“I came up here as soon as I was told,” she whispers against me, “but the lord’s guards were still watching thedoor, and I had to wait until they left. I thought Lord Henri had…”
She’s so soft, so small. The amount of love in her touch is enough to make tears come to my eyes, and I wish my hands weren’t still bond so I could squeeze her close.
“Thank you for coming,” I tell her. “I don’t want to be alone. Not now.” My own voice sounds strange to me. Too breathy and weak. I try to swallow, but as the muscles of my throat work, a sharp pain shoots from my shoulder, up my neck to my jaw.
“When Mr. Brenin told me that he found you here, I was sure you were dead. I was sure he finally killed you.”
Goosebumps crawl over my skin at the mention of Avrum. In the hazy fog that is my memory of the night before, I distinctly remember seeing him here in Henri’s room. His deep brown eyes looking down at me, his arms wrapped around me, and him pleading with me to wake up. But then, he’d left the room, left me alone with Henri.
Anger snaps through me. He was here, he saw what Herni had done to me, yet he’d done nothing to help me. He’d walked away.
“He didn’t know, miss,” Emma says, tilting her chin up to study my face. “Mr. Brenin didn’t know about the lord and what’s been happening.” Her green eyes sparkle with innocence. “I saw his face, miss. He didn’t know—”
“I saw his face too,” I bite out. Emma scrambles off me. “I saw his face when he found me lying in the corner there half-naked and practically dead. And again, when he watched Henri’s men tie me to his bed.”
That man deserves no sympathy, especially from me. Even if he hadn’t known, he’d done nothing to help mewhen finally faced with it. Nothing! He had just left me there to suffer.
“I may be alive now, but I don’t know how much longer I will last,” I say.
“Please don’t talk like that,” she replies. “I hate it when you talk like that.”
“I know you don’t like hearing it, but it’s true. I don’t know how much more I can stand of this.”
Emma covers her mouth with her hands.
“I have to find a way out of here,” I go on, “and I want you to come with me, Emma.”
Like all the times I’d mentioned it before, Emma’s reply is only silence and fear. She stares at me with panic-filled eyes.
“Please, Emma. I’ll have it all planned out before we go. We can leave right before morning and—”
She shakes her head. “No, no, no. I can’t!”
I sigh, and try to change my tone to something gentler. “I’m sorry, dear. I shouldn’t have brought it up again. Forgive me?”
She nods. “Of course, miss. I just get so scared… We can get in great trouble for even thinking such things.”
“I know, I know. It is selfish of me to worry you this way.”
“Is there anything I could get you now that I am here?” she asks, wanting to change the subject. “Some tea, perhaps?”
My eyes lift to my wrists bound above her head. “What I would really like is to get out of these ropes.”
Emma froze. “Oh, miss, I don’t know if I should…”
“You don’t have to,” I say. “I will do it.”
“How?”
My gaze searches the canopy. What I need is something sharp enough to slice through these ropes.
Like a letter opener.
“The connecting door, there,” I say quickly, and jerk my head toward Henri’s adjourning door, “in the study, there should be a silver letter opener on his desk. Get that for me, but be careful.”
Emma stares at me for a moment, unsure. When I give her a reassuring nod, she moves to the door on light feet.
“Be quick and touch nothing but the letter opener,” I whisper, and watch as she presses her ear against the wood of the door, wait a moment before turning the handle, and then push it open. She disappears inside.
