Chapter 19
The fire, which had been lit, did nothing to warm Christina as she eyed Lord Pennington, dread curling in her stomach.
He stood by the door, watching her with cold, calculating eyes that ran fear right through her veins.
Fear was what had kept her awake as the carriage journey had continued; fear had sent her thoughts racing as she had battled to find a way to escape him.
It had been to no avail.
Lord Pennington's knife had already been used against her once.
When she had refused to step out of the carriage and to make her way into the inn as he had directed, he had not hesitated.
The cut to her upper arm had not been deep, but had shown her clearly that his threats were to be taken with great seriousness.
She believed now that he would do whatever he had to in order to make her his wife.
"Now that we both have eaten, we can talk of other matters." His eyes darted to a bowl of water that sat on the small table by the fire. "This water is to clean your arm."
Christina's pulse quickened as he stepped closer, his gaze lingering on her arm where he had set the knife.
"You have no clean things, I know, but that will all be arranged once we are in Scotland."
Saying nothing, Christina lowered her head, her hands clasped tightly in her lap, her knuckles white. With every step he took, the room seemed to constrict around her, confining her like the walls of a prison.
"Do you truly believe that your silence and stubbornness will do you any good?" He chuckled mockingly, making her face flame with heat. "My intentions will not change, Christina. I will have you as my wife no matter your own thoughts and preferences."
There was nothing for her to say, not now.
All of her begging and pleading had led to naught, and she was not about to waste her time nor her words upon him.
It was futile to try to convince him to do as she wanted.
Her only hope lay in the fact that he had not noticed Sarah's disappearance.
With all that had occurred, he had seemed to forget that the maid had, at one time, been present but now was gone from their company.
"I will not marry you." Her voice was quiet but steady — the refusal of a woman who had run out of arguments but not resolve.
Lord Pennington snorted, shaking his head and then stepping back from her.
"So you keep saying, Christina. But recall," he continued, reaching for the door handle, "whilst I may have some patience and indeed, some tolerance for your attempts to stand against me, I am not above using more persuasive methods, if required. "
Despite her intention to show no weakness, Christina flinched, his words a cold, sharp reminder of the knife that had already struck out at her.
"I see my meaning is clear," he murmured. "I think I shall leave you to your thoughts for the night."
The door closed. The click of the lock rang through the room like a death knell.
"No!"
Her fingers scrabbled at the door handle, trying to force it open by the sheer strength of her will.
She bent down, peering through the keyhole — blocked by the key itself.
Closing her eyes, she set one hand against her forehead and forced long, slow breaths as she staved off the panic that threatened to consume her.
Setting her head against the wood, Christina finally let herself cry, tears pouring from her eyes as sobs racked her frame. She wrapped both arms around herself and rocked gently back and forth, her cheeks damp and heart broken.
I am trapped.
The quiet of the room swallowed her sobs one by one.
Wiping at her eyes, Christina lifted her head and looked about the room, cataloguing everything.
Two lit candles. One small window — too small to fit through, even if she tried.
The dying fire in the hearth. The locked door with the key on the wrong side.
Am I to give up all hope?
The thought whispered in her old voice — the guarded, frightened woman who performed composure because the alternative was devastation. For a moment, she let it speak. She sank onto the bed and watched the fire dim to embers, the long shadows crawling across the walls.
"Coventry."
Speaking his name into the darkness brought a faint sliver of light. She dragged in air, closed her eyes, and said it again. Not as a prayer this time but as a fact — a point of orientation, the way a sailor fixes on a star.
"He must be looking for me. Sarah will have told the household, and Sophie will have told Coventry." Her voice steadied as she spoke, each word a rung on a ladder she was climbing out of despair. "He will not abandon me."
She opened her eyes.
But I cannot wait for him to come. I must try.
Christina stood. The weakness in her legs resisted, but she planted her feet and forced herself upright, pressing her palms flat against her thighs until the trembling eased.
She crossed to the window and stood on tiptoe, peering through the grime at the moon riding high and bright above the trees.
It showed her the road, the path from the inn's front door, and the dark line of woods to the right.
Her eyes closed. Escaping the inn was one thing. What would she do thereafter? She had no money, no coat, no knowledge of where she was beyond somewhere on the Great North Road.
That does not matter. All I must do first is run from him.
She paced the room, her mind working as her feet measured the distance from wall to wall. The door was locked from the outside. The key was in the lock. The window was impossible. She had no tools, no weapon, nothing but—
She stopped. Bent down. Her breath caught as her fingers closed around the slim metal shape that lay on the floorboards near the edge of the bed.
A hairpin. It must have fallen from her hair.
Christina turned it over in her fingers, her mind already racing. She straightened it, tested the tip against her thumbnail, then knelt before the door and inserted it into the keyhole.
Nothing happened. The hairpin slid and caught, but could not find the mechanism. Her hands were shaking too much. She pressed her forehead against the door — the wood was cold and rough beneath her skin — and forced three slow breaths until her fingers steadied.
She tried again. The pin bent. The tip buckled against something inside the lock, and the whole thing twisted uselessly in her grip.
"No." She clenched her teeth and pulled the ruined pin free, staring at it in the candlelight. Useless.
But there were more. Three pins still held what remained of her hairstyle in place.
She pulled a second one free, straightened it with more care this time, and studied the lock.
It was a simple mechanism — a single-lever affair, the kind found in any roadside inn.
The key was sitting in the lock on the other side.
If she could push the key out and onto something beneath the door, she could slide it through.
Christina tore a strip of fabric from the hem of her dress — the muslin came away with a quiet rip — and slid it carefully beneath the gap at the bottom of the door. Then she inserted the hairpin into the keyhole, probing gently until she felt the resistance of the key's end.
She pushed.
The key shifted. She pushed again, angling the pin upward, and heard a soft, dull thud as the key fell onto the fabric on the other side of the door.
Christina's heart was in her throat. She gripped the edge of the torn strip and pulled, slowly, steadily, her hands shaking so badly the fabric jumped in her fingers. An inch. Two inches. The key scraped against the floorboards beyond the door. Another inch.
The key appeared beneath the door, resting on its strip of muslin like a gift.
Christina snatched it up, pressed it to her chest, and threw her head back with her eyes squeezed shut. A sob of relief tried to escape, and she trapped it behind her teeth, pressing both hands over her mouth until it passed. She could not afford a sound. Not now.
She crouched at the door and listened. Silence. Not even a murmur from below, no creak of floorboards, no sound of Pennington's boots. The candle on the table guttered in some invisible draft, casting her shadow long and unsteady against the wall.
Christina set the key to the lock. Turned it with exquisite care, feeling the mechanism yield with a soft click that seemed to echo through the room like a gunshot. She waited, breath held, for five long seconds.
Nothing.
The door swung open beneath her fingers.
The corridor was dark and empty, lit only by a single guttering candle at the far end near a narrow staircase.
Christina slipped through and pulled the door closed behind her, leaving it unlocked — if Pennington checked, a closed door would buy her more time than an open one.
She moved quickly, her soft shoes silent on the worn wooden floors. No servants lingered in the shadows. No sounds of laughter or conversation rose from below — the inn seemed to have settled into the deep quiet of a house abandoned for the night.
The chilled evening air hit her cheeks the moment she stepped outside, but Christina barely noticed, the sense of freedom pushing her forward.
She hurried along the path away from the inn, the moonlight turning the road to a pale ribbon ahead of her.
Her breathing grew ragged. Every sound made her jump — a branch cracking, the distant cry of a fox — and she threw glances over her shoulder as if she expected Pennington to appear behind her at any moment.
She paused at the edge of the woods. The darkness beneath the trees was absolute, a wall of black that offered concealment but also the certainty of becoming hopelessly lost. If she stayed on the road, Pennington would find her there the moment he discovered her absence.
If she entered the woods, she might never find her way out.