Stolen By the Icy Duke (Stolen by the Duke #9)

Chapter 1

Chapter One

“Honestly, Helena, is that the best you can do? Why do you persist in being so lazy? Cleanliness is next to godliness, don’t you know?” Sister Frances’s grating voice made Helena bite her lower lip in an effort not to respond.

Footsteps echoed in the empty hall as the nun approached, coming to a stop close by.

Helena stopped her humming as she scrubbed at the already spotless abbey floor. The stones were cold under her knees, and she hadn’t eaten yet today. She was resigned to it, though.

This was her life.

She began scrubbing harder, which was quite the feat, considering her hand was trembling from the cold and weakness.

Sister Frances huffed irritably. “Your attempt at pretense is fooling no one,” she snapped.

“Certainly not God. He is watching over you, judging your actions and finding you wanting. Recite the Adoro te Devote prayer as you work to remind you of the reason for your punishment. God does not like a willful child.”

“Yes, Sister Frances,” Helena said, keeping her head down.

She was quite sure that God was nowhere near this convent. Not with their tendency towards cruelty as punishment. Not with how they kept the girls half-starved in an effort to curb their ‘innate wickedness.’

Even with the diligent supervision of St. Margaret’s abbess, Sister Frances still ruled with an iron fist, managing to slip past the abbess’s watchful eye.

Sister Frances huffed and breathed in as if to say something else. To prevent her from doing that, Helena began to recite the prayer very loudly, her arms burning with exhaustion.

“Jesu, quem velatum nunc aspicio, Oro, fiat illud quod tam sitio; Ut te revelata cernens facie, Visu sim beátus tuae gloriae. Amen.”

From the corner of her eye, she could see Sister Frances’s face, getting very red with annoyance. The nun huffed one more time before marching away.

Helena watched her go, still reciting the prayer as loudly as she could while scrubbing at the floor.

Sister Frances slammed the door to the hall behind her and immediately Helena collapsed to the ground, breathing hard.

She was so tired. And she’d been tired for a long, long time.

Helena felt too fatigued to sleep. Her darkened room gave no indication of what time it might be.

She got up slowly, feeling along the stone floor for her slippers, bare toes curling from the cold. The side of her foot brushed against the shoe she was looking for, and she reached down to grasp them.

Feeling along her bed until she reached the end, she plucked her dressing gown from where she’d draped it earlier and pulled it on, tying the belt as tight as it would go—anything to offer a semblance of warmth in her damp, chilly cell.

She padded to the door and opened it, peering out into the darkened corridor.

The moon was full, shining through the slats of the abbey corridor and providing light.

She stepped out, looking first one way then the other, for any approaching nuns; there was always one sitting vigil in the chapel at all hours, so it was not unusual to encounter a sister heading to, or returning from, watch at any hour of the day or night.

Helena squinted at the moon. One of the other girls at the convent had tried to teach her how to tell time simply by looking at the sky, but she had never managed to grasp it fully.

Half the problem, of course, was that she did not want to be here at all. It made engaging with anything the abbey cared to impart next to impossible.

All she could think about was her family. She’d mapped her way out of the abbey so many times in her mind. She could have left years ago… were it not for Uncle James and his threats.

If you ever mention anything about your father’s death to anyone, little Charlie will pay the price. You want to protect your brother, don’t you?

It was just the twist that had made her settle, stop struggling, stop fighting so hard not to be left in this godforsaken place.

Uncle James, and possibly her mother, had killed her father.

Helena didn’t want to imagine what they might do to poor innocent Charlie.

And yet, it still was a struggle. Every day that she stayed was like holding onto the side of a sinking ship with just her fingernails. It was lying still while rats gnawed at her toes. It was a noose, getting tighter and tighter around her neck while she swung in the breeze, unable to stop it.

Every day for the last five years she had prayed for an answer, but God was not in this place—not with what Sister Frances had turned the abbey into.

Helena edged down the corridor, wondering if she might creep into the kitchen and steal some freshly baked bread.

Cook always left a few loaves cooling on the rack overnight, to be consumed at breakfast. Also, there was always left-over stew in the pot, bubbling over the banked flames of the kitchen fires in a cauldron.

One of the helpers usually slept on the kitchen floor to deter rats and other vermin from getting in, but Helena knew how to be incredibly quiet. She held her breath all the way down the corridor, releasing a sigh of relief when she reached the end without incident.

As she slipped down the stairs that led to the kitchen, she thanked God that she’d walked these steps many times. The darkness seemed to grow with every step, pressing into her oppressively. She might have given up and gone back to bed if she wasn’t so hungry.

She slipped on the bottom step, almost landing on her bottom, and gave out a tiny, startled squeak. She straightened up to her feet, leaning against the wall to get herself together.

It saved her from being caught, because she saw the approaching torch before the person was close enough to see her. As fast as she could, she slipped into the space beneath the stairs, crouching low and as far into the shadows as possible.

Her heart jumped as she recognized Sister Frances’s voice.

“I’ve received a letter from Mr. James Porter. He wants to know if we have managed to break the girl yet.”

She heard a snort, then Sister Mary Gertrude’s voice. “His niece is hopeless. I fear there isn’t much more we can do with her.”

“He would do better to just get rid of her permanently,” Sister Frances replied, making Helena tense further.

“I doubt he would object to that.” A third voice Helena recognized as Sister Philomena said.

They wish to get rid of me.

“I am at my wit’s end with that wretch,” Sister Frances said with an exasperated sigh.

“I gave her a whipping last week, and when the other girls cut her down, she was still impertinent. Absolutely hopeless,” Sister Mary Gertrude replied.

Helena remembered that beating. Five strokes with a cat o’ nine tails. She had thought she would expire. If she’d said anything afterwards—and she did not recall what had happened after the beating—it would have been to express her relief at surviving.

Though heaven knows what I’m surviving for. Seeing Charlie again, perhaps? If only.

Helena would have been happy about the idea of the nuns getting rid of her if she’d thought it’d involve anything except ending her life. She would have been happy to be thrown out onto the street to make her own way, or even transported, as long as Charlie was well.

But she could not let herself be killed. Not before she could rescue her brother from her uncle’s clutches.

Now, she had to think of herself.

When she was sure that the footsteps were completely gone, she got to her feet and crept the other way.

Thankfully, the nuns seemed to have been coming from the kitchen and so she did not have to abort her mission.

She scrambled down the rest of the corridor and came to a stop at the archway that led into the kitchen.

She could hear the gentle snoring of the helper and peered into the kitchen cautiously. By the light of the banked fire, she caught sight of him, laying on a pallet spread out at the end of the long table. She crept into the room, moving as quietly as possible.

Looking around the kitchen, she noted that the pail of goat’s milk they collected every morning from a milk maid was not empty.

With an internal skip of glee, she snatched up a scooper and filled a cup up to the brim.

Then she took a bowl from the drying rack, crept across the room towards the fireplace, and peered into the simmering cauldron.

There was still a little stew bubbling at the bottom, with parsnips, carrots, and a few pieces of meat bobbing about.

Marveling at her good luck, she scooped it all up into the bowl, before snatching a loaf and making her way as quietly as possible out of the kitchen—the helper’s reassuring snores keeping her company as she walked down the darkened hall.

With her hands full, it was more difficult to feel her way up the stairs. She put her back to the wall, sliding from step to step until she reached the top.

She hurried to her cell, sitting down on her hard bed and munching on the bread as she thought about what to do next.

I have to escape here before they do me permanent harm.

She thought about her seven-year-old brother and what escaping would mean for him. She wondered if he would be safe.

As the new Earl of Downfield, he was the legitimate owner of all the lands and properties that her uncle and mother were currently occupying. Uncle James was simply playing regent until Charles reached the age of majority.

Surely that will protect him. They cannot hurt him if it means they lose everything.

Helena wished that she could be completely certain of that. She would have left the convent long ago.

She tried to think what she could do. Even if she ran off, where could she go? It had been her mother and her uncle who had her locked up at the abbey once they realized she knew what they had done to her father. That meant she could not go back home.

She gave a long sigh as she bit into her loaf of bread. Hungry as she was, it tasted like ashes in her mouth. She didn’t know what she was going to do, what she could do, really. To run away from the convent would mean inviting harm to her brother.

Uncle James would surely think… but no. If I ran away from here, he would have to keep Charlie unharmed until he knew what I meant to do. If he knew that I would not say a word, he would have no reason to harm Charlie.

She chewed anxiously at her bottom lip, trying to think about what to do.

Should I write him a note? I should fake my own death. Then he’d have no reason to hurt Charlie.

She thought about how she could do that. Perhaps leave a bloodstain behind in her room before running away.

“No. Without a body, the nuns would never believe it,” she said aloud to herself.

Sighing with despair, she finished off her stew and drank the goat’s milk.

Once she was full, and feeling a lot better, she reexamined her options and concluded that she had only one real choice.

She had to run away.