His Wicked Sins (12 page)

HIS WICKED SINS

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Chapter 7

Northallerton, Yorkshire, September 5, 1828

C
old. She was so cold.

Sarah Ashton lay in the dark, shivering, her belly twisted in hunger, her fear near to

driving her mad. There was nothing left now of the girl she had been, nothing left of hopes

and dreams and fancies. There was only a fate she could never have imagined, not in her

nightmares. Not ever.

She was soaked through, her clothes damp and frigid against her skin, her joints aching.

Her arms were wrenched tight behind her, her wrists bound, her hands gone numb long

ago. A fetid rag filled her mouth.

Hours had passed since he had left her here … hours? No, longer … days? She could

not say. There was only the endless cold and the desperation and the jagged edge of terror.

She was beyond tears, cast in a pit of fierce misery, vast and overwhelming.

She could see nothing of her surroundings, and now that the pounding rhythm of the

rain had stopped, she could hear nothing save the steady thud of her own heart. She had

taken to counting the beans to stave off the memories and the terrible suppositions that

slunk from the darkest shadows of her soul. Then she lost count and the panic clawed at

her, terror creeping to the fore.

With perfect clarity she recalled the length of his crop tap-tap-tapping his thigh as he

stood, impatient, in the clearing. She remembered her eager steps, her girlish dreams, the

scent of rain in the air and, finally, the metallic tang of fear burning her tongue.

He had overpowered her with ease, tied her wrists and her feet, muzzled her with a

cloth tied so tightly that the sensitive skin at the corners of her mouth tore open. Her

struggles had been pitiful in the face of his strength, and he had relished that. Somehow,

she sensed that he had enjoyed her helplessness.

Then he had tied a rag over her eyes, and she had known only shock and dread as he

hefted her like a sack of grain and moved her to a carriage. Bile had churned in her gut

and up her throat, and she had fought it back, terrified that if she retched she would choke

on her own vomit behind the press of the gag. The carriage had rocked and swayed and

brought her here … wherever here was.

He had dragged her from the conveyance, his grasp bruisingly tight, hefted her once

more to carry her a short distance before dumping her on the ground. Yanking off the

blindfold, he had shoved her against something hard and unyielding. She had been too

terrified to notice her surroundings. She remembered screaming into the gag, struggling as

he touched her hair, a gentle stroke of his hand, then screaming again, more desperate as

she heard the heavy slam of wood against wood.

Everything had gone dark, so dark.

Fighting her panic, she had struggled and squirmed and felt her shoulders bump against

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walls mere inches away on all sides. No matter how she turned and twisted, there was

only the smell of damp wood and earth and the feel of unfinished planks close about her.

Splinters pricked her fingers as she maneuvered her body to allow her bound hands to drag

across the wood, searching for escape.

Dear heaven, a wooden box, long and narrow, smelling of earth and rot.

Sick with dread, she had bucked and jerked, slamming herself against the hard walls

with whatever force she could muster, nearly driven mad with the fear that he had buried

her alive.

Why … why … why…?

After a time she had slumped in exhaustion and lost awareness of the passage of the

hours, rousing at times to cry and wriggle and struggle, to rage and sob and plead with

stifled cries, only to fall quiet once more when her efforts came to naught.

Now, she shivered and shook and waited in the choking miasma of her ever-present

horror.

That was the worst part. The waiting.

How long had she been here? How long until she died?

She stiffened as the sound of horses reached her, the crunch of carriage wheels drawing

nigh. She thought it a conjured notion, a dream, and then the horses nickered and she cried

out, a dreadful muffled sound escaping her gagged mouth.

Every muscle and bone in her body protested in a riot of pain as she struggled anew,

desperate to be free, torn between hope and horror.

There came a soft, scraping noise, booted feet against the ground, closer and closer still.

Narrow optimism unfurled in her breast, then congealed into a glutinous mass that choked

her breath and hung leaden in her lungs.

Likely this was no savior come to free her, but her captor, come to harm her, come to—

The lid of the box lifted away, and Sarah blinked against the flare of light. She saw

nothing but spots dancing before her eyes, glowing and bright. The light hurt.

"So, miss," he said quietly, his tone even, chillingly void of inflection. "You've soiled

yourself."

She had, and now she was glad of it. Perhaps the stink would keep him away,

perhaps…

He reached into the box, her coffin, and dragged her out as though she were a doll, then

let her fall to the ground at his feet. Frantic, she looked about, the earthen floor cold and

damp beneath her cheek, her eyes at last growing accustomed to the light.

Morning light. She could hear the birds.

Turning her head, she saw that she was in a small building with wooden sides and a

wooden roof, and in the center was the simple wooden coffin set in a shallow trench. A

terrible shuddering took her, to see it so, with only the top exposed that he might set the

lid, and the remainder in the ground.

Buried alive.

She jerked and twisted and wriggled along the ground, digging her bound and numbed

fingers into the hard earth, dragging herself away inch by inch.

He stood staring down at her, his expression perfectly benign, but something in his face

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made her stop her struggles, made her freeze in place and pray. Moaning, she flinched

as he hunkered down beside her. Not even daring to breathe, she quivered, held in place,

at insect pinned and studied.

"Yes, that's a good girl," he whispered, his voice a low caress that made her skin prickle

and her heart slam against her ribs. "Be still. No tempests, now. No tantrums."

He never said what he would do if she was not still, but she knew. With brutal, lancing

certainty, she knew.

Reaching out, he stroked the backs of his fingers along her cheek, and she lay rigid,

frozen by the horror of it and the fear. She could not breathe. Her chest was tight, so tight,

and the edges of her vision blurred and wavered. She thought she would fall into the

blackness, the lovely, unknowing blackness.

"No," he murmured, and trailed his fingers along her cheek, her neck, the swell of her

breast where he pinched her sharply. The pain chased away the promise of oblivion,

reviving her.

And then she saw the gleam of the blade.

Leaning close, he spoke against her ear. "Be still." A lover's whisper, so soft.

She shuddered and squeaked as she felt a tugging on her scalp, a sting. He was cutting

her hair, she thought, sawing at the length with his knife, gathering the golden tresses in a

tail. His fingers stroked the pale strands of hair as he made low sounds of pleasure that

chilled her to her core.

He was pulling too hard. It hurt. In burned. She cried out at a sharp pull, the sound

swallowed by the gag.

Memories bubbled like a viscous brew, fevered recollections of two women found dead

in the woods, mauled and bloody, their bodies gouged and slashed by some unnamed

beast's claws.

Sarah began to struggle, despite his whispered urgings that she be still. Fresh horror

chewed at her, and she knew then that he had killed them, Helen Bodie-Stuart and

Katherine Anne Stillwell, the two young teachers from Burndale Academy.

Everyone had thought them mauled by some wild beast, but shivering here on the cold

ground, with her tormentor crouched overtop her, his knees pinning her shoulders flat and

the feel of his blade scraping against her scalp, Sarah
knew.

He had killed them, and now he would kill her.

"Not yet," he whispered, his voice hard with excitement as he leaned close to let his

breath touch her ear. "Not yet. First, we have things to enjoy together, you and I."

* * *

air clammy and cold. Griffin trudged along the road to the Red Bull Inn, one of four

coaching inns on Northallerton's main road. His business of the morning had been less

than satisfying in its conclusion. The exertion had stoked his appetite; the unfulfilling

outcome had fouled his temper. He was of a mind to find a meal and a drink before setting

out for Burndale.

He paused, listening to the town bell strike the hour. The sound was muffled, as though

the clapper was shrouded and dampened by the fog.

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On the far side of the thoroughfare, out of the cloying mist, loomed the rambling, dark

outline of the Red Bull Inn. Out front was an entrance porch, and Griffin knew that just

inside the front door was a parlor. He had warmed his hands before a glowing fire more

than one night when he had chosen to stay in Northallerton rather than take the road to

Wickham Hall.

An ill-preferred highway that was, even in the sunshine. The road to London always

beckoned, or the road to the coast, or the road to anywhere than was not Wickham Hall.

Griffin scrubbed his hand along his jaw. There were days, like this one, where he had a

wish to choose a different path, one than led to a new and heretofore untraveled place, one

that would see him unburdened by responsibility and regret. On those days he wished to

be the ne'er-do-well lad he had been a decade past.

But there was Isobel to consider. The lad he had once been was no fit parent.

The thought brought a dark twist to his lips. The man he had grown into was no better.

He had miserly success at fathering her. He ought to hire a nurse and a governess and

leave her to more capable hands. That thought both appealed and repelled.
Ought to
was a

far distance from
would.

Having been so thoroughly abandoned himself, he found he could not do the same to

her.

Interestingly, she had no similar qualms, choosing to abandon him at will, to stay at

Burndale Academy for lengths of time than varied as to her disposition. A week, a day, a

month. In the beginning, he had been baffled as to why she chose to stay there. But she

had only stared at him with her great, dark eyes and her body stiff and still. He had

quickly come to understand that she would not leave there. Too, he had come to

understand that she chose to stay there because it was away from him.

At first, he had visited her daily, the two of them facing each other, awkward and silent

in Miss Percy's office before the mullioned window. Isobel would sit, unmoving, her gaze

locked on the floor, her body rigid. After a time, he realized that his visits only made it

worse, and so they became less frequent and they fell into a pattern where he would fetch