Читать книгу The Abducted Bride - Anne Herries, Anne Herries - Страница 9

I t was no good! Try as she might, Deborah could not sleep. She had lain awake half the night, her thoughts going round and round in dizzy circles so that she became ever more confused. She could not believe that the young man whose portrait she had so admired could possibly be the monster the Marquis de Vere had described—and yet something deep inside her sensed that the marquis had been trying to warn her for her own good.

She had answered him proudly, dismissing his warnings—but that was because he had disturbed her, his kisses had enslaved her. She had needed to reassert her own will, to break his hold on her—but she had almost believed him.

She dressed in a simple gown, more suited to the country than the clothes she had worn of late, but which she was able to manage alone, then slipped on a dark cloak. She did not wish to call her maid. This restlessness must be subdued before she was prepared for the busy day ahead.

Going softly down the stairs, Deborah saw that no one was stirring as yet. The servants had retired late and were sluggards abed this morning. She pulled back the heavy bolts that secured the street door, glancing round as they screeched loudly. Surely someone would hear?

She peered into the street outside. It was still very early. A light mist was swirling across the river and into that part of the town that hugged its banks. No one was about, most of the houses still fast shuttered against the evils of the night air.

Pulling the hood of her cloak well up over her head, Deborah left the house where she and her family were lodged. She needed to clear her mind of the thoughts that so sorely troubled her, and she had missed the freedom she was used to at home in the country. There, she had been in the habit of walking often and alone.

Slipping from the house without having roused even the servants, Deborah forgot all the warnings she had been given about walking alone in London. It was very early. No one would trouble her, especially on such a morning. Anyone with any sense would not want to be abroad until the mist lifted. Even the beggars would not venture far until the sun broke through.

Her mind returned to the problem that haunted her as she walked, like a dog trapped on a spit wheel, endlessly turning its circle over the heat of the fire. Could it be true that Miguel Cortes was a cruel murderer? Surely not! The marquis must have lied to her. And yet there had been the ring of sincerity in his voice. He had seemed to care that Deborah might suffer some harm at the Spaniard’s hands…

She shook her head as the memory of the marquis’s dark eyes burning into hers forced its way into her conscious thoughts. He had looked so—so intense! So passionate! She could not help the little thrill of pleasure that invaded her when she remembered the way he had kissed her. But no, this must stop! It would be foolish to read too much into his kiss—or his words. She must not allow herself to think of a man who could never be anything to her.

Yet perhaps she ought to speak to her father of the marquis’s warnings? Perhaps it might be better to ask if her prospective bridegroom would agree to a period of courtship before the betrothal? She must be certain she could both like and respect the man she married.

What was that? Something behind her, close by? Deborah was suddenly alert to the sounds of footsteps in the mist, echoing eerily in the half-light. She glanced over her shoulder, realizing that she must have wandered some way from her lodgings. Engrossed in her thoughts, she had not noticed where she was going.

A shiver of apprehension ran through her as she tried to take her bearings and failed. Everything was so unfamiliar in the mist. Where was she? Which way had she turned? It had all become strange and slightly sinister.

As she stood hesitating, three burly figures loomed out of the mist towards her. Some instinct warned her that she was in danger. She gasped in fright and turned to flee but there was someone in the way—a large, tall man. She was trapped between him and the others! She gave a cry of alarm as a blanket was suddenly thrown over her from behind, covering her in a shroud of darkness.

‘No! Help! Help me…’

‘Fear not, Mistress Stirling,’ a man’s voice said close to her ear. It was a French voice, and not one she had heard before. ‘You will not be harmed. The Captain has ordered you be treated like a princess.’

Not harmed! Deborah tried to scream as she felt herself being lifted and hoisted on to a man’s shoulder. Her indignation was equally as great as her fear. She was being carried as if she were a sack of straw!

‘How dare you?’ she muttered, her cries of anger lost in the wool of the blanket. ‘Let me down at once. I demand that you put me down!’

She knew the covering over her head must muffle her protests. She could hear the sound of men’s voices, laughter and jesting—and then a sharper tone, the voice of command. After that there was silence.

‘What is happening?’ she asked and attempted to struggle as she felt herself transferred to another captor, one who held her more comfortably. ‘What are you doing to me?’

She was blinded and caught by the blanket, but somehow her senses seemed heightened. She was aware of being carried down steps and then felt a rocking motion beneath her. She was being taken into a boat! She screamed and struggled as violently as she was able, hampered by the confining weight of the blanket.

‘Let me go! Let me go!’

‘You are safe. There is no need to fear, mademoiselle.’ That soft French voice again, though indistinct through the blanket. ‘Do not struggle and hurt yourself. It is only for a little time. Soon you will be more comfortable.’

Now Deborah could feel a different sensation beneath her. The boat was moving. She was being rowed down the river. She had been kidnapped! She was being taken away from her father and friends. But who had abducted her—and why?

She felt her sense of balance returning. She was no longer in a man’s arms, but sitting on a bench, his arm loosely about her, supporting her—she was no longer a prisoner. She knew that she must escape now, before she had been taken too far. She sprang up, trying to throw off the heavy blanket so that she could see, but somehow her foot caught against a rope or something similar and she fell forward, striking her head on a hard object. For a brief moment she felt pain and then she was falling into the darkness of a black hole.

Her head ached so! Deborah could hear voices and sense movement about her—or was the movement beneath her? She knew that she would have to open her eyes soon, but felt too ill to make the attempt. A moan escaped her lips; her dark lashes fluttered against pale cheeks, and then she was aware of something cool on her forehead. Gentle hands soothing her, stroking her hair and easing the pain.

‘Forgive me,’ a soft voice murmured. ‘It was my fault you fell and hurt yourself, mademoiselle. I should have taken better care of you.’

Where had she heard that voice before? Deborah’s eyelids flickered and then opened. She lay staring up at the man bending over her, feeling bewildered. Where was she? What had happened to her? The man had been applying a cool cloth to her forehead; now he removed it and smiled at her.

‘Are you feeling better, mademoiselle?’

‘Have I been ill?’ she asked. Something was bothering her, but she could not seem to remember for the moment. ‘Are you a doctor, sir?’

‘No, mademoiselle, just the first lieutenant of the Siren’s Song.’

‘We are on a ship?’ She realized that the odd motion she could feel must be the sea beneath them. She tried to sit up, then fell back as the dizziness hit her. ‘Oh, my head hurts so much!’

‘You hit it when you fell. Forgive me. It was not intended that you should be harmed. The Captain was angry and very concerned that you might die. But I do not think that you will have more than a nasty bruise and a headache.’

Gradually, Deborah’s eyes began to focus on the man’s face. He was not handsome, but his smile was gentle, his eyes kind. His black hair was long and hung untidily about his rather thin face, and his nose was slightly crooked.

‘Who are you?’ she whispered, her throat hoarse. ‘And why am I here?’ She was struggling to remember…she had been walking in the mist and then something had happened to her.

‘You are here because…’ the man began, then broke off as someone moved forward into her line of vision.

‘You were brought here because I ordered it,’ a strong voice said—a voice that sent a thrill of recognition winging through her. ‘Henri is not to blame, Mistress Stirling. It was I who had you abducted—though I much regret that you were hurt. That was never our intention, and I believe you brought it on yourself by your wilfulness.’

Deborah gasped as she looked into the dark eyes of the Marquis de Vere. She forced herself up against the pillows piled behind her, her eyes meeting his defiantly. She was angry despite the pain at her temple and the dizziness that once again swept over her.

‘You!’ she cried. ‘How dare you make me your prisoner? How dare you treat me so ill?’

‘You mistake the matter,’ Nicholas said, smiling a little as he realized her ordeal had not damaged her spirit. When she had been knocked unconscious he had feared the worst, but it seemed that Henri was right. She had suffered no more than an unpleasant bump on her forehead. ‘I would have you consider yourself my honoured guest rather than my prisoner.’

‘Your guest?’ Deborah’s eyes glinted with temper. ‘I was half-suffocated beneath a filthy blanket, terrified near to death, knocked unconscious and brought here against my will. How can you say I am your guest?’

‘You have been treated extremely ill,’ Nicholas admitted, his expression contrite but with a hint of humour about it. ‘I do most humbly beg your pardon, Mistress Stirling—but it was necessary, believe me. Please do not imagine you stand in danger of any further…indignity. Henri will care you for until we reach the château, then my cousin will tend you. You shall have every attention, every comfort.’

‘How can I be comfortable when I am your prisoner?’ she cried furiously.

‘My guest, lady.’

‘I demand that you return me to my father at once!’

‘Forgive me. For the moment that is impossible.’ Nicholas frowned as he saw the distress in her eyes. ‘Do not be concerned for your father. He has been informed that you are safe.’

‘Safe! You dare to kidnap me, then assert I am safe? I find such behaviour unpardonable.’ Her eyes snapped with temper. ‘You shall pay for this, sir. I promise you shall be punished for your wickedness.’

‘You have my word that you are as safe as if you were still in your father’s care.’

‘The word of a pirate!’

‘A privateer, mistress.’

‘As if there was a difference!’

‘I assure you there is a vast difference between my ships and those of the Corsairs that roam certain parts of the Mediterranean,’ he replied, a small smile about his mouth—a mouth she remembered too well from kissing it. ‘But you should be resting, not quarreling with your host. I shall leave you for now. If the wind is fair we shall be in France within a few hours. I beg you to forgive any discomfort you have suffered and be assured I shall do all in my power to make you comfortable from now on.’

‘Discomfort!’ Deborah stared in disbelief as he bowed and left her. Her head felt as if it had a thousand hammers inside it—and he spoke of discomfort. ‘You wretch! I wish you had my headache.’

‘Is your head very bad?’ Henri asked, coming forward again. He had withdrawn into the background while she was arguing with the marquis. ‘Shall I prepare a tisane to ease your pain?’

She blinked. In her fury at discovering the culprit for all her ills, she had forgotten the Frenchman.

‘I hate him,’ she muttered fiercely as forbidden tears stung her eyes. ‘How dare he do this to me? How could he?’ She gazed at Henri. ‘Why has he done this terrible thing?’

‘Nico has his reasons.’

‘You call him Nico?’ She was curious, forgetting her anger for a moment.

‘His name is Nicholas. It is a childhood thing.’

‘You knew him then?’ Deborah frowned as he nodded. ‘You are his friend, are you not?’

‘We are as brothers.’

‘Yet you are a gentle man. I do not believe that there is any evil in you.’

‘Nor is there evil in Nico, mademoiselle. There is a certain darkness, an anger that cannot be slaked but by blood, but he is not an evil man.’ Henri hesitated, seeming unsure of whether to go on, then, ‘You were taken hostage to prevent your marriage to Don Miguel Cortes. It was done in part for your own sake.’

‘For my sake…’ Deborah’s words of furious denial died on her lips as she saw the expression in his eyes. ‘Why do you look so? Please tell me—is Don Manola’s son truly a monster?’

‘He raped and then strangled a young woman of good family. The act was unprovoked and brutal beyond belief. No decent man could behave in such a manner, mademoiselle.’

Deborah’s face turned pale and her heart jerked with fear. ‘Then it is true…all the marquis told me. I did not believe it. Miguel Cortes…his likeness looked so pleasant…’

‘Miguel Cortes has the face of an angel and the soul of the blackest demon this side of Hell,’ Henri said. ‘Isabella was not the only woman to have suffered at his hands—though perhaps the most vulnerable since she was innocent, little more than a child.’

‘Isabella…’ Deborah looked at him, an unconscious appeal in her eyes. ‘Who was she? Please tell me about her?’

‘Isabella Rodrigues was a young woman of good family but no fortune. She was betrothed to Nico for three months. Her parents were both dead, her grandfather too old to take proper care of her—or to exact revenge for what was done to her…’

Henri paused as if he found the tale too horrific to relate. ‘Miguel Cortes saw her visiting the church a month before her wedding. She had refused his courtship some months earlier and the resentment must have festered inside him. He followed her as she walked home through her grandfather’s orange groves and then…’ His mouth twisted with disgust. ‘Nico has sworn to take the life of the monster that subjected her to such a terrible ordeal that day.’

Deborah felt the sickness rise in her throat. The horror of the tale just unfolded to her was swirling inside her, and she seemed to see the young girl’s struggle to fight off her attacker and hear her pitiful cries. She pressed a shaking hand to her lips, as she fought off the terrible images. Henri’s story had been so harrowing that she could almost wish it untold.

‘Is that why the marquis had me abducted?’ she asked when at last she could speak again. ‘Am I a part of his revenge on Miguel Cortes?’

Henri looked uncomfortable. ‘Since the murder, Don Manola has forbidden his son to sail with his ships. He fears Nico’s vengeance.’

‘So I am the bait to lure Miguel Cortes from his home?’ Her clear eyes accused him. ‘I can see the truth in your face, sir. That is what the marquis intends, is it not?’

Henri nodded but could not answer.

‘I see…thank you for telling me the truth. I was taken to serve the marquis’s purpose because he believes Don Miguel must come to claim his own bride.’

‘And for your own sake. Believe me—’ Henri was silenced by her look of scorn.

‘Not for my own sake, sir. Spare me such excuses, I pray you! I needed no help to make my own decision. Had I been given the time to consider, I might have decided against the marriage myself. I should in any case not have consented to the betrothal until I had had the opportunity to know Don Miguel—and if he is the monster you describe, I would have asked my father to take me home again.’

‘Nico was certain you meant to wed him, that you would not listen to his warnings but go your own way.’

‘The choice was mine. He had no right to interfere in my life.’

Henri inclined his head. She spoke only the truth, they had none of them the right to take her from her father and hold her hostage. What could he say in the face of her anger?

‘Forgive me, mademoiselle. I shall fetch the tisane.’

Deborah lay back and closed her eyes as he left the cabin. Her head did ache so very badly. It was so very foolish of her to give way like this! She felt weak and wanted nothing so much as a good cry—but crying would not help her. She must be strong and conserve her composure. She had to think of a way to escape her captors.

Yet there was no possibility of escape while she was on board this ship. She could not swim back to England! She was helpless and it was her own fault. She should never have gone walking alone in the mist.

They must have been waiting for her to leave the house. She supposed that if the marquis was determined to capture her he would have found a way—but she need not have made it so easy for him!

Anger at her own carelessness banished her tears. She was not afraid of the marquis. Somehow she knew that he would not willingly harm her. The wound to her head had been caused by her violent attempt to escape.

Her real concern was for her father and how distressed he would be by her disappearance. Even if he had received word that she was safe for the moment, he would not be able to rest. She could imagine his agony of mind—and what of poor Sarah? Would her betrothal be postponed or would they decide that it must go ahead?

Would Deborah be returned to her father in time for her cousin’s wedding? Her mind was in such turmoil! If the marquis intended to use her as bait to trap Miguel Cortes…and what was she to believe about the man she had thought to marry? Could he really be guilty of the crimes Henri Moreau had described?

Deborah shuddered at the pictures in her mind. What that poor girl must have suffered! It was too horrible to imagine. She was sickened by such cruelty and dare not think of what might have happened to her if she had been wed to such a man. It would indeed have been a living death.

The marquis had tried to warn her, but she had refused to listen. Perhaps if she had not so brusquely repudiated his arguments he would not have thought it necessary to kidnap her.

Moaning as she felt the throbbing begin at her temple once more, Deborah closed her eyes. It was all too difficult. She could not think any more. She needed to sleep.

‘You are sure she said nothing to you?’ Sir Edward looked sternly at his ward. ‘If she has slipped away on some foolish errand—a surprise for one of us—then tell me. I shall not be angry, but I must know what has happened to my daughter.’

‘She said nothing to me,’ Sarah replied, frightened by the bleak expression in her uncle’s eyes. He had always been so kind to her, so indulgent. She had never seen him like this before. ‘I know you are anxious, sir…but I know nothing. Except…’ She stopped, her cheeks flushing crimson. ‘No, she assured me it was not a romantic tryst…’

Sir Edward’s hand snaked out, grabbing at her wrist. ‘What is this? Speak out at once!’

Sarah dropped her head. Deborah had been missing for hours. In another thirty minutes it would be the appointed time for her betrothal, but it could not go ahead without her cousin. Sir Edward was so angry, but if Deborah returned from a shopping errand she would be annoyed with Sarah for giving away her secrets.

‘Tell me, girl! Or I vow I will cancel your betrothal.’

‘No! That is not fair,’ Sarah cried. Her head went up, eyes sparkling with indignation. ‘Last night at the palace—she slipped away for several minutes alone with a man.’

‘What man?’ Sir Edward’s eyes narrowed. ‘If you are concealing something from me you shall be punished, girl.’

‘That is unfair, sir,’ Sarah protested. She did not know this suddenly old man who seemed almost driven mad by his fear for Deborah. ‘She told me she had felt faint, that she needed air and—she left the hall with the Marquis de Vere.’

‘That scoundrel!’ Sir Edward turned pale. He staggered back as if from a blow and his hand dropped from Sarah’s wrist. ‘Why—why did she do such a thing? I did not press her to this marriage. If she has run away with this rogue rather than…’