She smiled for the first time in a longwhile. “Not Paine, but Plutarch. Anymore questions, LordRutland?”
“Proves you are a weed among stones. So, I’min the company of an educated thief. Your name?”
His voice boomed like a thunderclap, ademand not a request. She stiffened, her emotions too raw for hisscorn. No reason to go into her real history, unable to prove hertrue ancestry in any event. She chose to give her adopted name.“Alexandra Elwins.”
“Miss Elwins,” he repeated.
She looked heavenward. His reckless defianceof Damiano and Captain Diogo, left no doubt of his authoritativenature. With all the ferocity of a winter tempest, he dared toquarrel with his captors. She reversed her earlier opinion of hisintelligence. He was insane or feeble-minded. “Why did you championme?”
He sighed. “You needed my protection.”
“I am grateful.” Regardless of hisbelligerence, she needed someone to communicate with as much as theair she breathed. “What do you think motivated the man who abductedyou and your sister, and lured your father and brother to thelaboratory?”
“If I knew”
His voice deepened, too complicated to pointto one single emotion.
“I am unable to explain anything,” he said,the sharpness in his voice betraying his unwillingness to do so. Ifhe wanted to keep his own counsel, then fine.
Alexandra closed her eyes, fighting anonslaught of images that flashed through her head. The leeringDamiano dropping into her cell, his rough hands and drooling mouthmoving over her body. So far, he’d been put off by the captain’swatchful eye.
The smirking Damiano indulged in countlesstaunts of the new hell awaiting her. The terrors she would face inBrazil. Stripped naked, men groping her breasts, to be prodded andprobed in the most intimate places, and then sold to the highestbidder. To be used by men to satisfy their lusts. Her mind spunwith the odious insults Damiano had described over the past weeks,in lurid detail, what ghastly fate was in store for her.
She squeezed her eyes shut.Think ofother things.Positive things. How to escape…or the low, deepand commanding voice of her fellow prisoner.
Was the man on the other side of the wallthe heir to the Duke of Rutland? She had seen him once, two yearsbefore, while visiting London. He was talking to friends in frontof the Palace of Westminster. Molly’s friend had affirmed theRutland ducal coach and Alexandra had glimpsed him from behind.Dark-haired. Broad-shouldered. Would a handsome face match thatrich masculine voice of his? Perhaps not. More a haughty,pinched-faced aristocrat, pale, and possessing a penchant to wipehis beak-nose.
She recalled a scandal following LordRutland, a noted pugilist after someone had died at his hands. Nowonder Captain Damiano kept him drugged. The newspapers hadtrumpeted that Lord Rutland had committed murder with one fatalpunch to another Lord. Competing testimony by witnesses, fanned bysensational articles in the London Chronicle had moved publicopinion against Lord Rutland. She shrugged, unable to determine hisguilt or not.
In her cell for days, Alexandra had countedeach grain and knot in the planks. She peered through the hatch,every inch of canvas fully drawn, the bellies so rounded and hardthey looked ready to burst, and speeding her away from her belovedEngland. She sat in the gloom, her companion choosing to sink intohis sullen reflections. His silence taunted her, reminding her howshe had arrived at this wretched point in her life.
Isolated in Deconshire, Alexandra had feltdifferent from the people who resided there, different in her wayof growing up. Old memories taunted her of a far easier life, andgoaded misplaced childhood years to the surface. Driven bycuriosity and frustrated by her adoptive parents’ lack ofinformation, Alexandra had resorted to snooping. She tore thecottage apart and found a gold covered Bible, far more elegant thananything Molly and Samuel could afford.
Written in the family Bible were her realparent’s names. She had confronted Molly and Samuel Elwins who hadposed as her parents. To have been lied to all those years.
Molly and Samuel sat her down and talked.Her real mother, Lady Lucy Sutherland had died during childbirth.Molly Elwins had been hired as Alexandra’s wet nurse and nanny,nurturing Alexandra. Two years later, her real father, BaronStephen Sutherland had remarried and soon afterward, died.
Molly had doubts about the new baroness.When Baron Sutherland had died suddenly while in good health, Mollybecame even more suspicious and started eavesdropping. From anoverheard conversation Molly had learned Alexandra’s stepmother,Lady Ursula Sutherland, had poisoned the baron, thus enabling herown son, Willean, to become the heir of the barony.
What terrified Molly was an unfortunateaccident planned for the three-year old Alexandra to ensureWillean’s inheritance. Powerless to prove the foul deed, and toprotect the little girl, Molly and Samuel had swept the child,Alexandra away in the middle of the night, leaving no trace oftheir footsteps. For seventeen years, they hid in the small fishingvillage of Deconshire in southern England where they provided asimple and good life.
Despite Molly and Samuel’s good intentions,Alexandra, at twenty years, simmered with a fury for being deceivedfor so long and had refused to speak to them. She had waited forMolly to leave for London to visit a friend. Part in rebellion oftheir deception and mainly because she needed answers, Alexandraput on Samuel’s sturdy woolen coat and had set out on foot, leavingDeconshire behind her. Catching a ride on a miller’s wagon to thenext town, she bought passage by coach and traveled to herancestral home.
Despite the danger, and under cover ofdarkness, she broke into the library.
The key to her heritage was there. All herlife, visions of her real father had haunted her. The wainscoting,his desk, the smell of leather volumes filling the shelvestriggered a flood of memoriesriding her Shetland pony, parties withcakes, her first puppy, sliding down a bannister, her father’slaughter. She had wiped away a sudden rush of tears and rifledthrough the desk. A lamp fell. Footsteps beat a staccato rhythm inthe hall. Willean appeared and overpowered her, and then Ursula,summoned from her chambers, materialized. Willean refused hismother’s demands to kill Alexandra, and then solved their problemby shipping her off with Captain Diogo, a smuggler and businessassociate.
TheSantanascareened to the right.Alexandra flailed her arms, slapping her hands against the greasyplanks to catch her balance. Rats scratched against the wall. Shehad no one to blame but herself for her miserable destiny.
Beyond the wall, Lord Rutland remained castin stygian darkness. He did not offer his thoughts. Had theresidual laudanum made him fall to sleep? Tucking her tatteredwoolen skirts about her drawn-up knees, she adjusted her filthylinen blouse, and then snuggled beneath Samuel’s woolen coat,grateful she had taken it for the warmth it provided. She leanedback, tilted her head up. Through the shrouds, the heavens chasedthe day into night, the glimmering of stars her only companions. Ashadow passed over the grate. The figure of a man. A key rasped ina lock. The hatch scraped open.Damiano.
He swung his feet over the edge.
“No,” she cried and scrambled to her feet,arms waving and pummeling his legs.
He dropped onto her. “Senhorita, you willexperience a man.” He covered her mouth, the rancid odor of rum andfish penetrated her cell.
“Leave her alone! Fight me, Portuguesescum,” bellowed Lord Rutland. He kicked the walls, making a racketto alert the captain. “Captain Diogo! Captain Diogo!
