Page 11 of Marry in Scandal

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Lily lay on the floor of the carriage, gagged, bound up in a shroud of heavy cloth and unable to see athing. She struggled to breathe. Waves of dizziness and a strange lethargy added to her fear and confusion. She tried to move her legs, but it was as if there were weights attached to them.

The cloth covering her was musty and stank of horses and mildew. A horse blanket? She pushed at it. “Keep still, you!” a man snarled. Not Mr. Nixon; his voice was rough and uneducated. Something pressed down on her neck—a foot? She froze, her heart hammering in her chest. She could barely breathe as it was. If he pressed any harder...

After a moment Mr. Nixon said, “Ease up. She’s no use to me if you break her neck.”

“I wasn’t planning to.”

“No, but a bump or pothole might jar your foot and then where would I be? With a useless body to dispose of. I didn’t pay you for that.”

A body?The flat indifference in the voices was terrifying. Lily’s heart hammered harder.

The pressure on her neck eased. She lay still, struggling to breathe. Questions swirled uselessly in her brain. What did these terrible men want? It sounded like Sylvia’s cousin, Mr. Nixon, was in charge. Was Sylvia part of this? Did she know what was happening to Lily or not? And who was the other man? Some rough hireling from the sound of things. Most pressing of all, why had they taken her? For what purpose?

And why was it so difficult to marshal her thoughts? Had she been hit on the head, that she was so dizzy and lethargic? She thought about her head. It wasn’t sore—at least not in the way it would be if something had hit it.

Her mouth tasted sour and cobwebby. So much fabric had been jammed into her mouth that her jaw ached from being forced open for so long. Her tongue was wedged to the side, pressing painfully against a sharp tooth. Every jolt and bump and swerve of the carriage was painful.

What did they want with her? Were they planning to murder—no, he said a body was no use to him. What then? Ransom?

She recalled something her brother, Cal, had said to her and Rose a lifetime ago in Bath, when they’d sneaked outalone at night. Something about girls being kidnapped and sold into some kind of slavery. Yes, that was it.White slavery—do you know what that means? Sold into a Turkish harem or a brothel in the seamiest foreign cities. And never seen again.

A chill ran down her spine. Was that it? Would she disappear into some Turkish seraglio and never see her family again? Tears squeezed between her tightly closed eyes.

She couldn’t give in to despair. She wouldn’t. She had to fight this. Somehow. She swallowed convulsively, and immediately had to battle the instinct to gag.

Lily didn’t know how long she lay there on the cold floor of the carriage, in a kind of stupor of helplessness and nausea, but eventually she realized the carriage was slowing. It stopped. Now what? She blinked hard, trying to breathe, to force herself to think. It was like wading through a heavy fog.

“How much of that stuff did you give her?”

Stuff? What stuff?

“A bit, just enough to keep her quiet. Any more and she’d have tasted it.”

“Better give her another dose before I leave you, then.”

She snatched a realization from the swirling bewilderment. The fruit punch at the party. It must have been drugged. No wonder she was so confused.

She could hear them moving in the carriage, shifting things, and then abruptly she was grabbed by the shoulders and jerked into a sitting position. The blanket was pulled off her face, and the wad of cloth dragged from her mouth. She swallowed, gasping deep gulps of air in relief, but before she could gather her wits, someone grabbed her hair and forced her head back, painfully.

A hand gripped her chin, hard, and the neck of a small bottle was thrust between her lips. She choked and spluttered as some nasty-tasting liquid was forced down her throat. She struggled with all the feeble strength left to her, but it did no good. The holder of the bottle—she couldn’t see his face in the dark—simply jammed it painfully against her teeth, while the other one pulled harder on her hair, forcing her head back until she feared her neck might break.

“Careful, not too much now, a dead bride will do you no good at all.”

A dead bride? A bride?

The vile bottle was removed and Lily, coughing and weak, found her wrists seized and bound. She tried to resist but it was like trying to swim in mud. The dizziness and lethargy were worse now.

“Good. Now, keep her doped up until you get to Scotland.”

Scotland?

Hard hands replaced the gag, still damp from her own spittle, but this time tied around her mouth instead of being stuffed into it. Small mercies.

She lay on the carriage floor while Nixon paid the other man. Then she was scooped up and dumped roughly into something like... a box? Acoffin? Panic threatened. She breathed deeply—as deeply as she could through the gag.Stay calm, Lily. Not a coffin.She would have seen a coffin. They were still in the carriage.Think, Lily, think.

It was some kind of container—no, a space under the seat. Yes, a space for storing cushions and rugs and extra luggage. And abducted women. As the realization came, a lid closed over her, turning the night from a terrifying thing of darkness and shadows into absolute pitch-blackness.