Chapter 16
“Are you at all interested in luncheon, my lady?”
Nora shook her head, squinting in the sunshine as it poured into the gardens. “No, I thank you.” She hesitated. “Have there been any letters this morning?”
The maid shook her head, a flickering smile at the corner of her mouth. “No, my lady. I will bring you anything that arrives just as soon as I can.”
Knowing that the smile came from the fact that Nora had asked that very same question a little less than an hour ago, Nora looked down at her hands and let her cheeks warm with embarrassment.
The maid, no doubt, would think that she was hoping for a letter from a gentleman or from a suitor – and whilst that was true, it was not the sweet whispers written in the letter that she was thinking of.
All she wanted to know was that Frederica had been found and Lord Hampshire was safe.
“I thank you.” She waved a hand to dismiss the maid and then picked up her book again, doing her best to read the next few lines but struggling to put her concentration on them.
In truth, her mind was fixed upon Lord Hampshire, worrying about what he was doing and whether he would have any success.
He had written to her the previous evening, telling her that he had gone to the solicitors but that it had been closed, fully shut up by the time he had arrived.
He intended to return that morning and, thereafter, to use any information he could garner from the solicitors to go in search of Frederica.
Nora had heard nothing since then, and it was making her anxiety rise with such strength that she felt as if she could not grasp it to get it under control. Setting the book down, she threw her head back and breathed deeply, heedless of the warm sunshine on her face.
Please, let Hampshire find her in time, she prayed, her eyes closing. Keep her safe until then.
“My lady?”
“Oh, Nora, thank goodness you are home!”
The cottage was three rooms and a silence that pressed against the walls like something alive.
Frederica sat on the narrow bed in the smallest room and listened.
Beyond the locked door, the floorboards creaked at irregular intervals — Rathbone pacing, or settling into the chair he had dragged from the main room, or simply shifting his weight in the dark.
He had told her he would stay awake. He had told her there was no purpose in trying to run.
He had told her this with the easy confidence of a man who had spent a lifetime cornering people who had nowhere to go.
She believed him about the door. She did not believe him about everything else.
The window was small — barely two feet wide and set high in the wall, its latch rusted but not locked.
She had noticed it when he first brought her here, cataloguing it the way a drowning person catalogues the distances to every edge of the pool.
It was too small for a man of Rathbone’s build. It was not too small for her.
She waited.
The clock in the main room — a cheap thing with a tinny voice — struck midnight.
The pacing beyond her door had ceased. In its place came a sound that made her press her hand over her mouth to stifle the sob of relief that threatened to escape: a slow, thick breathing, the breathing of a man who has succumbed to the exhaustion he swore he would resist.
She rose from the bed. The mattress creaked, and she froze, one foot on the floor, one still on the bed, her pulse hammering so hard she could feel it in her teeth. The breathing beyond the door continued, undisturbed.
She moved in her stockinged feet, shoes clutched under her arm.
The floorboards were old, and she had spent the afternoon mapping them — this one groaned, that one was solid, the one near the washstand tilted.
She placed each foot with the precision of a woman walking a knife’s edge, her teeth clenched, her breath held in a careful, metered rhythm: inhale through the nose, four counts; exhale through the mouth, four counts.
The window latch resisted. She wrapped both hands around it and pulled, her arms straining, feeling the rust give way in small, grudging increments until the catch released with a sound that was barely a click but felt to her like a gunshot in the silence.
She froze again. Listened. The breathing continued.
The window swung inward on hinges that squealed, and she winced, ducking her head as if the sound were a physical blow.
She waited — three breaths, four — and then pulled herself up onto the sill, her muscles burning with the effort, the rough stone scraping against her palms. Her dress caught on the latch and she heard the fabric tear — a long, ripping sound that seemed impossibly loud — and for one terrible second she was stuck, half in and half out, her stockinged feet dangling above the ground outside while the torn fabric held her to the window like a leash.
She pulled. The fabric gave way and she fell.
The ground was softer than she expected — damp earth, not stone — and the impact drove the air from her lungs in a gasp. She lay there, winded, staring up at the dark sky through the branches of the trees overhead. Stars pulsed between the leaves, indifferent and cold.
Get up.
The voice in her head was not her father’s.
It was not Hampshire’s. It was her own — a voice she did not recognise, lower and harder than the one she used in drawing rooms, a voice that had been forged in the dark of this cottage over the past hours, beaten into shape by fear and fury and the fierce, unyielding refusal to be mastered.
She got up.
She pulled on her shoes with hands that would not hold steady.
Her dress was torn from hem to hip on the left side, and the cold air bit at her skin through the gap.
She did not care. She wrapped her arms around herself and looked at the cottage — at the small window she had come through, at the dark bulk of the building against the darker sky — and then she turned her back on it and walked into the trees.
She walked first. Then, when the trees thinned and the road appeared — a pale ribbon in the moonlight — she ran.
She ran without knowing where she was going, only away.
The road was uneven, and her shoes were not made for running.
Twice, she stumbled, catching herself on her hands, the gravel biting into her palms. She did not stop.
Every sound behind her was Rathbone — every crack of a branch, every rustle of wind in the hedgerow — and she ran from each one with a fierceness that burned in her lungs and drove her forward.
The farmhouse appeared after what might have been twenty minutes or an hour — she had no sense of time, only of distance.
A light burned in the window. She slowed to a walk, then stopped, pressing her hand against a fence post to steady herself.
Her breath came in harsh, tearing gasps, and her stockings were soaked through with dew.
You are out. You are free.
She looked down at her hands. They were scraped and dirty, the fine kidskin of her gloves shredded. Around her neck, her mother’s pendant hung against her collarbone — the only thing of value she carried.
She touched it once, her fingers cold against the metal, and then walked toward the light.
Nora’s eyes flew open, astonishment tangling her words and tying them in her throat as the maid stood to one side, allowing Frederica to stumble forward. Nora rose, catching the young lady in her arms and holding her tightly as she began to sob, her chest heaving.
“F – Frederica?” Nora whispered, scarcely daring to believe that the trembling figure was the lady herself and not some strange vision borne from her troubling thoughts and overwhelming fear.
“Are you – are you well?”
“Yes,” Frederica choked out, her words caught with sobs. “I was so very, very afraid, Nora. I went first to Hampshire, but he is not at home, and then – ”
“Sit, please.” Nora snapped her fingers, catching the maid’s attention. “Bring me refreshments at once. Oh, and a small measure of brandy.” Returning her attention to Frederica, she took in the lady’s pale face, the dark shadows under her eyes.
“You should rest, Frederica. I think – ”
Frederica clung to Nora’s hand, her fingers tight despite the white in her face. “I must tell you all. I am afraid for Hampshire, I know he would have gone in search of Rathbone and me… ” Her eyes closed, and she shuddered. “Rathbone is cruelty itself.”
“If you have the strength, might you tell me what happened?” Nora asked, ignoring the scream in her heart to know everything all at once.
She had to make sure that Frederica was well enough to speak, despite her own fervent desire to hear all that had taken place.
“I saw Rathbone climbing up into the carriage with you, after Lord Dumfries took his leave.”
Tears spilled down Frederica’s cheeks. “Rathbone has had enough of my refusal. I was not about to give him what he wanted, and thus, he forced my hand.” A shuddering breath escaped her.
“It was my own fault. I should not have quit the house, I should not have gone in amongst society, but I could not bear to be alone in the townhouse for yet another day. Mourning is painful in itself, but it is all the more so when one does it alone.”
“This is not your fault, not in any way,” Nora reassured her, as fervently as she could. “You have done nothing wrong, Frederica. Tell me, however, where did Rathbone take you?”