Читать книгу Lords of Scandal: The Beleaguered Lord Bourne / The Enterprising Lord Edward - Кейси Майклс, Kasey Michaels - Страница 7

SNAP!

The loud, discordant sound sent a flock of nesting birds, who had just moments before been chirping merrily in the branches overhead, soaring into the sky as one, calling anxiously to each other as they flapped their wings in agitation.

The girl, on the contrary, made no move to flee from the unmistakable sound of an animal trap’s heavy metal jaws snapping shut, locking its unwary prey in a grip of iron. It wasn’t that she hadn’t felt the impulse to flee. Indeed, her heart was pounding nineteen to the dozen with fright and her muscles were quite painfully tense, silently screaming the message “Run!”

But while her spirit and flesh were willing, they could not travel anywhere as long as one decidedly heavy, extremely cumbersome animal trap had its jagged-toothed mouth stuffed full of last year’s yellow sprigged muslin.

The power of speech, momentarily lost, returned just in time to give vent to the overwhelming anger that set the trapped female to trembling as the violence of that emotion rocketed through her system. “A trap in the Home Wood!” she announced incredulously to the air, pointing out the obvious to the world at large. “Never—never—has there been trap nor snare in the Home Wood. Only a monster would choose to do murder to a two-pound rabbit with a five-pound trap. It’s like…it’s like…like hunting down field mice with field cannon, that’s what it is.’

Bending from the waist, she attempted to free her skirts from the offending device, but to no avail. The skirt of her gown now rent in several places (long, jagged tears that would bring tears to the eyes of the most clever needlewoman), she had no recourse left to her but to drop to her knees and scrabble about in the damp undergrowth for the stake that held the trap in place.

It took a dozen mighty tugs and a good deal of digging in the soft black soil with her bare fingers to separate the metal stake at the end of the chain from its snug home a full foot deep in the ground; a hot, sweaty business that strained her gown, dirtied her cheeks, and succeeded in enraging her to the point that the thought of her rather bizarre appearance did not deter her for so much as an instant as she set off hotfoot for Bourne Manor, dragging the heavy trap, chain, and iron post along behind her willy-nilly.