With gentle fingers she felt all around the leather collar he had put about her throat. It was fastened in the back of her neck by an iron padlock that was attached to a chain which was affixed into the wall of the cottage. It would be impossible to remove it without either the key to the lock or a knife with which to cut the leather. Her only option, therefore, was to somehow get the chain out of the wall. Turning about so that she faced the wall she felt it. Stone, worse luck. Jasmine almost cried with her frustration, but then she began to run her fingers slowly over the wall, seeking the ring that held the chain. Finding it she felt around it, and a slow smile lit her features. The ring’s bolt had been set into the mortar holding the stones. The mortar was dry and old, and crumbled beneath her very touch. She pulled at the ring, but while it wriggled about, it held fast.
I need something to help me loosen the mortar,she thought, and was immediately discouraged. If there was anything useful within the cottage, she couldn’t see it, and besides, the chain allowed her no latitude farther than a few feet. There was nothing within her reach. She shivered, yanking her shawl about her shoulders. As she did, her hand made contactwith the clan badge Jemmie had given her, which was pinned to the Leslie tartan of her shawl. She almost cried aloud with relief.
Quickly she undid the badge and, with the pin, began to chip away at the crumbling mortar. She had to force herself to work carefully, for the badge was her only weapon. The town was at least two miles away. By the time Piers St.Denis rode down into Leith, found an inn, obtained food and wine, and rode back again, it would be at least two or more hours. There was time, provided she did not panic and damage the pin. Jasmine chipped, and chipped, stopping every now and then to wriggle the ring. The sound of the pin scraping against the mortar seemed at times very loud, for there was not another sound to be heard but her anxious breathing. She had to get away from St.Denis. This was likely to be her only chance, Jasmine sensed. If he violated her further, she would never again be able to face Jemmie. And what if, by his brutality, the marquis harmed the child she was now carrying?
And then, when she thought she would never be able to free herself in time, the ring slid loose from the mortar in the wall, and the chain fell with a noisy clank onto the floor. Jasmine scrambled to her feet, legs trembling with her excitement, gathering up the links as best she could.Her shoes? Where were her shoes?She moved carefully about the small room, seeking, feeling. Then she found them, first one, then the other. She eased her way until she reached the single chair and, sitting down, pulled her footwear on quickly. Standing, she considered her next move. She must leave the cottage, of course, but where was she to go? Down to the Leith Road? And once there, what? To Leith or back to Edinburgh?
The first thing was to get out of the cottage, and so, gathering up the chain, Jasmine went to the door, opened it, and moved through. Her horse was unsaddled beneath a small shed at the rear of the cottage, but she would not take him. Itwould be the first thing that the marquis would notice when he returned. Jasmine hurried off down the path that led back to the road. Once there, she briefly hesitated. If she went toward the port, she was likely to run into Piers St.Denis returning from his mission, but if he returned to the cottage and found her missing, he would probably think she was on the road toward Edinburgh and go in that direction to seek her out and bring her back.
Jasmine turned toward Leith. If she heard a horseman coming, she would hide in the ditch beside the road. There was no moon, and it was a dark, misty night. It was very unlikely she would be seen. She could surely gain the town and obtain help. The first thing she wanted was to have this damned collar off her neck. It was rubbing her delicate skin most. She walked swiftly, and, as she did, she contemplated how she would kill Piers St.Denis, for she knew now for certain that she would never again be safe unless he were dead and in his grave.
What a pity this wasn’t India. She would have had him thrown into a pit with a dozen cobras to be stung to death. She contemplated what terror would look like on his handsome face. But she wasn’t in India. Perhaps they could return him to England and have him dragged along behind one of her grandmother’s trading vessels as it made its way out to sea. It would be a most terrifying and slow death. Quite fitting, she thought, for the presumptuous creature who had brutalized the Mughal’s daughter. The Leslies, however, would probably just hang the bastard as she had hanged the man who had murdered her second husband, Rowan Lindley, she finally decided.
The lights of the town were drawing nearer, and she had to consider what she was going to do next. She would make an odd sight, leather collar about her neck, chain still attached to it, as she walked about the streets. She stopped a moment and pinned her blouse together as best as she could. Then she wrapped the chain about her waist, tucking the end into her skirt, and drewher shawl up over her head to hide the leather collar about her neck. It might not have done in the daylight, but in the dim, poorly lit streets of Leith, it would do quite well. Coming into the town itself, she stopped a woman selling herbs and asked her for directions to the harbor.
“East-Street, mistress,” the herb woman said, pointing.
Jasmine hurried onto the narrow street. It had suddenly occurred to her that there might be an O’Malley-Small ship in port, and if there was, she was safe. She gained the docks and, outside the harbormaster’s office, was a large slate board upon which were chalked the names of the ships at dock. Jasmine stopped, and ran her finger down the board. She was almost weeping with nervousness, and disappointment until she reached the last name on the board.Lord Adam!The little coastal freighter her grandmother had named after her grandfather, for he would have no great vessel called by his name. Adam de Marisco had thought it presumption. Noting the location, Jasmine made her way down the docks to where the small boat sat bobbing at its mooring. Who was the freighter’s captain? She didn’t know. Jasmine picked her way up the gangplank. There was only a single lad on watch, but there was a light in the captain’s cabin. Seeing her, the lad on watch came forward.
“We don’t allow no women on board, mistress,” he said firmly.
“I am Jasmine de Marisco Leslie, the countess of Glenkirk,” Jasmine said. “Where is your captain? I must see him at once!”
The lad looked at Jasmine critically. “You don’t look like no countess to me, mistress,” he said boldly.
“Nevertheless I am,” Jasmine replied, drawing herself up proudly. “Now take me to your captain before I box your ears, presumptuous boy! Your manners are wanting, and I shall tellhim. And you will address me asmy lady,not mistress. Do you understand me?”
“Aye, mis … my lady,” the boy said. “If you will follow me.” Well, it wouldn’t be his fault if she was some town whore, he thought. The captain could deal with her, the uppity bitch.
Jasmine followed the lad across the deck. He flung open the door to the cabin house, and motioned her through. She stepped into the cabin, and relief washed over her so hard that her legs buckled, and she had to grab on to the table in the room’s center.“Geoff!”she managed to say. “Thank God it’s you!”
Captain Geoffrey O’Flaherty turned at the sound of her voice. His eyes widened in surprise.“Jasmine?Jesu! It is you!” Then, seeing her obvious state, he put his arms about her. “Cousin, what is it? Why are you here? What has happened? What the hell is this thing about your neck? Ewan,” he called to the boy. “Fetch some wine for her ladyship.” He settled her in a chair and waited while she recovered herself. “Now, tell me, cousin,” he said when she had quaffed the goblet the cabin boy had given her, “but first let me cut that leather from your neck.” Carefully he sliced through it with his knife, and, pulling it off flung it, chain and all onto the floor.
Jasmine took a deep breath. What on earth had happened to her? She had been so strong up until the moment she had seen her cousin. “I thought you were on the East Indies run,” she began, rubbing her neck gingerly.
“I am,” he replied, “but the captain of this vessel fell and broke his leg. I was in port with not another run scheduled for theCardiff Rosefor several weeks. We didn’t have another captain, and mother would not let father takeLord Adamup the coast, so I did. This is my son, Ewan. It’s his first voyage, and if he likes it, he’ll come out the Indies with me in another year. But you did not come to visit, cousin. Tell me what has happened.”
“What do you know of my return from France?” she asked him.
“Precious little,” he answered her. “I returned to learn that you had come back, and you had married Lord Leslie. What else is there, cousin?”
Jasmine told him. She told him of the king’s foolishness and of Piers St.Denis’s refusal to accept defeat, which had led to betrayal and murder. “Jemmie and I have spent the entire summer traveling about Scotland just to avoid him until our messenger could return from England. We have spent the last few days across the Forth at Lord Bruce’s games and planned to leave Edinburgh tomorrow for Glenkirk. I had to go to David Kira before we left, however, and, as I was leaving his house, I was set upon by the marquis and his cutthroats,” Jasmine told him. Then she went on to tell him of her kidnapping, leaving out the more unpleasant details, for she was, she found, uncomfortable even thinking of them.
“Jemmie must be frantic,” Geoffrey O’Flaherty said.
“Maggie, my maid, was with me. They didn’t see her, and I know she hurried right to my husband.”
“But how did St.Denis know where to find you?”
“I think simply bad luck on my part,” Jasmine said. “Just mere chance that I was leaving Goldsmith Alley as St.Denis was passing by it. I don’t know what I would have done, Geoff, if one of Grandmama’s ships hadn’t been in port. I took a chance, and this time my luck was better. Not only a ship, but a cousin who knows me.”
“You will be safe here,” he told her, “for I doubt that this marquis would even consider that you had found such a safe refuge. And you are right, I expect, that finding you gone, he would assume you would attempt to get back to Edinburgh. Where do you think your husband is, Jasmine?”
“Possibly in Edinburgh, Geoff. He could not know that St.Denis had brought me to Leith. The Leslies will probably think we are headed for the borders. They will have alerted their friends there.”
“I want to remain here with you,” Geoff O’Flaherty said, “but Ewan is an excellent horseman and can ride to Edinburgh to alert the earl as to your whereabouts and that St.Denis is still in Leith, if, indeed, he has not fled, being unable to find you.”
“I am so tired,” Jasmine said, and indeed her eyelids were drooping.
