Betrayal. She remembered Richard’s betrayal.
She jerked up, but something cold and hard dug into her wrists, rending an involuntary gasp from her as her bones jolted in their sockets. She looked down and found that she was chained upright, in a wooden chair. Her wrists had been cuffed behind the backrest, the hem of her engagement dress rucked up from where someone had tied her ankles to each chair leg.
She swiveled her neck. The shackles dug into her flesh, limiting her range of motion, but she ignored the pain, straining her eyes to take in every detail. The narrow room was windowless, furnished only with a low cot in one corner and the chair she was currently chained to. Dim light came from a single, naked incandescent bulb hanging from the ceiling. Grills covered a small window cut into the door, much like the door of a jail cell.
Was that where she was? Jail?
Panic rose in her throat. Had she been arrested? Had Richard managed to convince her father of her supposed guilt after all? Surely he couldn’t have. But underestimating Richard was what had landed her here in the first place. Not even Catherine’s warning could have prepared her for this.Some damned thorns,she thought, recalling her best friend’s words.
She closed her eyes, dragging through the rest of the scattered pieces of her memories, but the pain in her head and the desperation swelling in her chest dashed her focus.
She needed to get out of here. She needed to talk to her father. He couldn’t send her away, not again. But if he believed the tale Richard had fabricated, she knew what he would say:You are better off returning to where you came from.
The chains rattled as Poppy wrenched her arms forward, trying to pull out of the cuffs, but her efforts were futile. “Damn it,” she ground through her teeth. “I don’tdeservethis!”
Then she heard it: a man’s voice shouting, the words coarse and unfamiliar. It took her a minute to realize he was speaking Virian. It had been a long time since she’d heard the language, and he was speaking too quickly for her to pick apart the individual words, but his voice jostled something in her head. Her last memory came back to her, snapping into place: Turning around on the driveway. The caterer with the golden tray. A starburst of pain.
She hadn’t been arrested. She’d been abducted by one of the hired help.But why?What could they possibly want from her?
Footsteps echoed outside, drawing closer by the second. She stiffened, drawing herself upright. Her crown of braids had become loose and skewed to one side, and her dress was a crumpled mess, but she was determined to hold herself with dignity, chains or not.
A figure stopped in front of the cell door, their face blocked by the bars on the window. The grinding of a key turning in the lock echoed in the silence. Then the door swung open. The man entered, his head down as he clipped a key ring onto his belt. Her eyes latched onto it. Was the key to her shackles on there too? As he came to stand in front of her, she lifted her gaze to glare at him directly.
She locked eyes with the caterer, the one who had followed her onto the driveway. She hadn’t spared him a second glance at the party, but now she looked?—reallylooked. In the dimly lit cell, his facial structure was all harsh angles and shadows, like a sculpture whose edges had never been sanded down. Full, soft lips, twisted into a smirk, offset the sharpness of his stubbled cheeks and jawbone. His eyes, framed by thick lashes, gleamed with an intensity that was almost predatory. He reminded her of the tigers that noblemen were fond of hunting: handsome at a distance, but lethal in close quarters. Fear knotted itself just below her stomach.
“Who are you?” she demanded, choking back her sour unease. “How dare you chain me? Release me at once.”
The caterer didn’t react. “Good to see you awake. You suffered quite a blow to the head.”
Her cuffed hands curled into fists. He hadstruckher, kidnapped her, chained her like a common criminal, and now he had the nerve to ignore her question? She drew herself up even straighter, turning up her nose, channeling the imperious manner of the Hawk. “I asked you a question. Who are you?”
He was silent. Just as she began to think he wouldn’t answer, he said, “While I go by many names, you may know of me as the Jackal.”
She rifled through her memories, trying to place where she’d heard the name before. Then she recalled Richard’s words at that first dinner:He’s responsible for various grifts, extorting the poor, dealing in contraband, committing murder and arson.She repressed a shiver as she realized she was now in the presence of an infamous criminal. “What do you want from me?”
The Jackal lifted a hand loosely. “Nothing?—not from you, anyway. Your fiancé has something important to me, but he won’t give it back. So I’ve taken something important to him.”
“I’m not athing,” she said. “You can’t keep me here, in this?—where am I?”
His smile flashed like a dagger. “In the den of the Jackal. Consider yourself a guest of honor.”
“Prisoner, you mean,” she spat at him. “This is madness. How long will you keep me here?”
“Until your fiancé agrees to what I want,” he said, spreading his hands. “It’s up to him. Let’s hope he wants you back as badly as we want you out of here, hm?”
But Richard doesn’t want me back.She bit her tongue. Lord Montrose had an abundance of wealth, but if Richard’s endgame was to push her out of the way, would he refuse to pay the ransom?
A knock on the door broke the silence. The Jackal opened it, conferring with the other person in low Virian. The language was a dance between harsh consonants and dramatic vowels, and just as before, he spoke too quickly for her to understand what he was saying. She could catch a few words?—girl, awake, ring?—but not enough to make out the meaning of the conversation.Damn it.Why hadn’t she made a stronger effort to stay in touch with the language?
Finally, he finished with the person outside, coming back to stand in front of her. “I’m going to go let your fiancé know you’re here,” he explained, as though she were a child who had gotten lost in his office. “But first, I need to borrow something of yours.”
He slipped around her, his movements liquid. She twisted, trying to keep him in her line of sight, ignoring the bite of the restraints against her skin. His rough fingers pressed against hers, and she jolted at the sudden contact. Her pulse hammered at the surface of her skin, hitting the unrelenting metal of the cuffs. What was he doing back there? Her mind immediately jumped to the worst-case scenario.
“Are you going to cut my fingers off?”
“What?” The Jackal sounded genuinely surprised. Then he chuckled, his amusement grating on her raw nerves.
Glad my terror is so amusing to you,she thought blackly.
