Gregory, Lisa (36 page)

Katherine
closed her eyes. "Matthew, please, please, you must come." Oh, why
had she ever left? She pressed her fist against her lips to choke back a sob.
"I'll be good," she whispered. "I will do anything you want.
Only, please, please come."

She
lay paralyzed by fear and doubt. Time crept by, and she was left alone. Hunger
began to gnaw at her, and still no one came. She left her bed and crept to the
door; it was firmly locked; so were the shutters on the window. She searched
the room thoroughly and could find her dress and shoes nowhere in it. Why
didn't they bring her any food? Or water? She was dying of thirst. Did they intend
to murder her slowly like this? Oh, God, what was to become of her? Matthew was
far away in London; when he learned that she was missing, what if he were with
a girl, what if he casually tossed aside the message and continued making love
to the girl? Oh, how bitterly she regretted not giving in to him. If only she
had not been so stubborn—she would be with him right now, safely snuggled up in
his arms in some bed in London, miles and miles away.

The
pale light that seeped in around the shutters gradually faded away and she was
left alone in utter darkness. She curled up on the bed. Sternly she told
herself that she must not give way to her fear. She pretended she was back on
the ship, lying against Matthew's chest. She felt his even breath ruffle her hair,
felt his smooth skin against her cheek, heard the gentle rumble of his
breathing. Softly she slid into sleep.

Katherine
was awakened by the tepid light creeping in through the shutters. She sat up
and looked around the room. Her head felt much clearer and her hunger seemed to
sharpen her senses. The terror of the night before was gone. They had been
trying to frighten her, of course. Weaken her so that she would accept her fate
without a fuss. She grimaced; they would discover that Katherine Devereaux was
not so weak.

Assessing
the situation calmly, she felt that Hampton would look for her; his pride would
not let him permit a mere girl to defeat him. And knowing him, he might very
well be able to find her. The thing to do was to hold fast until he showed up,
and in the meantime wait for an opportunity to escape, just in case she had
calculated wrong and he did not bother to look for her or could not find her or
found her too late.

The
major problem was time. If she could just stave them off long enough—she smiled
faintly. Her thoughts were so similar to those right after Hampton abducted
her; only then he had been the villain and now he was the rescuer. Mentally she
shook herself—this was no time to dwell on the oddities of fate. How long had
she been here? It had been evening when Parker knocked her out with that
foul-smelling stuff—chloroform? Light when she awoke—must have been the next
day. Then another night. And now it was day again. A full day and two nights.
How long would it take Hampton to find her? No doubt Peljo would look for her
before he notified the captain; he would want to find her and not have to
report to Hampton that he had lost her. A few hours, perhaps, and then he would
telegraph Hampton. There probably would not be a train until morning. That
meant that Hampton arrived the afternoon or evening before. No doubt Peljo
would have checked out the logical places for her to go—the train, the police,
and so on—and they would have decided that something had happened to her in
this area. They would begin searching, asking questions, tavern by tavern. She
felt a flash of despair; it would take forever! She must escape. If only Peljo
had given her that promised knife—or if she had thought to take the little gun
that she had used against Hampton.

First
she took a pin from her hair and worked assiduously at the lock. At last it
clicked and she felt a brief moment of triumph, but the door still would not
budge. There must be a bolt on the other side, and there was nothing she could
do about that. Disheartened, she moved on to the shutters. The lock would not
open. Then she remembered her hoop which had been tossed carelessly on the
floor when they undressed her. Quickly she ripped out the hem and pulled out
the thin whalebone band and managed to break off a piece which she used to pry
open the shutters. Three of the whalebone pieces snapped before the shutters
gave way. The window they revealed was small and so grimy with soot and dirt
that she could barely see out. She did manage to see that the window looked out
upon the blank wall of another building less than three feet away and that
between was a sheer drop of at least three stories. She sat down and almost
burst into tears. No way out, unless she could manage to slip out sometime when
they entered or left the room. Heaven knows how she would manage to get out of
the house undetected. Well, she would worry about that impossibility when it
came up. Right now, she must face the impossibility of getting out the door.

First,
she needed a weapon. She roamed the room. No washbowl or pitcher. No mirror to
smash for its sharp pieces. Not even a small chair to hurl. Obviously they knew
their business. Katherine sighed in exasperation. Then suddenly she rushed to
the bed, knelt, and crawled under it, emerging a moment later with a sturdy bed
slat. That would stun one or two people, she thought triumphantly. But she
mustn't use it until the last possible moment. She slid it back out of sight
under the bed.

A
few minutes later the door opened to admit Pearl, who was today dressed in
shrieking orange. "Well, dearie," she said cheerfully, "are you
in a more cooperative mood this morning?"

Katherine
lifted her chin in a manner that Matthew would have easily recognized.
"Don't think you can starve me into submission. I am not that easy."

"No,
I dare swear you're not. You seem like a sensible girl, not one of these weak,
silly fools. So let me put this to you sensibly. You are a very pretty girl,
but has it ever gotten you anywhere? Of course not. Nothing but a lot of heartache.
But here, dearie, with my aid, you could make a fortune from that body of
yours. I give you good, decent food, a place to live, pretty clothes, and a
nice bit of spending money. A smart girl like you, before long you'll have
grabbed some wealthy old joker and be sailing off as his mistress. Now ain't
that better than spending your time with men like your captain?"

"Your
proposal does have merit," Katherine conceded coolly. "But I dislike
being pawed by all those different men."

"Pshaw,
chit, it won't be any worse than what you normally go through for free. Some of
'em can even be real gentlemanly sometimes."

"Give
me some time to think it over."

"All
right. I'll give you an hour to decide. But if you decide wrong, I shall have
to turn you over to Parker, and, believe me, you'll wish I hadn't."

Hampton
turned and stalked off toward his cabin. He felt sick with anger and
disappointment. His head throbbed violently and his stomach churned. Damn her.
He decided to get good and thoroughly drunk. Lock himself in his cabin with its
painful memories of her and get blind drunk, wallow in his hurt. And then he
would proceed to forget her, the cold, spiteful wench. What a fool he had been
to let her get so close to him, to let her sink her nails into him like this.

Peljo
stood for a moment in indecision, his worry about Katherine warring with the
fear his captain's enraged face arose in him. He gulped, crossed his fingers,
and hurried after Hampton.

"Sir!
Cap'n! Just a minute, sir."

Hampton
paused and turned toward the little man, his face and stance exuding irritation
and impatience. "Good God, man, what now?"

"The
thing is, Cap'n, I'm worried about Miss Katherine."

"Worried
about her?" Matthew laughed shortly. "I think there's one who is
quite capable of taking care of herself."

"Please,
sir, just listen to me. I have been looking for her ever since she escaped last
night and she hasn't turned up anywhere."

"Surely
you don't think she would let herself be found so easily."

"But
wouldn't you figure she would go straight to the police, sir? We have checked
all the police stations and not a word of her."

"Well,
after the British didn't come storming to her rescue, no doubt she mistrusts
them. She probably went straight to the embassy."

"No;
I checked there, too. And I've got two men at the train depot, and she's not
there, either. And I personally went to every hotel where the likes of Miss
Katherine might go, and she has taken a room in none of them. And she's one who
would be remembered, sir. This morning, I thought, 'Of course, she just went
straight down the dock to a Union ship.' So I checked, and there's not a Yankee
ship in the harbor."

Matthew
frowned, his anger turning to apprehension. "Perhaps she knows someone who
lives in Liverpool, some shipping acquaintance of her father's."

Peljo
looked at him skeptically. "Then why didn't she tell the old doctor to go
to them? They would have swung more weight with the Limeys than him."

"So
you think something's happened to her."

"Well,
sir, it was evening when she escaped. Going through the docks of Liverpool at
night like that—why, she didn't even take that little popgun of hers with her.
There's no telling what could happen to her—she could be raped or kidnapped
into white slavery or—" He stopped abruptly.

"Or
murdered," Matthew finished grimly. He stood for a moment, staring off
into space, his eyes as cold and hard as glass. "Gather up the crew, and
enlist the aid of that friend of yours, incompetent though he is. Keep the
watch at the depot and put some of the men to checking the pawnshops for that
engagement ring of hers. She will need money if she's all right, and if she's
not, they would take her jewelry and sell it. Everyone else is to comb this
area looking for her. Every street, every alley, every bar. And this time I
will not brook failure."

"Yes,
sir." Peljo scurried off.

Hampton
closed his eyes and leaned against the railing for support. There was a cold,
hard knot of fear in his stomach. At this moment she might be dead or hurt or
locked in some dingy little room, half-crazy with terror. And if she was, it
would be his fault. He had brought her here, driven her to make a desperate
attempt at escape. If anything happened to her, he was to blame.

Suddenly,
he realized—how obvious it was—he loved her. He, who had remained undisturbed
by the wiles of flirtatious Southern girls and fragile Asian women and
seductive European beauties, had been ensnared by that stubborn, willful, icy
Yankee. His mouth twisted in pain. That beautiful, sharp, brave girl. Now he
understood the inexplicable rage and desire and black depression she could
plunge him into. He loved her, and she could hurt him and please him as no
other woman had ever been able to. Determination boiled up in him. She could
not be dead. He must get her back; he had to find her. He had to make it up to
her.

Katherine's
hour of decision ran in fits and starts, now leaping forward, now crawling, as
she paced her room, her mind skittering over her problem. She must get control,
she told herself, must calm down and think clearly, but the next moment, she
found herself wringing her hands helplessly, her mind a jumble of disconnected thoughts.
What was Matthew doing? When would he find her? Would he even find her at all?
And how was she to answer Pearl when her hour was up?

She
pictured Hampton, cool, unruffled, even when facing death or capture, his eyes
clear, his face faintly contemptuous, his hard body misleadingly graceful and
relaxed. Somehow that calmed her. Nothing scared him; at least, he never showed
it. She sat down on the edge of her bed, her brow furrowed in thought.
Despicable as he was, he was also a fighter. What would he do in this
predicament? She smiled—aside from the obvious impossibility of his being in
this predicament, that is. Well, of course, he had a brute strength she lacked,
but when he had fought that battle with the
Susquetack,
he had been
fighting from a very weak position. Yet he had won because he had been daring
and quick; because he had taken them by surprise; because he had outbluffed
them. And that was exactly what she must do. Bluff them; make them relax their
guard; buy time until Matthew could rescue her; and if the chance came, strike
quickly, take them by surprise, and run like hell.