Chapter Ten
THE FIRST THING that Lucy saw when she opened her eyes was a lantern.
It was swinging back and forth in the most sickening rhythm and it kept pace with the pounding in her head and the heaving of her stomach.
She rolled over and was violently sick. Fortunately someone had had the intelligence to anticipate this, for there was a bowl beside her bed.
Lucy felt profoundly grateful and only a little less profoundly ill.
She lay back with a groan and closed her eyes and after a moment she felt the cool press of a cloth against the hot skin of her forehead.
She had absolutely no curiosity about where she was or what was happening to her.
Her entire consciousness was caught up in feeling so very ill.
She closed her eyes and let sleep take her.
The second time she awoke she felt different. The room had steadied. It no longer tipped and spun about her like a carousel. She opened her eyes and saw the same lantern on the wall above her head, scattering shadows across the room. There was nobody there and she felt a huge rush of relief.
She sat up and swung her legs over the side of the bed.
Immediately her head swam and she felt nauseated; touching the back of her head, she felt a lump almost the size of a small egg.
It was extremely painful. Her limbs ached too, protesting the bruises and bumps.
Simultaneously she realized that she was in her nightgown and that it was more than a little tattered and stained now.
Her feet were bare. Memory came rushing in.
She recalled the room at the castle and the clutch of fear she had felt on realizing there had been someone there in the dark.
She remembered the futility of her struggle against her kidnappers, the cruel blow to the head, then the endless darkness, sometimes rent with a brief flash of light that brought with it terror and sickness.
No one had molested her, though. She knew that at once and felt so relieved she almost cried.
Then she felt so angry she wanted to break something, wave upon wave of fury that beat at her and left her shaking.
She sat down on the edge of the bed until it had passed and her body calmed its shivering and she was able to think again.
She looked about her. The chamber was small with the one candle in a lantern on the wall showing battered wooden furniture, the bed she had been lying on, all tumbled sheets and sagging mattress, an old chest with a chipped china bowl on top and a matching ewer with faded roses painted on it.
She padded across the floor to it and tipped some water into the dish.
It was warm and smelled a little stale, but it was good enough to wash her face, washing away the cobwebs in her mind at the same time.
After that she crossed to the window and drew back the broken shutters.
There was twilight outside, the soft blue haze of a Scottish summer night that never turned completely dark.
She guessed it must be late, ten o’clock, eleven?
Yet that made no sense because the men who had taken her had come for her in the middle of the night.
A suspicion, a fear, tickled its way down her spine.
This could not be the same night.
She leaned out into the night. She could see the whitewashed walls of the inn glowing pale in the moonlight, a clear sky with pale stars and the inn sign swinging in a strong breeze.
The courtyard below was empty. Leaving the window, she tiptoed across to the door, wincing when the old bare boards creaked under her feet.
She did not want to alert anyone to the fact that she was awake.
She turned the knob. The door remained obstinately stuck.
She was not surprised, but her heart gave a giddy little swoop down to her toes.
She had been hoping it would be open, hoping she could run off in no more than her nightclothes to beg for help.
It was probably foolish to plunge from one danger into the next, but she was desperate.
She was not going to stay here at the mercy of whoever had taken her.
There was the rattle of a key in the lock, and Lucy shot back across the room just as the door opened and Robert Methven came in. She felt a clutch of shock so strong her knees gave way and she sat down abruptly on the edge of the bed.
“You’re awake,” Methven said. “How are you feeling?”
“You?” Lucy said. Disappointment slammed into her so sharp it stole her breath.
Robert Methven had kidnapped her.
Robert Methven had hit her over the head and carried her off.
She had refused his proposal of marriage; she had refused to be compromised by him, so he had taken what she had denied him. He had hurt her and frightened her and stolen her away.
It was the casual cruelty of that blow to the head that infuriated her the most.
“You!” she said again. Anger and disillusionment flooded her. Her rage flared. She flung herself at him, beating her fists against his chest.
“You abducted me! You low, scheming, underhand, conniving—” She drew a breath. The anger was in her blood and for a brief moment it felt glorious, wiping out the pain in her head and the ache in her heart that he was not the man she had thought him.
“Devious, sly, calculating—” She pummeled him again with her small fists.
“Clearly there are benefits to being a bluestocking,” Methven said. “You are not short of a descriptive word.” He caught her arms in a negligent grip and held her. His touch was gentle and that made her angrier still, that he could be so tender now when he had been so violent before.
“I thought better of you!” she finished bitterly.
“Thank you,” Methven said. “I am honored by your good opinion.”
Lucy fought a battle against a treacherous urge to cry.
It was the sickness and the blow to the head, she told herself.
It was not because she had been so disappointed in him.
He meant nothing to her. His betrayal meant nothing.
Inside her the fury still boiled, but she knew that physical violence was pointless against a man as strong as Methven.
She would need wit and guile to escape him—or a pistol if she could find one.
Her head ached suddenly with a vicious spike of pain and she swayed. Methven steadied her and suddenly she could not bear his gentleness. “Don’t touch me!” She wrenched herself from his grip. “You hit me—”
There was too much anguish in her tone. She could hear it. She did not want him to know she cared.
“You’re mistaken.” His voice was rough now. “I’d never hurt you.”
Their eyes met and Lucy’s heart felt as though it turned over in her chest. There was such a wealth of protective fury in his eyes.
She could feel it in every tense line of his body, wound tight.
Then he turned away. “It was your cousin Wilfred who had you kidnapped,” he said, over his shoulder. “He hired men to carry you off.”
He offered no proof, made no further attempt to persuade her he told the truth. It was as though in that moment when they eyes had met Lucy had known he did not lie.
“Wilfred?” she said. “Why would he do that?” She felt astounded.
It was true that Wilfred had paid her extravagant attention that night at Brodrie Castle, but he had scarcely been serious in his addresses to her.
Unless he truly was so deep in hock to the moneylenders and all the rumors that he needed to marry a fortune were true.
“I imagine he planned to force you to wed him,” Methven said. “Or possibly to prevent me from marrying you so that he could claim my lands. He knows I have to wed one of his kinswomen, and if he got wind that I had chosen you...” He let the sentence hang.
Lucy raised a hand to the bump on the back of her head. “They knocked me out,” she said.
“Aye.” That rough tone was back in his voice again. “That was why you were unconscious for so long.”
“I was sick.” Lucy was remembering the bowl and the cool press of the cloth against her forehead. Had it been Robert Methven who had sat with her while she was so ill? She looked at him, but his face was impassive.
“I’m sorry for that,” he said. “They were rough with you, but they said they had not hurt you. They had been well paid not to.”
“Oh.” The heat flamed into her face. She knew what he meant: the hurts she might have taken. “You...asked them?”
“At the point of my sword.” There was grim humor in his voice. “I’m glad it’s true. They would probably have sworn red was blue to escape me.”
Lucy could imagine, imagine his anger and the men’s fear. It made her shiver.
“What of Wilfred himself?” she asked. “Where is he now?” She felt cold that her cousin could treat her with such cruelty.
They had never cared much for each other, but this was outrageous, shameful.
She sat down on the bed again and drew the lumpy eiderdown around her, seeking comfort from its folds.
“I have no idea where he is,” Methven said.
He sounded indifferent, but Lucy caught the hot thread of anger buried deep beneath his words.
She was almost afraid for Wilfred now. “I caught up with them here,” he said.
“Cardross was taking you to his castle at Cairn Rock, along the coast. I sped him on his way there, on foot, naked, in the rain.” He shrugged.
“Lucky for him the rain has stopped now, though he may already have caught his death.”
Lucy’s gaze snapped up to his. “You took his clothes?”
“He was lucky I didn’t send him to the bottom of the loch,” Methven said. “If he had touched you I would have killed him.”
Lucy stared at him for a long time. “You mean that,” she said, frowning a little.