Miss Sophie's Secret (22 page)

“Wait!” Sophie protested, her stomach twisting in revulsion. “I am not!”

“Begin the ceremony,” Albert told Walker.

“No,” Sophie said. “I must consider a moment.”

“Nonsense! You’ll be happy married to me, whatever you believe at this time.” An obviously annoyed Albert waved a hand at Walker. “Come along now, proceed with the vows.”

“I won’t do it!” Sophie cried.

“I’ll not marry the lass against her will,” the minister said.

“Don’t be an ass!” Albert snapped. “Who will know but ourselves?”

“I’ll know,” the man said and hiccoughed again. “I’ll not be able to make peace with my Lord.”

Albert snorted. “Your Lord turned his back on you long ago, you drunken hypocrite! Proceed with the service.”

Sophie did not doubt that Albert meant to marry her and gain control of the fortune Lord Reginald had left her. She realized she must try to remain calm, to do the right thing. Her only chance of escape was to play along, then catch him unprepared and run. An idea struck her and she laid a hand gently on the back of his wrist.

“I need a moment of privacy first,” she said, and cast a meaningful glance at the chamber pot sitting beside the bed.

The minister’s face flushed an even deeper red as he turned and tottered out of the room. “I’ll wait downstairs.”

Albert eyed her with suspicion before snapping, “Five minutes, and not a moment more.”

Sophie flinched when he slammed the door behind him and then hurriedly dragged a chair into position. Her heart raced as fast as her feet when she rushed to pick up the pot. It was nice and heavy, perfect for her purpose. She removed the lid and put it on the bed so it wouldn’t rattle and give her away, and then set the pot on the seat of the chair.

The wind howled, covering her footsteps as raced to the window and stripped off the cords that swagged the curtains. Last, she peeled a case off a pillow. No sooner did she have everything at the ready than Albert gave the door an impatient rap.

Pot in hand, she climbed up on the chair and cooed, “Come in.”

Albert opened the door and stepped into the room.

Gritting her teeth in determination, Sophie raised the pot high and then crashed it down as hard as she could on his head.

He slid limply to the floor.

Knowing time was of the essence she jumped down from the chair, closed the door and got to work. Lord Reginald had taught her to tie several kinds of knots one summer, and she used that skill now to bind his wrists and feet together with one of the cords. Halfway through the process, he moaned. She grabbed the lid off the bed and conked him again and then tore a strip off a linen sheet, wadded it up and stuffed it in his mouth. To make doubly sure he couldn’t raise an alarm, she slipped the pillow case over his head, tied it around his neck with the other length of cord and fed the rope down and around his wrists and down again around the ankles, pulling his body into a bent figure S.

Satisfied the bindings were taut enough to choke him if he moved she pushed and shoved him, she pushed to her feet, ran to get her reticule and happened to catch a glimpse of herself in the darkened mirror that hung above the table. Through spotted and undulating waves of hazy amber, she found a startled, wild-eyed face staring back at her, its bonnet sliding to one side and large untidy clumps of hair bursting out in unlikely places.

“Good heavens,” Sophie muttered, setting her reticule back on the table and pulling off her bonnet.

She ran her fingers over her curls, soothing them and tucking them back into their pins. Then she replaced her bonnet and tied it in place. It was still sadly askew, she realized, but with no time to spare, she was obliged to settle for a slightly drunken effect.

A roar, a clatter, and then a thundering crash gave her a startle. She rushed to the door, pulled it open, and put her head out. She had a clear view of the common room below and saw that a spirited altercation was in progress.

At first it appeared that several louts were swinging at each other with bottles. Then she noted that one of the men was of a different stamp, tall, agile, clean, and dressed in a greatcoat of excellent quality. It was not long before it became apparent that all the other men were ranged against him and he was attempting to defend himself.

“Jonathan” she breathed as his hat tumbled off and his black hair was revealed.

His fists were swinging out strongly, and it appeared for a time that he might triumph over superior numbers. He landed a punch and one of his attackers fell to the floor with a muffled thud. But the next moment a hooligan swung at him with a bottle, striking him hard on the temple, and Jonathan sank to the floor.

“I’ll slit ’is throat,” one of the rogues bawled, leaning over Jonathan’s still form.

“No, ye don’t!” a woman’s voice cried out.

The breath whooshed from Sophie when Lovey stepped away from the door and into the middle of the room.

“De Lisle’ll pay extree if ’e wants ’him dead,” Agnes’s daughter told the lot of them. “This be Vaile hisself. Watch de Lisle dance like a dervish when ’e comes down an’ sees what we caught.”

“Good thinkin’, me little Treasure Chest.” Jed grinned at Lovey and then waved a ham-sized hand toward a closet that was set into a back wall. “Put ’im in there. That’ll hold ’im fer now.”

Three men gathered Jonathan among them and half dragged him to the closet, where they dumped him unceremoniously and backed out, locking the door behind them.

“Ye got a rope?” one asked the innkeeper. “I’ll tie up ’is ’ands.”

“They be rope aplenty on the wharf.”

“But it be froze to the planks.”

Grumbling to himself, the innkeeper fished under the bar, pulled out an iron rod and a heavy knife and pitched them at his colleague, who had the foresight to jump out of the way and allow the tools to land on the floor.

The three men who’d locked up Jonathan gathered up the gear and departed.

The innkeeper threw a lumpy arm around Lovey’s shoulders and let out a hearty roar. “Drink up, me lads! A toast to the earl o’ Vaile!”

While they were all occupied, Sophie dashed back into the room, put on her mittens, grabbed her reticule and blew out the candle. Closing the door behind her, she stepped out onto the landing and looked furtively around. The landing opened onto a short corridor that ran back toward the rear of the building and disappeared into gloom. Without hesitation she scampered along this corridor on her toes. At the rear of the inn she discovered that another staircase—this one narrow and winding—descended to the lower regions of the building. A strong odor of simmering onions and beef rose up the shaft.

Taking the steps carefully, she descended to a narrow hallway below. A short way to one side a door opened into the kitchen—she could hear a clatter of pots and pans. On the other side, a door was wedged slightly ajar, beyond which the howling wind was driving chunks of snow into the hallway and mounding them into a low pile against the base of one wall.

Sophie dashed to the door, forced it open a crack more, and slipped through, allowing the wind to push it back into place. A brutal blast of cold swept over her, pressing her against the outside of the building. She had to struggle for breath before she could move again. Then she began to pick her way around the side of the structure, pressing a hand against the rime-encrusted wall to keep from being toppled into the icy snow.

The temperature had plummeted since she had entered the inn. It was now so cold that she wondered if she were not doomed to freeze, whatever she did. But she remembered that Jonathan would certainly die if she did not make an effort to save him. She pushed herself on until she had rounded the corner and come into the lee of the building. There she was able to move more easily, and she quickly arrived at a low, grimy window with a large, gaping hole in one side of the frame where the wood had rotted away.

Hoping and praying that this was the window to the closet, she set her reticule on a frozen pile of snow so as to free up her hands, caught hold of the rotted frame and pulled. To her surprise the entire window gave way, breaking apart down the center strip, with three of the panes coming out. She tossed the debris aside onto the snow, then took hold of the remaining glass pane, which was protruding from one side. This pane came away easily, too. Tossing it down with the others, she rose up on tiptoe leaned in through the opening.

The closet was not deep. She found Jonathan crumpled in a heap on the floor below. She saw that his hands were still not tied, but he was frighteningly still.

“Jonathan!” she hissed. “You must wake up, Jonathan!”

He did not move. Frantically she turned and looked around her. Most of the snow had frozen solid, and there was no water or anything she could douse over his face. Then she noticed a place near the end of the building where the wind was whipping around a corner, bringing flurries of soft snow and dropping them in a pile where they rapidly froze. She scurried along the slippery surface and scooped up a handful. She teetered back to the window, then leaned inside and dumped it onto Jonathan’s face.

He shuddered, but did not rouse. She repeated the exercise. This time, when she threw it onto his face, he struggled up to a sitting position.

“My God!” he muttered, cradling his head between both his gloved hands.

“Jonathan!” she hissed. “Look up here. It’s Sophie!”

“I’ve broken my head,” he groaned without raising it.

“Please, Jonathan,” she insisted. “You must climb out of there. They’re going to kill you.”

“Good,” he said. “I’d be happy to die.”

“No,” she scolded. “You must climb out at once! Albert is going to have you killed for a price. Then he’s going to force me to marry him, and I’m going to kill myself.”

He finally looked up. “Run away, Sophie,” he whispered. “You can escape if you try.”

“No,” she said, shaking her head firmly. “If you’ll climb out and come with me, I’ll make every effort. But if you stay here and let them kill you, I’ll die also.”

He struggled to his feet and leaned against the wall. His face and shoulders were above the sill. But instead of trying to climb out, he closed his eyes.

“I’m sick,” he moaned as the cold shot icicles of pain through his head. “Run away.”

“Not unless you come with me.”

He stood for a moment, his chest rising and falling in great heaving rails. “Where is Albert?”

Jonathan looked at Sophie in amazement when she told him what she’d done to Albert. Finally he put his hands on the sill and with a heave raised himself above the opening. There he balanced for a moment and then pitched forward onto his stomach. By wriggling and rolling, he managed to push himself out onto the snow.

“Come quickly,” she urged, catching hold of his hand and pulling.

For a moment he resisted, sitting where he was on the ice. Then he rose to his feet and, leaning rather heavily on her right shoulder, allowed himself to be led away. She plunged rapidly into the storm with no idea of where she was going. All she wanted to do was get away.

The wind blew the snow thickly around them.

“It’s so dark,” she mourned. “Nicky and Fairmont have most certainly taken the others home.”

“I should think so,” he said. “I sent them on and stayed back to look for you.”

“But how did you know where to look?”

“I ran into Agnes’s daughter near the river and she offered to lead me to you.”

“For a sum, of course,” Sophie said wryly.

“Of course.” Jonathan staggered then and almost took them both down. “Can you find a place for me to sit a moment? The whole world is spinning crazily around me.”

“It’s spinning around me, too,” she told him. “It’s the blizzard that produces this effect. Come along, we must put more distance between us and the inn. Then we’ll find someone to take us home.”

But there were no carriages for hire in such weather, so they floundered onward, groping their way through the gloom, passing the opening to an alley and then tottering down a narrow street.

“How does your head feel?” she asked him when they trudged past a row of dark, forbidding buildings. 

“Better,” he said, straightening and putting his fingers gingerly to his temple. “I think the cold has driven the dizziness away.”

Now that Jonathan wasn’t leaning on her anymore, Sophie and he moved a little faster.

“If we can find the river and cross to the other side, we’ll follow the thoroughfare back to the Frost Fair,” she told him.

“But first, we must find some shelter,” he said. “In this cold, we’ll freeze before we know what’s happening to us.”

They peered through the murk, but saw nothing even remotely resembling the frozen river. It dawned on them at the same time that they were well and truly lost. Still, they plodded on until, finally, Jonathan stopped and turned his head from side to side, sniffing the air.

“There’s a stable nearby,” he said.

“Are you sure?” Sophie asked through lips that barely moved.

“Positive.” He took her arm and steered her down an alley leading toward the origin of the stable smell. “They probably keep draft horses there to pull carts full of merchandise down to the river barges.” 

The snow in this alley was deeper and softer and no longer slippery. They made their way without much difficulty to a pair of tall wooden doors. Jonathan lifted the latch and Sophie could smell the horses the instant they stepped inside.

The stable offered them blessed shelter from the storm. They could hear several horses whickering in the darkness and swishing their tails. Above them they could smell a fragrant hay-filled loft.

“We’d better hide up there in case Albert is found and sends his minions after us,” Jonathan said.

After groping in the darkness for several minutes, he found the ladder and they made their way up, rung by careful rung. Soon they were crawling happily into the straw.

“I can’t believe how warm it is in here!” Sophie exclaimed.

“It’ll be warmer yet when I’m done,” he promised her.

He began to push the straw aside and rearrange it to form a snug bed. Before he had finished, their temperatures rose enough that they were able to remove their coats and boots. After he arranged their discarded outerwear to form a sort of blanket, he pulled straw over the top. Lying down then, he slid his arms around her and drew her tightly against him.