Page 52 of A Duchess of Mystery (The Mismatched Lovers #3)

I sabella hugged her knees and shivered, both from the cold that was eating into her bones and from the continued scuttling of unseen creatures across the floors and walls.

She’d already concluded that her imagination was worse than not being able to see what was making the noises.

More cockroaches? Mice? Rats? Probably all three and in large numbers by the sound of things.

She kept her head hunched between her shoulder blades, the fear that something might drop down her neck from the ceiling all too real.

Spiders, possibly. If she’d had a shawl she could have put it over her head and had some protection, but they’d taken her into custody in what she’d been wearing to walk in the garden and charm Richard.

For a moment, she was tempted to go and retrieve that stinking blanket from where she’d thrown it, even though she had no idea how many people had used it before her.

But the thought of having to set her feet on the floor and risk having something run over them, or worse, up her legs, put her off.

Plus, her whole body itched, and the blanket might be harboring any amount of creatures intent on infesting her.

Even without it, she was certain she could feel things crawling over her skin and biting her.

Was this what her life was going to be like from now on?

Mired in dirt and the sort of horrible parasites she’d only heard tales of from her nurse as a child.

The temptation to give in and let herself cry mounted, but with it so did the determination not to.

She had to remember who she was, even though by now it was an uphill struggle.

She was not just an ordinary young woman; she was a duchess.

Surely those who had her in their power couldn’t leave her like this?

Surely once she was in London she would be held in a more salubrious jail.

They didn’t put members of the nobility in with common criminals, did they?

She pushed aside the fear that they might not care and would do just that.

She determined not to think about the future.

Instead, she would comfort herself by thinking of Dora, safe and not incarcerated, but being looked after by Richard.

Yes, he would take care of Dora for her.

He was a man of his word. She’d asked him to, so he would.

And perhaps, just perhaps, he might be able to get her out of this.

Thinking of him warmed her frozen heart just a little.

Although dwelling on how different her life could have been had she met Richard instead of Marcus promptly lowered her spirits once again.

The town hall clock struck once. How long would she have to wait for someone to come?

Maybe they’d just leave her here for another day.

Well, it was another day now. Perhaps the Bow Street Runners would take their time to come down from London and collect her.

She glanced at the corner; she was going to have to use that noisome privy soon, even though they’d given her nothing to drink.

At least she’d got a little more used to the stink, but the thought of having to go anywhere near it had her ready to gag.

Plus, she was back to not wanting to set her feet on the floor in the dark and all that threatened.

Outside, the town was now silent. As though a heavy cloak had fallen over it, muting its life blood, she could hear nothing.

No voices. No footsteps. No more mail coaches.

Not even the familiar call of an owl. She wasn’t used to being in a small town at night.

In London, when she was at the townhouse, there was never total silence, because London never slept.

Not totally. At night there was always something going on: people returning from balls or soirées, men on their way back from gambling dens, dogs barking, owls and the occasional nightingale, more than a few carriages even in the middle of the night.

But not here in this small market town. Here, there was nothing.

She could have been immured in the underground dungeon of some ancient castle, were it not for the faint glow of light from the nearest streetlamp.

The loneliness of it pressed in on her, threatening to squash her flat against the hard wooden pallet, like a fly.

She buried her head against her raised knees and closed her eyes.

Perhaps she could snatch a little much needed sleep in this position.

Perhaps if she thought about Richard… Diccon.

How she wanted to possess the familiarity with that nickname that Dora had.

How she wanted to call out his name, and have him turn to her, smiling with those kind eyes that were nothing like Marcus’s hard and cruel ones.

How had she ever thought him like his cousin?

He was cut from a different mold. He was a man she could willingly have spent the rest of her life with.

A man with whom this would now never happen.

Time ticked past.

She couldn’t get Richard out of her head.

If she went to the gallows, she’d close her eyes as they put the noose around her neck and visualize his face, so it could be the last thing she saw in this life.

Sitting here, afraid to sleep, she let her imagination furnish her with images of what it would have been like to have had him love her.

A tear trickled down her cheek, to be swiped away. She refused to let herself cry.

The sound of hooves and wheels on the cobbles at last broke into her troubled doze.

She lifted her head and listened. Another mailcoach?

The hour must be very late. By the sound of it, more than one coach.

They did pass through at unsociable times, of course.

They had to, in order to make their times.

These were stopping, and from the sound of it, right outside the Guildhall rather than nearer to the big coaching inn on the east side of the marketplace.

Voices carried on the damp night air. Men’s voices raised in anger.

Wait. She knew one of the voices. The loudest and angriest. Was that, was that… Richard ?

Her heart leapt as hope burgeoned, and she sat up straighter, alert now, ears straining.

Footsteps sounded on the stairs outside the cell. A key rattled in the lock. The door swung open so hard it crashed against the wall, and light from a handheld lantern flooded inside, blinding her. Rats scurried for cover, as did the cockroaches. She’d been correct in her imaginings.

For a long moment nothing happened, and then Richard was across the room.

His strong arms went around her, scooping her bodily up off the bed, as though she were light as a babe in arms, clasping her to him, pressing her close, careless of how she must smell after all these hours in this cell.

His breath was hot on her cheek, the feel of his arms tight around her, holding her as though he never wanted to let her go, so much more than just comforting.

All her previous determination flew out of the window.

She wrapped her arms around his neck and clung onto him like a drowning woman, burying her face in his shoulder, a shoulder that smelled clean and fresh, despite the musky aroma of his sweat.

She clutched him to her as though he were a living pomander, sent just to dispel the stink of the jail, breathing him in, taking great lungfuls of him deep into her core.

“Diccon,” the name came out as a whisper against the bristles of his unshaven neck. “You came. I knew you would.”

When the turnkey from the Bridewell, dragged most unwillingly from his bed, and swearing that even a duke ought to wait until a man was awake of a morning, had unlocked the cell door, and the light of the colonel’s torch spilled inside the fetid room, Richard had for a moment thought it empty.

The terror that they were too late, that somehow a Bow Street Runner had arrived this quickly, and Isabella was already on her way to London to another, bigger and more impregnable jail, washed over him.

And then something in the far corner, close to the filthy window, moved.

She was hunched, small as a child, on a narrow wooden pallet, devoid of mattress or blanket, her knees drawn up to her chest, her wide eyes blinking in the light. She couldn’t see him.

He stepped into the cell, the stink hitting him like a solid, malodorous wall.

He almost hesitated, only the sight of Isabella so vulnerable, so small, so pathetic, drove him on.

In a few short strides he was across the damp flagstones, insects he couldn’t see crunching under his boots, and before she could move or respond in any way, he had her in his arms, clutching her to him as though he never wanted to release her. Which was true, because he didn’t.

He could not have held her more tightly had he tried. Her breath was against his neck as she turned her head towards him, his lips in her hair. Out of instinct, he kissed the top of her head as he turned back to the others, fury on his face.

“What sort of a place is this?” he snarled, as a rat dashed away from the light and vanished into one of many holes in the wooden wall. Beneath his feet, the carapaces of more cockroaches crunched.

“The-the jail,” Colonel Jarvis said, holding a handkerchief to his mouth, his own rheumy eyes wide with shock. Perhaps he’d never seen the inside of where he was consigning those presumed guilty to languish before their trials.

The turnkey, a little rat of a man, shrugged his scrawny shoulders.

“Same as the inside of any jail I’ve ever seen.

Same as the Bridewell, an’ that’s got half a dozen vagrants in it right now.

” He grunted. “She’s lucky she weren’t put in there with those doxies.

None of them’d’ve taken kindly to a duchess being in with ’em.

This ’uns the best of the lockups we’ve got in Newbury. ”