He reached passed her shoulder to fling back the tarpaulin and show her the cart was empty save for two hay bales. Mina frowned and half turned to look back at Reuben,
“I fail to see—”
There was a blur of movement behind her and a sharp sudden pain before everything turned black.
21
The first thing Mina became conscious of was the low murmur of voices. At first, she tried to drown them out to spare her poor pounding head. Then, as her senses returned and she felt the cold stone of the floor beneath her cheek, she realized she needed to regain consciousness and fast. The chill of her unfamiliar surroundings told her she was in trouble. She shouldn’t be here. Even the sounds were echoing and strange. It was almost like she had been thrown into a cellar.
Had she been thrown into a cellar? Someone had spoken recently of cellars. She thought it was Nye. He would never have thrown her into any cellar though. She was sure of that. Mina’s eyes cautiously opened. Wherever she was, it was dark, dank, and chilly. She concentrated on the voices. Surely, she knew them? They were familiar, but danced on the edge of her memory, elusive as dreams on waking.
She was lying on the ground and her first thought was that she was injured. If she had fallen down the cellar steps, maybe she had hurt herself? Gingerly, she tried to move her feet and felt them scrape against the stone floor. Then her hands. Ouch. Her head was aching fit to bust and her side felt bruised and tender. She wondered if she might have broken a rib.
Mina struggled into an upright position, sucking in her breath against the dizzying pain. Her movements had alerted the other occupants she was conscious, and she heard their feet approach.
“Where am I?” Mina asks, raising fingertips to her temples.
“Don’t you tell her!” said an angry voice, she recognized at once as Reuben the stable hand from The Harlot. A memory surfaced of turning to see Reuben with a rock in his hand. With incredulity, she realized he must have struck her head with it.
“Now lad,” Gus said with reproach. “There’s no need to take on so. Mrs. Nye won’t be informing on us, will she?”
“Gus?” Mina blinked up at the fluffy white-haired old gentleman.
“Aye, it’s me,” he told her encouragingly. “Right glad I am your brains weren’t dashed out, girl. Our Reuben was a touch over-zealous, I’m afraid. I only told him to stun you, not to try and stave your skull in.”
“You told Reuben to stun me?” she repeated through lips that felt numb.
“I’m afraid so,” he said with a gusty sigh. “Needs must, you see. You’ve had a most unfortunate effect on Nye.” He tutted. “Never would have believed it, if I hadn’t seen it with me own eyes.”
Mina gazed up at him uncertainly. “I’m not sure I follow,” she faltered, drawing her knees up to her chest.
“Pass that blanket here, Reuben. For she’s trembling, either from the shock or the cold, one or the other.”
“Damned if I will!” retorted Reuben angrily. “Where’s the sense, when the plan is to throw her off the headland in any case?”
Mina’s heart contracted as Gus sent the younger man a reproachful look. “There’s no need to be churlish, Reuben! And nightfall’s not for a few hours yet.” He reached across for a green plaid blanket and draped it about Mina’s shoulders. “How’s that, my dear?”
“Yes, much better, thank you.” She squinted at the dim light thrown out by a single hurricane lamp on the floor. It looked like they were in a subterraneous cavern of some sort. “I don’t understand. Where are we?” she repeated, her mouth felt dry and dusty and when she reached a tentative hand to the back of her head she could feel a matted patch of hair that was likely dried blood and a throbbing bump from where she had been struck.
Noticing her discomfort Gus looked about. “Where’s that flask?” he asked Reuben who glared back at him. “Not the whisky, you needn’t worry. I mean the water.”
“I still say we shouldn’t waste it on her,” Reuben muttered.
Gus gave an exclamation and stooped to pick something up. “Here, take a drop of this, Mina. It’ll clear your head for certain.”
She took it from him but was unable to unscrew it, so weak did she feel.
Gus took it back from her. “Stupid fellow that I am!” he reproached himself. “Here now, I’ve removed the cap for you.”
She took a sip of the water, then another, before easing back against a packing case and taking a third. It refreshed her, and she clutched it to her chest as Gus removed a hip flask from his coat and took a pull of spirits. He held it out for Reuben who scowled and shook his head.
“Why am I here?” she asked in a rusty voice. “How long have I been here?”
“Only a couple of hours,” Gus said soothingly. “Reuben bundled you in the back of a passing cart and he bought you here.” He winked at her. “‘Course, the carter was an associate of ours, if you know what I mean.” He tapped his nose and laughed uproariously.
Reuben twitched with annoyance. “Keep your voice down you fool! Do you want the Tavistocks to hear you?” he asked in a furious undertone.
For a second, Mina thought she saw a spurt of annoyance pass over Gus’s features, then almost immediately it was gone, and his face settled back into its habitually amiable expression.
“Nay, lad don’t be daft. I never could resist a pretty woman, they’ve been my downfall all my life,” said Gus wistfully. “I misdoubt I’ll be cured of that in my advanced years.”
“Old fool,” Reuben muttered. “A pretty pass if the guvnor hears you’ve been spilling your guts to the likes of her!”
Mina watched a sudden expression of cunning steal over Gus’s face and it horrified her. It contorted his round cherubic countenance into something quite different and full of malice. For some reason, Reuben’s words filled him with an unholy sort of amusement. It seemed to be some sort of private joke, for when Reuben glanced back at him again, Gus’s face relaxed back into his usual semblance of geniality.
It didn’t make sense to Mina, but it frightened her all the same. Reuben was half Gus’s age and of a stout, strong build. But Gus was far from scared of him. Her head hurt too much for her to fathom what was going on, but she felt all the same that Gus was the real threat for all Reuben’s apparent menace.
“Have I been kidnapped?” she asked hollowly.
“In a manner of speaking, yes,” Gus agreed cautiously. He stroked his fluffy sideburns. “Though, we’re not holding you to ransom. Not but what I expect that man of yours would pay any price for your safe return!” He chuckled. “He’s that smitten with you. It would be funny how hard Nye’s fallen, if it weren’t so damned inconvenient.”
Mina winced, trying to piece his meaning together through the fog of her head. “Inconvenient?”
Gus sighed, and plunked himself down on a nearby barrel. “We’re land smugglers, you see Mina. When the boats deliver the goods, we collect and distribute the booty all around hereabouts. We’re a tidy organized bunch, a goodly number, and none of us know above one or two other members by name.”
“Except the guvnor,” Reuben growled.
“Oh-ho yes!” said Gus richly. “Save for the guvnor, who is the mastermind of our little group, so to speak.”
“And Nye? He’s one of your number?” Mina asked with a gulp.
“Oh, yes. A most valuable member.”
“Leastways, he was,” Reuben interrupted, an ugly expression spreading over his face.
Gus sighed. “Until you got your clutches into him, my dear Minerva and gave him a yearning for respectability.”
Mina stared up at Gus. “Nye?” she could not help but clarify. “Nye hankers after respectability? It’s the first I’ve heard of it,” she managed with a burst of her usual spirit.
He nodded back at her ruefully. “For your sake, he has determined to throw off all ties with our disreputable company. It is the most lamentable business. Really, most lamentable.”
“Which is why you’re going t
o have an accident,” Reuben told her harshly. His mouth tightened into a thin line. “Tonight.”
“Without you, he will have no incentive to clean up his act, do you see?” Gus pointed out gently with a regretful sigh. He walked over to one side and beckoned Reuben. They exchanged a few low spoken words and Gus retreated out of sight. Mina listened to his footsteps echo over the cold stone floor and was surprised to count a good dozen steps before she had to crane her ears. Wherever they were concealed was not a small space but extended at least a few feet.
Cold crept over Mina as it sunk in that they weren’t holding her to ransom or the promise of her return over Nye’s head. They genuinely thought to find her husband more manageable with her out of the way. Up until a certain point, she had had the vague idea of throwing herself on Gus’s mercy, but after she saw that wicked expression on his face, she had banished that notion completely. For all his bluff, Gus was clearly senior to Reuben in the smuggler’s chain of command
She pulled the woolen blanket closer about her, as her mind groped for some way out of her predicament. Now why was it that Gus had looked so irritated with Reuben for a moment, she tried to recall. Reuben had appealed for him to quieten his voice in case the Tavistocks heard, she thought slowly. The Tavistocks. Now where had she heard that name before?
She wracked her brain and took another gulp of the water Gus had left with her. Suddenly it came to her. Nye telling her about Vance House, the reason he had married her in the first place. A fine Queen Anne residence he’d said, with ten acres and its own private beach. His father the fourth viscount had left it to him on his deathbed but had not included it in his will. Jeremy had only made the deeds over to him when he had married her. The Tavistocks he had mentioned were the elderly current tenants.
Keep your voice down you fool! Do you want the Tavistocks to hear you? What else could Reuben have meant other than they were somehow concealed somewhere at Vance House. She frowned. Could this be the cellar? But no, it looked far too roughhewn for that. Perhaps a cave on the private beach, she conjectured. But if that were so, why would the Tavistocks overhear them, unless they happened to be on the beach itself?
She stole a sidelong look at Reuben, knowing he was in fact the weaker link than cunning old Gus.
“How interesting,” she said aloud. “I’ve always been curious about Vance House.”
He wheeled around and regarded her with narrow eyes. “No doubt you’re thinking that Vance House is the ideal place for a fine lady such as yourself,” he said with a pronounced sneer. “But let me assure you, woman, you’ll never get your hands on it. Over Nye’s dead body. So, don’t even think it!”
Meaning to rile him, she cast a look of disdain his way. “I assure you, that as his lawful wedded wife, that would be the one condition whereby I would get my hands on it.” she pointed out. “Any property of his would then come to me by law. But in any case, Nye has told me we shall retire here to Vance House, so I shall certainly be mistress here someday, whatever you say, Reuben.”
He balled his fists and took a hasty step toward her as Mina heard Gus’s approaching footfalls draw closer. “Let her alone, lad,” he said with a chuckle. “You’re not her equal for verbal sparring. She’ll run rings around ye, so she will.”
“I’ll give her a split lip if she keeps testing me,” Reuben said sullenly.
“Ah no,” Gus scolded him. “That’s no way to talk about a lady.”
Reuben spat on the ground. “For two pins I’d cut her throat now,” he snarled.
“Nay lad,” Gus said, shaking his head. “When we dispose of her, she’ll go over the cliff with not a mark on her. “She’s threatened to jump before and that’ll be what folk thinks happened this time.”
“I have never threatened to jump from a cliff!” Mina said indignantly.
“Have you not?” Gus stroked his chin. “But to be sure, that’s what they’re all muttering in the village for weeks now. You told Nye you would sooner go over the cliff than mind his shameful ways and that’s how you bought him in line.”
“I did no such thing!”
“Well, Minnie girl.” He shrugged and spread his palms wide. “You can appreciate how these rumors get started. Now you can’t deny, you did run up to those cliffs very dramatical that time.”
“I wanted to get away from the inn, not fling myself off!” Mina disputed hotly.
“Aye well, there’s always a grain of truth to such rumors but often not much more than that,” Gus admitted with a grin. “Reuben said you and Nye had just had a dust up about that Ivy’s disappearance. He’ll blame himself no doubt for being too sharp with you.”
“Nonsense!” Mina huffed. “Reuben quite mistook the matter. We did not quarrel and Nye will know I was not remotely distressed.”
“Shut the bitch’s mouth, or I’ll do it for her!” Reuben interrupted them in a low growl.
Mina glanced curiously at Gus’s face. It was clear that he gave the orders, for he had instructed Reuben to abduct her. Yet for some reason, Reuben seemed to forget this in the face of Gus’s affability. It was almost like he was taken in by the ‘salt of the earth’ act and forgot that was just a mask the older man wore. Having seen it slip, Mina knew she would not forget Gus’s real face in a hurry.
Gus seemed to notice her scrutiny, for he gave her a sly wink before sauntering over to Reuben and dealing him a vicious blow across his face. Reuben reeled and was forced to clutch at the rockface of the wall to keep standing upright. “Now Reuben, my lad,” said Gus in his kindly tone, rocking back on his heels. “I’ll not say it again. You’ll keep a civil tongue in your head around Mrs. Nye. I’m the one gives you your orders and not t’other way about.”
Reuben’s face turned a dull, ugly red. He choked back the angry words that sprang to his tongue and turned away to retreat skulking into the shadowy distance.
“Don’t you mind him,” said Gus jovially. “He’ll toe the line alright,” Mina said nothing, for in truth she was far more frightened of Gus than she would ever be of Reuben. “Just think, Minnie my girl,” Gus sighed, pulling out his tobacco pouch. “You’ll very likely end up another ghost story, like the one I told you about those dastardly monks.” He twinkled at her like a kindly uncle. There was something truly horrible about it.
“I’ll probably be a good deal more romantic and tragic in the re-telling,” she managed to joke feebly.
He chuckled. “Ah yes. You’ll be beautiful as the day, with a crude brute for a husband. The quintessential wronged wife, no less.” He transferred some tobacco to the bowl of his pipe with his thumb.
“No doubt a gray lady,” Mina forced herself to expand on the theme. “The ladies are usually gray I find, when forced to roam the earth weeping and wringing their hands.”
Nye nodded, removing his pipe from his mouth to consider this. “Very true,” he rumbled. “Tis a pity you’ve not a spectral hound to keep you company, so it is.”
“I will not haunt the cliff, though,” she assured him. “Instead, I would haunt you.”
He paused a moment in the act of striking a match. “Would you now?” He chuckled again. “I believe, if it were in your power you would.”
“Naturally, my afterlife would be in my power,” she told him coolly.
“Well,” Reuben said, holding the flame to his pipe. “I’ve had a few wives you know, and most of them swore vengeance on me at the last.” His eyes glazed over as if in fond memory. “The one I prized best of all, ah she spat in my face that she’d be revenged with her last breath. Such a spitfire she was, my Jenny! But she never troubled me, after I’d put her in the ground. Never heard so much as a peep from her.” He shrugged.
Mina stared at him. “How many wives have you had?” she croaked.
Gus cocked his head as if considering. “Well, five give or take. A couple of them was only common-law so to speak,” he said cagily.
“You killed them?” Mina heard herself ask faintly.
He shook his head. �
�My Lucinda she died in childbirth and the babe with her. And Connie, she was always nesh. Fever fetched her off. But as for the other three…” He let the words dangle and shot her a sly look.
“I don’t believe you,” Mina said obstinately, and Gus laughed. “It’s no different to your other fairy tales. I knew you lied about the monks,” she said obstinately.
“Lied? Not a bit,” he rumbled but Mina only shook her head.
“Spectral monks? I think not. And I know who Grayking was, even if you do not.” He lifted his bushy eyebrows at her in query. “He was a goose, not a saint.”
Gus removed his pipe again and stared at it a moment. “Well now,” he said ponderously. “Stranger things have happened. I have heard tell that there were dogs sainted at one time and even a woman once made pope.”
“Fancy that,” Mina said sarcastically, and he chuckled again. Somehow hearing him continue genial was far more frightening than Reuben’s ugly threats. “Nye will know I didn’t fling myself over a cliff,” she persisted. “I’m afraid your confederate’s understanding is far from strong. One time, Sir Matthew Carswell offered me a carriage ride and Reuben reported he had asked me to run away with him.”
Gus frowned and puffed furiously on his pipe. “And?” he prompted.
“This is just such another misunderstanding. We are on perfectly affable terms. The last thing Nye did was kiss my hand.”
Gus pondered this a moment, before breaking into a smile. “I won’t deny, you’ve got Nye panting on a chain for you, but you’ll have to admit Minnie dear, that you fight as much as you reconcile. That’s just the sort of couple you are.” He beamed at her. “It won’t be hard for folks to believe he drove you to it. Not a gently reared, respectable soul such as yourself.”
“Edna won’t believe it either,” Mina said, raising her chin.
“Edna Lumm’s thought an odd body in these parts,” he said mildly. “There’s not many will set much store by her ramblings,” he spread a piece of sacking over the barrel and sat back down on it again. “You’ve got to resign yourself to it, lass. There’s none will be the wiser for your untimely end. It’s a pity, but there it is. You’re a fine spirited lass after my own heart, but business is business, and none can get in its way. Started out as a wrecker I did when I was naught but a boy. You have to be utterly pitiless to succeed in that profession. You mustn’t think I’ll let my fondness for you stay my hand.”
A Bride for the Prizefighter: A Victorian Romance Page 30