Seized by Love (12 page)

"Where the devil is
she? I told you to keep watch over her!" Valdemar Forseus shouted
wrathfully at his large, lumbering son.

"She couldn't have
gone far without a horse or carriage," the middle-aged son calmly replied
to his father, who was livid with rage, having already harangued his son for
several minutes. Forseus's sparse gray hair was standing wildly about his bald
pate, his small, sunken eyes flashed with anger, his carefully manicured, blunt
peasant hands clenched and unclenched on his riding quirt.

"We weren't expecting
you for six more days," the son continued with the puzzled simplicity of a
dull intellect.

"That's obvious!"
Forseus thundered. "Is that devil's brat with her?" Forseus asked
suspiciously.

"No, I saw Katelina
out in the orchard with Rakeli."

"Very well, get out of
my sight!" Forseus spat out irritably. "I should have known better
than to expect any competence from you. You take after your mother, you
lout!"

Far from being disconcerted
by this tirade, the simple, ponderous son merely turned on his heel and walked
slowly back to the stables, where he was most happy and content, brushing,
feeding and talking to the horses. After years of listening to his father's
fulminations, they scarcely made an impression on him.

Forseus stalked into the
house, threw his coat, hat, and quirt on the hall table, and bellowed for his
butler.

"Bring me some kvass
into the study," he instructed grimly. "Leave the door open," he
ordered as the butler set the pitcher of kvass before his master and retreated
from the room.

For forty-five minutes
Forseus sat, sunk deeply in his leather chair, drinking steadily, his scowling
beady eyes trained on the hallway.

The object of this vigil
finally opened the front door and walked into the hall. Alisa's eyes widened
with alarm immediately as she spied the coat and hat on the table in the center
of the foyer. A startled catch of breath froze in her throat as an ominously calm
voice spoke from the study.

"Out for a stroll in
the spring air, Mrs. Forseus?" her husband inquired smoothly as his eyes
flicked shrewdly over Alisa's figure, observantly taking in every detail of her
ensemble. He hadn't amassed a fortune as a merchant because of a lack of
perspicuity, and at once noticed the rumpled skirt of the dress and the damp
hem and slippers.

"Down by the river, my
dear?" he questioned suspiciously. "Rather a long way from the house,
isn't it?"

Alisa stood frozen in her
tracks. The unexpected arrival was quite out of character for the punctilious,
meticulous Mr. Forseus. Her mind rushed through a hundred excuses, none
suitable, that might allay the sinister direction of her husband's inquiries.

"Yes," she
flushed helplessly, unable to present a calm facade with the rising terror in
her soul.

"Yes?" he
repeated softly, his anger flaring higher as fanatic jealousy displaced reason.
Forseus had wanted Alisa as a collector might want a fine painting, in order to
possess it. She was a showpiece, another possession to be flaunted and
displayed as further indication of his wealth, but not valued more highly than
any other representation of his fortune, no more than his blooded stallion or
his antique carpets or his gun collection.

He had also wanted her to
demonstrate to the world that by virtue of his fortune, he was now august
enough to marry into the gentry. He had also coveted the young girl because his
flagging sex drive at sixty-one had required more and more stimulation, and
young virgins were an obsession with him. After the novelty of the first few
months of marriage had worn off, however, even Alisa's young, tender body was
no longer enough to rouse his ardor.

Mr. Forseus had left her
alone at that point, finding stimulation in the brothels catering to deviates
who sought young girls. But even those had failed to satisfy him of late. Quite
by accident, in a drunken rage, three weeks earlier, he had struck out in anger
at Alisa and was astonished to discover that beating her had stimulated him
sexually. Not sufficiently to consummate the act, but it became satisfaction in
itself.

"Perhaps, Mrs.
Forseus," her husband suggested smoothly, raising his obese bulk from the
deep chair with some difficulty, "you would accompany me on a stroll,
since you seem to enjoy the out-of-doors so much."

He walked up to Alisa,
still frozen in her tracks, gripped her arm below the elbow in an iron grasp,
and steered his frightened wife out into the waning afternoon sunlight.

He forced her in the
direction of the barnyard, relentlessly keeping up a trivial chatter that
grated on Alisa's raw nerves and tremulous fears. Opening the door of a shed
with a key he kept on a chain at his waist, Forseus pushed her inside the empty
granary and shut the heavy door.

"Now, then, Mrs.
Forseus," he breathed with a fanatic gleam in his eyes as he stripped off
his coat and rolled up his sleeves, "we might discuss where you were this
afternoon."

Reaching out to a hook on
the wall, he took down a length of rope, tied a knot slowly and carefully on
one end, let the knot drop to the floor, and wrapped the excess length around
his hand.

"Now, my dear, we
begin. Where were you?" He swung the rope sharply and caught Alisa on her
shoulder. She shuddered from the pain, but spoke not a word, nor would she look
at him.

"Come, dear, lost your
tongue?" he sneered coldly, lashing out again and striking Alisa viciously
across her breasts. The strength of the blow dropped Alisa to her knees. God
help me, she prayed silently, for she didn't dare tell him the truth. He would
certainly kill her then. If she could just tolerate the torture, steel herself
to keep from screaming in agony, perhaps, merciful God, perhaps, after a time,
she would be lucky enough to faint.

Ten minutes later Forseus was
breathing hard and just about to cease, when Alisa lost consciousness and sank
gratefully to the floor and the beckoning solace of a black oblivion.

After rolling down his
sleeves, wiping his perspiring face with a silk handkerchief and carefully
adjusting his suit coat on his shoulders, Forseus quietly walked out of the
shed and locked the door behind him.

Much later that evening,
after explaining to a suspicious and distrustful Maria that Alisa had gone to
Vüpuri shortly before sunset, he ordered a tray of food and a glass of wine
brought to him in his study.

When the house had quieted
sufficiently and it appeared all occupants were sleeping, Valdemar Forseus
carefully maneuvered his way through the moonlit shadows of the barnyard,
unlocked the shed door, and deposited the tray on the floor beside his
still-unconscious wife.

Before departing, he drew a
small vial from his waistcoat pocket and poured half the contents into the
glass of wine.

Alisa woke in the early
hours of morning and lay for a moment with her eyes still closed, flooded with
a hopeless, bottomless despair so overwhelming, she could almost taste it. Her
eyelids blinked open; she saw the knotted rope hanging back again on its hook
on the wall and instantly renewed terror gripped her mind, tightened her
stomach. Her one brief chance for happiness was gone, sent away by her own
words. Any future offered only terror and abject misery. Her life ahead was
completely empty of hope.

She felt extremely weak,
and when she moved to a sitting position, a sharp pain began to throb in her
temple. Seeing the tray before her, Alisa reached out to soothe her parched,
dry throat with the contents of the wineglass, but the food remained untouched.

Almost immediately a vast
drowsiness overcame her, but

Alisa thought this the
natural result of her battered and fatigued body requiring needed rest. Her
violet eyes dropped shut and her breathing slowed into the labored cadence of a
heavily drugged repose.

Maria hadn't believed
Forseus's lies for one minute and had solicited Ami's assistance in trying to
find Alisa. Rakeli wouldn't be able to long allay the growing fears of
Katelina.

Early next morning,
returning surreptitiously up the servants' back stairway, Ami informed Maria of
his findings. He'd seen Forseus as he emerged from the house at dawn and
watched him go directly to the shed, enter the building and remain inside
briefly. On reemerging, Forseus had carefully relocked the door, bidden a
stable boy to saddle his horse, and left for Vüpuri. Ami had discovered the
destination upon questioning the lad.

Peering through one of the
cracks in the log structure of the shed, Ami distinguished the body of Alisa
lying on the floor, apparently asleep. When Maria was informed, her alarm
mounted.

"What are we to do?
He's beaten her again, you can be sure." Nothing went unseen or undetected
by a personal maid who was also a loyal friend.

"We must get her out.
Mistress Alisa has been wanting to leave. We can't wait any longer. Dare we
steal some of Forseus's horses and make our escape while he is in Vüpuri?"

"I don't know,"
Ami replied cautiously, "Forseus's arm is long and his money can buy much.
I think we should appeal to Prince Kuzan. He's much more powerful than Forseus.
He could protect Alisa where our poor credit could not."

Maria, Ami, and Rakeli,
Alisa's old servants from her parents' home, had protected and aided Alisa as
best they could in the years since she'd been forced to marry Forseus.
Carefully concealing their loyalties for fear of Forseus dismissing them, they
had been able to smooth some of the sorrow of her existence.

They were all very aware of
her relationship with Prince Kuzan since Maria had insisted Ami follow Alisa
that morning when the carriage had come from Prince Kuzan, to insure their
mistress was in no danger. After viewing the tender reconciliation in the
meadow, Ami assured Maria that the Prince was not a dangerous villain intent on
harming Alisa. On the contrary, he had brought an obvious ecstatic happiness to
their young mistress, and her faithful servants were silently pleased to see
Alisa singing again after years of quiet, hopeless despair.

If the question of morals
were to be raised, the inhuman marriage forced on the young fifteen-year-old
girl they loved was the most immoral of acts in their minds. That union was a
travesty of the bonds of marriage, obscene and repulsive.