Amanda Scott (45 page)

“What happened?” The two words nearly choked her.

“Like you, she discovered my identity and threatened to tell the world. I meant only to demonstrate the consequence of provoking my temper, but I fear I misjudged my own strength.”

“In fact, you beat her to death to silence her,” Anne said, amazed at how calm she sounded but certain he would discern the false note and know her fear of him paralyzed all other emotion.

“That was not my intention. I meant her to receive no more than the usual punishment allotted to misbehaving harlots.”

“Merciful heaven, how can a harlot, who has already sunk as low as a woman can go, be said to misbehave?”

His laugh sounded perfectly demonic. “How much you have to learn,” he said, “and how much I shall enjoy your lessons. Our little birds of paradise here on the
Folly
frequently misbehave and must be shown the error of their ways. Maxwell is quite adept with a whip and rarely does permanent damage, but I tend to let passion rule my arm, I’m afraid, which is precisely what happened with the Carver slut. She defied me. Not only did she refuse to promise to keep silent, even when most of the skin had been lashed from her back and her gown was in bloody shreds, but she was insolent. Had she begged for mercy and promised to obey me, she would still be alive today. Remember that, my pet.”

Anne felt sick. The image his words painted in her mind was more than her stomach could tolerate. “How could you? Molly was only an innocent young girl.”

He shrugged. “She was, like most maidservants, a trollop, a whore—as you said yourself, the lowest of the low. What difference can one more or less of that sort matter? She chose her lot in life.”

“You know she did not,” Anne said, forcing the words out between tight lips and gritted teeth, wanting to strike him, or better yet to shoot him right between the eyes. “I see now how it is, the way you threaten maids like Frannie and Jane. I daresay you demand favors for yourself from any maidservant you believe to be unprotected, and most are afraid to withstand you. If one refuses to submit, you turn her off without a character, rendering her unemployable elsewhere and leaving her no choice but to seek work here at the
Folly,
where she soon finds herself at your mercy. The wonder to me is not why
some
of our maids have become prostitutes but how so many have avoided it. You are a complete villain, Bagshaw, and will certainly be hanged.”

“Harsh words, my pet,” he said, stroking her cheek.

Anne wrenched away from him. “Don’t touch me!”

“Oh, I shall do more than just touch you, my love.”

“And don’t call me by those horrid words. I am not your love or your pet I am not your anything!”

“So it is possible to shake your calm,” he said, sounding smug. “I wondered, you know. Much of your great allure lay in wondering what it would take to shock you, to break through that serenity of yours and free the passion I was certain lay beneath. How gratifying to learn that instinct did not mislead me.” With an evil smile, he added, “We must cultivate this more passionate nature for the pleasure of others. I will teach you myself.”

“You will do no such thing,” Anne said, horrified. “Good God, do you think you can keep me here forever? You
are
mad.”

“Oh, not mad, my pet. I run no risk by keeping you aboard my boat. No one who cares about you has the least notion of your whereabouts. Lord Michael learned of your precipitate departure from the stable boys, of course, but they insisted they knew no more than that you had driven off in furious haste with Lord Ashby. They mentioned Scotland, however, which sent him haring after you at once. It all seemed quite providential, really.”

Remembering that she and Lord Ashby had both commanded his men to tell no one else how the balloon had got loose, Anne could not at this juncture think highly of Providence. She said, “Only you would say such a thing, Bagshaw.”

“Ah, but the whole business was clearly providential, you see, for I had been wondering how I might arrange to teach you manners—particularly after you worked your wiles on Burdekin—so I took advantage of your being out of the way today to search your rooms, and there were your papers sitting there, just begging to be used. When only a short time later his lordship mentioned your abrupt departure to me, the temptation was quite irresistible to encourage him to believe the worst. I’ve become rather adept of late at sending him off on little errands to keep him out of my way.”

“All the accidents and mishaps at the mines and elsewhere!”

“Just so.”

“But why?”

He narrowed his eyes. “The Priory is my domain, you see. Edmund was content to leave it so, but Lord Michael, not having the same exquisite tastes as his brother, was by far too likely to interfere. Thus, he was kept busy and out of my way. I controlled him like a puppet,” he added with a reminiscent gleam.

“Poppycock,” she said, using Lady Hermione’s favorite word. “Next you will be telling me you were responsible for that dreadful wager that—”

“Don’t look so conscious, my pet. You are not speaking out of turn now, for I know all about Edmund’s little wager. He was in his cups, of course—he frequently was—but even he would be surprised at how much vexation it has caused Lord Michael.”

“Well, how you can refer to a wager of twenty thousand pounds as
little,
I’m sure I don’t know. Such a sum must cause vexation to anyone who had to deal with it.”

“Indeed, it must,” he agreed with visible amusement, “particularly when he cannot, with any propriety, speak openly of the details. Another clear indication of the hand of Providence at work, just as it must have been at work when Lord Michael said nothing to anyone else about your departure.”

“You cannot be certain of that!”

“Oh, but I can, for when he saw your ‘letters’ he swore me to secrecy. He was hoping to whisk you home again before anyone knew you had gone, you see, and for all anyone else knows now, you are sound asleep in your own bed.”

“People saw me! Elbert, His Grace, men in the stable yard, not to mention Maisie!”

“When he returns I will simply tell him that you came back, discovered what he had believed about you, and then ran away in earnest. What you wrote tonight will serve as your farewell letter very nicely, for you actually addressed it to him this time, you see. He will be distraught, of course, and I will be sadly remorseful, but you … you will disappear—forever, I’m afraid—since it clearly would not be at all sensible to let you return to the Priory. And he will be unable to marry again, of course, so this little problem will not arise again. I shall be left in peace to rule my little kingdom as I see fit.”

“You never meant me to return,” Anne said in a small voice, “not even if I had failed to recognize you.”

“Well, no,” he admitted. “Even in that event, I could not allow you to speak of where you had been, you know, and I doubt that I’d have trusted any promise you made to keep silent.”

“I’d never have offered such a promise,” she said flatly.

“Oh, I think you would promise almost anything in time,” he said dulcetly. “Once I have taught you to behave, I shall remove you to a house in London in which I also hold an interest. In fact, perhaps it would be best to convey you to London as quickly as the journey can be arranged. Our people there know exactly how to deal with recalcitrant young women.”

Anne shivered. “Even you could not do such a thing.”

“Certainly I can. I’ll have no use for you here once I tire of you myself, for I cannot risk letting anyone see you who might reveal your whereabouts to his lordship.”

She wanted to keep him talking, to prevent his touching her again. “Why do they call you Lord M?”

“For Mephistopheles, a little conceit of mine.”

“But people believed you a member of the nobility! Surely you must have encouraged them to do so.”

He sneered. “That misconception was not of my making. When Edmund brought me in to help run this place—not long after he purchased the boat and had it brought here—the first of our little tarts assumed when they met the pair of us that I, rather than he, was the nobleman. Not surprising, really, for the nobility have become sadly slipshod in manner of late, and in any case, my deportment was always more polished than his. You have seen the same phenomenon for yourself many times, I expect, for upper servants who behave with more elegance of manner than their master or mistress have become distressingly common. I believe that such informal behavior on the part of a master quite lowers the tone of a house. I would never behave so shabbily.”

Anne stared at him. “You dare to criticize your betters when all the while you intend to ravish me? You are not only mad, you are ridiculous.” She moved to turn away in disgust.

Catching her chin to force her to look at him, and gripping her arm so hard when she tried to pull away again that she knew he would leave bruises, he said harshly, “You will soon learn not to speak so disrespectfully to any man. You stepped beyond the limit of my tolerance when you incited that fool, Burdekin, to stand against me. She will be the next to be reminded that a properly behaved female must submit gracefully to her master.”

Aware that more resistance would only infuriate him, she stood still, combatting her roiling emotions, trying to focus her thoughts, to devise a way to stop him, fearing that no acceptable way existed. “You cannot want to harm me,” she said as steadily as she could. “A true gentleman would never behave so basely.”

“Gentlemen do many things their womenfolk know nothing about,” Bagshaw said. “Only consider who my customers are. Sir Jacob Thornton was not the only Member of Parliament to visit this place. Even your precious Michael has been known to visit, and there are others all up and down the river—gentlemen, noblemen, and even wealthy tradesmen. I am not so nice in my ways that I turn my nose up at good money, and nor was Edmund. But now, my pet, I think we will begin your first lesson. For all my association with the nobility, I have not yet tasted the charms of one of its feminine ornaments. You will be my first.”

Desperate to keep him talking, she said hastily, “Did you know that your late master was so iniquitous that he intended to make you a gift of his own duchess?”

Bagshaw leered. “Generous of him, was it not? Such a pity that she took her own life before he could honor that pledge.”

“She took her life because she knew exactly what he meant to do,” Anne snapped, looking him right in the eye as she did.

He shook her. “I cannot think how you would know that, but I’ve warned you before about flaunting your disrespect, my girl. We don’t tolerate impudence from our little birds, I’m afraid.”

“I am neither your girl nor one of your birds,” Anne said, still looking directly at him. “Though you can ravish me, even beat me, you cannot alter that state of affairs.”

“Do you think not?”

She knew she had spoken nonsense. One touch of the whip that had flayed the skin from Molly’s bones and she would submit to anything he demanded. Even now, the tense fury in his voice and the igniting fire in his eyes were such that she thought it a wonder her nightdress had not been seared from her body.

The hand that held her arm moved to grip the back of her neck, and the other, the one holding her chin, slid down to grasp her left breast. Anne froze. Her lips dried, her heart pounded, and her knees threatened to betray her. Awareness of the last sensation suggested what she should do, and when he bent his head to kiss her, she let herself go limp. Ignoring the sharp pain in her scalp when the fingers gripping her neck caught in her hair, she kept silent as her body slipped from his grasp.

Bagshaw tried to catch her, but the way he had been holding her, and the fact that she had startled him, impeded his efforts. She crumpled to an awkward position, half sitting on the sofa, slumped forward over her knees. Her hands nearly touched the floor. Quick as thought, even as he was bending to yank her upright again, Anne snatched up the wineglass near her right foot and dashed the contents into his face, catching him hard just under his nose with the edge of the glass.

The effect was much more than she had hoped for. With a cry of outraged pain, Bagshaw staggered backward, tripped over the tapestry footstool, and fell headlong, cracking his head against the edge of the desk and collapsing to the floor, unconscious.

T
ERRIFIED THAT SOMEONE IN
the next room might have heard Bagshaw’s cry, or that he might regain his senses as quickly as he had lost them, Anne leapt to her feet and ran to the nearest window, shoving the curtains aside to find the latch, only to see that the rain-streaked window had long since been painted shut. She could not budge it. Without wasting a moment, she turned to examine the second window, the one blocked by the desk.

Snatching up her nightdress, she stepped to the chair seat and then to the desk top. Finding the latch free, she pushed open the window and scrambled to the wet sill, paying no heed to the havoc her movements wreaked on the cluttered desk. The blotter slipped beneath her feet, and she heard things crash to the floor, but thinking only of the noise and the likelihood that someone must hear it, or that Bagshaw might come to his senses in time to stop her, she did not hesitate on the sill long enough to glance back, but flung herself headfirst into the black night, realizing with horror only in the scant seconds before the chilly waters of the Derwent enveloped her that the window might as easily have looked onto the dock as over the river.

She sank quickly, making no effort at first to surface, letting the river current carry her, for she was aware that even in the darkness, it would take no more than a candle’s glow to reveal her white nightdress against the dark water. Only when she could no longer hold her breath did she allow herself to rise, at which point she discovered a new problem. She could not swim in the voluminous garment.

Material that had first billowed around and above her, threatening to swim away on its own, now grasped at her legs, trapping them, tangling around them, threatening to drag her under again. She fought welling panic, struggling mentally as much as physically to force her limbs to relax. Then, turning onto her back with her head upstream, she let the current carry her away from the
Folly
feet-first, floating in a way she had not done since she was a child learning to swim. Though she swallowed a good deal of water in her attempt to reach the button at the back of the gown’s close-fitting neckline, she managed at last to rip it open. And when the water caught the gown and swept it upward, she let the current strip it from her body, catching it at the last minute with both hands just before the sleeves slipped free of her arms.