The Kidnapped Bride Read Free

follow my instructions, did you not? Said nothing about meeting me to your maid or to anyone else?” She shook her head, gritting her teeth in exasperation. “Good girl. Could have ruined everything. I’m supposed to be in Brighton, you see.” He smiled at her, but without his usual bland insouciance. In fact, it made her a bit uncomfortable. “Sorry you won’t cooperate. Came prepared though. Daresay you won’t like it, but can’t be helped.”
    He had reached for her then, and she had not been able to elude him in the close confines of the coach. He had seemed in the past to be mild-mannered, even effeminate, and his contrived, sometimes mincing, attitudes had not prepared her for such strength as he then displayed. Stifling her outraged cries by muffling her head in the heavy blanket while he bound her wrists behind her, he had fastened the cloth gag, pushed her down onto the floor, and then draped the blanket over her. It was a matter of but a few minutes’ work, and by the time the coach turned from Portland Street into the New Road, he was resting one booted foot upon the curve of her backside as negligently as though he rested it upon a bundle of laundry.
    Passing through Kentish Town and skirting Hampstead Heath, the coach turned onto the Great North Road at Highgate and soon rolled through the village of East End, where the driver gave up his last ticket at the tollgate. A quarter hour later they turned onto the rough track leading straight across the Common, and a few miles further on, Sarah felt the coach slow and lurch as it left the rutted track and turned between the high gates of Ash Park, that rather derelict seat of the earls of Moreland and the barons Ashton before them. Some moments later, they came to a halt, and Darcy lifted the blanket.
    Sarah was at last able to glower at him as she had been yearning to do for some time. But he avoided her eye, pulling her to a sitting position and assisting her to alight from the coach. For the moment, curiosity overcame anger, and she looked about her. The carriageway from the gate was overshadowed by trees and infested with weeds. Spreading lawns that had not benefited from the application of a scythe in many a long day had made sweeping inroads into the herbaceous borders, and even the densely growing trees seemed shaggy and ill-groomed. The four-story stone house seemed to have resisted the weather and general neglect rather better than the surrounding gardens had done, but it, too, looked gloomy and ill-cared-for.
    Darcy waved the coach on around the house and then looked down at Sarah, his gaze traveling from curls she knew must be disheveled down to her wrinkled skirts. She had lost her hat in the struggle in the coach. “Sorry you got mussed,” he muttered ruefully. “It was a pretty dress. And I daresay you’ve not got so much as a comb in your ridicule.” Her eyes widened and she turned sharply in the direction taken by the coach. “Forgot it, eh? Well, remind me later and I’ll send Beck to fetch it. He’s not taking the coach back until morning, so there’s plenty of time. But come along in. I sent word earlier to Matty to expect us for dinner—country hours here, I’m afraid. Should be ready soon. Unless she’s pickled herself in gin,” he added as an afterthought, and scarcely an encouraging one.
    He started up the rough stone steps, evidently expecting Sarah to follow him, but she stayed where she was, staring after him indignantly and still finding it difficult to reconcile his present behavior with that of the rather languidly amiable young gentleman she had known in London. He turned to see what was keeping her.
    “Come along, Sarah.” Stubbornly Sarah shook her head. Did he not realize that this escapade of his was very likely to ruin her even if she did marry him? She would certainly be refused tickets of admission to Almack’s Assembly Rooms once the grand patronesses of that august establishment got wind of it, because no