Susan Johnson (46 page)

His footsteps paused for a moment and then continued, and she saw him through a blur of tears seconds later as he pushed open the door and walked into the
room. His cape swirled around his ankles as he came to a sudden halt, his height distinctive in the low-ceilinged room his dark head almost brushing the rafters.

“Let her go,” he said, his heated gaze on Harold Godfrey who had risen from his chair, a pistol in his hand, pointed not at Johnnie but at Elizabeth. “You don’t need her.”

“But I do, of course, at least temporarily, as you well know. She’s a necessary witness at your trial.

“Then you won’t shoot her,” Johnnie brusquely said, moving a step toward him.

“I won’t kill her.”

He stopped.

Godfrey smiled. “We understand each other then.”

“I don’t want her harmed.”

“What you want matters very little to me, Ravensby. But if you don’t cooperate, Elizabeth may rue your stubbornness. Not to mention your child, who from all appearances is due to enter this world soon.” His voice altered from its mannered calm to a cutting authority. “Now kindly hand over your weapons. Captain,” he ordered, calling in his dragoons. In a few moments the room swarmed with soldiers.

There was no opportunity for communication, as Johnnie was immediately surrounded by a cluster of soldiers and bound securely. He looked at her over the heads of the red-coated dragoons as they dragged him away, his gaze holding Elizabeth’s for a brief moment. “Don’t despair,” he told her.

More powerful than despair at the moment, overwhelming even that potent emotion, was her violent anger. Elizabeth wanted to kill her father and, had she a weapon available, she would have without thought. For the first time in her life she understood murderous rage. “I’ll see you dead for this,” she said to him, her voice trembling with hatred.

Her father only glanced up from his search of Johnnie’s belongings. “Somehow I’m not alarmed.”

But she was left with a guard in the room after everyone had gone to ready himself for the journey to Edinburgh. Turning her back on the soldier standing by
the door, she plotted revenge on her father, knowing she could rely on Redmond and her men at Three Kings to help her if she could get a message to them, knowing, too, her time was limited, and Johnnie’s life at stake. She also needed to find a means of reaching Robbie or Munro. Surely, in Edinburgh there would be more opportunity to communicate with the Carres or their friends. And she looked forward impatiently to leaving.

She was surprised to see a coach waiting at the door when she was escorted from the tavern several hours later. Carriages were still a luxury in the country. And surprised as well to see her father standing at the door of the vehicle. He wasn’t solicitous by nature.

“This conveyance was arranged for you, compliments of your husband,” her father smoothly said, gesturing with a negligent hand in the direction of the stables. “In his devotion to you,” he murmured with mockery, “my Lord Carre was willing to pay the price.”

Elizabeth’s startled gaze followed her father’s idle sweeping movement, his insolent jeer so full of foreboding warning signals began drumming in her mind.

The warning came too late. She was unprepared for the sight and her piercing scream disturbed the birds in distant Margarth Cove.

In the middle of the stable yard her husband was tied to the large wheel of a munitions cart, unconscious. His powerful body hung limp, dangling like a broken puppet from the bloody ropes securing his wrists to the wheel. His legs trailed in the dirt and snow, his breeches and boots spattered with blood.

Stripped to the waist, his lacerated back oozed blood, streams and rivulets and slowly ebbing drops tracing scarlet paths, splashing onto the white snow in horrific puddles.

Not a piece of flesh from his neck to his waist had any remnant of normal color. Torn and shredded ribbons of skin hung in flayed strips, lash marks sharply defined in brilliant crimson. Some whip strokes had cut deeply to white bone and cartilage, the heavy muscles and tendons looped across his shoulders, visible in places as though he were a medical specimen recently dissected.

His graceful head drooped at an awkward angle against his left arm, his hair splattered with bits of flesh; drops of blood slid down the silky dark tendrils, pooling when they struck the ground in tiny round circles like pink pearls, like liquid death.

“He didn’t cry out so you wouldn’t be disturbed,” her father casually said, watching her pale with dispassionate eyes, his disclosure a knife thrust to her heart. “Allow me to help you in.”

Sickened, Elizabeth felt her stomach lurch. A ringing vibrated in her ears at the horror; dancing white spots exploded before her eyes. Dizzy, light-headed at the harrowing agony of Johnnie’s martyrdom, she trembled as her legs collapsed under her, her brain shut down, and she crumpled slowly to the ground.

Harold Godfrey snapped his fingers with no more sentiment than when calling for his carriage after the theater. “Put her inside,” he curtly said to the two men who came running up. “We leave for Edinburgh directly. And see that the prisoner is cut down now.”

When Elizabeth woke, she found herself on the floor of the carriage. She lay there for a time, nauseated afresh by the shocking image etched on her brain, tortured by guilt at the torment Johnnie had undergone so she and their child would come to no harm, afflicted with self-reproach and blame for her father’s viciousness, at a momentary loss of initiative and hope, of energy and will.

Their flight had been physically and emotionally draining; her father’s capacity for evil was at the moment beyond the powers of her exhausted vitality. And she despaired, heart-stricken, of her husband’s life.

She lay lurching slightly from side to side as the coach passed over the frozen ruts on the winter road, inundated by misery and self-pity until her indomitable spirit that had enabled her to survive in the past gave her fresh courage, reminded her with a chastising censure that she at least didn’t have the flesh flayed from her back. And if she wanted Johnnie to live and if she wanted vengeance—an impulse that heated her blood
and inspired action—she’d better pick herself up from the floor and deal with her father.

She felt better already, convinced that her father had only temporary power over their lives. Also, she thought with a rush of renewed vigor, she still had most of her fortune locked away at Three Kings under Redmond’s guard. And regardless of her father’s plans for taking over some of Johnnie’s wealth, she’d noticed his momentary hesitation at the inn when she’d offered him her fortune for Johnnie’s freedom.

So she gathered herself up from the floor, seated herself on the front cushions of the coach, brushed the dirt off her cape, and ran her fingers through her hair as if the state of her disordered tresses mattered. And taking off her heeled boot, she commenced a vigorous banging of the studded heel on the forward ceiling of the carriage, directly under the driver’s seat.

She heard the coachman nervously call for her father, and she waited for his reaction, feeling more hopeful, recognizing she might have the means of mitigating Johnnie’s immediate pain.

When her father rode alongside, she pulled down the window. “I have a proposition for you,” she said, the chill wind rushing against her face.

“He’s not going free.”

“I’m only asking for a doctor, not his freedom. And I’ll pay you well for the favor. If you’d join me, we could discuss your terms.” She could almost see the calculations spinning inside his head. “I’m prepared to be generous,” she added. “Extremely so.”

He looked at her for a penetrating moment.

“You realize Queensberry is going to take more than his share. Knowing him, you can’t be sure how you’ll profit,” she reminded him, her breath curling into the icy air. “You might as well compensate yourself with some of my money.”

His large gloved hand resting on his thigh flexed during his deliberation. Her words were unpleasantly astute. “Very well. I’ll listen,” he curtly replied.

And after a brief delay for her father’s horse to be exchanged for a seat in the carriage, she found herself
opposite him, the confined space intensifying her feelings of hatred, his imposing bulk and cool contempt the same unregenerate force she’d been struggling against all her life.

“If Johnnie doesn’t have a doctor,” she said, forcing her mind to put forward the options with a cool detachment, knowing she’d be at a disadvantage if her feelings showed, “he might not survive the trip to Edinburgh. You’ll find it more difficult to convict a dead man.
I’d
have no incentive to be a cooperative witness if Johnnie were dead. And even if you have your amenable judge and jury and witnesses, my contrary testimony—
considering
my intimacy with the defendant—might at least arouse the public ire. Queensberry’s been afraid to show his face in Scotland for over a year. Johnnie Carre, on the other hand, is a popular figure in Edinburgh. I believe he’s cheered in the streets during the sessions of Parliament. And as I recall, the mob stoned Boyle and set fire to Seafield’s house last summer when the people were angered. Tarbot barely escaped with his life. It’s possible you and Queensberry might not survive the trial.”

She knew him so well that when he opened his mouth to utter the words, she interrupted. “The baby isn’t due for two more months,” she declared, dissembling by a few weeks. “So you can’t force me to falsify my testimony by threatening the child’s life. And my testimony
is
rather essential. If Johnnie dies, and if you wait two months for the baby’s birth, by that time Robbie would have assumed the title and would have had great leisure to marshal his influential friends and relatives. All you and Queensberry would have is a dead defendant accused of rape.”

“And treason.”

“Really. Are you that hopeful? Even more so then, you should prefer my husband alive. The heir to Ravensby is woefully apolitical. There might be enormous public support for an eighteen-year-old about to be pillaged of his inheritance when he has no political enemies.…” She smiled coolly. “Besides you, of course.”

“How much?” her father bluntly said.

Elated she had struck a nerve, she said, “For a doctor only. We’re negotiating for a doctor—in the next hour. If you delay or procrastinate, my price goes down. If my husband dies, you get nothing. If he’s well cared for, I’m prepared to pay you handsomely. In gold. You can have a man ride directly to Three Kings from here. Redmond has previous orders to comply if my message is properly delivered. You begin.”

“Twenty thousand guineas.”

“Five thousand. It’s many hours yet to Edinburgh. You can earn more.”

“Fifteen.”

“Eight.”

“Twelve.”

“Twelve if the doctor comes along to Edinburgh.”

“Done. We’ll be in North Berwick in ten minutes.”

“Did I mention if Johnnie dies, Redmond will come for you?”

“Redmond won’t know.”

“A man of Ravensby’s stature doesn’t die unnoticed, Father. And I’ve added my personal stipulations to Hotchane’s standing order. Redmond starts at the fingers and toes. It’s quite a slow death, I’m told.” It gave her immense pleasure to see her father blanch beneath his ruddy complexion. “I hope you find an excellent doctor.”

Her father required the note be sent off to Redmond before Johnnie was taken from the cart. At a small desk in the doctor’s office she wrote a brief few lines requesting the money be given to the messenger, a businesslike note censored by her father’s keen survey as she wrote it. By prior arrangement, an agreement of long standing, she signed her note “Lady Elizabeth,” a formality Redmond would recognize as a plea for help. Although Redmond would have heard of their flight already, some of the Carre retainers having been sent to Three Kings, he wouldn’t know yet that they’d not gotten free of Scotland. With the money requested being delivered to a henchman
of her father’s, however, Redmond would know her adversary.

Blessedly, Johnnie never regained consciousness as the doctor cleaned the hideous wounds, a grim, slow process of swabbing raw flesh and cutting away dead skin. He’d groan when the pain became intolerable even in his stupor, deep, low animal sounds of pain.

Elizabeth wasn’t allowed to talk to him, but she covered one of his clenched fists with her hand, and he responded to her touch in some deep refuge of his mind.… His fingers opened, she slipped her hand into his, and his hand closed over hers. She would have cried if she dared at that small recognition, but her position was precarious—totally dependent on her father’s whim—so she hid their hands behind a billowing fold of her cape and silently mourned.

Elizabeth refused to let the doctor bleed Johnnie. He was already ashen from loss of blood, and even the doctor had to admit that if bleeding was useful in reviving good health, Johnnie would surely recover. A poultice was gently spread over the gaping slashes and torn flesh, and the rough cart was made as comfortable as possible with fresh hay and quilts. And when the doctor said, “Drink some poppy juice, my Lord,” Johnnie seemed to have heard, because he swallowed the medicine.