Wherefore Art Thou. Read online

  It might have been his friend’s child, but the facts were the facts. She was unmarried and would remain unmarried, separated by eternity from marrying the father who begot the child she carried. If there was a duel that could raise men from the grave and force them into marriage with the ladies they had ruined, her brother would no doubt be the first one in line. However, there was not. And there was no telling Charles’ level of disappointment or disgust.

  She couldn’t turn to him.

  She was on her own, and would be for some time. She would have to figure out what to do eventually and there was no time like the present.

  She would have to figure it out as she went.

  They had homes for girls like her, right? She had read that in one of the many books in the Abbey’s expansive library. There were houses scattered about the country, taking in the otherwise unwanted strays. The issue was only finding where these homes were located and figuring out how to get there.

  She had, after all, in her haste to escape the barn, and the woman whose life’s work revolved around freeing women of the situation Isabelle now found herself in, given away her entire purse of coin. She still had the small satchel she had brought along with her—containing a spare dress and a bit of bread—but it was not enough to get her far. She would need the bread for nourishment and, if she was truly going to make it on her own, she would need a spare change of clothes as well, so it wasn’t as though she could trade her limited belongings for money.

  Her gloves. She supposed she could sell her gloves. And her bonnet. But even those wouldn’t fetch her much.

  But she couldn’t dwell on that, couldn’t worry about where she would be tomorrow or where she would rest her head tonight. Because if she dwelt upon any of it, her thoughts would spin out of control. Selling her dress would lead to considering why she needed to sell it, which would invariably turn her thoughts to Andrew and the fact that he was dead. Or her mind would settle upon the fact that his unborn child grew inside her still. And then she wouldn’t be able to think at all, she would be in too much pain.

  All she could do was run.

  She was terrified. Terrified of what was behind her, what was in front of her, what was to come, what had already come to pass.

  Too much was changing too quickly. She could no longer make heads or tails of her life.

  So, she ran.

  She couldn’t kill the last remaining piece of her love remaining here on earth. So, maybe—just maybe—she thought for a fraction of a second, nature would make the decision for her. Do what she couldn’t. The thought had no sooner formed than a root appeared as though it had been summoned by her terrible thoughts, jutting out of the ground. Her foot caught beneath it and her head whiplashed back as she flew forward. A lump rose up her throat and vomited out of her mouth.

  Isabelle landed face-down on the packed dirt floor of the forest, her face covered with the breakfast she hadn’t eaten. She laid there in stunned paralysis for a moment, before sitting up and touching a tentative hand to her bruised nose, wiping her face with her sleeve.

  She felt the pressure tickling its way up the back of her throat, the tears welling up in her eyes. Ignoring the dizzying sensation of nausea, she jumped to her feet. And as she ran, she cried, all her emotions spilling down her cheeks as she bolted blindly through the unfamiliar wood.

  She ran past the point of exhaustion, panting from the exertion.

  She ran until the biting branches of the trees and the silky whipping of the leaves broke away and she left the forest behind her.

  She ran until she ran right into a road.

  And then she froze, her jaw hanging slack as she watched a carriage barrel towards her.

  Perhaps there would have been enough time to leap out of the way if all of her wits had been about her. But she simply hadn’t the mind left.

  All at once, as the horses bore down on her, her emotions evaporated and there was a moment of utter clarity. For one moment, all the pain and darkness in the world was washed away.

  And then, everything turned black.

  Chapter 5

  Desmond Daniels, the Earl of Thornton, was enjoying a rather relaxing—albeit, a bit bumpy—nap. It was a privilege he did not regularly indulge in, but he needed the rest today; the demons of sleep be damned. It had been a long journey back to his homeland, one that seemed endless and needlessly cruel. He needed to not think for a while, not worry about the future and what it bode, or of the horrors of the past he had, for the past six years, been running from.

  While the exertion of riding the distance on horseback would have been faster and more numbing to his restless soul, he had found himself settling in to his carriage for the long trip from London to Cumbria, the ruts and rivets in the country roads becoming almost melodically soothing once he’d acclimated to the constant jostling of the carriage.

  It could be said that he was at peace. Or as close as he could imagine.

  Or, it should be said that, he had been enjoying a relaxing mid-day nap in the dark inner sanctum of his unusually large carriage. Until he was awoken. Abruptly.

  Desmond knew something was amiss from the very moment he plowed into awareness. It was not merely that he’d been deposited—tossed, really—onto the seat opposite, or that his head had met with the wall of the carriage, that resounded the alarm. It was the why this chain of events had occurred.

  In that moment, when his eyes had startled open, in that split-second before his body was in mid-air, he felt the blow the carriage sustained. It was unmistakable.

  For a moment, he didn’t think. He couldn’t think. His blood was sprinting through his veins like in a race, but with no end, going around in circles, making his heart pump faster and faster until his hands were shaking and his nerves were right alongside them.

  He took a breath, deep through clenched teeth. He knew he should take a moment, breathe through his nose and count as he had become accustomed to doing. But he was not a patient man and there was no time to pause. Not now.

  There were two logical possibilities Desmond considered as the air shuddered into his lungs, restoring his intellectual prowess. One was that they had broken a wheel. The second, that they had hit something—something more substantial than merely a rut in the road. And while he may have been awkwardly seated on the opposite bench of where he was originally, the carriage itself remained upright, so it was only reasonable to assume they hadn’t lost a wheel.

  He felt a familiar rage rise within him. He knew it was misplaced, but he couldn’t control the feeling. He’d been woken sharply, and his dark carriage now felt like a coffin. It was either unleash his anger, or be controlled by the unsettling amount of terror he knew all too well would replace it. He couldn’t think about those demons. He wouldn’t think about them.

  Desmond let out a harsh growl that rattled his heart within his tightening chest. He needed to move. He needed to get out.

  The carriage had barely come to a stop before he slammed the door open and jumped out, on his lips the harsh words, “What the Devil happened?” His query required no answer, or at least not in that precise moment, for on the ground lay a young woman, dressed as a fine lady. The young lady was the proof that confirmed his suspicions that they had, in fact, hit something. However, that something turned out to be more of a someone.

  Desmond felt an odd rush of relief which might have confused him if that feeling had not been quickly replaced by concern as the girl did not move. He cursed and tore out of his fitted coat, sinking down to the ground beside her, his outrider alongside him, as the coachman tended to the roused and anxious horses. As he knelt there, his hands hovering above the woman as though if he were to touch her she’d explode, everything began to flash.

  Back and forth, it went. Back and forth.

  He felt the familiar pulsing beneath his skin, behind his eyes.

  Desmond felt he himself would explode any moment now.

  He closed his eyes tight. There was a strange buzzing in his
ears that was only adding to his confusion.

  An answer to his forgotten question, which seemed like it had been asked a decade ago, finally came from his young outrider. “She ran right out in front of us, my lord,” he said, his voice trembling. “Mr. Landers tried to stop, but there wasn’t time.”

  Desmond could only half hear the boy, the voice barely more than the whisper of a bee in his ears. His focus was intent upon the fallen maiden. Or as intent as it could be, considering.

  The young lady in question was still, so still that Desmond feared the worst. He watched for the rise and fall of her breast as he asked, “Was she—” His voice cut off before finishing the sentence. He clenched his entire face as he rubbed his trembling thigh. He growled aloud in frustration, and restarted the question, focusing scrupulously on each word uttered. “Was she trampled?”

  “No, my lord, the horses just barely missed her. But we clipped her with the carriage.”

  “Damnit!” Desmond cursed. And this time, the curse was just that. A curse.

  It certainly seemed fitting as he certainly felt cursed.

  By the appearance of it, the girl had been so-called “clipped” on the entire right flank of her body. There was no blood he could see, but where her bonnet had been ripped aside he could see that the right side of her face, from temple to jaw, was already beginning to redden and swell. It was rather remarkable that she had not sustained worse injuries, Desmond mused, before a more haunting thought teased its way to the surface—You don’t know the extent of them.

  Desmond wanted to roar his frustration with his luck, or the lack thereof.

  How was this his life? How was it that so much bad could happen to one person? How come the world was determined to darken what should have been one of his brightest moments? His return home. His return to safety and life. No, instead he stepped booted foot on once-firm soil to find it shifted to sand. His world was falling apart. He was losing his home, he was losing his mind, and now he was running down damsels.

  His hands curled into claws of frustration.

  She hadn’t awoken yet and that was concerning. Why was she not awake? He could see her breast rise and fall. She was alive, but where was she?

  There was a flash.

  Desmond began to shake.

  Then he began to shake her.

  He blinked, stopped himself, grounded himself in the reality he couldn’t believe was now his, then shook her once more, more gently this time, in an attempt to avoid inflicting further injury. But when his attempts were met with no success and, as the ringing in his ears seemed to compound, he decided on a course of action.

  “How far to the nearest village?” he demanded, the words toppling over each other on their way out of his mouth.

  “There’s one a mile or two up the road, my lord,” the coachman answered quickly.

  “Good,” he barked.

  Desmond carefully scooped the dainty maiden into his arms, cradling her like a baby, her head bobbing backwards as he ducked his head and stepped up into his carriage, his eyes dead, even as the blood ripped through his veins, a bubbling, boiling stew.

  “We must find a doctor.”

  *****

  There was nothing but pain. It was blinding and red all at once. It was a blistering, earth shattering, all-consuming agony that ripped through her body like she was on fire in the middle of a hurricane and pellets of ice were being slammed into her with unimaginable force. It was so painful that it was incomprehensible. As if she’d slipped a hand into scalding hot water and her nerves were so shocked that they told her it was cold as her skin melted off her body.

  That’s what it was like. It was hot and cold, and pure agony and no agony at all.

  She didn’t understand it. She could only feel it.

  One moment there was nothing, not even the back of her eyelids, not even the black of sleep. There was simply an empty void. And then her eyes were snapping open and feeling as though they were bulging out of their sockets as she released an animal cry that would surely be heard for miles around, and attempted to move, but found herself held down by a heavy weight.

  “She’s awake,” she heard from a male voice. But she couldn’t readily identify the speaker, nor could she see him. All she could see was the room. The room that was bathed in hues of red.

  Everything was red.

  Her eyes scanned the room she was in and found nothing of familiarity. She was lying on something hard, and there was a window to her left through which streaks of red light shone.

  Then there was a man, towering above her, and he was talking but she couldn’t focus on what he was saying.

  She blinked several times, trying to ignore the pain that seemed to be obscuring her vision and hearing alike.

  She watched the man’s lips as he talked, she focused on them, and finally his words broke through.

  “Follow my finger,” he said, and she obliged, following his finger back and forth above her face.

  “Is she all right?” came the gruff voice of an unseen stranger.

  “Give me a moment.” Then, “Can you hear me, my lady?”

  She tried to nod, just a little, then gasped as the small movement sent a ripple of pain all the way to her toes. “Yes,” she squeaked.

  “Good,” the man answered, a small, sad smile lifting up one corner of his lip. “We have to reset your hip.”

  “What happened?” she choked out, trying to rise but once again being unable to lift the heavy weight that held her down. Panic began to rise within her, starting with a riot of thoughts and a quickening pulse, a fever of bewilderment and fear for her life.

  This wasn’t right. She was alone with what appeared to be two men. It wasn’t right. She shouldn’t be here. But she couldn’t move.

  “You were in an accident. We’ve already reset your shoulder, but you’ve dislocated your hip as well. We need to reset it as soon as possible to restore blood flow.”

  “I don’t—” She didn’t know. She didn’t know anything. She didn’t know what had happened or understand what was going on. She didn’t know why she was here. He was explaining, but she didn’t understand. She only understood pain.

  Why was she here?

  “I’m sorry, this is going to hurt,” the man said.

  “Can’t you give her something for the pain?” barked the voice with no face. It sounded as though whoever it was, was ready to throttle the man that appeared to be helping her.

  Chills ran down her spine.

  “It won’t do her any good,” came the response. “No amount of alcohol I have will lessen the pain she is about to endure, I’m afraid. Now, hold down your wife’s shoulders. Be careful with the right one there. Careful, but firm.”

  At the mention of the word wife, her unease doubled.

  She twisted her head around backwards, arching to see this man who had been proclaimed as her husband, but she made it not an inch before the pain tore through her shoulder and down to her feet.

  “Hold her still,” the man in view said as he pushed her skirts higher up her leg.

  Naturally, the last thing she did was remain still, however, every movement she made was met with sheer agony.

  “We want to get this right the first time,” the man muttered.

  And then her leg was being lifted and she was screaming. Lord, how she was screaming. The sound would surely be inhuman if she could hear it. But like her nerves, her hearing seemed to be in shock and, instead of hearing her own screams, all she could hear was this odd sort of drumming, as though she could hear the pulse of the blood within her veins.

  Though, while she couldn’t hear, she could feel. There was no fire over ice, no freezing, nothing that made the pain just a little bit bearable. The pain was a monster that tore through her. It was a tangible entity that was ripping her limb from limb. There was no color that marked her world when her hip was popped back into place. There wasn’t even darkness.

  One moment there was incredible pain.

&nbs
p; And the next, there was nothing at all.

  Chapter 6

  When she awoke for the second time, it was to find herself in the dark interior of yet another unfamiliar room.

  One tiny shaft of light filtered in through the slight break between the curtains, highlighting the shadow of a dark figure slumped over in a chair.

  She trembled. Her jaw, her hands, everything trembled. It was fear like she had never known, never thought could exist. Not only did she not know where she was or what had happened to her, but she also didn’t know who it was that was sleeping in her room. If it even was her room.

  She squirmed. It was meant to be more than that really, but a squirm was all she achieved for the pain was intense. She tried to pull, claw her way to the edge of the bed. Perhaps if she could get to the edge she would have a chance at escape. She hardly made it an inch before she shrieked at the pain that made stars appear in her vision, which of course summoned the figure to awaken.

  There wasn’t enough light in the room to discern who the person was, nor did it matter. She was in a strange place and she didn’t know how she’d arrived there. For all she knew, she had been kidnapped. As the person approached, she did the one thing she could do.

  She screamed. And screamed. And as the person drew closer, morphing into the figure of a woman, she squeezed her eyes shut and screamed some more.

  She screamed when she heard the click of a door open and it subsequently slam into a wall. She screamed as she felt a rush of heat spread across her face when she discerned the curtains had been drawn open. She screamed as she heard the rough sound of a man’s voice above the din of her own creation.

  Then, heavy hands settled on her shoulders. She bucked, or tried to, halted by a near blinding pain. “It’s okay, we’re here to help!” he shouted, his voice a roar, at which she opened her eyes, met his gaze, and screamed louder.

  She was being held against her will, of course he wouldn’t want her to scream. He wouldn’t want her to be found. Scream was all she could do.