Chapter Ten
Marianne woke to darkness, stiff limbs, and an aching back. Her body was twisted and she couldn’t understand why. Until, that is, she tried to move, then she quickly learned that her hands were bound behind her back.
And the hard mattress she was laying on was, in fact, a wooden floor.
Marianne’s head felt as if it was filled with cotton wool. How did she get here? A spiky ball of panic took root in her chest, but she forced herself to breathe slowly and think.
Think.
What was the last thing she remembered?
She squeezed her eyes shut and ignored the throbbing at her temples. She remembered kissing Toby goodnight.
A wave of sorrow overcame her, filling her aching eyes with salty tears, but she blinked them away and struggled into a sitting position. Her silken dress snagged on a splinter, and she heard a ripping sound as she straightened her legs. In the dim light she saw a flash of emerald green.
Why was she wearing such a beautiful gown?
It all came back in a rush. She had attended the masquerade ball. With Benedict.
They had kissed.
She had met his sisters.
A warm glow of comfort spread through her at the memory of Benedict, his strong embrace and his sister’s welcoming smile. But how had she ended up here?
Where even am I?
Marianne rested her back against a hard wall and attempted to take stock of her surroundings.
A thin sliver of moonlight shone through a shuttered window above her head.
The room was four-square and sparsely furnished.
She was sitting on bare wooden floorboards beside a large sofa draped in a dust sheet.
The room smelled of lavender and something about it was familiar, even in the darkness.
She squinted, trying to discern some detail that might help her make sense of the situation, but her head was too fuzzy for such complicated thoughts. She recalled a sharp, acrid smell and her stomach rolled.
Yes, that was it, a foul-smelling cloth had been pressed against her face.
Marianne once again breathed through the panic that was rising within her.
She had been kidnapped. Now she was bound in a darkened room, waiting for her captors to return.
A wave of terror paralyzed her, but then she woke up as if coming out of a dream.
She had to get out of there, for Toby’s sake.
The memory of his cherubic face gave her the strength to wriggle her wrists until the rope binding them began to slacken.
Even as the rope cut into her tender flesh and the pain surged through her arms, Marianne continued.
She ground her teeth and pulled with all her might until finally, her right hand slipped free.
Free.
For a moment she brought her wrists before her face and winced at the sores.
Blood was running down her arms and dropping onto the floor near her skirts, but there was no time to fret over it.
She pushed herself to her feet, leaned against the wall until her trembling legs agreed to hold her, and staggered toward the door.
It was locked.
Disappointed but not surprised, she wrestled with the handle, twisting it this way and that. But the door was solid and the lock would not yield.
Defeated, she staggered backwards until her calves met the covered sofa and she sank down onto it.
What now?
Her desperate gaze alighted on the window and she rushed over, wrenching open the shutters and peering out hopefully. It took a while for her eyes to adjust to the darkness beyond, but Marianne soon discerned that she was high above the ground.
She could not escape through the window unless she wanted a broken leg, or worse.
She returned to the sofa, shivering a little in her silken gown and muttering that she would not allow herself to be a victim. Not again. She folded her arms across her chest, trying to stop herself from shivering.
No, this could not be the end. She owed it to Toby to find a way out, because she was his mother and she would fight for him until her last breath.
And she owed it to Benedict, because he had believed in her.
She allowed herself a small smile at that.
But most of all, she owed it to herself, because just hours earlier she had glimpsed the very real prospect of love and happiness in her future, and she was simply not prepared to give up on that.
Marianne stared at the locked door as if sheer force of will might yield her a result.
She had done the same thing before Toby was born, when Victor locked her in their bedroom and told her it was for her own good. Apparently, Victor’s mother had been rather fond of locking her young boys in an oversized closet when they misbehaved, and this was a line she often used.
In her more flippant moments, Marianne thought her one-time mother-in-law might have done better to throw away the key.
She froze on the sheeted sofa, nails digging into her palms, as a memory floated just out of reach. What was it? Something about a key?
She relaxed as the memory came into focus.
Victor had once laughingly told her that their mother’s punishments were not nearly as harsh as she envisaged, because twelve-year-old Edgar had the foresight to sneak one of her hairpins into the closet.
Thereafter, whenever one of the Chawton brothers was incarcerated by an infuriated mamma, he could simply use the hairpin to slip the lock as soon as the coast was clear.
Marianne reached up to her hair, still pinned for the masquerade ball, but looking, she imagined, rather disheveled now. It took less than a minute for her to work a pin free, and scarcely longer for her to straighten it out.
What to do next seemed hazy indeed, but she crossed to the door and knelt in front of it, wielding the crooked hairpin as if it was a sword. At first, she tried to insert it into the lock, like a key, but no matter how she twisted and wiggled, nothing seemed to happen.
Marianne was warm with exertion, her hands slightly sticky with blood from her wrists. She gritted her teeth and tried again, wanting to curse but not daring to utter a sound.
It wasn’t working.
She sat back on her heels, shaking her head.
Think.
She looked at the hairpin and looked at the door. There was a gap between the lock and the door frame, not wide enough for a pencil but certainly wide enough for a pin.
Holding her breath, she slid the pin into the gap and brought it downwards, feeling a surge of excitement when she felt the barrier of the bolt. She frowned in concentration as she maneuvered the pin to the side of the bolt, newly conscious of the flimsiness of her chosen tool.
It was flimsy, but luck was on her side and on her second attempt, the bolt obligingly slid back into the door. Marianne turned the handle and the door opened. It all happened so quickly that she gasped in surprise before remembering her circumstances and clamping a hand over her mouth.
She must not make a sound.
The door had opened onto a wide landing, lit only by moonlight shining through a bare window. She looked right and left, making out a row of closed wooden doors.
Was there a kidnapped lady behind each one?
She took a hesitant step out onto the bare floorboards, moving slowly in case the wood should creak. The house was large, with molded ceilings and striped silk wallpaper that hinted at a former grandeur.
Marianne made a strangled noise, thinking she might be sick. She recognized this striped wallpaper, and she knew the lines of the curved banister before her. There was no wonder the room she had been in seemed familiar, for this was Medstead Hall.
Her former marital home.
She stayed still as a statue until her breathing slowed.
Now that she had worked out where she was, her situation seemed slightly less dire.
She knew all the rooms of this house, including which ones had interconnecting doors or closets large enough to hide her.
Whoever had brought her here was a fool to think she would not outwit them.
She all but laughed out loud at her own musings. There was no question over who had brought her here. Who else could it be but Edgar Chawton?
Her secret fears had materialized. But in doing so, those same fears had lost some of their power.
It was almost a relief to realize that she had not imagined the black-eyed man in the park.
The worst had happened, and consequently she had nothing left to fear.
Marianne was half tempted to call Edgar’s name and see how long it would take him to emerge.
But no, that would be foolish indeed. She had some advantage now, being free when he (or they?) thought her bound and imprisoned. She must escape the house and get word back to London, to Aunt Clementine.
And to Benedict.
They must ensure Toby was safe.
A lump rose in her throat at the thought of her boy, but Marianne pushed through the wave of sorrow and walked silently down the wide staircase.
When Victor first brought her here, she had imagined herself descending these stairs to greet guests that stood waiting for her in the marbled entrance hall.
She’d pictured parties and gaiety, but none of that had materialized.
Instead, the years she’d spent between these walls had been unrelentingly gray and lonely.
Even the young vicar and his pink-cheeked wife had stopped calling upon her in the end.
And who could blame them?
It would be different, she thought, when she lived at The Towers with Benedict. They may not throw lavish parties, for Benedict’s disdain for Society was very clear. But there would be laughter and hope and plans for the future.
She paused at the bottom of the stairs, shivering in a sudden draft. The door to the root cellar must have been left open. Whenever that happened, the chill pervaded through the whole of the downstairs. Marianne had often thought that Victor had much in common with the root cellar.
This gave her an idea. She could slip through the backdoor and into the kitchen garden, which would be more discreet than wrestling with the big front door which was inclined to shut with a resounding thud.
Holding her head high, like the mistress of the house should, Marianne walked boldly into the servants’ passage, finding her way by memory and the musty scent of dried herbs long since turned to dust. With the moon shining upon the front of the house, there was little light to guide her, even though the windows at the back were not shuttered.
She stumbled down the step into the kitchen and leaned upon the big oak table to gather her composure.
Footsteps sounded behind her and instantly alert, Marianne swung around to face her attacker. But there was no time to do more than say his name before the heavy weight made contact with her head and she knew no more.