The Earl's Captive Page 2

  But Martin Swift was untouched by his daughter's silent message. “Your mother and I love you and wish to do our very best for you. If you agree to marry the man I have in mind, not only will you live in comfort with a good man, but you will hold a very honorable position in the community, far higher than your mother or I could ever have hoped for.

  “I had no idea that my daughter had caught the eye of such an august man as the Reverend Pritt. To be the wife of a man of God, Lucy! When I informed your sister and her husband in the hallway – well, I couldn't keep such a compliment to the family to myself, could I? – they were so pleased for you that …”

  His voice seemed to be fading into the far distance, like the echo of a stone dropped into a dry well. At the same time, a mist formed in front of Lucy's eyes. She tried to pass her hand in front of her face, on which she could feel a cold, clammy perspiration forming, but her arm was like a lead weight and remained, unmoving, in her lap. Then a great lassitude overcame her and she felt her surroundings dissolve and her chair whirl like a spinning top.

  Chapter Three

  Lucy had never fainted before. She came to and found her mother hovering anxiously over her while her sister bathed her forehead in cool water from a basin held by Binns, the young maid.

  “Don't you worry 'bout her, ma'am. She be herself right soon enough,” said Binns reassuringly. Lucy could have embraced her for her honest country forthrightness, but Binns, for all her commonsense, could not smooth the worried furrows from her mother's brow.

  “My dear, are you all right? It is very hot today. You're not catching a fever, I hope?”

  Helen's small, square hand in its cuff of pale blue lace touched Lucy's forehead, then her temples, and finally pulled down the lower lids of her eyes, making Lucy jerk back and blink in alarm. “The boys had a summer sickness some weeks ago,” Helen explained. “They went quite, quite pale under the lids. But there's nothing wrong with you.”

  “I wish there was,” moaned Lucy fervently. “I'd sooner waste away and die than be married to that old … goat!”

  * * *

  Ann Swift drew a deep breath and chewed her lower lip thoughtfully. How she wished her younger daughter was as docile as Helen had been. She had gone to the altar with John Masters without a murmur and, indeed, the marriage seemed to be working. Helen had her boys and a good allowance and a husband who didn't beat her, even if he did sometimes respond rather over-enthusiastically to attractive members of the opposite sex.

  At least this philandering tendency kept him from eternally bothering Helen with his attentions. He had done his duty, fathered twin heirs, and now Helen was free to attend to her duties of lady of the house and follower of fashion, something that pleased her far more than her husband's twice-monthly drunken fumblings in her bedroom. Even love-matches couldn't be relied upon to be perfect, as Ann knew to her cost. Yet, for Lucy, that is exactly what she would have wished – the perfect love-match for her beautiful, unruly, headstrong younger daughter.

  * * *

  “I won't do it,” announced Lucy, mutinously, waving away Binns's proffered glass of water. “I refuse to allow myself to be incarcerated in that damp prison of a rectory with that revolting, ugly, nasty-minded old man. 'Man of God' indeed! I would never take a young, sensitive child to hear one of our dear vicar's sermons. To hear him ranting about the terrible punishments God has in store for us all if we dare to defy His will or take His holy name in vain, makes me think that worshipping the Devil would be the easier option.”

  “Leave the room, Binns. See how Cook is faring with the roast pork,” ordered Ann, terrified lest Lucy's blasphemies be prattled about all over the village.

  But Lucy wasn't done. “Reverend Pritt has a very twisted idea of what God is really like. I think something very terrible must have happened to him in his life to make him turn his good Lord into the kind of enemy he would have us believe God is, someone who isn't kind and just and forgiving at all, but is a cruel tyrant – rather like Father.”

  Helen clutched her sister's arm in the hope of distracting her from her subject, as it was obviously upsetting their mother, who was standing by the window, fanning herself agitatedly. But Lucy was not so easily deterred.

  “I am sorry, Mother,” she continued, a softer note creeping into her voice. Lucy loved her mother dearly and the last thing she wanted to do was upset her, but, on the subject of her own life, with her whole future at stake, she felt she had to express her feelings, even if it meant coming out with a few home truths.

  “I know you love Father, in spite of his vile temper and the anguish he's caused all of us. I am his dutiful daughter and have always done my best to obey him, but this is one thing that all the beatings on earth could not persuade me to do. He can beat me until I'm dead if he likes, but nobody will force me to share my life and, even worse, my bed, with that gospel-twisting, repellent old cadaver, Nathaniel Pritt!”

  “Oh Lucy, see sense,” put in Helen, stroking her sister's curly hair as if calming one of her toddlers. “He must be sixty if he's a day. One night with you and he'll probably drop dead of an apoplexy. I bet you he's never touched a woman in his life!”

  “And he's certainly not going to touch me!” Lucy exclaimed, brushing aside her sister's hand and swinging her legs off the couch. Her head swam a little as she put her feet to the ground and stood up, but she ignored her lingering weakness. Appalled by the way both her mother and sister were calmly complying with Martin's wishes, Lucy turned to them, appeal in her eyes.

  “Can't you see, either of you? Can't you understand?” She fixed her gaze on her sister. “I'm of the same blood as you, we're kin – who could be closer? Yet you seem to be made of totally different stuff. Why are you so meek? Why is it that you don't mind having to share a house and your body with an old, fat man whom you don't love?”

  She was pleased to notice Helen's eyes blaze for an instant as the barb of truth stung home. Turning to her mother, Lucy continued, in impassioned tones, “I know you can't stand up to Father. I know that, if you had done, either you'd be dead by now, or he would have turned you out. But you're both trapped. Trapped!”

  Her voice was rising on a note of hysteria. The whole room, with its pictures, hangings, heavy, cumbersome furniture and dark-coloured floor-coverings, seemed to be exuding waves of hostile oppression. She paced the drawing-room carpet agitatedly. She had to make them see. What was wrong with them? Nobody, not even her father, had the right to do this to another human being, to order their life right down to whom they should marry and when.

  She thought of Reverend Pritt, clutching his lectern and rocking back and forth while his congregation's ears were dinned with threats of being visited by plagues even unto the third and fourth generation, his gaunt face grey with stubble, his yellowed teeth spraying the unfortunates in the front pew with holy saliva. She imagined herself spread like a naked sacrifice on a white-sheeted bed surrounded by the mouldering walls and ragged tapestries of the vicarage, with the knobbly, grey, corpse-like body of Nathaniel Pritt kneeling over her, his fetid breath fanning her face, his obscene, maggot-like fingers about to touch her own warm, living flesh.

  “No!” she screamed. “No! Mother, Helen, you've got to help me! Tell him it's impossible. I don't care that he's the vicar, I don't care about his position in society, I don't want to share it. I'd sooner marry an ostler, a highwayman, anybody! But I won't marry that… that …”

  Words came to her mind, words she'd heard her father and the grooms use. However, before she could say anything more, the door burst open and in strode her father, glowering like a thundercloud.

  “Martin!” cried Ann, rushing towards him and catching his elbow in an attempt to halt a physical attack on his errant daughter.

  “Woman, leave me be!” snarled her husband, his face suffused with scarlet anger. He shook off her restraining hand so violently that Ann lost her balance and fell, dashing her head against the ornately carved leg of a side table.

&nb
sp; “Mother – oh, Mother!” wailed Helen, rushing to Ann in a crackle of starched petticoats and kneeling over her prostrate form. “You've killed her, Father!”

  Chapter Four

  Her mother lay as still as a corpse on the floor, yet Lucy made no move towards her. With her father charging towards her, she didn't dare and she dodged round the back of a damask-covered armchair for protection.

  Martin took two more furious strides towards her then stopped, and Lucy felt as if her heart had stopped, too. How she hated and feared him! Suddenly, she was a child again, screaming at him not to hurt her mother. Then she was a young girl being slapped across the face for some minor misdemeanour such as not having bid him a polite enough 'good morning'.

  Now, she was almost as tall as he was and her will was equally as strong, even if her muscles were not. In many disagreements in the past she had given way, but not this time. It meant far too much to her.

  “Well, madam,” hissed her father, with heavy sarcasm, “so we have a new head of the household, have we? One who thinks she can set rules for herself and all the other silly little bints in Christendom!”

  Lucy noticed his fists spasmodically clenching and unclenching and steeled herself to expect the blow. Across the room, Helen was still kneeling and chafing her mother's temples, and against the tapestry-covered door, a silent observer, John Masters, was nonchalantly leaning, a smug leer plastered on his plump wet lips.

  “So Miss High-and-Mighty thinks a vicar isn't good enough for her, is that it? She thinks to stamp her pretty foot and defy her father, who's only a stupid, tyrannical old man? 'Marry an ostler or a highwayman' indeed!”

  Lucy's hand flew to her mouth. So he had overheard her incautious words. There was no escaping a punishment now. Her eyes flicked desperately round the room, to the door, the windows … Her long, full-skirted dress made it impossible to move fast enough to escape. Either he, or her brother-in-law, would stretch out a foot and trip her, or catch a handful of her dress and tear the delicate fabric. All she wanted to do was ascertain that her mother would recover and then fly out of the room, out of the house, to heaven-knows-where.

  Across the room, Ann Swift made a low moaning noise and began to stir.

  “Thanks be to God!” called Helen, tears streaming down her rouged and powdered face. “She's alive!”

  Lucy unfroze and started to move towards her mother, but had scarcely taken two steps when her father grabbed her by the wrist and, with an adroit movement, thrust her face down across the arm of the armchair she been standing behind.

  “Get off me!” Fury seethed in Lucy's brain. To be beaten by one's father in private was one thing, but here, front of her sister and her odious brother-in-law … Her father had his hand on her left shoulder and was forcing her painfully down. With a cat-like twist, she jerked her and sank her sharp teeth into his arm.

  “Ouch!” Her father's cry of pain nearly deafened her as his mouth was so close to her ear.

  The pressure on her shoulder was suddenly gone but as she made to spring to her feet, she heard a hated voice drawl laconically, “Whip the bitch.”

  “John!” replied Helen sharply. “This is none of your business. You keep out of this.”

  “Hold your tongue, wife, or you'll be getting a beating too. A good flogging never hurt a mare – aye, Martin?”

  Lucy caught her breath in a sharp gasp as she saw the object that John was holding out to his father-in-law – a small riding switch with a thong made out of tough hide, knotted at the end. Before she could cry out in protest, her father stuck out his leg and upended her across it. In spite of her vigorous kicking, she felt her petticoats and skirt being hauled up.

  How could he? Lucy had never felt so horrified and shamed in her life. The leather thong sang through the air three times, causing her to shudder in pain. The embroidery on the screen in front of the fireplace, of which she had an upside-down view, began to blur as tears misted her eyes. She hated her father. She would never forgive him for this.

  She heard her mother's weak voice pleading, “That's enough, Martin.”

  Her mother's intervention stayed his hand. The whipping suddenly ceased and Lucy stood up shakily, smoothing her skirts and pushing back her tangled hair.

  “If you'd have been a boy, I wouldn't have stopped at three strokes. You deserved a dozen at least for that show of defiance. Now, I hope we'll have a bit more obedience from you, my girl.”

  He paused to consult the French clock on the mantel-shelf. “I am expecting a visit from Reverend Pritt in just over an hour's time. He has already made it known to me that he is coming to ask for your hand in marriage. His own dear wife died many years ago, before he came to this parish, and he is a very lonely man who dearly wants children, which his first wife could not provide for him.

  “Go and clean your face, girl. Helen can help you do your hair. I don't want the Reverend to think you are a slut with those unruly locks of yours. Put your best dress on, the blue one that makes you look like a girl rather than a stable-lad, and come downstairs when I call you. You are to behave to the vicar like a well-brought-up young lady. None of those bold stares, my lass, and no answering back. Just reply politely to any questions he may ask you – and of course you are to accept him. There is no question about that. Understood?”

  “Yes, Father,” whispered Lucy, frightened of the sarcasm that might creep into her voice if she spoke any louder. She bowed her head and inclined her knee, then stood up and took stock of the rest of her family: of her mother, crouched on the settle in the window, face in hands, weeping silently; of her sister, pausing in the act of comforting Ann to give her sister a look which said, 'I had to go through it and now it's your turn'.

  To her surprise, her brother-in-law was nowhere to be seen. She reflected that he had probably gone to check up on the twins who were, no doubt, being plied with buns in the kitchen by Binns and Cook. With the exception of her ill-used mother, Lucy despised the lot of them. Giving them a contemptuous glance, she swept out of the room.

  Once in the safety of her bedchamber, she paused. She had less than an hour in which to devise a plan. Maybe she could think up some way of putting Nathaniel Pritt off her, by saying or doing something so subtle that he, but not her father, would detect it. Maybe she could say something about religion which would show him that she was not in accordance with his own strong-held beliefs. He would not want to take for a wife a woman who was not totally committed to his own beliefs.

  Yes, that was it! If she could let slip some pagan idea, or some comment that had more in common with the Church of Rome than England, maybe he would see at once that she was not the stuff vicar's wives are made of.

  There was a knock at the door, and Lucy started guiltily, as if the visitor, whoever it was, had been able to read her thoughts and was coming to assure her that there was no escaping her fate. But it was only Binns with a basin of warm water, which she placed on the marble dresser. Lucy gave her a grateful smile and dismissed her.

  Alone again, she sank down onto the gold-embroidered coverlet of her bed and instantly stood up as the pain in her buttocks was so bad. On the other side of the room, next to the cupboard where she kept her clothes, was a long mirror in which she could see her image reflected from head to toe. She had grumbled when it was installed, insisting that she didn't mind what she looked like. However, her mother had prophesied that, as she got older, she would mind, and so the thing stood there, in its heavy gold-leafed oak frame. Lucy stepped before it and examined her reflection. She saw a tall girl, whose naturally pink and white complexion had no need of rouge, with loose chestnut curls tumbling down to her breasts, wearing a rumpled dress of cream satin and ruffles which she'd always hated because it was feminine in such a silly way.

  If I were a witch, she thought venomously, I would take some witches' wax and, under a waning moon, I'd make a figurine of John Masters and stab it with a hatpin there (she imagined the pleasure of spearing him through the groin) and there (no
w his heart was pierced by a silver barb).

  Suddenly, Lucy started. Surely her imagination wasn't that strong? For a moment, she thought she'd glimpsed the face of John Masters in the mirror. Dropping her skirts, she whirled round – and did indeed find herself face to face with her loathsome brother-in-law.

  “A pretty sight,” he purred, his double chin sinking into his cream-coloured waistcoat. “But a few additions from myself would make it even prettier.”

  “Get out of my room!” yelled Lucy, furious that her most intimate, private moment had been invaded. She advanced on the interloper, not quite sure what to do, but determined to wreak some damage on him. Like a tigress unsheathing her claws, her fingernails lashed towards his eyes. His arms went up and caught her hands and squeezed them until she squealed. “Let me go, you're hurting!”

  “All in good time, little sister.”

  “If I scream loud enough, Father, Mother, someone will hear,” she warned him, and inhaled to fill her lungs for the effort.

  “But you won't, will you, Lucy?” he informed her, his small eyes in their puffy surrounds of fat boring into hers.

  Lucy stared at him in surprise. She had long thought her brother-in-law to be cunning, but she had no idea what devious scheme he was working on now.

  “You can yell all you like, my dear, but I doubt if you'll be heard. Your mother and sister are at the other end of the house, supervising refreshment for your … suitor.” He hissed the word with obvious enjoyment, reminding Lucy uncomfortably that time was running out for her.

  “The children have been put to rest in the conservatory,” he continued, “and as for your father, he's in the cellar tasting the wine to help him decide which to offer the dear Reverend. So you see, my sweet, we are all alone. I sympathize with you, my dear. Reverend Pritt is an old toad, about as lusty as one of the tombs in his graveyard. It would not be right for your pretty body to go to him without a full-blooded man having enjoyed it first.”