Who were these people? And whom were they talking about?
Someone entered the room. Sophie couldn’t make out his facial features but he was large. He might have been wearing a mask. He pulled her arms up.
“Sit up, my lady.”
The stranger held out a dipper of water, and she drank from it. The lukewarm liquid soothed her parched throat but didn’t really quench her thirst. Her hairs stood on end as fear coursed through her veins.
When she had finished drinking, she looked up at the man holding the dipper. He was indeed wearing a black mask. “Who are you? Why am I here?”
“Those questions will be answered in the morning, my lady. For now, go ahead and rest.”
“But…I need to use…a chamber pot.”
“Oh, for corn’s sake. Jake, she needs a chamber pot,” the man yelled.
Jake? Sophie didn’t know anyone named Jake.
The other man brought in a chamber pot. “I don’t know what to tell you. I guess unbind her and then we’ll bind her back up. One of us will have to watch her.”
Sophie couldn’t bear the thought of it. “For goodness’ sake, where would I go? Please, just a little privacy.”
“It couldn’t hurt,” Jake said. “I don’t really want to watch her piss anyway, Harry.”
“Well, I wouldn’t mind.” Harry unbound her hands and then her feet, chuckling. “I’ll watch her. Make it quick like.”
“Please. I can’t have you…” She looked away. No privacy. Just like during her childhood…
“God a’mighty, fine,” Harry said. “You have two minutes.”
The men left, closing the door.
Sophie took care of her necessities quickly. And then she looked down at the ceramic pot. Was the window open? She walked toward it. No. The pot would make quite a handsome weapon. If only she hadn’t filled it. The last time she was abducted, she had been too scared to do anything except what her abductors told her. She had not caused any trouble.
She was no longer that timid and shy creature. Holding her nose, she held the pot and stood at the door. She’d just have to use the pot with the urine in it.
“I’m finished now,” she called.
The door rattled, and in came Harry. Sophie heaved the pot over her head and brought it crashing down on his skull. The centrifugal force kept the urine safely in the pot. Not that she would have minded soaking him with it.
“You fucking bi—”
“What the…?” Jake rushed in. “So you thought you’d get a little brave, did you?” He pushed Sophie down on the bed.
Within a few minutes, she was bound again. Jake dragged Harry’s body out of the room.
He returned a few minutes later. “You just lost any privileges I might have given you,” he said. “You’ll stay here until the boss gets here in the morning.”
Sophie buried her head in the ragged quilt on the bed and cried. No one even knew she was gone yet. No one would notice if she didn’t come down early for breakfast to get to rehearsal, because she was under house arrest. Her stepfather had notified the director that she would be missing a few rehearsals, so no one at the theatre would notice she was gone. No one at home would be looking for her until luncheon at the earliest.
When would this “boss” get here? And what did he want with her?
The boss—he had to be the person who had sent the notes. Harry was out cold, and Jake wouldn’t tell her anything. But they knew who he was. She was sure of it.
How was this happening again? She had never hurt a fly in her life, and she didn’t intend to. What woman of the peerage was kidnapped not once but twice?
She hated being bound, despite the fact that Zach had bound her hands once. That was different. Zach would never hurt her and would unbind her as soon as she asked him to. She knew nothing about these men. They were clearly hired by someone to take her. Whoever this boss was, she wasn’t looking forward to meeting him.
She tried stifling her tears. She didn’t need her nose to run, because she couldn’t empty it. Nothing to do now but wait.