Twelfth Night by Deanna Raybourn Read Free Book Online

eyes. “I knew the family would not let
him suffer for my sins.”
    I felt a stab of exasperation. Lucy could dramatise as well as
a character from Beaumont and Fletcher. “What sins, Lucy? You had a child by
your husband.”
    “Husband! Do you think I could bear to call him that?”
    “But he is,” I persisted. “Your child is legitimate. You have
committed no transgression, and even if you had, we are not the sort to make a
fuss over such a thing. You know that.”
    Tears leaked from her eyes and slid down to the pillow. She
opened her eyes slowly. “I know. But his lordship has already been so generous.
And, as I say, you all had your own troubles. I could not add to them with my
burdens. It was a difficult pregnancy,” she told me. “I suffered much, no doubt
because of my mental anguish. You cannot imagine what it is like to be tormented
by fear, hounded and chased like an animal, never settling. Even now, I try to
sleep, and I fear I can hear him, trying the locks, calling my name in that sly,
insidious voice. If it were not for Nanny Bleeker, I would not have survived at
all.”
    “Where did you find her?”
    “On the ship, when we fled India. She had gone to India to
deliver her last charge into the care of his parents. She had been comfortably
pensioned off, and...I suppose she sensed I needed a friend,” she said quietly.
“It was supposed to be our wedding voyage, but he spent all of his time in the
card saloon, fleecing the other passengers,” she said bitterly. I noticed she
did not mention Black Jack by name. “And the nights...well, best not to speak of
them.”
    “Did he mistreat you?” I felt a surge of rage at the notion
that any man could raise a hand to my gentle cousin.
    Her expression was one of astonishment. “Mistreat me? He never
laid a finger upon me in anger. His cruelties were of the subtler, more refined
variety. He made me do things with him, to him.” She shut her eyes against the
memory of their marriage bed. “But the worst of it is that he made me want to do
them. I had no will except his. And when he was finished, he would tell me
things, terrible things he had done, as if to make me despise myself because I
could not help wanting a man capable of such deviltry. I learned to hate him
during that trip. And by the time we docked in Marseilles, I knew I had
conceived his child. I had made up my mind that I must escape him, for the
baby’s sake. Nanny Bleeker had money, and I had put some by after Cedric died.
He took most of it,” she added bitterly, “but there were one or two things he
had not yet found. And Nanny and I simply disappeared in the melee at the docks.
We stepped off one ship and made our way directly to another that was about to
set sail for South America. There was a terrible row when they found we had
stowed away, but there was an empty cabin, and we paid for it, and they looked
the other way. That’s how it began, this long, terrible chase. I am the hind to
his hunter, and he will find me,” she said at last breaking into long, violent
sobs.
    I stroked her hair and marvelled at how much the village gossip
had got wrong. There was no witch, only a kindly old woman. And no ghostly
lamentations, only the weeping of an unhappy girl who had made a deal with the
devil.
    “Lucy, about the baby,” I began.
    She gave a low sob and pressed her hands to her eyes. “Not now.
I cannot think now.”
    I sighed. She was in no fit state to consider her child’s
welfare. He was in good care at the Abbey, and we could certainly keep him until
she had recovered herself. She was family, after all, and we owed her as
much.
    I rose and pressed a kiss to her brow. “I will leave you now,
Lucy. But I will come back soon and see how you are.”
    She struggled up and clasped my hand. “You will keep my
secret?”
    “Yes, but I really think—”
    Colour rose stormily into her face then ebbed as swiftly as it
had come. She was as pale as the sheet upon which she lay.