Chapter 32
It was late in the night when she realized they were no longer moving. She moved her arms and remembered that her wrists were bound tightly across her lap. A searing pain shot through her forearms and she lost consciousness. Her head collapsed against a metal surface with a thud.
The bang woke her up.
As she moved again, the burlap sack that covered her head caught on something and it held her head upright. Her hot breath came in quick puffs against the material, suffocating her in a disorienting panic.
She groaned.
Why couldn’t she keep her eyes open?
She brought her bound hands to her face. A thousand pins stabbed her numb arms. They felt like two lumps of steel and it took all her strength to keep them up. She grabbed onto the sack and pulled, but it would not budge.
With a muffled cry, she wiggled her bottom down and pulled the bag upwards at the same time. Hair ripped from the back of her head. She cried out. As soon as she slipped free, her head fell against the floor with a loud, hollow thud.
She panted and stared at the ceiling. The light of the moon played tricks on her mind, making her believe there were faces in the darkness. She blinked. She was still in the carriage. The men were not there. The back of her throat tasted bitter, like she had swallowed a whole bottle of herb-flavoured liquor.
Her eyes slipped shut once more as her body relaxed into a state of unconsciousness.
A flash of Henry’s face came.
His dark brows were pressed together, a thick vein protruded from his forehead and his voice came loud, like the boom of a fighter jet. “Get up!”
She jolted awake.
“You must run, now,” he whispered.
A flare of anger burst in her chest. How dare he interrupt her sleep.
“Go away,” she slurred and propped herself on her elbow. “I hate you—”
The carriage was empty.
Henry’s voice was a figment of her imagination. Her lips twitched at the irony of it all. What if he had been exactly that this whole time? As she wondered about the possibility, she observed her legs.
Her skirts were ruffled around her waist. Dark splotches of dried blood marked the inside of her thighs.
She swallowed back the rising nausea. Had they…? She could not bring herself to ask the question. If she had been violated that way, she couldn’t remember. In fact, she remembered hardly anything past the engagement announcement. Hot tears marked her eyes. You need to escape. Escape, yes. She had to ignore her injuries and quickly escape before her attackers returned.
She leant her hands on the bench and lifted herself from the floor. She sat and used the cool metal side of the carriage for support. After a few seconds of catching her breath, she carefully scanned the surroundings outside the window.
The carriage was parked by a roadside tavern tucked into a valley surrounded by hills. Thick plumes of smoke billowed from the stone chimney. The tavern’s windows glowed a pale orange. There were no signs of people outside. All was silent, except the faint sound of music from inside.
She tried the carriage door handle.
It was locked.
A dizzying sensation made her sit still for a moment. She blinked a few times. She felt drunk or … drugged. Dammit, they must have drugged her with something.
Take control of yourself.
She took a couple of breaths before standing. The urge to sit and sleep was too great. Think of what they did to you. Think of what he did to you.
The pain of betrayal spread out from her heart like wildfire. She used its momentum to fuel her strength and threw herself at the door’s large, rectangular window.
It did not shatter.
She steadied herself with a few more breaths before kicking it with her boot.
It broke with the third kick.
A wave of relief came. She worked quickly now. With her elbow, she cleared any jagged shards from the window frame, leaned over the edge of the frame and threw herself onto the grass.
As she slammed to the ground, her breath left her lungs in one swift blow. Tiny glass shards dug into the side of her face. She inhaled deeply. Upon exhaling, she grabbed hold of a bigger shard and began sawing at the rope around her wrist. Strand by strand, the rope gave way. As she continued to saw, she occasionally eyed the tavern’s front door. Every hair on her body stood on end at the thought that one of her attackers would come running out. She barely had the energy to fight, but at least her wrists would be free. Maybe then, she would stand a chance.
The rope snapped.
With a gasp of relief, she momentarily glanced at her aching hands. Deep-purple gashes marked her wrists. The bruising made them feel broken. With trembling fingers, she took hold of the glass shard and stood.
The night air on her skin was like being doused in cold water. It gave her the renewed energy to put one foot before the other. Armed and ready, she entered the field behind the inn. It led straight down a slope, into the hilly moorland.
There was a flash of black to her right.
Her head whipped around, and she spotted one of her attackers with a cigarette between his lips, taking a piss against the tavern. His black eyes fell directly on her.
She made a run for it.
Before she could even get halfway down the hill, he had a firm grasp on her arm. He spun her around. The force of it nearly knocked her down.
“You sneaky bitch,” he slurred. “I see the opium was not enough for you.”
Opium?
He chuckled. “Or maybe … maybe, you want round three.”
His hands dug into the soft underside of her arms and pulled her toward him. Horrified by his aggression, a raw primal fear shot through her nerves. She brought the glass shard to his neck and the shard slipped into his muscled flesh like a hot knife through butter.
He gasped.
Half of the shard stuck out below his left ear. The thin glass shone in the light of the moon, twinkling like another star in the night sky.
Oh God. Oh God.
Horrified, Eva stumbled back.
He reached for his neck, gurgling bubbled blood from his lips. Just as he fell to his knees, Eva spun around and sprinted as fast as her numb legs could take her into the darkness of the moorland.
***
When the opium wore off, the pain hit Eva like a brick wall. She stumbled across the moor, thick tears streaming down her face. Everything hurt, both physically and mentally. Her head spun. She could not think straight.
At a large, jagged stone, she momentarily halted to catch her breath. A twinge of pain lanced across her right palm and she examined it. It had been sliced open, probably from the glass shard she had used to defend herself. With trembling fingers, she tore at the hem of her skirt and wrapped the cloth around her palm.
An early-morning drizzle was falling. Fog had crept into the valley, blanketing the low-growing vegetation in a thin layer of haze.
Eva wandered through the scratchy bushes and stunted trees, feeling like her head was going to explode. Years ago, she had hiked through Northumberland with her dad. On that day, it had been bright and sunny. The terrain was beautiful, with its carpet of purple heather and yellow gorse. Now, all she saw was a never-ending wasteland of burnt brown.
A cool gust of wind swept through the valley.
She could faintly hear her dad’s voice.
“The moors contain peat bogs, known as ‘watery graves’,” he had said.
“Why graves? Did they bury people out here?” she had asked.
“No, my dear,” he had replied. “Unsuspecting travellers fell in them and died.”
“They fell in one of these tiny puddles?”
“They may be tiny, but they are deceptive. There’s more water than you think beneath the vegetation and sometimes, if one is unlucky, that vegetation can give way and the person will fall, drown, and eventually become mummified. Quite fascinating, actually.”
She had groaned. “Tell me again why we’re hiking across the moors?”
He had chuckled. “To feel history, Eva.”
She collapsed against a boulder.
Her heart ached up a storm. Exhaustion was also setting in, forcing her eyes shut. Just as she drifted off, the cry of a hunting bird squawked above. She jolted awake.
A reddish bird flew over. It was a red grouse, as Lottie had taught her.
Lottie…
Tears burned her eyes and she closed them shut again. Ignoring the ache between her legs, she held her arms tighter around her knees and silently fell asleep.
A delicate flutter touched her lips.
“Henry,” she whispered.
The fluttering stopped.
She opened her tired eyes and saw something orange move across her mouth.
Her breath hitched.
The tortoiseshell butterfly fluttered away.
Instinctively, she scratched the itch on her chin and grazed the deep split in her bottom lip with her thumb. It stung. A flash of getting backhanded by her kidnapper came to her mind. She shuddered. Carefully, her fingers touched the rest of her face and she discovered shards of glass protruding from her left cheekbone. She did not know if removing them would increase the risk of infection, so decided to leave them in and deal with them later. She dragged herself to her feet and continued walking.
As the hours passed, the landscape did not change. Depressing grey sky, maroon hills and shallow streams that occasionally crisscrossed the land.
Her shoes were soaked from walking through wet soil. Burrs caught at her skirts, occasionally pricking her skin. Her stomach twisted in pain from hunger. She remembered her dad describing the types of edible berries found among the brush. Blackberries, or brambles, as they called them in Britain, were common. But she couldn’t find them now. Was it even the season for them?
A strong wind picked up and the grey clouds turned darker.
Eva held herself and cried as the rain fell heavier. She had no jacket or shawl to keep herself warm. All she could do was stumble on through the woody stems of heather until she found help.
Eventually, a weathered stone hut came into view. Next to a stone fence built to keep animals in, the hut appeared an ancient relic. There was no door fixed to the gaping entrance; it had one window frame with broken glass and a crooked roof that leaned to the right. By the time she reached it, the rain had drenched her to the bone.
With the howling wind at her back, she stepped into the damp, cold space. Thick grey cobwebs draped across the corners of the ceiling. There was a broken chair in the far-left corner beneath the crumbling roof where the rain cascaded in.
With a sob, she huddled in a corner and rested her head against the cool stone wall. Her bones ached. She drew her legs in carefully. Somehow, she managed to push away thoughts of being wet, cold and hungry, and instead, she thought of home until sleep came. But not even her dreams were safe from the nightmares of her new reality.
She dreamed of a darkened room enveloped in fog. Canon in D played in the background, sounding as if it came from a distant tin can. As she struggled with her bindings, her attacker approached with a wicked grin. He smiled. A hundred sharpened teeth glinted in the faint spotlight above him.
He brought his mouth to hers. A forked tongue protruded from his lips and forced its way into her mouth.
With a muffled scream, she turned her face away.
His fingers clutched her jaw. He jerked her head to face him. Just as she made to scream, he silenced her with another kiss. His snake-like tongue wiggled further down her throat, choking the breath from her lungs. Distracted by the sensation, she did not realize that he was hiking up her skirts and positioning his thighs between her.
An overwhelming pain entered her with brutal force.
She jolted against the wall as if shocked by electricity. Held still by the torment, she could only watch as his eyes changed from black to blue – her favourite sea-blue colour.