Thea Devine - Captivated

It feelsthere.

I'll take it out for you… After I soak you in hot water to relieve the soreness.

Bottomless brown eyes alight with amber fires stared out of the sponge.And what then, Colonel Coally?

Then I'll put it back in for you.

A wave of exhaustion rolled over him.

It was immediately followed by a rush of rage.

By leaving behind the trunk and the sponge Abigail had made clear her decision.

He should let her walk away. He should let her have her cold, passionless reality.

But he wasn't going to allow that.

Abigail would not get away from him that easily. He was a soldiera damned good oneused to tracking down far more wily quarry than a genteel lady.

He would find her. If not tomorrow, then the next day. Or the next.

Robert picked up the journal. It was marked by a dark wet circle.

And when he found her… he would know every sexual act that she had ever read about. That she had ever fantasized about.

The next morning found Robert a thoroughly educated man. Acting on impulse, he packed the twelve copies ofThe Pearl into his saddlebag.

Old man Thomas was tending a pig and a dozen squealing piglets when Robert reined in his horse.

"Miss Abigail left a trunk inside the cottage. Store itI'll arrange to send it to her later. Meanwhile, I will give you a sovereign if you will take me to the train station and feed and care for my horse until I return."

Old man Thomas upturned a bucket of slops into the sty. "Miss Abigail said we wus to throw that trunk away. Ain't no need to store it. 'Less you care to buy it, of course…"

Robert grimly dug out another sovereign.

"I don't suppose Mrs. Thomas remembers what town Miss Abigail was getting off at?"

The birdlike eyes fastened onto the gold. "We don't keep track of renters. In an' out like flies, they are."

"And of course you don't know the name or address of the owner of the cottage," Robert remarked cynically.

Thomas licked his lips. "We just does what we're told."

The old man stuck to his story all the way to the station.

The ticket seller was more helpful. He remembered selling a ticket to a lady"going to London Station. She didn't look too happy going there, neither. Her eyes were all redlike she'd been crying. You her husband?"

Robert hardened his heart at the image the ticket seller painted.

Abigail had given him everythingand had left him with nothing. Tears seemed a cheap price for the pain she had caused.

He purchased a ticket without answering.

In London a cab drove Robert to an affordable hotel on a quiet street like the ones on which he used to work when helping his father sell ices. After visiting a tailor, he commenced his search.

The thought of Abigail turning thirty without him there to celebrate with her spurred him on.

Unfortunately, he was not of the upper ten thousand. Nor had he ever made friends with commissioned officers who belonged to that prestigious club.

After three weeks in London, Robert was no closer to finding Abigail than he had been when questioning the Thomass. Until he picked up a newspaper.

There was her face, in the society section.

Underneath it hailed the news that Lady Abigail Wynfred, sister of the Earl of Melford, was marrying Sir Andrew Tymes, eldest son of Baron Charles Tymes and Lady Clarisse Denby-Tymes.

The wedding was to be a small family affair, the article went on, that would take place on the twenty-seventh of June at the Earl of Melford's London town house.

Robert could feel the color draining out of his face.

Abigail was the sister of an earltheWilliam who would die of an apoplectic fit should her trunk of erotica be discovered.

No wonder she had not offered Robert her last namea liaison with a common colonel would rock society.

Had she been simply a woman born into gentility, Robert could afford the simple luxuries due to her station in life. But she was of the aristocracy.

There was nothing a man like him could offer a woman like her.

He studied the picture of her fiancé.

Sir Andrew Tymes had side-whiskers framing plump, round cheeks.

No doubt he and Abigail would own several pianos.

And every one of them would be draped with ruffles.

Ikilled my first man three months to the day of my enlistment, Abigail, and I have been killing ever since.

You had no choice, Robert.

He crumpled the paper between his fingers.

Perhaps hehad had no choice twenty-two years ago. But he did now.

Abigail did not deserve ruffled pianos.

Today was the twenty-fifth of June.

Robert hoped the earl's town house could accommodate one more guest.

contents

Abigail stared into the full-length mirror and knew that she had accomplished her goal.

The pale, brown-eyed lady with her hair pulled back in an elaborate French bun did not read erotic literature. She did not have forbidden fantasies.

She had no dreams other than to be what she wasthe daughterand now the sisterof an earl who was aligning the House of Melford monies to the House of Tymes money.

For the first time in her life she was content.

There was no pain in that pale, expressionless face. No lust. No loneliness.

Abigail liked that.

It was everything and more she had ever wanted to be.

A sharp knock interrupted her complacent perusal. There was a genteel fussher sisters. Elizabeth, the middle one, twitched Abigail's heavy, dove-gray skirt over a fashionably full bustle; Mary, the youngest next to Abigail, daintily wiped a tear out of the corner of her eye with a lace handkerchief. Victoria, the eldest, waited by the door to give Abigail into the hands of their brother, who would then give Abigail into the hands of the man who was waiting to become her husband.

Abigail liked the fact that there were no raw emotions intruding on the serenity of the occasion.

It was a beautiful day, a perfect day.

One of those rare London mornings where all the soot had settled with the morning dew and the sun shone out of a blue sky with picturesque clouds that a less pristine lady might mistake for a face with stark gray eyes or a cottage with a thatch roof or some other silly pipe dream, when really clouds were merely particles of dust and moisture marring the horizon.

Victoria opened the door and shooed out Mary and Elizabeth. Faint piano chords drifted into the bedchamber.

Abigail smiled at her sister's whispered instruction to lie back and think of England when her husband did his duty. Then her brother stepped through the doorway and took her gloved hand.

"This is an extremely important day for you, Abigail. Sir Tymes is a fine man; you will want for nothing. We trust that you will not do anything to disgrace our family name."

Abigail smiled.

Of course she would not do anything to disgrace the family name.

She was happy in her new life.

She wanted this marriage.

She wanted to be the Lady Abigail Tymes.

Abigail Wynfred had died three weeks and two days ago; it was time that she be buried.

Robert waited long minutes after the last carriage pulled away from the tall, narrow town house before mounting the cobblestone steps. Faint music penetrated the closed double doors.

He gained entrance by the simple maneuver of elbowing aside the butler when he opened the door in response to a brisk knock. Robert's scarlet dress uniform complete with a sword that was not ornamental prevented retaliation.

The butler clearly knew his duty; it was equally clear he was reluctant to carry it through. "May I help you, sir?"

"I am a friend of the groom's," Robert said grimly.

"I am afraid the wedding is for family members only, sir." The butler stared warily at Robert's dark-brown hair that was overlong and not pomaded, then at his tanned face that was shaved clean and spoke of climates and practices more barbaric than those belonging to England. "If you will give me the package, you can be assured that I will"

Robert hoisted high the silk-and-ribbon-wrapped box. "I will deliver the package personally, thank you. Carry on with your duties. There's no need to show me the way."

His heels clicked along the length of the elegant black-and-white marble floor. He followed piano music and the low murmur of voices to a dark salon filled with vases of flowers and a ruffled grand piano. Rows of chairs were positioned so that an aisle led to a white marble fireplace. The chairs were occupied by over bustled women in subdued colors and too tightly collared men in funeral black with slicked-back hair tamed with grease and side-whiskers that bristled like wire brushes. A crow of a minister and a plump cherub of a man, both with the same pomaded hair and bushy side-whiskers, flanked the marble fireplace.

Robert had timed it perfectly. No sooner did he enter the room than a hush fell over the crowd of politely expectant faces and the pianist ended the recital in a soft crash of chords. He stepped aside at the sound of rustling silk.

Abigail.

She wore a dove-gray dress with a tent-size bustle and she had never looked worse, he was sure, he thought with a stab of vicious satisfaction. Her face was chalk white with dark circles underneath her eyes. The man leading herher brother, the earl, no doubt was the same height but at least fifty pounds heavier. He, too, had pomaded hair and side-whiskers.

Abigail's back was ramrod straight as she faced the minister to take her vows. The groom, Robert noted, had a fat bottom. And he was two inches shorter than the bride.