The Nightingale Legacy Read Online Free Page B

morning, “Dear Miss Derwent-Jones? It is I, my dear, do let me in. I must speak to you. It’s about your inheritance, and a serious matter. Let me in. Come now, let’s have no fuss aboutthis. It really is to your advantage to speak to me.”
    Ha, she thought. Letting him into her bedchamber would be like welcoming Napoleon to Whitehall. She said absolutely nothing, just waited, her face pressed to the door, waiting for him to go away, which he did after several more moments that seemed to stretch longer than the time her mother had wrapped a string around the doorknob to pull one of Caroline’s baby teeth many years before.
    Finally, she thought, finally he had given up. She forced herself to stay still for another five minutes, surely enough time for him to be in his bedchamber, three rooms down the corridor, and prepare himself for bed. Then she pulled her valise from beneath her bed, pulled on stout walking boots, and slung her blue velvet cloak over her shoulders. Very slowly she turned the key in the lock, then just as slowly turned the knob. The door opened slowly. She slipped through and stared up and down the corridor. She saw nothing but shadows, night shadows she’d known all her life.
    She turned and walked quickly toward the central staircase, her boots making not a single sound. When an arm went around her, jerking her back, she opened her mouth to scream, but then a big palm was flattened against her teeth and she knew he’d again outsmarted her. She felt his hot breath against her ear, felt his arm tighten hard across her ribs, squeezing the breath from her.
    “Now, you little bitch, not a sound from you. You believed you’d dupe me, did you? No one beats me, no one, certainly not an arrogant little girl. Now, you and I will take a walk. We will celebrate your birthday, fear not, and my gift to you will be my seed. You will like being married to me, Miss Derwent-Jones, and if you don’t, well, I will have your money and it won’t matter. I do suggest that you not struggle, that you accept your future, for it is upon you, yes it is.”
    She bit down hard on his hand. She heard him suck in his breath, felt a moment of sheer pleasure, until he whirled her about and struck her jaw hard with his fist. She crumbled where she stood.
    The throbbing pain in her jaw brought her back. Her eyes opened and she blinked. There was only the flame from one small candle on a rickety wooden table near her. The rest of the chamber was in darkness. She tried to sit up but realized quickly enough that her hands were tied above her head to the slats of a narrow bed that didn’t smell too clean.
    “Well, you’re awake. I didn’t mean to hit you so hard, but you deserved it. Think of it as a lesson, one that will be repeated whenever you fail to obey me with proper dispatch and eagerness. Your jaw isn’t broken, I’ve already felt it. Now, my dear, you are nineteen years old. You have come into your inheritance and you will shortly marry. What do you think?”
    “I think you’re quite mad.”
    “Then you can spend a lot of time on your knees praying our children won’t inherit the madness. Ah, yes, there will be children, my dear, as many as I can plant in your belly. I plan to keep you pregnant. A big belly tends to keep a woman lumbering along slowly, all her attention on the babe, on all her little aches and pains. It keeps her silent. Who knows? After birthing a good dozen children perhaps you’ll turn into a model wife. I doubt it, but who can say for sure?”
    “Where did you get that idiot bit of wisdom?”
    He just smiled and sat down beside her on the narrow bed. She froze and he saw it and smiled more widely. “I know you’re afraid, though you’ll try your best not to show it to me. You’re like your father in that. I remember when we were boys how he led the rest of us into trouble that made his parents’ hair rise off their necks, but he trieddesperately never to show fear; he scoffed at any of