To Have and to Hold (3 page)

Isobel fought back a pang of longing for
those sweet fun-filled days of her youth.
 
She had learnt the hard way that those days were gone for good.
 
Life could be truly cruel and unforgiving to
those of the weaker sex.
 

Throughout her
early childhood, her parents rarely talked about her father’s younger brother,
Uncle Rupert.
 
His was a name shrouded in
myth and mystery.
 
In her youthful
imaginings, Isobel had frequently dreamt he was a pirate buccaneer on his many
Ocean adventures, or a dastardly highwayman full of dangerous intentions.
  
The reality was not as adventurous nor
anything near as magical as all that, she thought cynically.
 
The reality was harsh, brutal and
unforgiving. The man was evil personified.
 

With a cruel
reputation of gambling and shady business dealings, his entire livelihood was
questionable.
 
His associates from the
lower end of the social spectrum were just as mysterious and equally brutal.
His wealth materialised from no reasonable source, and vanished again just as
quickly.
 
Nobody knew what he actually
did to earn his place in society or his living.
 
Had they asked, his cold ruthlessness immediately surfaced leaving one without
information and feeling distinctly threatened.

It was the cold
reminder of just how brutal her Uncle could be that gave Isobel the strength
she needed to make it to her goal.
 
At
the far corners of the sprawling mansion was her brother’s old bedroom.
 

‘Oh God Peter,
why did you have to go and leave me like this?” Isobel’s voice was a mere
shiver in the cold midnight air.
 
She
watched in horror as her breath fogged before her as she whispered, and she
immediately slammed her mouth shut, her blood pounding in her ears as the
familiar fear surfaced once again.
  

Tears stung her
eyes as she softly eased towards her elder
brother
Peter’s room
and the brief sanctity, she knew it offered her.
 
At the far corner of the main building to her
own room, she knew a rose trellis ran the length of the house.
 
During his youth, Peter had often used this
method of escaping the house and in doing so had secured it tightly to the wall
to make it strong enough to carry his weight.
 
Isobel fervently hoped the ravages of time hadn’t rendered it useless
now for it was her only way out.

“Still, a broken
neck is better than a life at his merciless hands.”
 
Isobel murmured starkly as she glanced around
the looming doorway before her.
 
As she
entered and eased the door closed with a quiet click behind her, it became
apparent that little had changed.
 
Covered
in dust cloths and old sheets, the furniture hadn’t been moved nor had it been
aired for some considerable time.
 
Dust
motes were clearly visible even in the darkness. However, despite the ravages
of time a faint scent that was distinctly Peter was still redolent in the
air.
 

Isobel’s chest
tightened with a wave of grief so strong she wasn’t sure her knees would
support her and she leant briefly against the wall to gather herself.
 
She desperately longed to lie down upon the
bed and give in to the sobs that threatened to choke her but with each passing
moment, dawn was approaching and the risk of discovery increased.
 
It was imperative to both her, and Kitty that
she got out of the house.
 

It took several
minutes of jiggling the stubborn metal latch on the bedroom window before the
old ironwork finally released and allowed her to slide the rickety frame
upwards.
 
A quick study outside revealed
the trellis still to be where Peter had secured it.
 
Carefully easing her leg out of the window,
Isobel paused and scowled downwards into the gloom.
 
Peter had said scaling the trellis was
risking his neck, and he had been unencumbered by skirts.
 
Frowning down at the crumpled and soiled
linen of her dress, Isobel slowly eased her leg back into the room and turned
towards the darkness with a frown.

“Now
what?”
 
She muttered considering her options.
 
She certainly wouldn’t get very far dressed
as she was.
 
Although she was not in
finery by any stretch of the imagination, she was still easy to recognise.
 
She would fall victim to every
ne’r
do well within one hundred miles!
 
If she was to survive the first day alone she
could not afford to leave any trail for her Uncle to follow.

When Peter had
ventured into the village, he had been dressed as one of the locals not as the
eldest son of a Lord.
 
Frantically
searching her memory, she vaguely recalled his mentioning a small drawer hidden
in the bottom of his linen press.
 
Several moments later she pulled out a somewhat musty pair of buff
breeches and rough cotton shirt, along with a smelly pair of old boots, a thin
jacket, flat cap and a long riding cloak.
 
Without hesitation, Isobel quickly donned the clothes, carefully making
sure the telling mound of her breasts were tightly bound with torn off strips
of her petticoat.
 
Dubiously she squinted
through the darkness at the size of the boots before tying the boot laces
together and hanging them around her neck.
 
Quickly putting her dress along with her shawl into the hidden drawer,
she eased it closed, pleased when she was rewarded with a soft click.
 

Feeling somewhat
reassured by the lingering scent and ephemeral presence of her elder brother
surrounding her, she returned to the window and eased herself out into the
darkness of the night.

Her heart
thumped heavily in her chest as her fingers locked tightly on the
criss-crossing timbers of the trellis.
 
She fought the surge of bile in her throat as she glanced down into the
gaping maw of inky blackness beneath her willing her trembling in her knees to
stop long enough to hold her upright, she fought desperately to let go of the
trellis and slide the window closed.
 

“You’ve come
this far, don’t let it beat you now!”
 
She chastised herself sternly as she eased the window silently downwards
and began to make her way through the rough thorn-laden rosebushes to the
ground below.
 

Isobel fought to
keep her knees from buckling as she reached the safety of the solid
ground.
 
Thankful for the small mercy of
being in one piece, she eased Peter’s boots onto her chilled feet before pulling
her meagre jacket and cloak around her thin shoulders with a shiver, wishing
briefly she had taken the time to bring her shawl anyway.
 
Ruefully she looked downwards at her
masculine attire and considered the eyebrows that would be raised should she don
a shawl to match!
 
Now that certainly
would draw attention!

Shivering at the
cool night air that ruffled the loose folds of her shirt Isobel pushed away
from the house and quickly took off across the yard, careful to keep off the
gravel and deep within the shadows of the low standing hedgerows.
 

Within minutes,
she had disappeared among the shadows of the woodland to the side of the house,
a mere wisp of a memory in the night.
 
So
thin and silent was her tread that anybody bothering to look out into the
gardens would have seen little but the shifting of the shadows in the darkened
garden.
 
Certainly, nothing that would
give rise to forewarn of the looming change of events that was to come.

For hours, she
trudged onwards, feet aching, desperately considering the options available to
her.
 
Valiantly ignoring the increasing
pounding in her head and empty rumble of her stomach she stopped only briefly
to drink from a tiny stream on the outskirts of a small hamlet several miles
away as dawn rose above the horizon.
 
Although she blessed the foresight of her elder brother for putting the
boots into the drawer with his clothing, she
wished his feet
were somewhat smaller as the boots had begun to chafe the tender soles of her
feet several miles earlier, and she was already sore and uncomfortable.
 
How far away was Cumbria anyway?
 

“Oh dear Lord,”
Isobel murmured.
 
She wished she had
taken a few moments to purloin one of her Uncle’s horses, but knowing him he
would take great delight in having her arrested for horse theft.
 
At least on foot, although slow, she could
vanish relatively easily as long as she kept out of sight and away from the
busy roads.

Fear compelled
her to ignore her physical discomfort and continue onwards.
 
She stopped once or twice to study the
mileage stones and knew that as long as she went in the opposite direction to
London, she would be heading north and towards Cumbria.
 
Vaguely, she could recall going through it as
a young child to visit a distant relative and knew it was some considerable
distance away, but as a child her perception of the passing countryside from
the window of a speedy carriage was vastly different to those of an adult on
foot.
 
Nothing looked familiar.
 
She had only her wits and her vague sense of
direction with which to guide her, and that thought didn’t fill her with much
confidence at all!

Having spent
most of the night walking exhaustion was beckoning rapidly.
 
She had no idea where she was but could only
hope it was several miles away from Gosport Hall and her uncle Rupert.
 
Being an excellent horsewoman, she knew that
the distance she had spent most of the night and day creating could be easily
covered on horseback in half the time and given her dire situation time and
distance were of the essence.

For certain Kitty
would have been discovered by now. Isobel prayed that the woman hadn’t been
suspected of helping her.
     

“Now
where to?”
Isobel
murmured, her breath coming in shallow pants.
 
Tears pricked her eyes as she tipped her head backwards and looked at
the twinkling stars through the heavy canopy of trees.
 
Dusk settled over the horizon, and already it
had begun to grow cold.
 
There was a fine
tremor in her fingers from exhausted hunger that had grown worse throughout the
day.
 
Despite the ephemeral threat of discovery
by her Uncle, she physically couldn’t continue.
  

Oh how she
longed for the solid comfort of a chair, a warm fire and a good meal!
 
She spent most of the day walking through
fields and skirting towns.
 
For miles and
miles, she trudged onwards ducking low to avoid farmers and the watchful eyes
inside passing carriages.
 
So far, she
had not seen any sign of her Uncle or any of his servants but knew
she
that although she couldn’t see him, it didn’t mean he
wasn’t there.