My Favorite Marquess. Alexandra BassettЧитать онлайн книгу.
difficult. Pulling her by her elbow, the Brute steered her to a boulder.
“If you care a farthing for your life, you’ll stay quiet,” he warned, pushing her down to a seated position.
“What are we doing here?” she asked.
His lips turned up in a sneer. “Don’t follow directions very well, do you?”
“I only wanted to know.”
“We’re waiting on…friends. And they aren’t such gentle folk as I, Highness, so you’d best do as I say and keep your pretty lips buttoned.”
As she placed her tied hands to her right side in order to steady herself, she noticed that the rock she perched on was covered in some sort of slime. So much for this, her favorite carriage dress. Though maybe it was just as well, since the matching shoes were undoubtedly ruined as well.
“Perhaps it would be best if you let me go now,” she suggested after a moment. “After all, I’m only apt to get in your way.”
“Not a chance,” he sneered.
“But—”
He swooped down till he was inches from her. “I said quiet!”
The ferocity of his hot breath on her face shut her up.
As the minutes dragged by with the smuggler staring distractedly out to the sea and not speaking, Violet began to grow yet more anxious. What, and who, were they waiting for? Was there a more sinister reason why he hadn’t let her go before now?
As she scanned the beach around her, it occurred to her how alone they were. He could do anything to her, and who was to intervene on her behalf? Of course, she’d known this as they had trudged along, had in fact spent the first minutes in blind terror, but somehow when they were moving she had been focused on her discomfort and was able to not think about what might lie at the end of this trek.
The smuggler took a few steps toward the shoreline, and Violet glimpsed a light being flashed—like some sort of signal. There was a boat out there.
She began trying to piece the situation together and was dismayed by the picture she came up with. Robert the Brute must be meeting up with the rest of his gang of smugglers—his friends, as he had called them. The ones that weren’t as nice as he was.
She shuddered. Why didn’t the Brute want to be rid of her already? It would take her a long time to find her way to Trembledown. He and his smuggler friends would be miles from here by the time she could locate a constable.
Then a terrible, startling thought occurred to her—what if the Brute had no intention of letting her go? What if he was planning on taking her along to meet up with his merry band?
“I am always on the lookout for a sassy wench with pretty ankles,” he had said.
She shivered as she remembered his hand on her leg—she thought he had been joking about not wanting to let her go, but what if he wasn’t? What if he was some sort of flesh peddler? She had read accounts of women being abducted and taken to far-flung reaches of the earth, never to be heard from again!
Or perhaps—a thought that turned her blood cold—he would just allow his band of outlaws to use her for their own pleasure!
Good Lord, she grumbled to herself, I’m beginning to have thoughts as lurid and melodramatic as Hennie’s.
It was past time that she took control of this situation. She had no intention of going quietly to a fate commonly referred to as worse than death at the hands of a bunch of criminals. She scanned the area desperately. The hills they had just stumbled down would take her forever to climb back up. Catching her would be as easy as chasing a lame sheep. The sea, of course, would be certain death, since she could not swim well at all. The cliffs farther along the shoreline looked impossible to scale.
Then, lo and behold, she spotted a dark opening in the rocks…a cave!
And so near! It was not more than ten yards away and looked to have a wide entrance. Perhaps it was deep enough that she could hide herself until Robert the Brute sailed away with his cohorts.
Violet was careful to make as little noise as possible, though with the sounds from the ocean, she doubted that the Brute would hear her—if he would only keep his back turned for five minutes! The cave had seemed close, a mere dash, but her feet sank into the sand, making for slower going than she anticipated. And yet she made it—and her captor was so involved in the message blinking from out at sea that she managed to elude him.
Once she stepped foot inside the mouth of the cave, a rank odor stopped her cold. If she had thought the rock she was sitting on had been slimy, this place was positively grotesque with ooze! Still, it was either the cave…or the Brute. Violet willed herself to not think about bats, spiders, or whatever else might be lurking and slipped farther inside.
The darkness was complete. She literally couldn’t see her hands in front of her face—and she was wearing what had once been white gloves! She picked her way inside gingerly, her bound arms probing ahead of her in the blackness. As the floor seemed relatively level, she began to move more quickly. After about ten feet, the chamber broke off into two directions. Violet veered right and promptly hit a wall. She retraced her steps and went the other way until she made it back to the fork.
It seemed to her that the cave’s pathway was leading her up, as if it might eventually stop toward the top of the hill. She had read that some of the caves in Cornwall were intricate—had been made so by years of smugglers. As she came to another fork, she thought she might have stumbled upon such a one. With any luck, Robert the Brute would never find her in here…even if he did notice that she was no longer sitting obediently on his slimy rock.
She huddled in the darkness, working at the bonds that tied her hands. Who would have guessed tulle could be so strong! Finally, she edged toward the wall, which she had been trying to avoid, since it was the walls that no doubt housed spiders and other undesirable creatures. She felt along it for a moment, and when she hit a sharp rock jutting out, she began to work the knot Peabody had tied against it. Lord, he had done an expert job. If she ever saw Peabody again…
If. A heavy lump formed in her throat. She couldn’t let herself think that way. She would see him again. Soon. And when she did, she would be kind and understanding and listen uncomplainingly to his worries about soup tureens…
After she gave him a piece of her mind for tying this infernal knot so tightly!
It took her some time, but finally the material was rent and her hands were free. Free! She would never take the use of her arms for granted again. Indeed, she swore to herself that if she ever got away from Robert the Brute, she would dedicate herself to making the most of each precious moment of freedom.
She heard something behind her and tensed. The noise wasn’t footsteps, exactly, so much as the sound of someone splashing toward her. She took a step herself and suddenly realized that water had seeped into the cave and now covered the floor. The bottom of her skirt was soaked. She had been so preoccupied with freeing her hands…
Just then, she hit another wall. Blast! She would have to backtrack again.
But what if she backtracked right into her pursuer? It was so dark, she would not know if he was inches from her.
She thought she had carefully noted each turn she had taken on the way in, but now the cave began to seem like a hopeless maze. Her head felt muddled, and the rising tide, presently hitting her at midcalf, made movement all the more difficult. There was no way to get her bearings, and she worried that going back the way she had come would simply lead her back to Robert the Brute.
And she was right.
“Stop at once!” His voice echoed through the darkness at her. “We’ve got to get out of this cave before the tide comes all the way in!”
Ha! Like she was such a fool as to believe him. Although the water was getting higher, she noticed. But the cave was also leading to higher ground, so hopefully she would make it to a chamber that