‘Or forgive, apparently,’ Nell said tartly and heard him laugh softly. ‘And why involve me?’
‘Why, you are a part of the thread too—you and your brother and your sister.’
‘They are alive?’ She stumbled again, badly this time, and he caught her by the shoulders, holding her so she could not turn to face him.
‘Don’t you know, Helena?’
‘No. No, I do not,’ she admitted. ‘Nathan vanished—did you kill him?’
‘Perhaps.’
Nell stifled a sob and pulled free, walking on ahead. He is not going to make me cry. He is tormenting me. Nathan is safe, Nathan is alive; they both are.
‘You should ask Miss Price,’ he said. ‘She has secrets too.’
He was trying to unsettle her, torment her. Diana Price could know nothing of Nathan. After a moment, when she regained her composure, she said, ‘This thread you speak of is silken, I presume, and makes a rope to hang a peer with?’ She heard a grunt of assent. ‘And the rosemary is for remembrance?’
‘What rosemary?’
‘You did not send a sprig of it? To Lord Narborough?’
‘No,’ he said, and for the first time she thought she had unsettled him, just a little, but he said nothing more.
Almost at the bottom of the slope now, she could see meadows through the trees and guessed they must be downstream of the lake where the party had skated. Where was he taking her? Should she try and escape, or should she stay passive and hope to learn more?
‘Here, turn to the right.’ There was a hut of some kind nestled in the edge of the wood. A shepherd’s night shelter perhaps, for when the flocks were brought down to the water meadows to graze. ‘Go in. It is not locked.’
Nell pushed open the door. It was snug enough, although dark, without a window. The thick planks overlapped to keep the worst of the draughts out, and a pallet heaped with blankets lay against one wall. Nell eyed it nervously.
‘Sit down on the stool and put your hands behind you.’
With a sigh of relief she did as she was told, sinking down on the three-legged stool in front of a small hearth. She had hardly settled when her wrists were lashed together, not brutally, but with a ruthless efficiency—and what felt like a soft cord. Salterton had left the door open for light while he knelt to strike a flame and touch it to the pile of dry kindling on the hearthstone.
‘It is very dry,’ he remarked as though reading her thoughts. ‘There will be no smoke to guide your gallant lover here.’
‘He will find you,’ she swore, looking down at the sweeping brim of the slouch hat.
‘I doubt it. When the time comes, I will find him. I will find all of them.’ Salterton got to his feet and shut the door, leaving the interior of the hut lit only by the flickering flames. He sank down on his haunches beside the hearth and tossed his hat onto the pallet. In the firelight his face was a mask with dark, glittering eyes, the lines made harsher by the shadows.
But he was, she could tell, a disturbingly handsome man with a feral grace about him and the edge of wild danger in every movement. It was a strange contrast with the calm irony of his voice. It would not do, Nell told herself, to underestimate his intelligence.
‘Why will you find them?’
‘To deliver an old foretelling,’ he said, and it seemed to her that a nerve jumped on one of the beautiful high cheekbones as though he was in pain. He lifted a hand and touched his forehead for a moment.
‘What? What is foretold?’
‘You will find out. All of you. The children will pay for the sins of their fathers. It has been seen and it has been said.’
Nell told herself that the thin trickle of ice down her spine was a draught from the door, not the effect of the lilting voice speaking its prophesy.
‘I will leave you here. Just for a little, Helena, while I make sure the coast is clear. And then you will come with me and learn how to please me.’ The dark man’s voice dropped into a caress like velvet on her skin, and he came up onto his knees beside her, one long brown finger tracing the line of her cheek as his lips just brushed her own. ‘Wait for me, Helena,’ he said as she recoiled. ‘Wait and think of your lover’s suffering when he imagines what will pass between us.’
Nell strained her ears as the door closed behind him, listening. Even in the deep snow around the hut he made no sound. She counted in her head—one minute, two, three—then stood up, her arms awkwardly behind her, and knelt down on the pallet with its thin covering of blankets. Somehow she had to get her hands in front of her.
For what seemed like an hour, but was probably only fifteen minutes, Nell rolled and twisted and swore, hampered by her heavy coat and thick skirts. Finally, at the cost of wrenched shoulders and sore wrists, she managed to get her arms under her bottom and thread her legs through.
She sat on the pallet panting for a moment, then used her fingertips to pull out the knife she had concealed in the side of her half-boot. It had seemed wildly melodramatic when she had selected the sharp little fruit knife and slid it into its hiding place; now she was grateful for the impulse. It was far more useful than any pistol would have been; with it wedged between her feet she sawed through the bonds easily.
It was not until she looked more carefully at the loops still tied around her wrists that she realized it was more of the silken rope, spun this time into a thin cord. Nell started to tug at the knots, then realized she was wasting time. She had to get back to the house, tell Marc what Salterton had said, and hope he and Lord Narborough and Hal could make some sense of it.
All I have to do is elude him, she thought ruefully as she opened the door and peered out. Salterton’s tracks led back behind the hut—he had gone into the woods. Nell took a moment to get her bearings, then set off along the edge of the trees, hugging the hedge line. It was at least a mile back to the house, more likely a mile and a half by this route.
Nell ran and walked alternately, stumbling as she kept turning to check around her for pursuit. How long would he take on his errand before he returned for her? Where was Marc?
Then out of the corner of her eye, in the distance, she saw movement. Nell stopped, squinting against the dazzle of sun on the snow, and realized it was the top of a carriage—and with this snow, the only route a carriage could take was the turnpike road. If she cut across the meadows, across the frozen river and up the other side, then there was a good chance she would find another carriage, a cottage, a farm. Refuge.
But it meant leaving cover and going into the open. Nell hesitated, then turned her back on the woods and ran, the snow kicking up behind her, her throat raw with the cold air. For a moment she thought she had done it, then a dark figure burst from the woods by the hut, threw off its hampering greatcoat and began to run diagonally across the meadow to intercept her.
He had farther to run but he was stronger, his legs longer, and she was battling her clinging skirts. Nell wrenched off her bonnet and struggled with buttons as she ran, gasping with relief as she left hat and coat behind her. But the advantage was not enough; as she reached the river and
