CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
The axles creaked; the horses' hooves clopped along gravel trails, down the steep hill leading to Norbury Manor; thunder growled ominously as rain pattered on top of the carriage. If terror, pain and heartbreak hadn't already occupied her every sense, Isobel may have been quite taken by the comfort of the carriage; far more inviting than poor Mr. Trevingham's rickety wooden cart, its seats felt like a cloud, stuffed with goose-down and covered in violet, plush velvet. Lanterns lit the inside of the cabin, warding away the foreboding dark of the storm without. In truth she could think about nothing - not the beauty of the white steeds, nor the jolly chatter of the driver to his passengers, nor could she think about just how surprisingly smooth the ride felt.
All she could think on was Lord Brighton - crested with the glow of white lightning, his expression broken, his spirit crushed; chains shackled so tightly to the both of them, keeping them prisoners of the lies, betrayal and scandal that rocked so much of northern England. Nor could she stop thinking on the terror that filled her each time she thought on her erstwhile companion, stuffed up close to her upon the carriage seat - Lord Miller, the Duke of Thrushmore, who now shamelessly crowded Lady Duskwood's space; he treated her as his property, and for all purposes, perhaps - now that he owned her debts, he owned her, something which brought him immense, perverse joy.
"Come now, Lady Duskwood, am I truly the detestable toad you insisted I was, in Lord Brighton's parlor?" Lord Miller asked, wearing that mask that so disgusted her - the mask of the gentleman, disguising his wicked lust and thirst for domineering control over the innocent woman. "Surely I must have some features that entice you? If not, I'm certain you'll learn to appreciate me, in time," he added cheerily.
"I'll quite appreciate when you lay buried beside your unfortunately late wife, so that I might trod upon your shriveled corpse, m'lord," Isobel spat back at the duke, her eyes watching as the storm-stricken countryside rolled alongside the carriage. She felt the jab strike quite rough, as the duke, who had been so full of chatter thus far in the course of their journey, fell silent, no doubt nursing the wound struck by Lady Isobel's verbal rapier-strike. She smirked, quietly satisfied at having caused him pause with the tip of her sharpened wit.
"That's hardly a wish befitting a proper lady, though I'll quite indulge you for a moment in asking - are you aware of just how my lovely late wife passed, Lady Duskwood?" the duke's voice fell cold, and Isobel suddenly shivered at just how frigid and, frankly, dangerous his voice sounded. She finally looked at him - the old man, wrapped in his oversized suit and his tall hat, always wanting to look larger than his diminutive, shrinking, elderly body did.
"A stark and sudden illness," Isobel recalled, though suddenly she did not trust her own words.
"Lady Willemer, she was such a sweet woman," the duke recalled, his voice reminiscent, but... off, vexing in some manner that startled Isobel to her core. "A proper lady, in every inescapable sense. From a good family, taught proper manners... in many ways, nothing like you, Lady Duskwood," he sneered, his hand grasping at Isobel's wrist; she pulled it away, but he persisted, grabbing her hand forcefully. She yelped, but he held on to it tightly. "Lady Willemer, she was a proper woman in so many ways, Lady Duskwood... except that she refused her husband's wishes," he whispered into her ear, taking sadistic glee in the pain his squeezing grasp inflicted upon Isobel.
"Wh-what did you do?!" she said, quite startled at the sudden, sinister nature of the conversation.
"The Lady Willemer's family adored me... quite a pity that after we married and she moved to my estate, she no longer felt the same. I told her, she would learn to love me," the duke recalled, more and more twisted delight in each of his words as he told the story, almost aroused by it. "...but she refused. Like you, Lady Duskwood, she claimed I had deceived her family; deceived everyone. She even dared to claim I was not a proper gentleman. Can you believe, a woman like that, making such a bold claim?" he asked; Isobel looked away, sniffling through tears and pain, but the duke enjoyed her hurt enough that he wanted to see it, and grasped her chin, wrenching her face towards his. She closed her eyes, refusing to look at him.
"Truly unfortunate as it as, her father fell in to some manner of debt, and of course, he asked me to assist... the debt would have put most of the assets of Lady Willemer's family in my hands. How could a brilliant gentleman like myself not seize such an opportunity?" Lord Miller's sinister tone seethed with arrogant satisfaction. "Of course, having divined my plan for claiming her family, Lady Willemer resolved to warn her father, and to stop me..." Isobel's eyes shot open in grim realization, her lips parted in abject terror.
"You... you couldn't have!..." she exclaimed in a harsh whisper.
"My lovely wife, she always had such trouble, such a frail constitution... anything, certainly, could have been a danger to her... particularly a dangerous solution, dropped unceremoniously into her stew, may have presented a severe danger," he recalled, more and more pleased with his vicious handiwork.
"You poisoned her," Isobel swallowed hard. "You monster."
"Her father wept with me, and I comforted him with promises of financial assistance. Certain as the sun rising, he came to me, and the Willemer family will never know what it is to be solvent again, m'lady. And have you heard the rumors? That he ran off and used the wealth to cover gambling debts? Ruinous. Such an unfortunate situation, the Willemer family has endured," he clicked his tongue against the roof of his mouth in facetious sorrow. "So tragic, indeed."
"You'll not get away with this," Isobel hissed, tears staining her cheeks. He viciously grasped her thigh with his hand, and when she tried to pull away, his arm lassoed her body, pulling her close. He licked her ear as she squirmed in pained protest against the disgusting duke's strength; he pressed his lips against hers, and it hurt; it hurt not just her body, but her soul, to feel a man so wretched claiming her lips.
"And now you know the true price of the words and deeds you've committed, you harlot," the duke whispered in hot, filthy bursts against Isobel's lips as she struggled weakly. "You belong to me. Your soul, your name - your life, if you know what's best for you. Everything, everyone you care about - they're in my debt, little whore," the duke growled. "And if you displease me, you can forget about those silly thoughts of self-murder you voiced, lovely. I'll be certain to do the favor for you, once the time is right," he huffed, before pressing another disgusting kiss against Lady Duskwood's struggling, yelping lips. She wretched, quaking, full of fear and full of hate.
"You wouldn't dare," she spat at him.
"I've dared before, and won - and you think any would worry on the fate of a seductress harlot who angled at not just Lord Brighton's fortune, but my own?" he smirked evilly. "You're nothing but what I make you out to be, to the simpletons who rule these lands."
"I'll never love you," she hissed.
"Oh, I certainly don't expect you to, nor does it quite matter to me," he said, calmly satisfied. "But you will suffer whatever it is I wish to inflict upon you, Lady Duskwood," he drew closer, letting his fantasies fill her ear. "You will not enjoy it. I will not make you feel good - I will not make you feel free, as your precious Lord Brighton has. I will not give you what you like. I will take what I want," he promised in his dark and displeasing tone, "and you will lay there, and you will give it." He ran his hands along the inside of her thighs; she squeezed her legs together, but he would not be stopped now, forcing them apart to her quiet protests. He unceremoniously slammed the small window behind the driver's ears shut; she couldn't scream, now.
"Stop! You can't," she whimpered.
"I can't? You belong to me, now," the duke snarled. "You'll listen to every last thing I have to say. You'll listen to just how much you're going to suffer. I'll claim your body every day if I wish. More than once, if I wish. I will not be gentle. I will not do the things you like," he continued, undeterred by her struggles and the tears in her eyes. "My tongue will taste every inch of your body, and you will obey me when I tell you to get onto your knees and do everything I wish. You will have no choice. And you remember what happens if you displease me, don't you?" the duke threatened. She refused to answer, and he grasped her hips harshly, digging his hands into them. "Don't you?" he demanded.
"Yes! Please, stop," she begged.
"That's what I want to hear. Obedience. I want to hear you plead," he huffed, "so that I can refuse you. So that I can do what I want. Always, what I want," he grinned. "Do you understand?"
Knock knock knock!
A quiet rapping on the small door he had slid shut interrupted the lord; he sighed in irritation, trying to put back on that wicked mask he wore for the world.
"What's the trouble?" he questioned, annoyed, still harshly holding on to Lady Isobel, who laid frozen in fear across the carriage's seat. Silence. Then, another series of knocks, and what sounded like a pitched scuffle among the patter of rain on the roof. The Duke of Thrushmore sighed in irritation; the axles of the carriage stopped creaking, and a muffled whinny from a horse followed the sigh. "Why have we stopped?" he demanded. Silence. Isobel held her breath, eyes darting around the cabin, tense and full of tremors of horror. Another frustrated grunt and the filthy duke crawled to the sliding window to the driver.
"What is the meaning of this, Bertrand?" he asked, sliding the window open. To Isobel's shock a fist swung through the small hole, shattering the Duke of Thrushmore's nose in a precisely-placed, quick punch. The duke howled in pain, falling backwards from the force, scrambling along the carriage's floor. Isobel inched back along the bench, and with sudden force the door to the vehicle flew open. Blood streamed from the duke's broken nose, the flesh swelling, and he shouted garbled protests as a strong pair of arms reached into the cabin and tugged his shrunken, elderly body out into the rain. Isobel watched the duke fall to his knees; she could see little else amid the darkness of the storm, but the duke's heated shouting met only with more punches and laughs. Suddenly, a man appeared before her, clad in a heavy black cloak, a thespian's laughing mask upon his face, a parasol unfurled.
"M'lady," the mysterious man offered her his hand. She had heard tell of these masks, cloaks - the Merry Bandits, oft mentioned by those nobles traveling the paths through north England, as a scourge of the rich and friends to the needy. She blinked, fearing they would seek her as another target.
"I'm... please," she stammered. The masked man chuckled; he grasped his mask, pulling it from his face - and Isobel's heart throbbed and her eyes gleamed as she saw her Lord Brighton, damp and dirty but grinning at her, beneath the mask.
"The little bird certainly didn't know all of my secrets," Lord Brighton chuckled.
"You're a b—a bandit?!" Isobel exclaimed.
"Bandit? What an outdated term," he scoffed. "Bandits pilfer, hurt. Kill. What do you think of that, Merry Bandits?" Lord Brighton looked back on his crew of cloaked men, who joined in with hearty laughs and jeers.
"I can't... you're a bandit," she mumbled in disbelief.
"Not quite, m'lady," Lord Brighton smirked. "Though I appreciate their style."
"Merry Bandits, what do we do?" one of the masked men asked his brethren aloud.
"Medicine for the hurt, food for the starving," one of the masked men proclaimed proudly.
"And never a soul claimed or a person hurt," another echoed proudly.
"Well... except this one," Lord Brighton smirked, looking down at the Duke of Thrushmore; on his knees, his arms held by two of the Merry Bandits, he thrashed in a puddle of pooling rainwater, blood streaming along his face.
"You! You, you bastard, you," he seethed upon seeing Lord Brighton's face. "Consorting with criminals! If you thought your situation wasn't already untenable, you wicked wretch," the Duke snarled. Lord Brighton smirked.
"I knew I'd need some help, if I was going to thoroughly embarrass you," Lord Brighton laughed. "A few of the Merry Bandits might be friends of mine, certainly. And I may appreciate their mission, certainly. But me, a bandit? I'm a proper gentleman," Lord Brighton growled facetiously. Overcome, Lady Isobel rushed from the carriage; she didn't care about the rain, or the puddles beneath her feet, or the roar of the thunder or the flash of the lightning, or the bandits or the pain in her wrists or any of the disastrous things to befall the two of them, today. All she cared about was seeing his face; as she rushed into his arms he nearly dropped the parasol, their lips locking and all that desire burning hot through their bodies as they reunited.
"I couldn't let you leave, not after I looked into your eyes," Lord Brighton admitted, wrapping an arm around her waist. The bandits laughed, a few catcalling the display; Lady Duskwood blushed. "Quiet down, you rapscallions," Lord Brighton joked.
"What... what about," Isobel swallowed hard, "the... Lady Maryweather, and all the lies? The evidence she has, against you, and against us—"
"I love you, Isobel. I thought it to be quite improper of me to demand that you throw off your chains, and to watch you submit yourself to me, wanting and willing - and then, that I not reciprocate," he smiled warmly, kissing along her jawline as the rain fell around them. "I couldn't let that happen. I couldn't dare to let you go, love." Tears of pain turned to tears of joy streaming down her face as they embraced; she didn't want to let him go.
"I'll have the constable arrest the lot of you - you'll never see the outside of a prison again, do you understand me, Ellery Brighton?!" the Duke of Thrushmore's protests began again, but were quickly silenced by a harsh fist to the face by one of the Merry Bandits, to which he moaned pathetically in pain, his suit drenched through and coated in mud.
"I think we ought to get out of the rain, don't you, love?" Lord Brighton asked his darling. "Do you think the duke'd much mind if we borrowed his carriage, for just a short while?" Lady Isobel glanced at the old man and seethed; her fists balled up as she recalled the story, and all the things he'd done to her, she nearly shook with the rage.
"Let me ask," she answered, storming out from beneath the parasol, into the rain. Lightning crackled across the sky, illuminating her face, skin beat-red. The Duke of Thrushmore glanced up at her, his lip trembling in the cold.
"Tell these roustabouts to unhand me, Isobel, and... and I'll still consider forgetting all of this," the duke offered weakly.
"I want you to beg," she said coldly. "Like I'm sure Lady Willemer did. Like I did." Confused, in pain, and soaked in rain, the duke cried out pathetically.
"Pl-please, Lady Duskwood!" he shrieked. She thanked him for his obedience by swinging her foot straight at his crotch, striking him with her toe; he writhed in agony, yowling like a nasty old dog as acute pain struck his faculties. She watched him fall to his side into the puddle and smiled.
"This man is a cheat, a liar, and a murderer, Merry Bandits. I'm certain the constable would be interested in the story of Lady Willemer," she announced proudly, stepping back to her lover's side.
"We'll take care of it, m'lady," the masked bandit nodded, as Isobel embraced Lord Brighton again.
"I'll drive the horses," Lord Brighton kissed her deeply.
"Hurry them along," Isobel added, her voice shaking, "I can't stand to be away from you for another moment."