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  Held in place as she was by the man’s hand on her back while her head spun sickeningly and her stomach churned, the truth of the matter occurred to Isabella in a blinding flash: for whatever purpose, she had just been kidnapped!

  II

  After a bruising ride over rough terrain, the horses—for her hearing told her that there were other horses and riders with them—at last stopped. The man behind her swung down, as did the others, she thought. The rain had stopped, but the smell of it was everywhere. The cold grew worse as the clock approached what must have been midnight or beyond.

  With about as much care as if she had been a sack of grain, Isabella was lifted down from the horse and hefted over a man’s shoulder again. Wordlessly he carried her inside what she assumed to be a house from the countless smells that assailed her nostrils as she passed out of the cold: cooking spices and peat-fueled fire, dust and tallow and a faint mustiness overlying all.

  “Ye ’ave ’er, then?” It was a woman’s voice, coarse and low.

  “As ye see.”

  “Good, good. My, she be a wee little thing, ain’t she? Not dressed as fine as I thought, for a countess. Ye sure ye got the right one?”

  “She be the countess, right enough.”

  “Take ’er up, then. I got the room ready.”

  Isabella was borne up a steep, narrow flight of stairs. Its dimensions became painfully obvious to her because her head banged against the wall several times during the ascent. When he reached the top he took only a few steps. There was the sound of a door opening, and he walked through it. Without warning, Isabella felt herself falling, to land on her back on a prickly, straw-stuffed mattress. She cried out at the unexpectedness of it, the sound muffled by the gag.

  The woman tch-tched. “No more need for that, is there? There’s none to ’ear ’er no matter if she screams. No need to suffocate the poor thing.”

  The man apparently shrugged, because the gag was fished from Isabella’s mouth. Her lips and tongue felt dry and swollen. Her jaws ached. She closed her mouth, swallowing painfully, even as she was flipped over onto her back and her hands were untied.

  “She’s wet through. I s’pose she’d be glad to get them clothes off ’er.”

  “I don’t see as it makes no difference whether she’s wet or not.”

  “Ain’t you that ’as to nurse ’er if she sickens, is it?” the woman retorted.

  “Do what you want,” the man replied, clearly indifferent.

  “Besides, them clothes might look right nice on me.” The woman reached out to finger Isabella’s skirt. “ ’Tis good cloth, it is.”

  The man snorted. “Aye, and you might just get the dress on, too, if you was to split yerself in ’alf!”

  The woman gave an indignant cry. There was the sound of a slap, and half-playful wrestling. Isabella, her hands free, turned over cautiously, hoping they were too intent on themselves to notice her. Instinctively one hand rose to her blindfold.…

  “Nah!” The man’s hand knocked hers away, the blow so hard that her fingers went numb from it. Then his hands were on her shoulders, shaking her. “You try that again, lady, and I’ll beat you clear to London and back. You understand me?”

  “I—I understand!”

  He stopped shaking her, pushing her back down against the mattress instead.

  “What are you doing?” Isabella could feel him leaning over her, and her heart stood still. He said nothing in reply, but caught one wrist and lifted it high above her head. Isabella felt a rope pass around her wrist, and realized with a sinking feeling that she was being tied to the bed frame.

  “But ’ow am I to get ’er dress off, then?” The woman sounded disappointed as Isabella was secured wrists and ankles.

  “That’s your affair. But you’re not to untie ’er without me ’ere, understand? If she was to get loose, it would go ’ard with you.”

  “Don’t you threaten me, you—”

  “Understand?” His voice was suddenly cold. The woman quieted.

  “Aye, aye then. I understand.” She sighed. “I s’pose I could cut the dress off ’er—but what good’s a cut dress?”

  “You’ll ’ave to cut it to get into it anyway,” the man said without sympathy. The pair of them sounded as if they were moving away from the bed. Isabella heard the creak of floorboards, followed by the sound of the door being shut and the click of a key in the lock. She was left alone in the dark, bound hand and foot to a bedframe that her fingers told her was made of solid iron. She was wet through, shivering with cold, and more afraid than she had ever been in her life.

  What was to come to her now?

  III

  As hours of captivity turned into days, physical misery was as constant a companion to Isabella as stark fear. She was untied twice a day, and permitted to remove her blindfold to use a chamber pot in relative privacy. She was left alone in the room for this business, while one of her captors—she thought it was always the same man, the one who had carried her inside that first night—remained in the hall just outside the open door until she was finished. When her blindfold was retied (which Isabella did herself on the man’s orders) he would come back in, and thrust a piece of bread and sometimes a bit of fish or game into her hand. Isabella would eat standing up, wolfing the food down so as to have time to finish. Then she would be permitted to drain the water from a mug, and retied in the same position as before. Her muscles screamed a protest each time, but she did not. The man’s brutal indifference gave her the feeling that he would have no compunction about clouting her over the head, did she give him any cause.

  The room where she was being held was tiny, furnished only with the single iron bedstead, a rickety candlestand and a washstand with a pitcher and bowl, which she was never given the opportunity to use. Everything from the cobwebbed ceiling to the dusty plank floor was filthy. Under other circumstances, Isabella would have cringed at the idea of lying on the grimy mattress. It was bare of any bedding save the tattered quilt, gray with age and dirt, which they threw over her for warmth. Despite its condition, the coverlet’s protection was welcome against the icy nights passed without a fire lit in the blackened stone hearth. Shivering, glad of the bedding that would have revolted her under any other conditions, Isabella knew that she had more things to worry about than the possibility of nits. Like her life …

  The woman—Isabella had overheard one of the men call her Molly—ordered Isabella out of her dress the first time she was untied, thus for Molly neatly solving the problem of whether or not to cut the much-admired cloth. Isabella protested timorously that she had nothing to put on instead, and after a moment was tossed what, from its width and lack of length, was one of Molly’s own gowns. It was of coarse kerseymere, in a truly dreadful shade of brown, and was so large it could wrap around Isabella twice. She looked at it in revulsion, but from her position in the hallway Molly warned that Isabella would be forcibly stripped if she did not obey. Horrified at the prospect, Isabella quickly took off her clothes—Molly wanted “every blessed stitch”—and donned Molly’s scratchy, dirty gown. It barely covered her calves, but in every other respect was so huge and shapeless on her that Isabella could have been any size beneath it. Molly was clearly a female of ample proportions. Isabella was allowed to keep her half-boots—Molly apparently had no hope of squeezing her feet into Isabella’s narrow shoes—but that was all. Even her stockings were taken from her! Scantily clad as she was after that exchange, Isabella suffered even more from the cold than she had before.

  Once Molly got her hands on Isabella’s clothes, she seemed to lose all interest in her. Sometimes Isabella was aware of her presence as she performed some task in the room, but the woman never approached Isabella nor spoke to her directly. Isabella came to believe her primary purpose was to cook for the men, and care for their needs in other ways. Ways which Isabella tried not to think about. Although her fear of being intimately attacked by one of her captors receded as days passed without it happening, the possibility remai
ned always in the back of her mind. If the other woman was there to take care of the men’s carnal needs, Isabella could only be thankful for her presence.

  From the voices she sometimes heard below, Isabella speculated that there were at least five men, and possibly six, holding her captive. Scraps of conversation she overheard led her to the conclusion that she was being held for ransom. On the surface, Isabella supposed she seemed an ideal candidate: the much younger wife of an earl, the oldest daughter of a duke. Her captors would have no way of knowing how tenuous her hold was on either man. Her husband openly admitted that he had married her for her large dowry, which had towed him, a hardened gamester, out of the River Tick. Her father had married her off to please Sarah, his new young duchess, who had, in six years of wedlock, already presented him with a brood of three, including the newest infant, his long-awaited heir, making Isabella herself both unneeded and unwanted. Neither man would be overly enthusiastic about parting with a large sum to regain that which they did not particularly value in the first place.

  Although they would, Isabella was almost certain, pay the ransom. Not to do so would be embarrassing. If word of Isabella’s fate should ever leak out, a refusal would not look good to the ton. Sarah, the young duchess, might take to her bed over the expense, but the money would be handed over, however reluctantly. It was possible that the earl would be induced to pay it all out of what remained of Isabella’s dowry. Certainly that would be the solution Sarah would prefer.

  At any rate, despite the possible slight impediment of a family quarrel, the ransom would certainly be forthcoming sooner or later. So all Isabella had to do was remain calm, cooperate with her captors, and cause no trouble, and she would eventually be released. She could continue her journey to London—though why her husband, Bernard, wanted her there still mystified her—as if nothing had happened. Or perhaps she would even be permitted to return home to Blakely Park. In any case, all she really had to fear was her husband’s wrath if he was forced to use her dowry. Nothing aroused Bernard’s anger more than having to part with funds on his wife’s behalf.

  The first small indication Isabella had that change was in the wind came that evening, her sixth in captivity, when the man came as usual to release her to eat and use the chamber pot. When she was finished and he had reentered the room, he did not check the tightness of the blindfold as he always did. Thankful to be spared a tightening of the knot—she had kept it loose in deference to the headache that throbbed at her temples—Isabella did not wonder at his lapse until he was retying her to the bed. Her head turned sideways against the mattress in silent protest against the screaming pain of muscles forced to assume the same unnatural position in which they had been stretched for three endless days. The blindfold slipped. Isabella found herself looking right into her captor’s black-bearded face.

  Isabella stared up at him in growing horror; he was looking back at her with a gathering scowl. Their eyes met. Isabella felt panic tighten her chest. Would he kill her, now that she had seen his face?

  “Oh, the light is blinding me!” she babbled, her mind pricked into renewed sharpness by pure terror. Quickly she shut her eyes, hoping and praying that he would believe that the feeble glow cast by the candle he’d set on the bedside table was in truth enough to blind someone who’d been deprived of light as long as she.

  To her surprise, instead of striking her, or retying the blindfold, he pulled it from her head and dropped it on the floor by the bed.

  “Don’t matter, not no more. ’Tis at an end, anyroad.” He seemed to be talking more to himself than her. Then, candle in hand, he turned to leave the room.

  “Do you mean—did you get the money, then? Am I to be released?” Isabella’s eyes flew open. With sudden, wild hope, she watched as the man looked back over his massive shoulder at her, his blunt-featured face twisting into a grimacing smile.

  “Oh, aye, we’ll be settin’ you free, sure,” he said, and turned away.

  “When?” Her voice rose shrilly. To be free again …! Only now, when the prospect of being safely released was at hand, did she realize how truly frightened she had been.

  A careless wave of his hand was her only answer. He lumbered from the room, closing the door behind him as he left her alone again in the dark. Isabella lay there for long moments, flooded with relief. Soon she would be free of fear—free!

  Then, slowly, she frowned. Her giddy anticipation faded as she realized that something did not seem quite right.

  She had seen him clearly, could identify each and every feature. He knew it, and didn’t care. What did that tell her?

  As Isabella worked it out in her mind, she began to shiver. There was only one possible interpretation: they had indeed gotten what they wanted—the ransom—but instead of releasing her as agreed, she was to be killed. That was the only solution that made any sense. The man had been so careful not to let her see him, or any of them, up until now, when it was all over. If they meant to let her go, common sense dictated that they should be doubly worried about concealing their identities. Once free, she could go to the authorities and identify them. If caught, they would certainly spend a long time in gaol. They might even hang.

  The more she thought about it, the more certain Isabella was that she was right: the man didn’t care if she saw his face because they had already made up their minds to kill her.

  Her heart seemed to stop. She could barely draw breath. Bound hand and foot, she was helpless to resist in any way. At any moment they might come in and shoot her, or strangle her, or smother her with a pillow, or …

  Panic clouded her mind, sent her thrashing wildly on the bed. Frantically she jerked against her bonds, not caring how the rope cut into the flesh of her wrists and ankles, kicking and writhing with all her might as she fought to get free. The bedstead banged against the wall.…

  “What’s goin’ on in ’ere?” Her captor was back, glaring at her from the open door, the candle held high as he surveyed her frenzied movements. Until now, she had been an ideal prisoner, causing no trouble, hoping that her meekness would make it easy for them to let her go when the time came. Now she knew that the time would never come. Again he had not bothered to conceal his face. Isabella stilled for a moment, fighting panic. She had to think!

  Her eyes were wild as she stared at him, her chest heaving with terror that she fought to control. Would he divine that she had guessed what they intended to do? If he did, would he kill her now? She could not allow panic to consume her. If she did, she would stand no chance at all. There must be something she could do, some way …

  “I said, what you kickin’ up such a dust about?” He took a step into the room. The candle’s golden glow bathed the bed. Above it, his face looked fiendlike, menacing. It was all Isabella could do to bite back a scream.

  She could not give way to panic. Her wits were the only weapon she had.

  “There—there’s a mouse in the bed,” she gasped in a squeaky voice that was caused by true fright. The inspiration had come upon her from nowhere. She let it take her, hoping, praying.… “Oh, please, it’s burrowing in the bedclothes! You must help me! Oh!”

  Desperately she began to writhe again, jerking and thrashing and crying out, “Oh! Oh! Oh!” in shrill fear. The bedstead banged against the wall, scooted over the dusty floorboards. Scowling, the man approached.

  “Help me! Help me! Oh! It’s—it’s right under me! Oh!”

  “Oh, for Gawd’s sake,” the man muttered, and set the candlestick down on the bedside table. Isabella continued to whimper and thrash as he bent to untie her ankles. When they were free, she kicked wildly at the bedclothes, doing a praiseworthy imitation of a featherheaded female crazed with fear of a small rodent.

  “Be still, or I’ll—” The threat was accompanied by a grunt as he freed her hands. Isabella catapulted off the bed, visibly shaking, while he scowled at her, then turned his attention to the rumpled quilt.

  This was the moment, the only chance she might get. She had t
o incapacitate this big, burly man who was easily twice her size—but how?

  “I don’t see no mouse.” He was pawing rather gingerly at the quilt. Isabella’s eyes settled on the filthy pitcher in its equally filthy bowl on the washstand not more than a pace to her left. From their grimy state, neither had held water for at least a year.

  “It’s there, it’s there!” she cried, pointing as he cast a suspicious look at her over his shoulder. “Get it, oh, please, get it!”

  Thus adjured, he turned back to the bedclothes. Isabella took a lightning step toward the washstand and grabbed the pitcher. He was still bent over the bed, but he was turning his head to look at her again.

  “You—” What he was going to say, she never knew. Strengthened by terror, she brought the pitcher crashing down on the side of his head. It shattered. The man blinked once as she watched with horror, dreadfully afraid that she had done no more than annoy him and he would straighten up to his awful height and murder her on the spot.

  Then he collapsed like a punctured balloon, sprawling facedown across the bed.

  IV

  For a moment Isabella stood frozen. But only for a moment. She had no idea how long he would remain unconscious, but she didn’t think it would be for very long. Should she tie him up? Foolish to waste precious time, especially when she doubted that any knot she tied would hold him. Her best use of these precious minutes would be to flee into the night.

  Isabella raced to the door, stopped, and listened. She could hear the sound of voices from below. Of course, the other men would be down there, and Molly as well. If her caretaker didn’t appear shortly, one of them would undoubtedly come looking for him.

  On that thought, Isabella closed the door and turned the key in the lock. On the bed, the man groaned and stirred. Heart pounding, Isabella ran back to hover over him. He was waking up!