Dangerous Exile by K.J. Jackson

{ Chapter 28 }

Talen was poking her arm. No, shaking it.

Wait. He wouldn’t be doing either. His lips would be on her neck, nuzzling her awake. This was shaking. Hard shaking. And she wasn’t in bed—something hard was rubbing against her spine.

Where was she?

Wherever it was, the air was stale. Suffocating her like a gob of wet wool was shoved deep into her throat. No. That was her tongue. Her tongue too big for her mouth.

What the hell had happened to her?

Afraid to open her eyes, she scrunched her eyelids tighter closed, trying to remember what had happened last night.

She’d left Talen’s room. Gone down to the kitchens for some tea—with a splash of brandy—to calm her nerves before returning to his room. For she needed to find her mettle before she stood in front of him again.

She’d run too quickly. Scampered off like a frightened little doe. Talen wouldn’t hurt her, she knew that to her bones, but when his voice had raged at her, she’d fled in panic, the instinct uncontrollable as it drove her from the room. Avoid. Escape. Hide. It was all she knew to do.

She’d escaped down to the kitchens where she’d been warming a pot of tea when the dowager had appeared—appeared with a soft shoulder to cry upon for long minutes.

And Ness did. She cried for all of what she’d brought down onto Talen. All of the haunting memories that should have stayed in the forgotten wasteland where they belonged.

Lady Washburn had clucked and tucked Ness under her arm, pressing her head onto her chest. So like her mother had once done. The woman was a saint to listen to her, for all the dowager had endured herself over the years. Ness knew the guilt of the past weighed heavy on the dowager’s suffering soul.

Lady Washburn had sat with Ness for an hour, probably more. And then what had happened?

Ness worked deeper into her mind, trying to remember. The dowager had encouraged her to go and speak with Talen, to set right whatever had set him off. She had poured Ness another cup of tea that Ness had splashed a dollop of brandy into. She’d sipped it.

And then…nothing.

Nothing until this very moment when her left arm was shaken, the harsh movement sending vicious pangs along the nerves still healing around her broken bone. 

She opened her eyes.

The dowager hovered above her.

Had she fallen asleep in the kitchens? Or in a servant’s room?

“Dear Ness. Do wake up.”

Ness looked past the dowager’s head bobbing above her. The ceiling was rough planks of wood. Dark. Not the kitchen ceiling. Not any ceiling she’d seen at Washburn. Where was she?

Her eyes shifted. A red brick fireplace, darkened with years of soot. Walls the same as the ceiling. Dark rough wood that had never been smoothed after the blade of an ax shaped it.

A bench. She was lying half on her right side on a bench pushed up against a wall of that rough wood, splinters digging into the back of her left shoulder.

“I am sorry for the uncomfortable conditions, dear. I thought to keep you here for just a few days until your father could come and collect you, as I imagine he knows how to take care of you properly, possibly to the same place your mother went to, if you are lucky. The man always was an ogre. But I underestimated Conner’s feelings for you.”

“What?” Ness’s mouth opened, her tongue only able to form a whisper as the dowager’s rapid words filtered through the fuzz in her brain. Her father? Collect her?

The dowager clucked her tongue, her head still bobbing above Ness. “I heard you last night, dear, pushing Conner to take the title. It won’t do. He does not need you in his life. And I imagine your father will agree. Your father will surely have other plans for you. Did you know he once tried to sell you off when you were fifteen to our neighbor, Sir Hawlins? The old lecher was sixty-three at the time. But then the old goat died in his soup.” Her head shook. “Your father has a very sick sense about how to use his property.”

Her head stubbornly foggy, Ness frantically tried to clear it enough to follow the ramblings of the dowager.

Her look focused on the dowager’s left eye, because it was too much work to shift her head enough to see both of her eyes at the same time. “You brought me here to get away from Talen?”

Good. Her tongue worked. Now onto her body. Ness tried to shift, to sit up, and she understood for the first time that she couldn’t. That her arms were bound together. She stretched her bent legs.

Hell, her ankles were strapped together.

She looked down to see rough rope twined about her wrists.

“I did.” The dowager slipped her hands under Ness’s left arm and pulled her upright with a grunt. “I thought with you gone, Conner would return to London and forget he ever came to Washburn. If you hadn’t pushed him to take the title, I wouldn’t have interfered and you two could have moved on from here and lived a nice life in London. But you pushed.”

“I didn’t push, I—”

“I heard you, dear.” She clucked her tongue. “You pushed. So now you are here. But that is where I miscalculated and underestimated what Conner was willing to do for you. I thought it merely lust between you two. But now I don’t think that merely removing you from his life is enough. I thought it would be. You would be out of sight, out of mind. He would go back to London, forgetting you, forgetting he ever stepped foot into Washburn. I thought your father could take you and that would be the end of it. You would be gone.”

Her thin wrinkled lips pulled inward as she shook her head. “But now I fear that is not to be. Connor is now insistent on getting you back and taking the title to that end. I don’t think he will let it be and he will overturn every stone to find you—including a visit to your father.”

Upright, Ness could see the whole of her surroundings. A small cottage, dark. Only three windows that were skinny and high in the walls, letting in just enough light to see the interior. One small table with a black iron pot atop it. Two chairs. The bench she was sitting upon.

Mounting fear in her chest started to war with a panicked calm—both attempting to take over her emotions.

The dowager couldn’t have possibly brought her here, could she?

She looked to Lady Washburn. “Where are we?”

The dowager patted her knee. “Nowhere important, dear.”

Ness’s lips parted so she could draw more air into her lungs as she stared at the woman in front of her. Such a kind face.

But a madwoman.

There wasn’t any denying it. She’d been bound up. Set in this hovel. And the only one in front of her was Lady Washburn.

Reality was her only ally in this situation.

The sooner she accepted the fact the dowager was not her friend, not kindly—that the madwoman had intentionally dragged her here and tied her up—the better off she would be.

Ness glanced down at her bound wrists again. Fat rope. Talen had tied her up several times to teach her how to loosen the knots enough to free herself. With enough time, she could get out of the rope. She just needed time.

Hard won, the panicked calm took over. Talen would be proud of her.

Shifting her hands out of view under the table, her wrists started to work back and forth as her look lifted, her eyes narrowing at the dowager. “So, what do you propose to do with me?”

The dowager turned away from her and moved to the small square table by the hearth. She picked up the table, balancing a teapot and teacup atop it, and came back to Ness, setting the table down directly in front of her.

The dowager picked up the pot and poured what looked like tea into the delicate teacup. She set the pot down and nudged the cup closer to Ness, then stood straight, her hands folding in front of her grey cloak.

Ness looked to the table. The teacup sat in its bright white splendor, the prettiest painted blue bells lining the lower half of it.

Gorgeous destruction.

Ness’s glare lifted, skewering the dowager.

She smiled at Ness. The same vacant smile that had been in her face when they had first met. A smile that somehow now managed to look both idiotic and sinister all at once. “Please, dear, just drink the tea.”

“The last time I drank the tea, I faded into blackness and then woke up in here.” Ness let every ounce of bitterness she was feeling lace her words. The damned woman was about to find out she wasn’t going down without a fight.

The dowager’s lips pulled tight, the hard glint in her eyes not shifting. She looked pointedly to the tea.

“What was in it last night? Laudanum?”

“Just drink the tea, dear Nessia. It will be easier for all parties involved. Cleaner. Less dramatic. Less fear. Less pain. Just quiet. Just slipping into darkness.”

Ness scoffed a laugh as her hands started to work harder at the rope binding them. “You wish me to die quietly?”

The dowager took a heaving sigh and her hand dipped between the front folds of her cloak. She fished into an interior pocket for an extraordinary amount of time before pulling free something silver.

A pistol.

A bloody pistol, the elaborate etched scrolling motif along the silver barrel showing it was one of a fine dueling set.

She didn’t actually know how to use it, did she?

The dowager pulled back the hammer of the pistol. Damn. The blasted thing was already loaded.

Lady Washburn aimed the tip of the barrel at Ness’s head. “Please, dear. We both want this to be attended to with the tea. I fear for the pain you will be in if the bullet strays from my aim.”

All of Ness’s breath left her in that moment, the air seeping out of her until she was nothing.

No.

Fight.

What did Talen always say?

Stay alive.

Fairly simple instructions.

She tried to draw in breath past the dam of fear lodged in her throat and she looked up at the dowager, attempting to ignore the cavernous black hole of the pistol that was aimed at her forehead. “Why? Why do this?”

“Conner will not take the title from us. He won’t. I worked too hard for it. It is mine. With you gone, his interest in it is moot.”

Ness’s eyebrows drew inward. “It’s not your title. It’s your son’s.”

Her lips drew into a vicious snarl. “It is ours. Mine. I did everything for it. Everything. Now drink the damn tea, Nessia. I do not have the patience for this.”

Stay alive. Stay alive. Stay alive.

Her look fixed on the pistol, Ness reached out with her bound hands and wrapped her fingers around the teacup. She paused, staring at the brown water.

Death. So simple and easy.

Death she didn’t want.

For how she’d wished for it once upon a time, that time was done. She’d been a fool. An utter idiot to have ever tried to escape this life.

“Do it.”

Ness set the cup to her lips. How much could she hold in her mouth?

“Do it.”

Raving desperation spiked the dowager’s words and sent a shake into her hand holding the pistol. The last thing Ness needed was for the madwoman to accidentally discharge the pistol into her skull.

Her hands trembling, Ness parted her lips, letting the liquid breach her mouth. Bitter tasting, so bitter she could barely hold it against her tongue.

Don’t swallow. Don’t swallow. Don’t swallow.

“Swallow it.” The barrel of the pistol edged closer to her brow. “I said—”

The door of the cottage flew open, crashing into the adjoining wall.

Talen.

Talen standing in the doorway, raging.

The dowager spun around and Ness instantly spewed out all the contents in her mouth.

“Don’t move.” The dowager lifted the pistol high, aiming it directly at Talen’s chest.

He stilled in place, his fists half raised as his look surveyed the cottage. Then Ness saw it plain as day in his eyes.

He knew this place.

Knew it well.

Terror. Pain. Death.

All of that had happened here.

And he froze.