“Aye, it’s just a little stuffy nose and a mite of a cough. Lady Cecilia, however, won’t leave her, as you know. She did tell me to bid you good night for her. I imagine she and Miss Marie both will be downstairs tomorrow.”
She was whistling as she walked up the staircase. She looked once at the empty wall space she’d cleared of one of North’s father’s paintings, the one where he’d looke
d so sour, so malevolent, he could have been the Devil’s right hand. It would one day soon hold Cecilia Nightingale’s portrait. And also a portrait of Marie, with North. Yes, it would be proof for all eternity that a Nightingale wife was faithful and loyal to her husband.
She felt exhaustion weigh her down. She felt as heavy as the statue of the god Mercury that stood in a deep niche at the head of the stairs standing on the toes of his winged feet. Each step she took became more of a chore. She shook her head and frowned at herself. The babe was making her tire more easily. She didn’t like it a bit.
She was nearly trembling with the immense fatigue when she reached the master bedchamber. Even turning the doorknob was a mighty effort. She thought about calling one of the maids to help her undress, but decided it was too late. There was a nice fire set in the bedchamber, blazing brightly, casting shadows in the dim corners of the huge room, and she managed to make herself walk to it. She stretched out her hands to warm them. She looked at her hands. They seemed to fade even as she watched them. Lighter and lighter they became, the pale blue lines beneath her flesh brightening, then they too became vague and insubstantial as her hands themselves, like the shadows flickering in the corners, or maybe it was simply the firelight that was making her hands look so very strange to her.
Something wasn’t right. She turned slowly at the very soft sound coming from behind her. She saw nothing, but she was so tired, her legs so weak, she could barely stand, much less investigate the likely mouse that was scurrying about in the far corner of the room. She took the two steps to the wing chair and clung to its back. Again, there was a soft rustling noise and it was coming closer now, just over there, next to the Chinese screen she never used because when she bathed North invariably turned up, all wicked smiles and wandering hands.
She stilled, trying to make herself pay attention. She was so bloody tired. There it was again, that silly sound that probably wasn’t anything really, just something out of her imagination, woven there by her fatigue. Yes, that was it.
She slowly turned back to face the fireplace. The flames were dancing like the Cornish piskeys now, scampering and waving to and fro, always changing, shifting, their heat reaching out to her but she couldn’t feel it. She raised her hand to her face, or she tried to. Her arm dropped to her side. She was too overwhelmed by fatigue to move.
The noise came again, but she didn’t have the strength to turn. It was closer now and she knew it. She was now just simply waiting for it. Like a rabbit looking down a hunter’s gun, she thought, just standing here, waiting for that noise to come and get her.
How could a noise hurt her?
There was a soft murmuring beside her. She whispered, “What is happening? What is it?”
Soft sibilant murmurs came close to her ear, meaningless sounds, just nothing, really. She would have sworn that fingertips lightly brushed her hair. “You’re a whore,” that sweet dreamlike voice said. “A whore and you’ll die now, just like the other whores.”
“No,” she said. Her mouth was dry; it hurt to say that simple word. “No,” she said again. She felt arms close about her. She breathed in an elusive scent, then ever so gently, she was lowered to the floor. At last, for an instant, she felt the blessed heat of the fireplace, then it was gone and there was only coldness.
“North,” she said, then her head fell to the side and she said nothing more.
The wind was howling. There were swirling grains of sand in the air; the taste of salt was strong.
Without really realizing what she was doing, Caroline huddled down into the velvet cloak, then wondered why she was wearing it. Surely she hadn’t come for a walk without wearing something, but she couldn’t remember, couldn’t seem to grasp preparing to come for a walk.
It was dark. There was a quarter moon high in the sky to her left. Dear God, it hurt to open her eyes, but she did and she saw that moon, tasted the salt from the sea on her dry lips, and felt the bone-deep cold. She shivered then and came fully awake. She was tucked as far as possible underneath the jutting ledge of a large black rock. She knew where that rock was. It was very close to the cliff at St. Agnes Head. She knew too how she’d gotten there. Someone had drugged the tea. Someone had come to the bedchamber and made those odd rustling noises, then whispered in her ear that she was a whore and she was going to die, and then that someone had carried her away from Mount Hawke and brought her here.
What someone?
She stretched about, realizing her hands were bound behind her back, her ankles bound as well. She was leaning back, the main force of the wind off her, but the cold was hard and deep.
Where was that someone?
She was quite alone.
She knew terror that froze her brain and numbed her body. She saw her mother then, quite clearly: her beloved face, her green eyes bright with laughter, eyes just the same color green as Caroline’s, but then her mother’s face faded away and left only the memory of it. She’d not remembered that her mother’s eyes were green. “Mother,” she whispered. “Mother.”
She was alone in the dark of the night, the howling wind dinning around her. Surely it was a man who had brought her here, a man who had access to Mount Hawke.
Coombe? He’d come back, all smiles and sheepish looks, bringing with him North’s mother and sister, all to make him look like a saint, a reformed character, a man of conscience, to make all of them forget that he’d lied about Caroline meeting her supposed lover, Dr. Treath, that he’d possibly poisoned the oxtail soup that had made poor Alice so ill.
She heard a low moaning sound, close, too close. She huddled in on herself, wanting to escape it, knowing it was frightening, and then she realized it was coming from her, from deep within her, and the terror was now a part of her. It was over for her. She’d found North, but now after only months he would be alone again. No, no, he had his mother now and his sister. He wouldn’t become a brooding dark man again who didn’t laugh or jest.
She didn’t want North to laugh without her. She was selfish, but there it was. She didn’t want to just sit here and wait for the someone to come and stab her and push her off the cliff. She didn’t want to die.
She felt clearheaded for the first time. She didn’t feel much hope but she didn’t feel like rolling over and simply waiting for the someone to come and kill her. She tested the rope wrapped around her wrists. It was secure. She tried to pull her ankles apart. There was only about six inches leeway, not enough to run, barely enough to hobble along.
All right, then, if she wasn’t just going to give up, she had to do something. She felt the edges of the huge black outcropping rock. Ah, yes, there was nothing but sharp edges; she just prayed they were sharp enough.
She realized then that her hands were bare and they were cold, almost too cold now, and soon they would be numb. So her attacker had wrapped her cloak around her, but pulled no mittens on her hands. That wouldn’t be so bad, she thought, as she began to rub the rope vigorously against a sharp edge. Then she wouldn’t feel the pain, and she knew that was coming.
She gritted her teeth and sawed back and forth.