“It’s not that you’re all interchangeable, it’s just that I have never before felt the need… Ah, enough of this, it’s very improper. Now, you shouldn’t even be with me since you have no chaperon. On the other hand, I would just as
soon stay close until Mr. Ffalkes makes his move, and I know he will. He’s a desperate man and you’re the only lifeboat around to save him from his sea of debt.”
“Are you dark and brooding and dangerous, North?”
“Do you think I am?”
“Yes, it’s possible. You certainly do adapt to the role with ease. Bennett said you looked like a wild Byronic hero, and that’s true enough. But you’ve been wonderful to me, so I’ll accept all sides of you. If you want to go off with your hounds and brood on the moors, why, it’s your business. A person should be allowed to develop like a rich tapestry with all sorts of vivid colors and different moods and settings, some harsh, some gentle.”
“Perhaps,” he said, looking at her closely now because no woman had ever before spoken thusly to him. Of course, he’d never before been alone so long with a woman and not making love to her. He said, “Tell me, Caroline, how do you know I have hounds? When you were with me, they were all in their enclosure. As I recall they weren’t even howling at the moon.”
“I overheard Mr. Tregeagle say something about their food to Mr. Polgrain. He called them ‘bloody proper pigs.”’
“Ah. I guess they are. Tell me something else, Caroline. What dark secrets are you hiding?” He stared down into her open, quite lovely face, those remarkable deep-green eyes of hers, bright with humor, mischief, and intelligence. Ah, and so much curiosity and interest in everything. No, she wasn’t interchangeable with any other woman, and for a brief moment it scared him quite to his toes. Then, without warning, in his mind’s eye he saw his father yelling at him, his face mottled red with his fury, with his interminable impatience, his bitterness, his rage. No, he wouldn’t think of his father. He raised his hand to smooth back a thick
tendril of rich chestnut hair that had come loose from its coil at the back of her neck. As he tucked the hair behind her ear, he said, his voice low and dark and smooth, “No, you don’t have any secrets, do you? You’re open and sweet and remarkably kindhearted, given the guardian who’s plagued you for how many years.”
“Mr. Ffalkes was my guardian since I was eleven years old. I don’t think I like to be called sweet. It sounds like a fat pug who lies about waiting to be scratched on the belly.”
“You’re too trusting, Caroline, out here on this windblown promontory with a black-souled devil like myself. Much too trusting. Oh damnation, give me your mouth.”
He leaned down and kissed her lightly on her closed lips. She was too surprised to move, just stared up at him, her head slightly tilted to the side in question. For a moment, his fingers caressed her cheeks, her ears, her throat.
“Sorry,” he said, stepping back from her. “I must contrive to remember I’m a gentleman and a gentleman doesn’t take advantage of a lady.”
Caroline stared up at him in blank surprise. She touched her fingertips to her mouth, now looking thoughtful. “ Actually, you just took me by surprise. Perhaps you could do that again? I think it might be very nice. It might be more to my advantage than to yours.”
“Stop it. Come, let’s ride northward and I’ll show you a hidden walkway down to the beach.”
Roland Ffalkes knocked on the immense griffin-head brass knocker of Scrilady Hall at six o’clock the following evening.
Caroline was quite alone, save for two servants and Mrs. Trebaw, the housekeeper. It was Mrs. Trebaw who appeared in the doorway of the small breakfast room where Caroline was eating her dinner in isolated splendor, Bennett having
ridden to Goonbell to drink himself into a stupor at Mrs. Freely’s Pilchard Head Inn.
“Begging your pardon, Miss Caroline, but a Mr. Roland Ffalkes is here. He said he was your guardian and sort of your cousin and uncle, and he’s most anxious to see you. Shall I show him in?”
But she didn’t have to, for he’d followed her, now standing behind Mrs. Trebaw, looking confident, hale, and hearty as a stoat.
Caroline knew a moment of sheer terror. Then she slowly rose from her chair. “Mrs. Trebaw, listen to me carefully. I want you to have Robin fetch Lord Chilton right now. Don’t tarry.”
“Oh, I don’t think that will be necessary, Mrs. Trebaw,” Mr. Ffalkes said easily, coming into the breakfast room now, a comfortable smile on his mouth. “You see, dear ma’am, my ward and I have had a disagreement. I am here to mend fences, so to speak.”
“How do you manage to dredge up a smile? It nearly looks sincere. Never mind. Do it, Mrs. Trebaw. This man is a criminal. He is not my guardian. Have Lord Chilton fetched immediately.”
Mrs. Trebaw, looking perplexed and just a bit frightened, hurried away.
“It won’t matter, Caroline,” Roland Ffalkes said, looking briefly after the fleeing housekeeper. “If Lord Chilton even bothers to tear himself away from his own amusements at Mount Hawke, he will arrive only to find you gone. Are you ready, my dear?”
“Go to the devil, Mr. Ffalkes. This is my home. You will leave now. I have nothing to say to you. My solicitor will be in touch with you. You are no longer my guardian. You are nothing to me, nothing at all. No, I take that back. You are a thoroughly wretched memory. Now, get out.”
He laughed and walked to the rectangular table, after quietly closing the door behind him. The room was small and square and there was no other exit. She picked up a knife from beside her plate. “Keep your distance, sir, or I’ll skewer you, and enjoy it immensely.”
“I doubt it, Caroline. You caught me by surprise last time, but not again. Be easy, my dear. Accept me, for you really have no other choice.”
She watched him calmly pull a large white handkerchief from his pocket. From his other pocket he withdrew a vial of clear liquid. She watched him liberally douse the handkerchief with the clear liquid.
She stared at that vial, the liquid within as clear as water. “What is that?”
He merely smiled at her and came around the table. “Put the knife down, Caroline.”
“No, I won’t. I’m not going to faint or weep. Believe me, Mr. Ffalkes, I’ll stab you and I don’t care if the knife isn’t all that sharp. I’m very strong, I’ll get it shoved in you nice and deep and then I’ll turn it. Such a pity I left my pistol upstairs in my bedchamber, but this will gullet you just as well. I mean it, Mr. Ffalkes, go away from here.”
He was six feet from her. He didn’t pause in his confident stride toward her, the soaked handkerchief held toward her in his right hand. Suddenly, he tilted one of the heavy mahogany chairs and shoved it hard and fast, so it teetered madly, right at her. She tried to move out of the way, but it struck her arm. She grabbed her arm because the pain was numbing. In the next instant, he was on her, slamming the wet handkerchief against her face with one hand, his other hand clutching the nape of her neck, holding her still.
She felt his hot breath on her face. “That’s it, my dear, struggle like a wild thing, it will go all that much faster.” She tried to stab him with the knife, but the fumes, strangely
sweet, were filling her nostrils, her throat, her brain. She felt herself growing faint and weak, all her coordination falling away from her. She felt floppy, her muscles lax and useless. She raised the knife, only to feel her fingers release it. She heard it drop to the wooden floor. She tried to free herself, but she couldn’t. The last thing she saw was his face hard with satisfaction above hers. “Yes, that’s it, Caroline. Breathe deeply. It’s chloroform and it will keep you quiet for a very long time.”
She tried one last time to twist away from him, but she couldn’t. His face blurred above hers. She saw his smile, heard him say from a great distance, “I did wonder how long it would take before I got you alone. Not long at all.”
She heard him laugh. Then she didn’t hear or see anything at all.
North couldn’t remember being so frightened before in his life. Treetop ate up the ground between Mount Hawke and Scrilady Hall, but he knew in his gut that Ffalkes had come because he’d been watching and had known she’d be alone, without even that idiot Bennett Penrose there to give her protection, and Penrose had been told never to leave her side if other men weren’t about, namely him. He’d wanted to dine with her this evening, but one of his mares was foaling and she was having a hard time of it and he was fond of Spring Rain and so he’d remained to help her. And now this, dammit.
Caroline was tough, she was resourceful. For a girl, she was strong. He knew that, just as he knew she wouldn’t faint helplessly away in the face of adversity, but he also knew that Ffalkes wouldn’t take any chances with her, not this time he wouldn’t. No, he’d arrived prepared and North knew in his gut that he’d succeed. His blood ran cold.
He outstripped poor Robin in a matter of minutes, his
body bent low over Treetop’s neck, urging his bay to go faster and faster. When he arrived at Scrilady Hall, Mrs. Trebaw was standing in the open door, wringing her hands on her black bombazine skirts, pale as a hoary frost of November.
“He took her, my lord! Beyond wicked, he is. I never would have believed it, but he came in and took her. Oh dear, oh dear, I couldn’t stop him and I tried. He just shoved me out of the way.”
North pulled Treetop next to the Scrilady Hall steps, but he didn’t dismount. “How did he take her?”
“She could have been dead, my lord. He was carrying her and her head was flopping back over his arm. He had a carriage. I tried to stop him, my lord, please, I swear that I did, but as I said, he just pushed me away and said it was none of my business. The two maids were of no help at all, hysterical, both of the silly girls. He had a man driving the carriage. They went northward, toward Newquay.”
“I want you to have Robin fetch Dr. Treath as soon as he gets here and tell him the same thing you told me. Have him go to Mount Hawke and wait for me. It’s all right, Mrs. Trebaw, I’ll get her back.”
Jesus, what if… No, he wouldn’t let himself think about all the awful things Ffalkes could do to her. He had to turn his energies to following the quite clear carriage wheels. It had rained during the afternoon and the wheel marks were nice and deep. At least this was one advantage Ffalkes hadn’t counted on him having. But he had to ride Treetop more slowly than he would have liked. Would Ffalkes rape her in the carriage? While she was unconscious? He had no doubt that somehow he’d managed to knock her out. No, she wasn’t dead, that would defeat Ffalkes’s purpose.
He kept his eyes on the wheel tracks. It would be dark in an hour; thank God he still had that much daylight left.
Suddenly the wheel tracks veered away, going directly toward the narrow cliff road, more a path that was treacherous and surely too rutted and winding for a carriage. Something wasn’t right. He stopped Treetop and dismounted. He was glad he’d stopped. It took him a while, for someone had taken a tree branch and swept it across the ground. He could almost feel the man’s impatience, sweeping the branch over the hoof marks, believing it foolish and unnecessary. North looked very closely and was soon rewarded for his own diligence and the man’s impatience. He saw the deep hoof marks. Three horses, one set of hooves deeper than the others, showing the horse was carrying more weight, which meant that Ffalkes was now carrying her. The bloody carriage was some sort of diversion.
Who was riding that other horse? It better not be that chinless Owen. And who was on the third horse? Doubtless both of the other horses carried hired villains, and that made North gnash his teeth with anger and worry.
He dug his heels into Treetop’s belly. Within minutes, one set of horse’s hooves veered away.
“S
HE
’
S WAKING UP
, guv.”
“I’m relieved. I didn’t know how much to give her. That damned apothecary was so drunk he didn’t even realize what I was buying. I could have killed her and that would have gained me nothing at all.”
“She’s a purty little bite.”
“She’s too tall, her breasts aren’t large enough, she has a bitch’s mouth, but I suppose, when her mouth is properly closed, her face is all right.”
“I’ve been awatchin’ ’er breathe, guv, and ’er titties seem jest fine to me. As fer ’er face, lordie, she’s a luv, and ever so soft-lookin’. Jest look at them eyebrows of ’ers, all nice and arched and dark as ’er eyelashes. Aye, guv, she’s a sweet little bite.”
“Shut up. I want to make that cottage before dark.”
The scruffy young man with thick black eyebrows that met in a straight line over his eyes, whose name was Trimmer, shut his mouth for the simple reason that the rich old cove wot ’ired him ’ad the groats and thus the power. Poor little girl. What was he going to do with her? But Trimmer knew what he was going to do. He wondered if he would be allowed to enjoy himself with the delicious little piece after the old guv had her. But all that trouble just to plow a single female’s little belly? It seemed beyond strange to Trimmer. Females could be had cheap, so why this bleedin’ drama?
Caroline looked up at Roland Ffalkes’s chin above the folds of his black coat and cravat. There was a tuft of whiskers he’d missed shaving. He was holding her close and she felt the smooth motion of the horse beneath her. She’d lost and she felt the return of the terror she’d felt when he’d first walked into her breakfast room.
She said very slowly, her voice and brain still slurred from the fumes from the soaked handkerchief, “Where are you taking me?”
“Ah, awake, are you? Hello, Caroline. No protector for you now, my dear. Just your dear soon-to-be husband and a very harsh young individual who won’t be as kind to you as I am if provoked, so I beg you to remember your manners.”
“When you’re through admiring the sound of your own voice, tell me where you’re taking me.”
“Still so mouthy, so full of swagger so unbecoming the gentle sex. I’ve never understood where you got this flippancy of yours. Your father was a quiet man, albeit a man of many moods. All he needed to make him content was a cause; anything would do: the corn laws, for example, the deportation of a miserable lout who stole a loaf of bread. He loved to smash his head against what couldn’t ever be changed, all in the name of justice, which has never meant anything at all. As for your mother… that’s it, that’s where you get this damnable smart mouth of yours. She always said just what she wanted to say. But she never jested, not like you do. She could hurt a man just speaking her mind. Once, she went too far and I was just showing her how much I admired her, but… Ah, you needn’t know what she was really like. Odd, isn’t it? I tried to keep you alone, isolated, if you will, after you so cleverly got yourself away from the young ladies’ academy. Mrs. Tailstrop was the most witless female of the appropriate level of quality I
could find to live with you and be your chaperon. I believed you’d take to Owen because there was simply no one else. But you didn’t. As for this pathetic jesting of yours, Caroline, you will get over the woeful tendency once you’ve been my wife for a while. I suggest that you try now for a bit of conciliation. I am perfectly willing to wed you before I take you to bed and relieve you of your precious virginity. Well?”