Teena Thyme (4 page)

Angelina screwed her eyes tight shut and shook her head in barely controlled anger, but she had little time to consider Hacklebury's threat, for even as he finished speaking she heard the slapping sound as he paid his whip out across the stone floor and, a moment later, there came the most dreadful hiss and a line of fire exploded across her shoulders.

Instantly she opened her mouth to scream, but so terrible was the pain that all that emerged was a strangled gasp, followed by a terrible groan as she was hurled against the racking and then rebounded in her agony, so that now she swung with almost all her weight hanging from her already tortured wrists, her feet kicking in an attempt to regain some purchase on the floor.

He allowed her several seconds, perhaps half a minute, to regain her balance as best she could and then the awful hissing heralded a second bolt of fiery agony. This time Angelina felt her feet slip from under her straightaway and the dull red mist quickly turned purple and descended into a peaceful blackness, but the respite was only temporary. Almost immediately her senses returned to her and with them the pain. She heard herself wailing, as if from a great distance and then, as her vision began to clear again, her eyes immediately became filled with tears, for Hacklebury grasped her roughly by her trailing hair and yanked her head back mercilessly.

'There are four more still to come, madame,' he hissed, his breath hot in her ear. 'Four more - and you will feel every one of them, even if I have to wait here for an hour for you to recover between each lash.'

'Bastard!' Angelina shrieked, no longer caring for decorum. 'You evil... bastard!'

He shook her head roughly and merely laughed. 'I see you are already learning new ways,' he guffawed. 'Not so much the prim little virgin now, are we? Well, my dear, by the time I have finished with you, you will crawl to me on your knees and beg me to take you in every and any conceivable way.'

'Never!' she cried. 'Never, never! Do what you want with me, I'll not go on my knees to you, nor to any other man yet born.'

Again, he laughed. 'Oh, I shall do as I want with you, lady, have no fear of that. Only Pickering knows you are here, after all, and he is now in Austria, so my sources tell me. Austria is a goodly long way distant and many a mishap could befall the unwary traveller between there and here.

'Besides, as I stated earlier, Pickering cares nothing for you as such. You are simply a liability and the sooner he can pay someone the dowry left in your father's will, the sooner you will cease to be a financial embarrassment.'

'Liar,' Angelina croaked. 'Lord Pickering is my great uncle. I am family to him.'

'Of course you are,' Hacklebury sneered. 'Family that has cost him many thousands of pounds over these past ten years. Family that has a small fortune in trust, which your husband will get on the day of your marriage, yet not a penny of which has the poor old fool been able to touch during all this time.'

'He shall be repaid, he knows that,' Angelina asserted. 'I am determined to make that the first condition of any marriage I might make and any husband to be shall sign a promissory to that effect, before ever I shall exchange vows with him. My uncle is a good man, a decent man.'

'Of course he is,' Hacklebury agreed, lightly. 'But he is also now a relatively poor man; a poor man who stands to receive several thousand pounds just as soon as you are safely married. Good man or not, the clock runs against him now and he would see you wed to almost anyone. Even me,' he added, with a deep chuckle.

And then the fearful hissing rent the air again, the tongue of fire lapped hungrily across Angelina's shoulders once more and this time, mercifully, the dark velvet rose up to claim her into its blissfully unconscious embrace.

For those of you who don't know the area around Rowlands Castle (and why should you, unless you live around here?) it's nice. Very nice. Very nice and very English, with woods, fields, cottages, sheep grazing and tractors blocking every other back road and lane. And there are plenty of pubs, most of which, back in nineteen seventy-five, hadn't yet been ruined by the big brewery chains and their go-getter marketing oiks.

I'm a traditional girl, me. Fair enough, back then I was as happy as the next of my peers to experiment with chunky platform shoes, short skirts, lurid make-up and tight tops in eye-searing colours. Some of the girls were just as bad, too!

No, seriously, and I mean that. I was brought up fairly conservatively and we lived near enough to the countryside for me to appreciate its virtues without having to trek miles for a packet of cigarettes or a refill for my lipstick. Muck the towns about by all means but leave the countryside alone. I like the sight of little lambs gambolling on hillsides, the thought of cows being left to graze and chew the cud contentedly, shepherds watching their flocks by night and gamekeepers shooting over the heads of poachers in darkened woods. Or not shooting over their heads, as the case may be. Go and vandalize things that deserve corporate vandalizing, I say, but then corporate vandals have existed since time immemorial, even before the real vandals gave their name to it, as I can personally attest now, so why should the late twentieth century escape?

But escape is just what
Rose Lea
cottage had managed to do, as I saw immediately when we drew up in dad's protesting Wolseley the following afternoon. It even had a thatched roof, for heaven's sake!

'It's pretty!' mum gasped.

'Roof'll cost a fortune in maintenance,' dad muttered, but I could see that even he was impressed. 'Has it got electricity, do you know?'

It had. And gas. And running water. And a connection to the main sewer. Well, it wasn't more than a hundred yards from the main village itself and Great (several times over) Aunt Amelia had been wealthy enough to make sure that all the mod cons were added, as and when they became available.

'Jesus!' dad exclaimed as we stepped over the threshold, straight into a scene from Dickens. 'That dresser must be worth a few hundred quid!'

'Two thousand,' I said. Mr Swann had given me the valuer's inventory the previous afternoon and certain items had lodged themselves very firmly in my mind.

'Jesus!' dad repeated.

'Beautiful wood,' mum muttered, running her hands over it. 'And what gorgeous jugs. Victorian?' She looked at me questioningly. I nodded.

'Early period,' I said. And worth about five hundred pounds as a pair, even back then, according to the expert.

All in all, we three agreed, it was a very nice cottage. Very traditional, structurally sound and with a very pleasant, welcoming feel to it. True, the garden - it was more the size of a small field - was running a bit wild, even though it was still mid-winter, but then a few pounds from Amelia's bequest would pay for 'a man' to come and see to that and then to come around periodically to keep it in check, once the growing season started again.

'You've done well, Teen,' dad said, through a mouthful of rump steak at the
Ploughman's Refuge
a little later. 'You should get a good price for the cottage. All in all, you're well set up for life now.'

'I'm not selling
Rose Lea
,' I said firmly. Two pairs of eyebrows rose as one. 'No,' I said, 'I think I'm supposed to keep it.'

'Does it say so in the old lady's will?' dad asked.

'Nope,' I replied. 'Everything is mine to do with as I see fit, but that's not the point. Maybe I'll sell the place eventually, but not yet. Amelia Jane lived in the place for seventy odd years and apparently it was in her family for years before that. I'm her only surviving female relative, so I think I ought to live there, too, at least for a few years.'

'You're proposing to leave home?' Dad looked devastated. Mum gave me the sort of look that only mothers and their daughters know how to interpret.

'Well, sort of,' I replied, carefully. 'I mean, I'll still have my room at home, won't I? And I can come back. Once a week, at least. Maybe more.'

'What about getting to school in the mornings?' dad asked. I was in the final throes of my A-level years.

'School is no further from
Rose Lea
than it is from where we live at the moment,' I pointed out. 'In fact, it's probably a mile or so closer and the bus service can't be any worse.' Actually, it was worse, but by the time I discovered that it didn't really seem to matter any more.

And so, after a fashion, I moved. Bags, baggage and platform shoes, I moved into my very own little chocolate box cottage and, having suitably aired it first, slept my first night under a thatched roof. It was not to be my last and there were to be many more thatched roofs, in many more towns and villages, in many very different times, but all that, as I settled down under my feather-filled eiderdown, was still very much in the future.

No, correction. It was actually in the past, but then the past was to become my future, though I little suspected it as I drifted off to sleep, to the accompaniment of a distant owl hooting somewhere outside in the night. At least, I hoped it was outside. I snuggled deeper beneath my covers and eventually drifted off to sleep, queen of my very own little castle and mistress of all I surveyed. Hah!

They left her in her bedroom for four days, uninterrupted except for twice daily visits from one or other of the two maids, to refresh her water jug, leave some slices of meat and bread and to apply a salve to Angelina's ravaged back.

Late on the second day she managed to haul herself from the bed, where she had lain face down since the two women had returned her here, and stagger across to the long mirror on the wall, where she twisted about to examine her wounds. To her surprise, the skin did not appear to have been cut through, though the area across and between her shoulders was dark red, with an even darker purplish hue spreading throughout.

Still clad only in her under things, Angelina stumbled back to the bed, took a long draught of the stale tasting water and forced herself to eat one of the smaller slivers of meat, though her stomach wanted to rebel at every mouthful and the thought of eating anything provided by him made her want to vomit. Despite her pain and humiliation, however, Angelina still managed to retain that core of reality that told her that she must eat in order to retain what remained of her strength, for she would surely need it now.

Feeling slightly stronger, though still far from steady on her feet, she stood up again and crossed the room to the door and was not at all surprised to find it was locked. Wincing, as even the slightest change in the tensions upon her flesh sent tiny fingers of acid fire coursing through her entire body, Angelina made her way to the window. Once again she found that the casements were securely fastened and could not be opened, although the distance to the ground from here had to be easily thirty-five feet and a body would have to be crazy to even think about jumping.

Crazy - or mad, perhaps. She grimaced ruefully. Dear Gregory perhaps thought her desperate enough to try to end it all, did he; accept death rather than a fate worse than death?

'You don't know me, Gregory Hacklebury,' she hissed, blinking back the tears that suddenly sprung up in her eyes. 'You don't know me even the slightest little bit, you pig. I'd sooner kill you first than kill myself, and by everything that is dear to me, I swear I shall revenge myself on you for this, even if it takes me forever!'

Slowly she turned away from the window and the vista that included the perfectly manicured lawns, the carefully trimmed hedges and bushes and the mock Greek statues that peered out from almost every patch of greenery. She moved stiffly to the dresser, where she opened the top drawer and began to rummage carefully through the layers of silk and satin. At last her fingers closed on what they sought and she withdrew the soft leather pouch with reverence, opening it to reveal the gold locket.

She eased the delicate catch, opened the two halves and gazed at the portraits that now faced each other. The one on the left showed a man, perhaps in his early thirties, his keen eyes gazing outwards from beneath a carefully groomed head of dark hair, his slightly longish nose straight and aristocratic, above a firm mouth that Angelina always imagined was on the verge of softening into a broad smile, the smile she remembered so well from her now seemingly distant childhood.

The eyes were blue, matching her own, and they seemed to be turned slightly to the left - the right as she looked upon them - so that they could just take in the image in the other half of the locket. The woman there looked young, scarcely older than Angelina herself now, and her features were almost ghostly white, reflecting the fashions of the day when the artist had captured them. The hair was elaborate, intricate, and without doubt a wig, Angelina knew, but the green eyes seemed to twinkle as mischievously as they had ever done and the full, pouting lips appeared to be struggling to contain some amusement.

'Help me, poppa, mama,' Angelina whispered. 'Help me to be strong - as strong as you two were when your greatest perils beset you. And I swear to both of you, I shall not fail you, whatever trials I am subjected to - if only God will see fit to give me the strength...'

I still had several days before the new school term started: plenty of time to make myself cosy in my new home and take stock of some of the things that came with it.
Rose Lea
was a mass of nooks and crannies, every alcove a cupboard, or set of shelves, every horizontal surface covered with knickknacks of every description.