Rexanne Becnel (27 page)

Read Rexanne Becnel Online

Authors: Heart of the Storm

BOOK: Rexanne Becnel
13.86Mb size Format: txt, pdf, ePub
She couldn’t finish. Instead she wheeled around and ran from the room, embarrassed, ashamed, and so consumed with sorrow for herself that she thought she must expire from it. If only Oliver’s words were true. If only they were.
But as she hurried down the hall, clutching her shawl
around her shoulders, then jerked open the front door and dashed down the steps, she knew that Oliver was wrong.
She flew headlong around the house and hurtled down a garden path until her side ached and her breath frosted the cold night air. She collapsed onto a wooden garden bench and pressed her hand to her side. No one had followed her. She was all alone and free to contemplate her awful manners and otherwise reprehensible behavior.
Whatever she’d been before her ill-fated departure for Madeira, she was no longer the same girl. She’d fallen from grace—and fallen in love with a rogue. But he didn’t love her, no matter what Oliver said.
And yet … and yet even if she never loved again, and no one ever loved her, the fact remained that she might very well already bear a child of Cyprian’s. She moved her hand down to her stomach and held it there. Her reputation was already ruined, so would it really matter if she did, she wondered. She could always move to her dower house in Surrey and live a quiet life there with her child.
But everyone would know her child as a bastard, she reluctantly admitted. Though she felt she could bear being ostracized by society, the thought of an innocent child being treated so was too awful to contemplate. And anyway, why was she even thinking such thoughts? Why was some stupid, emotional part of her actually wishing she could bear Cyprian a child?
It was that which finally brought tears stinging to her eyes. Cyprian didn’t love her. He never had. And any baby of theirs would always be called a bastard.
She cried hard, hurtful tears in the cold loneliness of the brown, winter garden, her misery wrapped around her like an icy blanket. She didn’t see her mother silhouetted in a second story window watching over her.
Nor was she aware that Perry stood guard as well, hunched over in the shadows of a bare-limbed beech tree. She only knew that everything had gone wrong and it seemed it could never be put back to rights.
M
orning started as miserably as the previous day had ended. Eliza’s monthly courses began.
Constance was understandably ecstatic. Eliza, however, sank into depression. She lay abed all day, trying to blot out the sounds of life beyond her room, muted through they were. Clothilde brought breakfast. Lunch, too. But Eliza waved her away. Her stomach cramped and hurt, but the pain seemed somehow cathartic. She wanted it to hurt, for the physical pain was at least real. She could press her two hands over her lower stomach and know exactly where the pain was. Her other wounds were not like that. The rest of her ached in less tangible ways, yearning for things she could not have. There was no comfort to be found for such deep, pervasive pain.
So she lay in bed most of the day, pretending to be asleep whenever anyone peeked past the door. Not until her mother shook her shoulder sometime in the early afternoon did she relent and open her eyes.
“I don’t wish to get up,” she muttered, pulling the coverlet over her shoulder and rolling to face the wall.
“There is a messenger here, Eliza, and he won’t give his message to anyone but you. Get up,” Constance demanded, tugging the warm coverlet back. Then her lips
thinned and her nostrils flared. “He says he’s from that man.”
That man. The only person her mother referred to in such a distasteful manner was Cyprian Dare.
Eliza sat bolt upright and kicked free of the heavy bed linens. A message for her from Cyprian?
“Your father has threatened to throttle the hapless fellow, but he nevertheless refuses to give the message to Gerald. We’ve sent word for Lloyd and Judith to come round, in case there’s word about Aubrey.”
Constance grabbed for the wrapper Eliza meant to don. “You cannot see him in that!”
Eliza glared at her mother, then thrust her unraveling braid behind her shoulder. “I doubt he cares what I wear.”
Constance let out an uncharacteristic snort of disbelief. “Dear God, but that man has truly addled your senses. Put on a dress, Eliza. Here.” She threw the first frock she could lay her hands on at her daughter. “And you’ll
have
to comb your hair.”
Eliza did as her mother asked, shedding her nightgown without the least thought for her more normal modesty, then pulling on her discarded chemise from yesterday. She gave her mother a warning glare when she stepped into the skirt, foregoing any petticoats or slips. She tied the tabs then thrust her arms into the simple wool bodice and turned so her mother could do up the buttons on the back.
“Hurry,” she muttered, tapping her foot in a jittery motion. “Hurry.”
“No. You slow down, Eliza. Just look at you,” Constance accused, once she finished the buttons and began to release the rest of the braid. “You mope around as if you’re dying, then that man sends word and you’re suddenly bursting with energy.” She picked up a hairbrush and began to brush Eliza’s hair in long determined
strokes. “Besides, this will give your aunt and uncle time to arrive.”
Eliza suffered her mother’s ministrations in silence while her anxiety increased. Her mother was right, of course, and she was a fool to react so at the first mention of Cyprian’s name. But she couldn’t help it. Besides, she was as concerned about Aubrey as anyone, she rationalized.
“Sit down and I’ll dress your hair.”
“Oh, that’s completely unnecessary,” Eliza cried, coming to the end of her patience. With deft fingers she caught her hair in one hand and tied it back with the first bit of ribbon she spied.
“A green ribbon with a blue dress?” Constance complained. But Eliza ignored her. Without waiting for her mother, she hurried from the room, oblivious to her appearance, her cramps, or anything else. Cyprian had sent a message to her. To
her.
That was all that mattered.
She found her father, both her brothers, and a man she didn’t recognize standing in her father’s office. He looked more a solicitor than a messenger boy, and she frowned in confusion.
“Miss Eliza Thoroughgood?” he asked, clearly relieved to see her, for the atmosphere in the office was decidedly frosty.
“Yes. Give me the message. Please,” she added as an afterthought.
He cleared his throat. “Could we speak in private?”
“No!” Gerald burst out. “I will hear every word that man sends to my daughter.”
“But Father—”
At that precise moment voices in the hall heralded the arrival of the Habertons with several of their daughters in tow as well. For a moment pandemonium reigned. Her uncle Lloyd was shouting. Her aunt appeared
ready to dissolve into tears. Jessica and Augusta Haberton corralled LeClere and Perry, both urging their cousins to fill them in on the details. Then Oliver strolled in and while attention diverted momentarily to him, Eliza grabbed the messenger’s arm.
“Tell me,” she hissed. When the man’s eyes darted about, she squeezed his arm all the tighter. “Tell me now!”
“He demands a ransom for the boy. Fifteen thousand pounds.”
“That’s all?”
He looked at her as if she might be a little mad. “That’s a rather goodly sum, miss. He wants it delivered to the Bear and Claw Inn in Lyme Regis on Wednesday coming. Someone will lead the bearer to a meeting place where the boy will be released.” He sighed, as if glad to be done with his job, but Eliza could not believe that was all he’d been charged with saying to her.
“That’s all?” she repeated. “He … he said nothing else?”
She caught a glimpse of comprehension in the man’s face, and a trace of sympathy as well, but he still shook his head. “No, miss. Nothing else.”
Lloyd Haberton stepped up at that moment and pulled the man away from Eliza. “Tell me!” he demanded. “Tell me what he said. What does he want? Is my boy all right?”
Sorrow should have been Eliza’s consuming emotion at that moment. Sorrow or anguish or some equally devastating sentiment that Cyprian hadn’t cared enough to send word to her. At the very least she should have felt relief, that Aubrey would be freed on Wednesday to return home. But in that instant what she felt most was anger. How dare he? How dare he make her love him,
then ignore her! How dare he send a message to her with no personal word whatsoever!
Her hands closed into fists. If Cyprian had been there instead of his emissary, she would have slapped him hard enough to make his head spin.
“Tell me what he said!” her uncle demanded in a threatening tone that drew her attention. And just that fast did she decide what to do.
“Quit berating the man,” she ordered her uncle, stepping between him and the shorter messenger. “Captain Dare has sent word to me that he wants fifteen thousand pounds for the return of Aubrey.”
“Thank God,” Aunt Judith cried.
“Fifteen thousand pounds!” Uncle Lloyd bellowed.
“Yes, but I’m to deliver it myself. It’s the only way he’ll do it,” she added, unobtrusively pinching the messenger’s arm.
To his credit, the man didn’t make a move to contradict her. As the crowd in the office all began to talk and question and offer their disparate opinions, Eliza was more conscious of the messenger’s silence than anything else. If he’d objected to her impulsive lie, she didn’t know what she would have done. But he didn’t say a thing.
As for the rest of them, it didn’t matter what they said. Aunt Judith would force Uncle Lloyd to pay the heavy price; Uncle Lloyd would convince his sister-in-law to let Eliza go; and Constance Thoroughgood would prevail upon her husband’s concern for young Aubrey to make him agree. But even if they all said no and Eliza had to go to the Bear and Claw Inn all alone and without a penny of the ransom money, she meant to be there come Wednesday. Nothing in the wide world could prevent her from being there.
 
“’Tis a good thing we’re not trying to go unnoticed,” Oliver smirked as he and Eliza exited the first of the two
coaches that had carried their party from London to the small port town of Lyme Regis. Eliza was truly thankful for Oliver’s presence, for he was the only one besides herself who was not out for Cyprian’s blood. Well, Perry wasn’t either, but he didn’t count. Still, Oliver had insisted on coming as had both her parents, her aunt and uncle, and her two brothers.
Fortunately, the two older couples had traveled in one coach and the younger foursome in another. Eliza was not certain she could have borne being confined with her Uncle Lloyd for the duration of their lengthy trip.
As she stepped down from the coach, she pulled her hood up against the frigid mist that hung over the town. Despite the foul weather, however, there were signs of activity. In their carriage Oliver had told her, Perry, and LeClere that Lyme Regis was a small but busy resort town on Lyme Bay, once a favorite haunt of smugglers. Perry had pumped him for information about the lucrative smuggling industry and as Oliver had warmed to the task, spinning out his tales of dangerous chases and narrow escapes, even LeClere had become spellbound. But all Eliza could think was that somewhere in this very ordinary place, Cyprian was waiting with her cousin—at least she hoped he was here. He could have sent Xavier with Aubrey, or anyone else, for that matter.
But somehow she knew he wouldn’t do that. She’d had an awful lot of time during the last two days to ponder this strange turn of events. Cyprian had not kidnapped Aubrey for monetary reasons. It had never been Lloyd Haberton’s money he’d wanted. What he’d wanted had been his own unique sort of revenge. The fact that he was demanding a ransom now struck her as a rather large compromise on his part. Obviously he’d come to the conclusion that Aubrey must be returned
to his family, but his need for revenge was not entirely gone. That must be why he was demanding such an ungodly amount of money from his father. In Cyprian’s eyes, Lloyd Haberton had to pay in some painful way.
The fact that he’d sent the demand through her, however, was harder for Eliza to understand. That he wanted her to know what he was doing was obvious. But why? So that she might see him in a more favorable light? So that she would come herself? But if that was so, why hadn’t he sent her a message of some sort?
Eliza paused at the entrance to Darnell’s Posting House, while her father herded everyone else inside. He meant to take rooms for them for the night, and they all prayed that Aubrey would join them soon. Eliza prayed also that Cyprian would want to see her. But even if he didn’t, she was here. Beyond that she had no further plan. She could only go on to the Bear and Claw and wait.
She didn’t have to wait for long.
Oliver had delivered her to the Bear and Claw and sat downstairs in the public room while she waited alone in a private dining room. A serving girl brought her hot tea and stoked the fire. Now as Eliza shed her heavy cloak, the girl gave her a frankly curious look.
“No, no. Don’t take off your cloak yet, ma’am.”
Eliza stared at her. “Are we going someplace else?”
“Yes, ma’am,” the girl replied. “I’ve been given instructions. If you’ll just follow me, I’ll show you to the backstairs.”
The backstairs? At once Eliza understood. Cyprian was just making sure no one followed her. She nodded and did as the girl instructed. But her heart began to race in nervous anticipation.
“Don’t forget your satchel,” the maid reminded her when Eliza would have left her uncle’s ransom money
sitting on the floor beside the hearth. Then with money in hand and her hood pulled up about her face, she hurried down a narrow servants’ stairwell behind the maid, through a series of storage rooms, and out into a small rear courtyard.
The door shut behind her with a dull thud, and for a moment Eliza was alone, unsure where to go. Then a sharp whistle sounded and a wiry old man in the stable doorway gestured her toward him.
He didn’t speak but only pointed at a rough cart with a canvas cover when she drew near. Eliza climbed inside without voicing the myriad questions that clamored inside her. Where were they going? How was Aubrey?
When would she see Cyprian?
The man closed the flap so that she could not be seen from the outside, nor see out either. Then the wagon creaked and shifted as he climbed on board, and with another short whistle, the team of draft horses started forward. Eliza braced herself with a hand on each side of the narrow cart, but after a short jouncing ride along the cobbled stone streets, the ride turned easier. By the time the cart rocked to a halt, however, grim clouds hung low, darkening the entire world, and when Eliza crawled out of the vehicle, she had no idea whatsoever where she was. But surely Cyprian must be near.
When she spied a coach waiting with another driver in place, however, and her taciturn driver ordered to get in it, she objected. “Where is he going to take me? And where is Cyprian?”
“I don’t know nothin’ ’bout nothin’” the man grunted. “Get in.”
When Eliza finally complied, it was with the greatest of misgivings. She was getting scared. To make it worse, the carriage was pitch black inside, and before she could even get settled, it took off with a lurch, unbalancing her completely. She lost hold of the satchel when she tried
to right herself. But she was unable to prevent herself from toppling over anyway.

Other books

Infamous by Irene Preston
When in Rome... by Gemma Townley
Crimes of the Sarahs by Kristen Tracy
Spark - ARC by Anthea Sharp
The Open House by Michael Innes
Mistress of Magic by Heather Graham