Call of the Heart (19 page)

Lord Rothwyn gave an exclamation. Then without another word he pushed passed the servants who were standing in front of the door and ran down the front stairs.

Royal followed Lord Rothwyn before anyone could prevent him.

A footman gave him his hat and cloak, then opened the front door. Outside, a carriage was waiting.

Lord Rothwyn stepped into it.

“To the docks with all possible speed!” he said to the coachman.

Only as the carriage-door shut and the horses started off did he realise that Royal was sitting beside him on the back seat.

It seemed to Lalitha that she was being carried a long way from Rothwyn House.

She was too frightened to move even when she was thrown from side to side by the movement of the carriage.

The rope was biting into her ankles and she was finding it hard to breathe beneath the heavy thickness of the cloth which

covered her face.

She tried to think but her head felt as if it was filled with wool and she was only aware of a fear flickering within her like the pointed tongue of a serpent.

Where was she being taken?

She thought then that she had been right in knowing who had kidnapped her.

She was to be shipped abroad and sold to the highest bidder in some foreign town.

She was too innocent and too unsophisticated to realise exactly what would happen once she was put up for sale, and yet she knew that it would be a degradation and horror beyond anything she could imagine.

What was more, no-one would ever find her and she would never see Lord Rothwyn again.

She found herself thinking how little she would have to remember; his kiss when he had thought she was Sophie, the feel of his head against her breast, and the silk of his hair touching her lips.

Would that be enough to sustain her, to keep her sane through the terror of what was waiting for her?

She wondered whether there would be any chance of his finding her even perhaps after she had been sold.

Would he think it worth-while to cross the sea to search for her, or would he never guess where she might have gone? Perhaps, she thought despairingly, he would think she had run away once again.

Yet how could he think such a thing after the happiness of the dinner they had eaten together, the way in which they had talked, and when he must have known how thrilled she was with the drawings he had given to her.

She thought of the moment at which they had been interrupted.

“Lalitha!” he had said and there had been a note in his voice which vibrated through her whole body.

She remembered how she had said to him:

“You will . . . laugh at me for being . . . sentimental.”

“I am not laughing,” Lord Rothwyn had replied. “I want to tell you something.”

What had he wanted to tell her? _

She remembered the look in his eyes, a look which had made her thrill and quiver in a manner which she could not translate into words but which had been very wonderful.

She had felt at that moment a strange excitement well up inside her.

It had been impossible to speak; hard even to breathe.

Her eyes had been held by his, so that she thought that he was telling her wonderful things that she had always longed to know but had never heard expressed.

Perhaps she had been mistaken; perhaps she had simply been blinded by her love for him, which made her see things that were not there and imagine something which had no foundation in fact.

She loved him so desperately that just to be near him was to feel herself vibrate to a strange music that came from within her very soul.

She recalled then how she had told him that she looked at a drawing not with her eyes but with her soul.

After she had read him the poem he had asked her whether she thought the lady to whom Lord Hadley had addressed it had called to his heart.

When she had found it difficult to answer him the note in his voice had changed.

What did it all mean?

Or had it indeed meant nothing?

He was so kind, so sympathetic, that perhaps it was only part of his re-construction of her and meant nothing special to him. Now she would never know the answers to all the questions which had puzzled her.

She was being taken away. She would never see him again! The future would be a hell worse than anything she had suffered from her Step-mother.

She wanted to scream at the thought but knew what would happen to her if she made a sound.

She was back where she had been before, cringing at the thought of being whipped, expecting to receive a blow, certain of making mistakes because she was so afraid.

“Can I never escape from this?” she asked herself.

She thought someone answered cynically: “Only by death!” Then Lalitha knew that if what she suspected was true, if she was indeed being taken to some foreign place to be humiliated and degraded in a manner she could not at the moment imagine, then she must die.

She wondered if it would be hard to kill herself and how she should do it.

There would obviously not be a pistol within her reach. Perhaps too prisoners were not allowed to possess knives.

How then could she die?

She felt that if one was determined enough it would not be impossible. Somehow she would find a way, but only when she was certain that Lord Rothwyn would not come to her rescue.

What would he feel if he followed her and then found that she was dead?

Then mockingly the thought came to her that perhaps he would be relieved. She would no longer be an encumbrance upon him, no longer a trouble as she had been up to now.

Why should he concern himself with anyone so tiresome?

She remembered that she did not yet know what he had said to Sophie.

Why had he left Sophie at Roth Park and come in search of her?

Sophie had been so insistent that all he wanted was her love, and that once she had given it to him he would no longer have a thought for anyone else.

But he had left Sophie and followed after her so quickly that he had caught up with the stage-coach before it reached London.

If she had gone on to Norfolk as she had intended, Lalitha thought, it might have been more difficult for him to find her.

He did not know where her Nurse lived.

As far as she knew, he had no idea where her home was before her Step-mother had sold it and they had come to London.

But even if she had managed to change coaches in London and start off for Norwich, Lalitha thought now, that would not have deterred him.

He had not finished with her after all and therefore he would have pursued her as he would pursue her now.

Quite suddenly it seemed to her that there was a light at the end of a very long tunnel.

There was hope!

There was an irresistible belief deep down within her that he would not let her go. He would find her somehow.

But how would he ever know what had happened?

It had all been so cleverly done, she thought; Nattie and the house-maids ill, Elsie attending her, and because she thought Royal was involved in an accident she had run impetuously from her bed-room so that no-one would know where she had gone.

Lord Rothwyn would be asleep now, confident that she too was sleeping in the next room.

How often had she looked at the communicating door which lay between them?

When he had been ill she had visualised herself opening it and going into him even though he had not asked for her.

He would have been shocked at her presumption, perhaps angry because he would consider it an impertinence.

Yet she would have seen him; she would have heard his voice. Even to listen to him when he was angry with her was better than not hearing him at all.

What would happen when the morning came? Who would tell him that she had not slept in her bed?

Nattie would do so if she was well enough, or would it be Elsie who would keep the house-hold from realising that she was not in the house?

Part of the next day might pass before anybody realised that she was not there, and by that time where would she be?

Lalitha wanted to cry out at the hopelessness of it.

The horses came to a stand-still and she realised that for quite some time they had been rumbling over heavy cobbles which shook the carriage and were very unlike the smooth roads in the smarter part of London.

Now she heard a ship’s bell and she was sure that they were down by the river.

For the first time since they had left Park Lane the man beside her spoke.

“Keep quiet an’ don’t move!” he said. “One sound an’ Oi’ll sock ye!”

Lalitha heard him open the carriage-door and step outside.

She could hear him talking to another man, but the cloth which covered her head was so thick that it was difficult to distinguish what they said.

Rough hands then picked her up and carried her from the carriage.

There were two men, she knew that.

They placed her on what seemed to be a stretcher and someone else, a third man, threw some heavy covering over her and pulled it over her feet.

It covered her completely so that now she could hardly breathe.

They were moving and there was a man walking in front and one behind her.

They walked across cobbles and then Lalitha knew that they were taking her up a gangway.

A man spoke to them and although he spoke in English it was with a pronounced foreign accent.

“Down below!” he said. “There’s only one more to come, then we sail.”

She had been right in what she feared!

She was in a ship and they were taking her across the Channel.

Frantically she began to pray that Lord Rothwyn would somehow find her.

“Save me! Save me!” she called him with her heart. “Find out where they are . . . taking me. Save me because . . . otherwise ... I must die!”

The men carrying her had set the stretcher down on the deck and now one of them picked her up in his arms and put her over his shoulder.

Her head was hanging down his back and his arm encircled her legs.

He was climbing down a steep companion-way to what appeared to be the bowels of the ship.

He moved along a passage so narrow that his shoulders brushed against the sides.

He unlocked a door, and to enter what Lalitha imagined was a cabin he had to bend his head and he put his other hand on her back so that she would not fall off his shoulder.

Then he set her abruptly down on the floor, so roughly that it hurt.

She gave a little exclamation of pain and then was afraid in case he would be angered by it.

She felt his hands fumbling with the rope tied round her waist, then he pulled the cloth from her head.

For a moment she could see nothing and thought that they had blinded her.

Without speaking he tightened the rope round her hands again, then drew a handkerchief from his pocket and tied it over her mouth.

“This is t’ help ye keep silent,” he said. “Oi told ye before what’d happen if ye make a noise and that goes for the rest of ye!” he added in a louder tone.

The handkerchief hurt Lalitha’s mouth and she suspected that it was not particularly clean.

As the man went from the room, his feet heavy on the bare boards, she realised that there was a faint light coming through one port-hole and that the reason it was hard to see was that it was still dark outside.

The man who had gagged her slammed the door behind him and she heard the key turn in the lock.

She tried to discern to whom he had spoken and who else was in the cabin.

It was very small, low-ceiling, and devoid of any furniture, but gradually as her eyes grew accustomed to the darkness she could distinguish what appeared to be bundles lying on the floor.

Then she knew that, like her, other women were lying there, gagged and bound just as she was.

Gradually the light from the port-hole grew stronger as the faint shimmer of dawn began to dispel the darkness of the night.

Edging herself backwards inch by inch, she sat up, and propped herself against a wall.

Now she could see who else was in the cabin.

There were eight other bodies, and as the light increased second by second she could see that they all had frightened eyes above their silenced mouths, and their arms were tied as were their ankles.

‘Nine women,’ Lalitha thought, ‘and one more to come!’

Even as she thought of it she heard heavy foot-steps coming down the passage.

The door was unlocked and the man came into the cabin carrying another woman’s body over his shoulder.

He threw her down at the other side of the cabin, pulled the cloth from over her head, tightened the rope round her waist, and gagged her.

She was a very young pretty girl with fair, golden hair, and although she gave a little whimper before the gag was applied she was obviously too frightened to make any noise.

“We be a-sailing now,” the man said, “an when we be out at sea ye’ll be untied if ye behave yeselves. Oi expect anyhow ye’ll want t’ be sick!”

He laughed as if at a joke, then went from the cabin, locking the door behind him.

Overhead was the sound of hurrying feet and the slap of sails being set.

‘We are leaving England,’ Lalitha thought. ‘I am being carried over the sea and no-one will ever know what has happened to me. ’

She wondered if it would be possible to free herself and make one wild dash to the Quay.

Then she realised that even if it were possible to undo the cords which bound her, there was a locked door to prevent her escape and the only port-hole in the cabin faced out onto the river.

Lalitha also knew only too well the kind of punishment she would incur for trying to run away.

She was certain that the man had not spoken idly when he

had said he would knock her senseless.

Looking round the cabin, Lalitha saw that two of the girls were lying with closed eyes and appeared to be asleep.

She was certain that if they were sleeping it was not a natural slumber.

The others were all staring round as she was; their eyes wide, their pupils dilated with fear.

Lalitha realised that the majority of the girls were just as Lord Rothwyn had described to her—from the country.