“Hit me, and make it good,” Kitty whispered with a hard glare of warning.
“What?” Isobel squeaked, suddenly feeling sick. Having such first-hand experience of what it was like to be the recipient of a fist, she loathed to inflict it upon another. “No!”
“You must, otherwise he will know it is a set up. If you really do not want me to get caught you must make it look real. Hit me, it is alright.” Kitty’s voice hardened in anticipation. “Make it good.” Her own safety depended on Isobel’s compliance.
Tears pooled in Isobel’s eyes as she stared aghast at her maid for several long moments. Closing her eyes, with a silent prayer heavenwards, she raised her hand. Tears streamed down her cheeks at the sound of her hand meeting the other woman’s cheek. For several moments, she stood and wept, the hollow sound of her hand meeting flesh echoing in her ears with too much familiarity.
“It’s alright Miss,” Kitty mumbled, her voice laced with pain she couldn’t hide. “You must go now.”
Isobel couldn’t see how much she had marked the older woman through the darkness, but could see the dark tell-tale trickle of blood coming from the corner of her mouth.
“I am so sorry Kitty,” Isobel muttered, wishing she could undo the ties and give the woman a hug.
“Get out of here. Now!” Kitty’s voice was harsh in the still of the room.
Swiping the dampness from her cheeks, Isobel sniffed and nodded before she turned away. Carefully drawing her only remaining shawl tighter around her shoulders, she turned towards the heavy wooden door to the room that had been her virtual prison for the past two months.
Through the gloom of the darkened bedroom, Isobel glanced backward, wordlessly seeking reassurance of her only ally. With a quivering quirk of her lips, she accepted the encouraging nod Kitty gave her, and disappeared into the darkness of the upper hallway.
She could only hope that one day she would be in a position to offer Kitty the thanks she so richly deserved. Indeed, if all of Isobel’s plans came to fruition, she would be in a position to ensure Kitty remained in employment for as long as she wanted. As long as her evil uncle didn’t dispose of her first.
Isobel slowly opened her eyes. All of her senses tuned to any signs of movement in the hallway before her. She now knew what the term ‘deathly silence’ meant. Standing enshrouded in the inky blackness of the house that had once been so familiar to her was almost claustrophobic.
Scenting her first taste of freedom for several long and very painful weeks, Isobel wanted to run as fast as her feet would carry her, straight out of the building and as far away as she could get. It took all of her willpower to ease away from the strangely comforting solidity of the bedroom door, and almost too slowly, take the first steps across the upper hallway towards freedom.
There was no moonlight to penetrate the thick blackness that settled around her. Gosport Hall was her grandmother’s former residence; a large sprawling house that had been full of happy times and plenty of teasing laughter. There wasn’t any part of the rambling abode she didn’t know in minute detail. Most of her childhood had been spent chasing her older brother Peter through the long, draughty corridors that were as familiar to her as her own home in Oxfordshire, Willowbrook.
Now, with the gaiety and laughter of her formative years nothing more than a faint echo of her distant past, Gosport’s once lavishly warm and inviting rooms stood cold and empty and alien to her. The heavy wooden shutters remained closed even during the daytime, leaving the rooms feeling isolated and damp. Thanks to her uncle’s greed and carelessness, the rooms held a menacing air that permeated the bones, and made one constantly cold and uncomfortable.
Isobel fought back a pang of longing for those sweet fun-filled days of her youth. She had learnt the hard way that those days were now gone for good. Life could be truly cruel and unforgiving to those of the weaker sex, and she was no different.
Throughout her early childhood, her parents rarely talked about her father’s younger brother, Uncle Rupert. His was a name shrouded in myth and mystery. In her youthful imaginings, Isobel had frequently dreamt he was a pirate buccaneer on his many ocean adventures, or a dastardly highwayman full of dangerous intentions. The reality was not as adventurous, or anywhere near as magical as all that. The reality was harsh, brutal and unforgiving. The man was evil personified.
With a reputation of gambling, and shady business dealings, his entire livelihood was questionable. His associates from the lower end of the social spectrum were just as mysterious and equally as brutal. Rupert’s wealth materialized from no reasonably identifiable source, and seemed to vanish again just as quickly. Nobody knew what he actually did to earn his place in society, or his living. Had they had the temerity to ask, his cold ruthlessness immediately surfaced, leaving you feeling distinctly threatened, as though you had crossed some imaginary boundary into territory that was far from safe.
It was the stark reminder of just how brutal her uncle could be, that gave Isobel the strength she needed to make it to her goal. At the far corner of the sprawling mansion lay her brother’s old bedroom.
‘Oh God Peter, why did you have to go and leave me like this?” Isobel’s voice was a mere shiver in the cold midnight air. She watched in horror as her breath fogged before her when she whispered, and immediately slammed her mouth shut, her blood pounding in her ears as all too familiar fear threatened to overwhelm her.
Tears stung her eyes. Ignoring them, she softly eased towards her elder brother, Peter’s room, and the brief sanctity she knew it offered her. At the far corner of the main building to her own room, she knew that a rose trellis used to run the length of the house. During his wayward youth, Peter had often used this method of escaping the house, and in doing so had secured a trellis, strong enough to carry his weight, tightly to the wall. Isobel fervently hoped the ravages of time hadn’t rendered it useless, since it was her only way out.
Still, a broken neck is better than a life at his merciless hands, Isobel reasoned starkly, moving silently toward the looming doorway before her. She entered the bedroom, easing the door closed with a quiet click. On first glance, it was evident that little had changed. Covered in dust cloths and old sheets, it was clear that the furniture hadn’t been moved in some considerable time. Dust motes were clearly visible, even through the darkness confirming that the room hadn’t been aired either. However, despite the ravages of time, the faint
scent that was distinctly Peter still hung in the air.
Isobel’s chest tightened with a wave of grief so strong, she wasn’t sure her knees would support her, and she leaned briefly against the wall to gather herself. She desperately longed to lie down on the bed and give in to the sobs that threatened to choke her, but with each passing moment, dawn was approaching and the risk of discovery increasing. It was imperative to both herself and Kitty that she got out of the house.
It took several minutes of jiggling the stubborn metal latch on the bedroom window before the old ironwork finally released, and allowed her to slide the rickety frame upwards. A quick peek at the wall outside revealed the trellis was still where Peter had secured it. Carefully easing her leg out of the window, Isobel paused and scowled downward into the gloom. Peter had once said that scaling the trellis was risking his neck, and he had been unencumbered by skirts. Frowning down at the crumpled and soiled linen of her dress, Isobel slowly eased her leg back into the room and turned towards the darkness with a frown.
“Now what?” She muttered, considering her options. She certainly wouldn’t get very far dressed as she was. Although she was not in finery by any stretch of the imagination, she was still easy to recognize. She would fall victim to every ne’er do well within one hundred miles! If she was to survive the first day alone, she could not afford to leave any trail for her uncle to follow.
When Peter had ventured into the village, he had been dressed as one of the locals, not as the eldest son of a lord. Frantically searching her memory, she vaguely recalled him mentioning a small drawer hidden in the bottom of his linen press. Several moments later, she pulled out a somewhat musty pair of buff breeches and rough cotton shirt, along with a smelly pair of old boots, a thin jacket, flat cap and a long riding cloak.
Without hesitation, Isobel quickly donned the clothes; carefully making sure the telling mound of her breasts was tightly bound with torn off strips of her petticoat. Dubiously, she squinted through the darkness at the size of the boots before she tied the boot laces together and hung them around her neck for later. She quickly put her dress, along with her shawl, into the hidden drawer. She eased it closed, relieved when she was rewarded with a soft click.
Feeling somewhat reassured by the lingering scent and ephemeral presence of her elder brother, she returned to the window and eased herself out into the darkness of the night.
Her heart thumped heavily in her chest when her fingers locked tightly on the crisscrossing timbers of the trellis. She fought the surge of bile in her throat. Glancing down into the gaping maw of inky blackness beneath her, she willed her trembling in her knees to stop long enough to hold her upright, and she fought desperately to let go of the trellis long enough to slide the window closed.