her former husband’s lunacy. “Is that what this is all about?”
“I tried these past several days to see you at Kilberry, but Sung Li seems to have taken it into his mind that I am his enemy rather than his employer.” Hayes curled his lip. “He should better remember his place. Indeed, he had a pair of large footmen remove me from the property as if I never lived there.”
“Good for him!” She straightened with a smile. “He is my servant now, Freddie, not yours, and he works for my best interest.”
“Living with your husband is in your best interests.”
“Do you actually believe that?” she asked in gaping disbelief, unable to comprehend he was even able to voice such a thought. “You beat me on a regular basis, Freddie. Do you remember that? How could it possibly be in my best interests to stay in such a hostile environment?”
/> Hayes squatted on his haunches in front of her and took her hands in his, ignoring the fact that hers were bound. “My love, you know I am so sorry for those incidents when my rage overtook my actions. It has never been my intention to hurt you. I love you and only want you with me. You are my wife.”
He leaned toward her and tried to kiss her, but Kitty turned her head away. Freddie’s eyes narrowed and he grasped her chin tightly and pressed a hard kiss to her stiff lips.
Grabbing his hand between hers, she used what limited mobility she had to sharply twist his hand around and back in a move Sung Li taught her recently. Hayes cried out in surprised pain and drew back, nursing the injured wrist. She spat in his face, only to receive a sharp slap to her cheek in return.
“I don’t know what it is you think you may have accomplished in leaving me, Katherine, but you are my wife and you will stay with me, do you understand me?”
“I’m not your wife anymore, Freddie, and you are completely insane if you think I will ever live with you again,” Kitty snarled at him. “I hate you! Understand that!”
Rising, Hayes backhanded her across the mouth, sending her reeling into the hay behind her. Kitty shot her bound feet outward, wrapping them around his ankle and sweeping him to the side, bringing him down as well. Thank God for Sung Li and his teachings!
“Want to beat me some more?” She threw a handful of hay at him from her bound hands and kicked out at him again, screaming as she hadn’t dared for years fearing retribution. She no longer cared. “Give me some bruises to match yours? You just wait ’til Haddington finds you this time. That will be nothing compared to what you’ll get next!”
The next blow laid her out flat, but Hayes wasn’t done. He leaned over and followed it with another blow, and another that left her lying limply in the hay. Unable to catch her breath, Kitty kicked out, catching him between his legs.
Hayes doubled over in agony, bringing a grim smile to her lips as she dabbed blood from the corner of her mouth. She was in pain but, thanks to Sung Li, at least felt as if she were giving back some of what she’d gotten.
After several long moments, Hayes straightened. “Perhaps, after a period of reflection, you will see the wisdom of my words, my love.”
With that he descended the loft, closing the door and leaving her once again in darkness.
* * *
“Where could he have taken her?” Jack demanded with aggravated frustration as they gathered in the family parlor that afternoon.
Jack, Francis, and a half-dozen footmen had all ridden out in different directions, trying to trail the carriage that had taken Kitty away, but met with no luck. The local sheriff was called in to assist and was gathering deputies even as they met to form a search party. General consensus determined Hayes must be the perpetrator of the crime. There could be no one else who would focus on Kitty alone for a kidnapping when any of the residents of Kilberry would have been sufficient impetus for a ransom request to be successful.
The two lackeys had taken Kitty on Hayes’ command, but where and to what end was the question. He’d nearly worn out the carpets, pacing in endless worry.
“Well, they couldn’t have gone too far,” Francis reasoned after much debate. “We should have had some sign of them if they had gone any distance. A witness. Something! I would wager they are actually quite close.”
“They’d have to be,” Eve agreed, though she wrung her hands uncontrollably. “Someone would have seen the carriage otherwise. Newport is not a large place.”
“Where then?” Jack paced the room again, agitation clear in each step, running his hands through his hair. “And for what purpose?”
“To have his wife back.” This came softly from Maggie, who sat near the window with Eve as they comforted each other, looking every one of her years as anxiety ravaged her. Everyone turned to her. “We were in New York when Kitty came to us a few months ago. She told us that she was going to visit Eve but did not want Freddie to know and asked that we not tell him. We tried to have a reason from her but she seemed hesitant to speak on it, so we didn’t pressure her.”
Maggie cupped Eve’s face and looked down at the features so much like Kitty’s, kissing her cheeks. “Freddie showed up a couple weeks later in a rage, demanding to know where Kitty had gone. By then we had gotten your telegram and knew we couldn’t tell him anything, so we deliberately misled him. We sent him to the Carolinas.”
Her admission garnered a stifled laugh from Eve.
“Kitty always hated it there,” she told the others. “Too hot and wet. She never wanted to vacation there.”
“Yes.” Her mother smiled sadly, then lost any trace of amusement. “But when he came back, Freddie was truly volatile. He damaged our property and threatened violence against both of us if we did not tell him. It was then we realized why Kitty had left more fully than your telegram let on.” She sighed heavily. “He demanded ‘his wife’, his, and said he was in his rights to have her back. Freddie always was a jealous boy. Hated to share what he thought was his.”
“Why did you make her marry him then?” Jack went down on a knee before her and taking her hand in his. “She never really wanted to, you know?”
Maggie looked with surprise to her older daughter who nodded in confirmation. “She never said anything to me,” she admitted ruefully. “Kitty was always a proper daughter. Obedient, uncomplaining.”
“Unlike me,” Eve added wryly.
“Yes,” her mother agreed. “You fought tooth and nail against marrying Shaftesbury. You were quite vocal about it, if I recall.”
“Always disobedient and complaining,” Eve softly added.
“I loved you both equally, in spite of and because of your differences.” Eve hugged her mother gently. “We were such terrible parents.” Maggie sighed.
“You were wonderful parents, both you and Da,” Eve assured her, tears burning her eyes. “You just wanted us to be taken care of and Freddie always professed to love Kitty.”
“And there is where the problem resides,” Maggie reverted to the previous subject. “It is what kept us from realizing how bad the marriage truly was for Kitty. Even after her letter, I guess we never thought it could be this bad. Freddie believes that he loves her, passionately and possessively.”
“Fanatically,” Jack inserted grimly, remembering the way Hayes had acted at the lawyer’s office.
“Yes,” Maggie continued. “And now I believe if he discovers she does not feel the same for him or if he feels she betrayed his love, he will be very angry with her. I fear for her safety.”
“Well, you are right to fear,” Jack informed them all, “because he does know. Jensen sent word that Hayes received his divorce papers yesterday.”
Haddington ground his teeth in helpless frustration. When he had followed Eve up to Kitty’s room that morning to locate her in this cavernous mansion, he intended only to talk to her to find out the reasons for her temper the previous evening. Kitty was like a thundercloud, bursting abruptly but usually ready to spread apologetic sunshine over the aftermath. He thought her anger would surely have dispersed. When he had held her in his arms, however, all the passion from the night before flooded him, and her as well, he was sure, and he’d had to take her again. Perhaps it hadn’t been the most romantic interlude, but it had been fulfilling for them both. Still, afterward she hadn’t even looked at him or said a word, clinging to her anger.
Disappointed and uncertain how to proceed, he returned to his own room only to find a packet of papers delivered in his absence. It had taken little time to realize that the legal documents from Mr. Jensen detailed a monetary transfer Kitty had set up while they were still in New York. The paperwork documented a transfer of funds into his account in Edinburgh in an amount tripling the sum he required to remove the lien from his estates. Her generosity left him humbled and disgruntled. Suddenly he wanted nothing to do with their ‘bargain’. He wanted simply to walk away from this troubling relationship, remove himself back to Scotl
and and a life without the turmoil she had brought into it.
Throwing that sheath of papers aside, he left, taking MacKintosh with him for a hard ride through the countryside. He needed time to think about her reaction and expectations…and his own. To examine the disturbing realization that he was, in essence, a kept man. Jack knew Kitty did not see their affair as such, but what did she want, then? What was her anger based on?
Whether she had misinterpreted his comments or not, Jack was certain Kitty had intended to engage in an extended affair with him. If that were going to be possible, they would have to come to an understanding.
But to do that, he first needed to find her.
“We need to find her before Hayes harms her in a fit of rage,” he said aloud, unaware of the emotion that thickened his voice. “If he is so far gone in this obsession to kidnap her, he might in the end decide if he can’t have her for himself, he would rather she die.”
Eve and Maggie both gasped at his grim prediction but Francis only nodded gravely. “Let’s get back at it then. Assume they are close by. We will send a man in every direction to every building we come upon. She must be found.”
“Soon,” Haddington growled, and stalked out of the room.
Chapter 32
Tyranny, like hell, is not easily conquered;
yet we have this consolation with us,
that the harder the conflict,
the more glorious the triumph.
~ Thomas Paine from The American Crisis
Kitty dabbed the edge of her skirt against her bloody lip, wincing in pain against the contact. Her cheek and jaw throbbed terribly but she didn’t think they were broken. Her left eye, however, was swollen nearly shut.
Damn that Freddie! She thought she was done with moments like this! He had come back in, raving about the divorce and claiming he would never let her go. When she had remained adamant she would never go back with him, he had beaten her again, convinced that domination would eventually force her back into the role she had once dwelt in.
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