The Rake and the Recluse REDUX (a time travel romance) (53 page)

Perry’s breath caught in his chest.

“No. Oh God, no.” Gideon stood in the doorway to his study, stricken and pale, his arms hanging limply. “What have I done?”

Mrs. Weston went to him, stretching to rest her hands on his shoulders.

“Your Grace. I’ll see to the food. We’ll get you out of here.”

The brute threw Francine unceremoniously on the gilded four-poster bed, then overtook one of the chairs at the other side of the room.

Francine glanced around. The room was decorated in hues of garish orange trimmed with gold braids, filigree, and paint. It made her even more dizzy and nauseated. Any bare wood appeared painted with a thick coat of glaring white enamel.

She looked down, the rough-hewn rope splintered, digging and tearing at her raw flesh. Her skirts were ripped and tangled around her, her stockings torn and slipping, and her ankles were bloody and painful as if full of glass shards, and sore from the same roughly-made ropes.

She caught the man’s eye on the other side of the room. “What’s your name?”

He only stared at her.

“Please,
please
help me. If you help me, the Duke of Roxleigh will be forever in your debt,” she begged quietly.

The brute did not give.

She stretched out on the bed, trying to straighten her tensed muscles after the cramped ride.

He only continued to stare and soon a small, pointy woman walked into the room.

The man stood, looking intently at the floor, and the woman waved at him, sending him out. She paused, listening for the door to close behind her, then slid toward the bed.

Francine watched carefully. “Please, help me,” she implored from atop the thick covers.

The woman stopped near the edge of the bed and peered down her nose.

“Do not address me as if you are of
my
station,” she drawled. If Hepplewort was the embodiment of sloth and gluttony, this woman’s demeanor bespoke wrath. Her beady black eyes bore into Francine, unnerving her, and she shrank.

“You,” the woman said in clear disgust while reaching out and grabbing Francine’s skirt before she could move away, “are a filthy mess. Have you no pride? You are betrothed to my son, the Lord Fergus Darburgh, Earl of Hepplewort. Consider that in your actions. Your one purpose in being born was to bear the future Earl of Hepplewort. If you cannot do that, you serve no purpose at all. Do you understand?” The woman turned, not waiting for Francine’s response. “Morgan!”

The behemoth thumped back into the room, his gaze downcast.

His entire being oozed simplicity, and his quiet actions scared her. It was the air of violence, pure and unadulterated, that chilled her to the bone.

The woman spoke at Francine over her shoulder, not wasting any effort by turning around. “If you behave, we will remove the binds. If you make one errant move, Morgan will stop you.” She nodded to the man, who moved to the bed and cut the ropes.

Francine didn’t move.

“Good,” the woman said, shifting her gaze back to the doorway. “I’ll send the girl in to attend you. You are filthy. Unworthy.” Without hurry she slipped from the room, and a few moments later a mouse of a maid entered.

She bade Francine follow as she walked into an attached room covered in light green tiles. In the corner rested a square basin on the floor, and Francine looked closer, seeing the piping that rose above it.
A shower
, Francine thought. She would have smiled, but her body and her mind wouldn’t allow it.

The maid unhooked her dress and corset, letting them fall to the floor. Then she carefully removed her stockings, peeling them away from the injuries to her ankles. She shook her head. “I’ll get some salve fer ye, miss. As soon as we get ye clean,” she whispered.

Francine turned to smile at her, then shrieked when she saw that Morgan had followed them. “Get out!”

The maid quickly hushed her. “Please, miss, ye don’t want the lady back in ‘ere. Please,” she begged.

Francine convulsed, but her stomach was empty. She let the girl lead her to the shower and stood silently while she was washed. She clenched her eyes shut and thought of Gideon, willing him to her. The uncomfortable shower dribbled on and when she opened her eyes, Morgan was still the only man there.

The girl toweled her off and brought her back to the bedchamber.

Francine stood still again, her eyes closed, trying to pretend the brute wasn’t inspecting her with a threatening disregard as she was dressed in a chalky white dress. It was simple and tight, fitted over a painful corset and a giant caged crinoline with heavy woolen underskirts. Her breasts were compressed flat, her lungs crushed within her ribcage. The skirts itched horribly and weighed her down, but she bore them.

The maid pulled Francine’s hair into a tight bun on top of her head and secured it, covering it with a white linen mobcap. She left her for a few minutes then returned with a jar of brown goo that she smoothed on Francine’s wrists and ankles before wrapping them with strips of linen.

The mother scrutinized Francine. “This is to be my successor, the Countess of Hepplewort?” She frowned at the white bandages around her wrists. “These are terribly unsightly,” she said to the maid as she yanked and pulled and pushed at Francine’s dress.

“I beg pardon, my lady, I thought to heal them with salve.”

“It will do for now.”

The girl curtseyed and left the parlor expediently as the woman motioned to the divan.

Francine didn’t think she could be any more uncomfortable, but she was wrong. She walked over and sat down carefully, feeling the metal bands of her crinoline biting her legs. The dress and corsets didn’t give an inch. It felt as if her lungs were being forced up under her collarbone, into her throat, and her stomach was crushing her heart physically, as the woman attempted to do the same to her hope. She stifled a cry, feeling her face flush from the pressure. She clasped her hands together in her lap and the woman handed her a small basket with an embroidery hoop and thread.

She sat across from Francine in a chair and picked up another basket, staring at her as Francine toyed with the hoop.

“I expected you to be well trained. What is the difficulty?”

Francine shook her head.

“Do what you can,” the mother said disapprovingly.

Francine steadied her hands and set about figuring out how to embroider. She bided her time, the dutiful fiancée, waiting for the moment when she could flee. Every time she looked at Morgan he glared back. She was no match for him. She tried to think of something to say to the woman, to find some common ground that might weaken her terrifying resolve, but nothing would come. She wasn’t even sure she
could
speak, as contracted as her torso was.

After what seemed an eternity of forced silence, punctuated only by the minute pinpricks of the embroidery needle, the door to the parlor swung open.

“Supper,” called the butler.

Morgan, who had been sitting in the corner, stood to follow Hepplewort’s mother and Francine from the room.

Francine carefully studied her surroundings and the movements of her captors—which doors required keys, which ones led outside, which windows she’d seen open.

She’d watched Gideon tighten the saddles on his horses, not to mention all the Clint Eastwood westerns she’d watched when she couldn’t sleep. She didn’t think it would be too difficult to get one on a horse, but she wouldn’t have much time to do it. She suddenly wished she had participated in Westernaires as mother-number-two had wanted her to, but she’d been too stubborn and angry—an immovable attitude that eventually got her sent to yet another home.

She sat at the end of the table, trying to catch her breath after the short walk from the parlor. Hepplewort was positioned at the other end, but he wasn’t seated in the first position. His mother was. Hepplewort sat to her left which, Francine knew—thanks to the book of manners she had been studying—to be a blatant put-down since his mother’s immediate right was left unoccupied. He wasn’t worthy either, but it didn’t serve to make her feel better.

She stared down at the soup they placed before her and a shiver ran the course of her spine as she slowly began to spoon it to her mouth.

She felt as though she sat in a vacuum, the only sounds the clinking of her silverware on the dish. Francine was so far away she could hardly hear the conversation between them, and she considered that she might be better for it. They paid no attention to her, except when she needed a reprimand because the spoon hit the side of her cup or scraped the bottom of her bowl.

“Lady Madeleine,” the mother would shout at her, “you should endeavor to be silent.”

Hepplewort smiled a crooked, rotten grin when the talk turned to the young maids in town who were looking for positions within the household, and Francine tensed.

She watched as they supped on beef in a thick sauce and vegetable soup with crusty breads and fruit compote. Then she stared into her bowl, watching the different patterns made in the surface of her liquid.

“Look at her, Fergus. She isn’t the least bit appreciative of what we’ve done for her. She can’t carry herself, gasps for air at every turn. She’ll be bedridden when she is with my heir. Ridiculous. This isn’t the girl we were promised,” the mother complained.

Hepplewort remained silent.

After supper Morgan escorted her to her room, then stayed and watched as the small maid undressed her. The corset and dress she’d been forced into provided so little room that she’d lost her breath again halfway up the stairs, and the removal of the corset and sudden rush of air made her head spin, reminding her of the day she came to be here. Her eyes stung as the maid pulled a flannel nightgown over her head.

She noted that Morgan seemed to be getting tired, and hoped that she could outlast him and make a run for it in the night. She would never make it far in that corset, but the nightgown certainly held possibility.

The mother walked into the room with another maid, who was carrying a serving tray with a small teapot. She gestured for her to pour Francine a cup of tea and waited, watching while she drank it, not saying a word before leaving with a nod to Morgan.

Francine lay in the bed, alone in the dark, waiting for the giant to nod off so she could sneak out, but her chance never came. She couldn’t keep her eyes open no matter how hard she tried. As she fought her way against a deep sleep, the thought occurred to her. Her eyes jerked open in one last vain attempt before the room disappeared.

The next morning Francine stirred, her thoughts finishing where they had been interrupted.
Drugged
. She grunted, shaking her head and glancing around the room. Morgan stood and rang the bell.

The maid came in the room and helped Francine stumble to the shower for her morning ablutions as Morgan followed.

Francine wasn’t sure how much she could take of this before she passively let them beat her to death. She allowed the girl to dress her in another white gown of the same fashion as before: breathtakingly tight and uncomfortable. The diminutive maid fixed her hair and pushed her toward the door as Morgan—yet again—stood to follow.

Panic set in unexpectedly and Francine bolted for the staircase like a wild rabbit. She was clutching her chest, yanking on the top of the tightly laced corset before she made it ten steps, and within fifteen Morgan had her about the waist. His sweaty palms burned through her dress and his malodorous exhalation engulfed her face. She wanted to hold her breath against the stench, but as she gasped for air she gagged on it and her lungs gave up. She passed out cold.

She was awakened by a stinging slap across her face. “Do you need to be bound again?” the voice screeched.

Francine opened her eyes slowly to find the drawn-up face of the mother staring down at her from beside the bed. She skittered away but the woman caught her ankle, digging her nails into the injured flesh under the linen, tearing at the loose skin surrounding the deep gashes.

Francine cried out in agony, the searing pain shooting up her leg and spine. She lashed out at the woman, trying to stop the seizure of her leg, but it only caused the grip to tighten. She wailed and screamed, assailing the sickening woman, not understanding why she couldn’t unlatch her. “Why? Why, why!”