Nicola and the Viscount (17 page)

Lord Farelly's reaction to these words was swift and terrible. He was on his feet in a second, knocking the chair from his way as he took a single step toward Nicola, his right arm raised….

The Grouser moaned and hid his eyes. The Milksop had never even lifted his head, so he did not know what was happening. But Lord Sebastian, still leaning against the bar, grinned and said, “You've done it now, Nick.”

Nicola did not flinch. She looked up into Lord Farelly's face, mottled red with rage, and said, “Go ahead and hit me. It's exactly the kind of behavior I'd expect from a coward like you.”

Truth be told, Nicola did not feel half so brave as she was pretending. Her heart was in her throat, and she was quite certain that, should she ever again be allowed to stand, her knees would not support her.

Nevertheless, she kept her chin thrust forward and her brows lowered over her eyes. This was, she felt, the appropriate response to a bully. For that was all the Earl of Farelly was: a great, mean bully.

Something in Nicola's attitude must have reached the tiny part of Lord Farelly's brain that was still capable of civilized behavior. Because, slowly—too slowly, for Nicola's peace of mind—he lowered his arm…though he never took his glittering gaze from her face.

“Locked up, eh?” he echoed, breaking the thick silence that had fallen across the room.

Nicola held her chin higher still. So, she imagined, had Lady Jane Grey, going to meet the chopping block, held her own chin…right before she helpfully removed her lace collar, so her executioner would not miss his mark. Nicola, however, had no intention of being anywhere near as accommodating.

“That,” Nicola said rudely, “is precisely what I hope they do to you.”

Barely was the last word out of her mouth before Lord Farelly, with another thunderous cry, swooped down and hauled her bodily from her chair.

“Then let's see how you like it,” he bellowed, propelling Nicola by one arm toward the staircase at the far end of the room. “Go on! Upstairs with you. If you think locking someone up is so effective, let's see if it works. Perhaps a little time for some quiet reflection will cause you to see the error of
your
ways, Miss Sparks!”

And, with a great shove, Lord Farelly forced Nicola up the stairs and into a tiny room on the building's second floor, into which he thrust her, and then, with a slam, closed the door behind her. The last sound Nicola heard for some time was the scrape of the key turning in the lock.

And then she was alone.

“‘Oh, young Lochinvar is come out of the West, through all the wide Border his steed was the best.'”

Nicola, lying on her narrow and extremely uncomfortable pallet, stared up at the sloping beams above her head. It was difficult to see them in the waning light. There was only, after all, one small window to begin with, and that had been somewhat crudely boarded up.

Still, she attempted to make out the shapes of the beams against the dark wood ceiling.

“‘So faithful in love, and so dauntless in war, there never was a knight like the young Lochinvar.'”

Nicola's voice, in the stillness of the room, sounded curiously muffled. Perhaps that was because she had, for some time before that, been crying. She was hoarse from it, and from screaming, the sides of her fists raw from where she had beaten them against the locked door, her boot toes scuffed from her kicking them against the unyielding panel of wood. She was, she was beginning to realize, well and truly trapped.

Still, though they could lock up her body, they would never get, she'd decided, her mind. And so she strove to keep it flexible by demanding from it all the poetry that she knew.

“‘For a laggard in love, and a dastard in war, was to wed the fair Ellen of brave Lochinvar.'”

That was precisely who Nicola was. Fair Ellen, locked in this odious tower against her will.

But where, Nicola wondered, was her Lochinvar?

Nowhere. For Nicola had no Lochinvar. In the first place, she was not even sure anyone yet realized she was missing. And in the second, so what if she were? It wasn't as if anyone would have any clue where to begin looking. No, Nicola had seen to that with her own stupidity. Imagine, believing that silly note! Why, she ought to have known a gentleman like Sir Hugh would never purchase a shawl for his lady love. Not when he knew how much the purchase might upset his future mother-in-law.

No. Nicola was a fool, and of the first order. And look where it had gotten her: locked in a cell, with no chance of rescue from Lochinvar—or anyone, for that matter.

She would rot here, she was quite certain. Rot until she was nothing more than a steaming pile of bones.

And then, without warning, the key scraped once more in the lock. Nicola lifted her head from her pallet, but as the door opened, her eyes were dazzled by a sudden burst of light. She threw up a hand to shield them, but it was only, she soon discovered, the light from a candle flame. It had grown so dark in her cell that her eyes had gotten quite used to it.

“Well, Nicola,” said the voice not of her rescuer, but of one of her tormentors. Her guardian, to be exact. “Quite a little dilemma you find yourself in the middle of, eh?”

Nicola, who was not in the mood to speak to the Grouser, rolled over on her pallet and stared steadily at the closest wall instead.

“Oh, not speaking to me, are we?” The Grouser did not sound bothered by this in the least. “Well, that's understandable, I suppose. Still, surely by now you've had time to realize that his lordship and I…well, we mean business, Nicola. It truly is of no inconvenience to us to keep you locked in here forever. You really might consider being a good girl, and giving us what we want. It will spare you a good deal of suffering in the end.”

“I won't,” Nicola said through gritted teeth, and in the direction of the wall, “sell.”

“Ah.”The Grouser sounded a bit sad. “I was afraid you were going to say that. I told Farelly you'd not been in here long enough. He is not used to, as I am, your bullheadedness. He seemed to think a few hours was all it would take. But no. He is accustomed, you see, to his own daughter, who is of course a model of femininity. Quite unlike you, Nicola, whom I am beginning to think quite unnatural. I told him it would take far more than mere imprisonment to get through to a stubborn miss like you. I am very much afraid we will have to resort to Lord Farelly's other plan.”

Nicola, hearing this, rolled over and sat up so swiftly, she came close to striking her head on one of the very roof beams she'd been staring at just moments before, so low did the ceiling slope above the bed.

“I knew it,” she cried with flashing eyes. “I knew you intended to kill me, you murderous swine. Well, go ahead, and be swift about it, so that my soul might commence to plaguing you and drive you directly to your own grave, through madness.”

The Grouser looked a good deal taken aback by this. He stood with the candle in one hand, and his handkerchief with the other, the door wide open behind him. Still, Nicola feared that, even if she were to rush him and successfully get past, she would only encounter the hansom cab driver belowstairs, who would turn her around and force her right back up them again.

“Kill you?” Lord Renshaw shook his head distastefully. “Good Lord. You always were a most fanciful child. No one intends to kill you, Nicola. Except, of course, in the case of self-defense, as I swear, I sometimes fear for my own life where you are concerned, you are so brash at times. No, that is not the plan I refer to…though I cannot but admit that all of our lives would be a good deal simpler were you no longer in them.”

“What is it, then?” Nicola barked. “Torture? Do you plan on sticking hot needles beneath my fingernails until I agree to sell?”

When the Grouser only blinked some more and looked confused, she went on passionately, “Or starvation? You plan on slowly robbing me of my will by denying me food and water? Well, sorry to disappoint you, but it won't work. I will never give up the abbey. Never!”

The Grouser, frowning, said, “You read entirely too much, my dear. No one will be sticking needles anywhere. Good Lord, how revoltingly imaginative the young can be. And as for starvation, that is entirely your prerogative, of course. But as I did go to the trouble of securing a meal for you, I would be insulted were you not even to sample it. It isn't much, I know, but—”

Then, going to the door, the Grouser took a tray from the hansom cab driver—if he even
was
a hansom cab driver, which Nicola was beginning rather to doubt, who was lurking about in the dark hallway. More likely he was a hired henchman of Lord Farelly's.

“—it should, at least, be edible.”

And the Grouser left upon a low, rickety table in one corner of the attic room a tray, on which rested a loaf of bread, some cheese, and a pitcher filled with what Nicola presumed was ale.

“There,” Lord Renshaw said with some satisfaction. “That should do admirably for the moment. And now, as I mentioned before, I had better go and let Lord Farelly know that you remain, er, committed to your cause. He will, I believe, have some business to attend to, given the circumstances.”

And then, leaving the candle so that Nicola had some light with which to see her food, the Grouser withdrew, taking the driver with him.

Alone again in her cell, Nicola reviewed her options. They weren't many. She could, it appeared, eat her supper. Or she could save it to hurl at the head of the next person who came through the door.

On the whole, Nicola thought more of the first option, as she was both hungry and thirsty. And who knew how long it would be before someone again turned that key?

And so Nicola broke off a piece of the bread, and, finding it not too entirely stale, laid across it a piece of the cheese, and ate both. They were, as the Grouser had assured her, not much, but highly edible. She washed this frugal meal down with a few swallows of ale, which was most notable for its not being too bad.

Then, when she had eaten until she was full, she lay back down upon her cot and commenced to staring at the shadows the dancing candle flame made upon the ceiling.

“‘Heap on more wood,'” Nicola said, to the oak beams. “‘The wind is chill. But let it whistle as it will.'”

Her voice, now that it had known some succor in the form of liquid refreshment, was stronger. She was quoting with some energy, “‘And dar'st thou, then, to beard the lion in his den,'” when the key again turned in the lock, and this time not the Grouser, but his son, slipped into Nicola's prison cell.

She sat up at once to whisper, “Harold, are you here to rescue me?”

Harold, though he laid a finger to his lips, said, “No, no. I've only come to see how you fare.”

Disappointed, Nicola lay back down and said, moodily, “If you aren't here to set me free, then I have nothing to say to you.”

“Nicola.”The Milksop lifted an unsteady chair from a far corner of the little room, placed it by Nicola's cot, then sat upon it. “Please don't be that way. You know if I could, I would help you in a moment.”

“Do I know that, Harold?” Nicola asked him. “No, I don't think I do. I think that you, Harold, are incapable of thinking about anyone but yourself.”

The Milksop looked almost as hurt as he had the time she had put a garden snake down his trousers.

“Now, Nicola, that simply isn't true. If it were, would I be here? Not on your life. But you must know, escape is impossible. That horrid Grant is downstairs, quite watching the door.”

“Grant?” Nicola asked. Then she sank back against her hard pallet. “Oh, I suppose you mean the driver.”

“Right. He's a great, strong brute, Nicola. Even if I did manage to sneak you from here, there's only one way out, and he's blocking it.”

“And I don't suppose,” Nicola said, “that it would have occurred to you to have gone for help.”

The Milksop looked appalled. “Help? Oh, Nicola. Then everyone would find out—”

“Find out what?”

“Well,” the Milksop said shamefacedly, “what a monster my father is.”

“Harold,” Nicola said. “What difference does it make? I thought you were running away to America.”

“I am,” Harold said. “But a thing like that…well, it can follow a man, even across an ocean. I honestly can't afford the talk it would cause, Nicola. You understand, don't you?”

Nicola laughed, though bitterly. “Oh, certainly, Harold. I understand that an up-and-coming designer of men's fashions can't afford to have a lot of loose talk about his father being a murderer of innocent young girls…. ”

“Oh, but he doesn't intend to murder you, Nicola,” Harold said lightly. “They don't intend to harm you at all. They only mean to make you marry Lord Sebastian—”

“
What
?” Nicola cried, sitting up fast, and again narrowly missing smacking her head against the roof beams.

“That's right,” Harold said, looking a little taken aback. “Lord Farelly, it turns out, secured a special license some time ago. He's gone out to fetch a parson. They mean to make you marry the viscount tonight, so that he can sell the abbey, since you won't do it.”

“They can't do that!” Nicola swung her legs from the bed and stood up.

“I'm afraid they can,” Harold said apologetically. “Even though you're underage, my father is your guardian, so all he has to do is give permission for the match. And since, as man and wife, what's yours is his, Lord Sebastian would be well within his rights to sell the abbey, no matter what you say.”

“That's…that's…that's
preposterous
!” Nicola shouted, giving the rickety table that held the remnants of her evening meal a kick, so that the leftover ale sloshed over the side of the pitcher that held it. “I won't stand for it, do you hear, Harold? And I won't say ‘I do.' I can promise you that!”

Harold looked concerned. His dark eyebrows constricted in his bland, moonlike face.

“I don't think this particular parson will care,” the Milksop said. “He's a close friend of Father's. The two of them were at school together.”

Nicola let out a strangled scream, and then, much to the alarm of the Milksop, bent down and seized him by the collar of his coat.

“Now you listen to me, Harold,” Nicola said in a hiss, her face just inches from his. “And listen well. You are going to go downstairs, and you are going to make up some kind of excuse—I don't care what—and then you are going to leave here. And then you are going to go to Mayfair, where you are going to tell Lord Sheridan precisely what's happening here. Do you understand me?”

The Milksop's pouting lips fell open. “B-but, Nicola—”

“No, Harold,” Nicola whispered hoarsely. “Not this time. You are not going to weasel your way out of this one. For once in your life, you are going to prove that you have a backbone. You are going to do the right thing. Otherwise, Harold, if I live through this, I will go to the press, and I will tell them that you were the mastermind behind the entire plot, do you hear me? How do you think your future clients in America are going to like hearing
that
?”

The Milksop's jowls began to quiver. He looked to Nicola to be on the verge of tears. Indeed, she could see the drops of moisture already gathering at the corners of his piglike eyes.

“All…all right, Nicola,” he stammered finally. “I'll…I'll do it. Only don't…don't go to the press. Please. I beg you.”

Nicola released his coat collar and took a step backward. “I won't,” she said. “If you do the right thing.”

“I will,” Harold said, climbing shakily to his feet. “I swear I will, Nicky.”

And then, still fighting back tears, the Milksop staggered through the door, closing it softly behind him, and then, almost sheepishly, turning the key in the lock.

Nicola, hearing this, only stood and stared at the solid portal, her heart drumming an uneven, too-rapid beat within her chest. Because, for the first time, she was frightened. Not for herself. She'd been frightened for herself all day.

But now she found herself fearing not for her own life, but for the lives of the people she loved. For it seemed to her that at last Lord Farelly had found a way to win, and that meant the end for Nana and Puddy, and the tenant farmers, and all the people who depended upon Beckwell Abbey for their livelihoods.