speechless.
‘How old are you?’
‘Eighteen. This...was my...first...Season.’
Young. Unprotected. Defenceless.
‘Are you married?’
His eyes searched the fingers on her left hand and saw them bare.
‘I am...not, sir...but I soon...may be. I...have a...suitor...who...likes me and I am...sure that we...will...’
She didn’t finish for shouts filled the courtyard of the inn as another conveyance reeled wildly into view. Several men alighted and came towards them and as the door was snatched open all James felt was pain as a firearm exploded into his face, the smell of gunpowder one of his last and abiding memories.
* * *
He was dead.
Her father had killed him, the blood oozing from his neck and his mouth in a slow dribble of frothed red.
The sound of the shot had deafened her so that all she could see were people with open lips and corded throats and wildly gesticulating hands.
She felt him fall and she went with him, the green-eyed stranger who had taken her. She saw the spurt of his blood and the quick steps of the horses as they danced against the movement. She saw the rough broken face of her father above her, too.
Crying.
That single thing shocked her more than anything else had, his tears against her face as he tried to pull her up.
Everything smelt wrong.
The blood. The gunpowder. The fear of the horses. Her sweat. The last tinge of vomit in the air.
It smelt like the end. For him and for her. A quick and final punishment for something so terrible she could hardly contemplate just what might happen next.
He lay on the ground beneath her, her abductor, young and vulnerable, one arm twisted under himself, a bone sticking out through the linen shirt and blood blooming. She wanted to hold on to him, to feel the lack of pulse, to understand his death, to allow him absolution, but her father was dragging her away, away from the people who had gathered, away from the driver who was shouting and screaming, away from the light of a rising moon.
The smell of peppermint followed her, ingrained and absolute, the heat of it sitting atop her heart which was beating so very fast.
He had rubbed the ointment there. She remembered that. He had lifted her on to the seat and placed his jacket around her shoulders to cover her lack of clothing, to keep her hidden. He had removed her dress so that she might breathe, protecting her as he done against the threat of the dogs.
The wrong person.
He had said so himself.
The wrong punishment, too. She began to shake violently as her father discarded the jacket she’d clung to before calling to his driver and footman. Then the horses jolted forward as they left the country inn and raced for the safety of Mayfair and London.
A warm woollen blanket was tucked carefully about her and she heard the soft sound of her father praying. Outside it had begun to rain.
* * *
‘Is she ruined, John?’ Her mother’s voice. Tear filled and hesitant.
‘I don’t know, Esther. I swear I don’t.’
‘Did he...?’ Her mama’s voice came to a stop, the words too hard to say out loud.
‘I do not think so, but her petticoats were dishevelled and her dress was disposed of altogether.’
‘And the cuts all over her legs and arms?’
‘She fought him, I think. She fought him until the breathing sickness came and perhaps it saved her. Even a monster must have his limits of depravity.’
‘But he’s dead?’
‘Yes.’
‘Who was he?’
‘God knows. Florentia could hardly draw breath and so we left. I don’t want to send anyone back either to the inn to make enquiries in case...’
‘In case our name is recognised?’
‘Milly said the Urquharts saw Florentia in the park a moment before the abduction and that she had spoken to them. They are not people who would keep a secret easily. I doubt Milly is a girl of much discretion, either. But they did not see our daughter as I did. They did not see her so underdressed in the company of a stranger, her gown gone and her hair down. There might be some hope in that.’
Her mother’s sob was muffled and then there were whispered words of worry, the rustle of silk, the blown-out candle, the door shutting behind them and then silence.
She was in her room in Mayfair, back in her bed, the same bunch of tightly budded pink roses bought yesterday from the markets on the small table beside her. It was dark and late and a fire had been set in the hearth. For heat, she supposed, because all she could feel was a deathly cold. She wiggled her toes and her hands came beneath the sheets to run along the lines of her body. Everything was in place though she could feel the scratches incurred during her flight through the woods.
She breathed in, glad she could now gather more air than she had been able to in the carriage. Her neck throbbed and she swallowed. There was a thick bandage wrapped across her right thumb and tied off at her wrist.
He was dead. All that beauty dead and gone. She remembered the blood on the cobblestones and on her petticoats and in the lighter shades of his hair.
The beat of her heart sounded loud in a room with the quiet slice of moonlight on the bedcovers. A falling moon now, faded and low.
Was she ruined because of him? Ruined for ever?
She could not believe that she wouldn’t be. Her sister had not come to seek her out and extract the story. She imagined Maria had been told to stay away. Her maid, Milly, had gone too, on an extended holiday back to her family in Kent. To recover from the dreadful shock, her father had explained when he first saw her awake, but she could see so very much more in his eyes.
The howls of the dogs came to mind. Her abductor’s voice, too, raw but certain. She remembered his laughter as she’d hit him hard with her books. There was a dimple in his chin.
Where would he be buried? She’d looked back and seen the servant lift him from the ground, carefully, gently, none of the violence of her father, only protection and concern.
She was glad for it. She was. She was also glad that she was here safe and that there was nothing left between them save memory. His pale clear green eyes. The shaved shortness of his hair. The two parallel scars evident on his scalp. The smell of wool and unscented soap in his jacket. She shook away such thoughts. He had ruined her. He had taken her life and changed it into something different. He had taken her from the light and discharged her into shadow.
The deep lacerations on her arms from the trees in the glade stung and she could still smell the peppermint even after her long soak in a hot bath scented with oil of lavender.
The scent clung to her and she recalled his fingers upon her as he had rubbed it in. Gently. Without any threat whatsoever.
He was dead because of his own foolishness. He was gone to face the judgements of the Lord. A deserved punishment. A fitting end. And yet all she could feel was the dreadful waste.
A tap on the door had her turning and her sister was there in her nightgown, face pale.
‘Can I come in, Flora? Papa said you were sleeping and that you were not to be disturbed till the morning. But Milly has been sent home and she was so full of the horror of your abduction it began to seem as if you might never be back again. What a fright you have given us.’
Florentia found her sister’s deluge of words comforting.
‘Mama says that there is the chance we