His Duty, Her Destiny Read online

  ‘Get up!’ he snapped.

  Holding a hand to her face, she did as she was told, with difficulty. This was worse than the childhood muck-heap, she thought. This was deliberately aggressive, not accidental. ‘If you’re going to hit me again,’ she mumbled, ‘would you mind giving me some warning?’

  ‘That was for your righteous brother,’ he said. ‘It was also for you, for playing the whore, my dear.’

  ‘How dare you say that?’ she said, furiously. ‘You have slandered me in public, and now you dare to—’

  His hand shot out only a split second after his eyes gave her the warning, this time to hold her chin in a cruel grip and push her back against the wall with a thud. Above their heads, the sound of running feet mingled with the crash of thunder, absorbing her cry of fear. His face became a mask of petulant animosity. ‘Dare to what?’ he snarled, pushing his nose so close to hers that she could smell the reek of stale wine on his breath. ‘So, tell me exactly what you were up to in the woodland with that great lout only an hour or two ago? In his arms, weren’t you, my dear? With your kirtle down over your pretty ivory shoulders. Eh?’ Pinning her back to the wall by the throat, he placed his other hand in the neckline of her bliaud and, in one savage assault, ripped downwards, tearing the fabric like paper as far as her waist.

  For all her pain and numbness, Nicola fought to keep herself together and his hands from doing more damage. But the harm was done, and the breast that had been the object of Fergus’s attention was now exposed to Lord John’s wrath. The wound had started to bleed again.

  He stared. ‘Little whore!’ he whispered. ‘Been playing games, have you, my dear? Is this how you like it, then? A bit of violence? And I’ve been tip-toeing around you all this time and getting nowhere. And no wonder. Why didn’t you tell me? I could do the same…’ He reached behind him for his dagger, but her hands grappled at his arm, fumbling, trying to out-reach the hand at her throat. Frantically, she clung to his arm, shaking with terror.

  ‘No…no!’ she cried, taking fistfuls of the soft velvet. ‘He’s my betrothed…we’re to be married…I swear it. It was an accident, that’s all.’

  Relaxing his hold of her, he stood back, concerned that she had pulled him out of shape, stroking the velvet into place. ‘Oh, really,’ he said, scathingly. ‘So show me the ring.’

  ‘There isn’t one yet. I’ve only just accepted him. Where is he? Tell me where he is, Lord John.’ The pain in her head made her see double and her eyelid was already swelling. ‘Please,’ she said, ‘tell me what you’ve done with him.’

  His face was twisted with hate as he watched her try to pull the edges of linen together over her nakedness. ‘You would have me believe you were a virgin,’ he said, angrily, ‘and now I find that you’re second-hand, and marked, too. What am I going to get for you now, I wonder?’

  ‘Get for me? What do you mean? Where am I?’

  With no man to oppose him, the Earl gave vent to his grievances, sparing her nothing of the malice he had kept carefully hidden until now. As she tried to cover herself, he pulled her hands away and ripped at the torn bliaud until she was again half-naked, shamed by his blatant examination. ‘They were right,’ he said. ‘You are more difficult to get at than is good for you, my lady virgin. Maybe I should let them all have a turn on you, after all their efforts. Eh?’

  ‘Please…Lord John…tell me what you’ve done with Sir Fergus. None of us have ever done you any harm. This is unworthy of you, my lord.’

  His eyes never left her body. ‘Oh, I don’t know. I think it’s very worthy of me. In fact, I think you’ll be worth quite a packet. Enough to pay my debts.’

  ‘What do you mean? What are you going to do? Where am I?’ The words would hardly come out straight, so painful was her head and the scattering of stars that swam before her eyes. Never had she felt so ill. ‘Where?’ he said with a laugh. He released her hands, allowing her to hold her clothes together again. ‘You’re on a Venetian merchant galley, my dear lady. The captain is a friend of mine, a man who appreciates a good bargain when he sees one. He and my agent take good bodies like yours—virgin bodies, my dear…’ he shoved his face nastily against hers ‘…fetch a good price on the slave markets of Turkey. Now don’t tell me the idea doesn’t thrill you a little, you with your open house and vast circle of friends. That’ll be something for the grand Coldynghams to be proud of, won’t it, my dear Nicola? Turn round!’

  With unnecessary violence he pushed her round and held her wrists together behind her back, this time passing the rope round her elbows and pulling them inwards so that it bit painfully through the fine silken sleeves. When he threw her viciously to the floor, she saw the reason, for righting herself became almost impossible.

  Without another word, he left her, shooting the bolts of the door and taking advantage of the poor visibility outside to make an exit that few would bother to witness. With clothes like his, Nicola thought, he would need all the diversions he could get.

  It was to be her last thought for some time: the abuses and injuries, fights and fears, the cold and wet, the terrible predicament of her surroundings now began crowding in upon her and with one fleeting vision of the man she wanted lying in a pool of blood on that desolate track, she succumbed to the icy sweat that crept along her limbs and into her head. Silently, she slipped into the inviting black oblivion.

  ‘Signora…. signora! Wake. Wake up, per favore.’

  A man’s deep voice pierced the haze in Nicola’s mind, reducing the blackness to vaguely encouraging sounds, and hands lifted her, even though she could not understand her lethargy.

  ‘Who are you?’ the voice persisted. ‘Santo cielo! What’s happened?’ It was kindly, surprised and musically Italian. The face, when the swirling mists cleared, was bronzed, neatly bearded, and belonging to a man of mature years, judging by the lined skin and the wealth of experience in the sharp eyes.

  She felt nauseous, but the man needed an answer. ‘Lady Nicola Coldyngham,’ she whispered. She glanced down at herself, flinching more at the pain in her head than at her semi-naked state, aware of each painful move as her bonds were cut. Her released arms returned as if on rusty hinges to cover herself, though she knew her rescuer must have seen. Was this the Venetian captain who traded in slaves? His manner suggested sympathy and concern rather than brutishness.

  ‘Vino!’ the man said to someone behind him. ‘Pronto!’ He placed a pad of something behind her head and lifted her so that she could sip the wine, then he took off his own mantle of wet-smelling wool and covered her. ‘Giovanni Foscari, captain of this ship,’ he said. Then, picking her up easily as if she were a child, he carried her through the door and up the short flight of stairs to the upper deck.

  Nicola blinked at the fading light and at the rain falling in sheets and bouncing off the boards but, up another short stairway, they were beneath a large canvas awning covering one end of the deck upon which the rain thundered unceasingly. Here, in this private tent, Signor Foscari placed her with hands the size of loaves and the gentleness of a woman on his own cushioned chair.

  ‘Ees better,’ he said. ‘Piero!’ he called sharply to the man who had brought the wine. ‘What’s been going on here while I’ve been ashore? Who brought the signora on board?’

  ‘Your pardon, capitano, but I did not see her come aboard. All I saw was three men carrying a laundry basket and a nobleman following. They took it down there to the food locker. It had just started to rain, sir, and the oarsmen were dashing for cover. I didn’t see them coming out or rowing away.’

  Nicola saw the anger mounting in the captain’s eyes and gestures, but the next part of the conversation was in Italian and she was little the wiser. She began to understand more when the captain released a volley of expletives as picturesque as Fergus’s, and when she heard a mention of George’s name, then Queen’s Wharf, she realised that Master Piero had appreciated the urgency of his mission.

  ‘I’ve sent him to find Lord Coldyngham,’ th
e captain told her. ‘Now, what can you tell me about how you came to be here on a Genoese galley, my lady?’

  ‘Genoese?’ Nicola whispered, accepting the glass of wine again. ‘But…Lord John told me it was a Venetian merchant galley. Was he trying to fool me, or…?’ She winced at the sting of wine inside her sore mouth, and her hand shook on the stem of the glass.

  ‘Venetian?’ The burly bald-headed captain turned aside to spit the word out, literally. ‘Hah! Either your lord was trying to fool you, my lady, or he cannot tell one city’s galley from another. He sounds like un’ idiota, si? He did thees?’ His fingers gently touched her cheek and swollen eye, though his own eyes strayed further afield.

  She found it difficult and painful to speak, but this was important. ‘Yes, he and some others ambushed me while I was out riding with Sir Fergus Melrose beyond Charing Cross. I have no idea what’s happened to him. Please can you find him for me? They may have killed him.’ Her eyes filled with tears.

  The captain’s face rekindled like a new fire. ‘Sir Fergus was weeth you?’

  ‘Yes. You know him, sir?’

  ‘I should say I do, signora. Sir Fergus, ’e own half of this galley. I am his galley-master. I shall find him for you.’ Nimbly, he disappeared through the canvas opening to lean over the rail above the deck, bellowing into cupped hands at the rowing boat pulling through the rain towards the wharf. ‘Piero! Go to Holyrood Wharf first. Tell them to find Sir Fergus. Pronto—pronto! Beyond Charing Cross.’

  There was an answering yell before Signor Foscari returned, wiping the streams of rain from his bald pate. He placed his hands like buttresses upon the carpeted table, leaning towards Nicola. ‘He’ll be back for you, thees Lord John, will he? Ees good,’ he said, nodding. ‘Then we shall be ready for heem, eh?’ He smiled at her and then, as if he knew all about such things, he helped her discreetly to turn her bliaud round, back-to-front, so that her modesty was restored. Lifting her feet up on to a stool, he tucked his warm mantle and an extra blanket around her and begged her to excuse him. ‘I am not about to leave you, bella signora,’ he said. ‘I shall be down below. Be patient. There is no danger.’

  It was not the way Nicola preferred to do things, but she had to accept that a man’s reaction would be to catch the man who had used his ship, mistakenly or otherwise, for his villainous schemes. If it had been left to her, Lord John could have rotted in hell for all she cared; her main concern was to find Fergus Melrose and to bring him back to her side. There were important things she had to say to him before the sun went down which, to all intents and purposes, it had already done.

  She was to remember that dreadful time of waiting as one of the lowest periods of her life, for her battered body lacked the strength to rise above the deep despair in her mind that insisted Fergus was dead. After all the dangers he had experienced in his twenty-nine exciting years, this must surely be an attack he could not survive. The gang who had shown little mercy to her would show even less to him, and they would have been ordered not to leave him alive to tell what happened.

  Drifting in and out of consciousness, the blackest and most terrible fears bore down upon her, obliterating her physical pains and the crushing shame of Lord John’s scorn, the defamation of her character, his lewd and frightening threats, though these hung like ghouls ready to rend her delicate womanly essence. More, far more than those hurts was the terrible pain of knowing that, because of her waywardness, she had caused the death of the only man to claim her love. Yes, she loved him. There had never been a time when she had not, even through the fighting and slanging, the rejections and stalling, she had loved him. And now he would never know.

  The pain was too great for tears. Once again, she passed out.

  The torrential rain drummed upon the canvas awning, rattling it noisily and waking her with a start. She found that she was still shaking, as she had been through the black dreams, and her head was pounding to a sickly rhythm…or was that the drumming of feet she could hear?

  Men’s voices rose above the din, the clash of steel, bumps and yells, the hard slam of a door. Fergus? George? Had the Genoese captain caught Lord John, as he said he would? Would he come to tell her what was happening?

  The thud of feet sounded upon the wooden stairway as Nicola heaved herself up in anticipation, then came the hat with many folds and, unbelievably, the surly wet face of Lord John, rising up to the deck like a dark menace from her worst fears.

  She gasped, stumbling on shaking legs, clinging with tight fists upon the cloak and blanket, noting the greedy hard eyes of the four men who followed their leader. Sheathing their daggers and grinning at their most recent success below decks, they piled up behind him like so many soaked brigands drunk on killing, and Nicola’s blood froze in her veins as she recalled Lord John’s suggestion of their reward. Her mouth dried with a new fear.

  ‘So,’ he said, ‘the good capitano brought you up here, did he, my dear? Well, it seems my boys had a problem telling a Venetian galley from a Genoese one, but no matter, we’ve sorted it out, and the capitano is not my friend after all, is he, lads?’ He turned to them, laughing. ‘I think he had something in mind for us other than the lovely Nicola. Pity. He didn’t put up much of a fight.’ He slapped the chest of a squat dark man who still breathed noisily from the exertion of boarding. ‘This,’ he said, ‘is my Venetian agent Agostino who deals in flesh. Human flesh. Preferably healthy, reasonably comely and, above all, young and virginal. But that’s something he’ll have to find out for himself, since there seems to be some doubt about it. He has little English, but he’s willing to take my word that you’re unblemished. He’ll take you.’

  ‘What about us?’ said one of the men, eyeing Nicola. ‘You said—’

  ‘Later, you fool,’ Lord John snarled. ‘I’ve told him she’s a virgin, not a whore. I want his money for her first.’

  Something in Nicola’s mind snapped at that point, though she could not have said exactly what it was that triggered it—perhaps the men’s barefaced leers, perhaps one insult too many, or the realisation that the expected help had failed. Without even thinking about the odds stacked against her, she freed one arm and, taking a bold stride forward towards her tormentor, swung a hand hard across his face, knocking his head sideways and sending his hat away across the deck. The incredulity in his eyes was worth, she thought, whatever punishment he had in mind for her, but she would make her point before it was too late.

  ‘Swine!’ she screeched. ‘Low, filthy cur! You shame your own breed, whatever that is.’ And before he could recover or refocus, she hit him again with a backhander that sent him staggering into the rail. It was the first time she had ever hit anyone in her life, but the rage that boiled inside her was also a first, as was every other emotion of the last few hours. ‘That’s for Sir Fergus Melrose,’ she screamed at him. ‘And the other is for me.’

  She was in two minds, at that point, whether to challenge the whole pack of them or to keep the blanket tight in her fist and pray that they would keep their distance along with their amazed expressions and grins of admiration. Fortunately, she was prevented from choosing. Just when she had abandoned all hope of seeing her beloved Fergus and her family again, a slow movement along the bulwarks behind the crowd of men caught her eye, slow shining wet shapes, pouring silently, leg by leg, body by body, on to the slippery deck, daggers glinting in the fading light…faces grim…and there…yes, there was the unmistakable figure of…no…yes, it was him. It was Fergus!

  She truly believed she was imagining things, her mind being so confused by loss, by pain, and now by the intoxicating gratification of physical revenge. She swayed on her feet, clutching at the captain’s table, mesmerised by the slow advance of Lord John’s ugly gang and of the silent crew who came up behind them, unseen and unheard. Lord John’s face was contorted by fury. ‘Take her, then!’ he said. ‘Do what you like with her!’

  There was a concerted rush and a leap of figures, a struggle, some shouts of surprise and ang
er, and then it was all over for the surly and disappointed crowd of bound captives as Fergus and his men, far outnumbering Lord John’s gang, took possession of their ship. The lovely, courageous and bruised woman with them said only three faint words before she was caught up by a pair of strong arms, scooped against a wet leathery chest to the sound of, ‘Aye, lass. Well done, little tiger.’

  ‘Fergus…oh, my love.’

  But the noise was too great for Fergus to catch her whisper and, even if he had heard, it is doubtful if he would have believed his ears. For Nicola, it was enough for her to be held safely by him during that hazy journey home.

  From that glorious point onwards, things ought to have improved between the two of them, if only because they had found each other alive and relatively well. And indeed, after the first few moments of relief and euphoria, no one would have known any different, with so many male onlookers, that is.

  It would have helped Fergus’s cause, however, if he had been listening a little more intently to the advice given him by Nicola’s brother on that critical day at Bishops-gate when they had breakfasted together.

  ‘It doesn’t mean she’s tough or insensitive to pain,’ George had told him. ‘She’s not. She’s a woman now, with all a woman’s needs, and she’ll not easily be won over.’

  Fergus had been listening, but he had not taken it in. Seeing her hit Lord John, moments before, had only reinforced what he remembered of her: tough, spirited, madly courageous and desperate not to show any sign of hurt. Many times he had seen her bruised and bleeding, stung and scratched, but never once had she whined like a girl or run crying to her nurse. She had changed physically, as one might expect, but that outburst and assault upon her male aggressors on the galley seemed to Fergus clear proof that she was tough, and she was able to handle pain as well as any man. She had raced against men only the other day, she had fought with them in Southwark, and now what more evidence did he need after her feisty performance today? She had a badly bruised face, but that was from the rough ride in the laundry basket, so she had said. Otherwise…? Well, she had been very quiet on the ride back to the River House, but that was not surprising after the ultimatum he had imposed earlier, now expired. No real harm done. Just another uncomfortable adventure, which would not have happened at all if she had not gone galloping off so far ahead.