Where was she?
Wherever it was, the air was stale. Suffocating her like a gob of wet wool was shoved deep into her throat. No. That was her tongue. Her tongue too big for her mouth.
What the hell had happened to her?
Afraid to open her eyes, she scrunched her eyelids tighter closed, trying to remember what had happened last night.
She’d left Talen’s room. Gone down to the kitchens for some tea—with a splash of brandy—to calm her nerves before returning to his room. For she needed to find her mettle before she stood in front of him again.
She’d run too quickly. Scampered off like a frightened little doe. Talen wouldn’t hurt her, she knew that to her bones, but when his voice had raged at her, she’d fled in panic, the instinct uncontrollable as it drove her from the room. Avoid. Escape. Hide. It was all she knew to do.
She’d escaped down to the kitchens where she’d been warming a pot of tea when the dowager had appeared—appeared with a soft shoulder to cry upon for long minutes.
And Ness did. She cried for all of what she’d brought down onto Talen. All of the haunting memories that should have stayed in the forgotten wasteland where they belonged.
Lady Washburn had clucked and tucked Ness under her arm, pressing her head onto her chest. So like her mother had once done. The woman was a saint to listen to her, for all the dowager had endured herself over the years. Ness knew the guilt of the past weighed heavy on the dowager’s suffering soul.
Lady Washburn had sat with Ness for an hour, probably more. And then what had happened?
Ness worked deeper into her mind, trying to remember. The dowager had encouraged her to go and speak with Talen, to set right whatever had set him off. She had poured Ness another cup of tea that Ness had splashed a dollop of brandy into. She’d sipped it.
And then…nothing.
Nothing until this very moment when her left arm was shaken, the harsh movement sending vicious pangs along the nerves still healing around her broken bone.
She opened her eyes.
The dowager hovered above her.
Had she fallen asleep in the kitchens? Or in a servant’s room?
“Dear Ness. Do wake up.”
Ness looked past the dowager’s head bobbing above her. The ceiling was rough planks of wood. Dark. Not the kitchen ceiling. Not any ceiling she’d seen at Washburn. Where was she?
Her eyes shifted. A red brick fireplace, darkened with years of soot. Walls the same as the ceiling. Dark rough wood that had never been smoothed after the blade of an ax shaped it.
A bench. She was lying half on her right side on a bench pushed up against a wall of that rough wood, splinters digging into the back of her left shoulder.
“I am sorry for the uncomfortable conditions, dear. I thought to keep you here for just a few days until your father could come and collect you, as I imagine he knows how to take care of you properly, possibly to the same place your mother went to, if you are lucky. The man always was an ogre. But I underestimated Conner’s feelings for you.”
“What?” Ness’s mouth opened, her tongue only able to form a whisper as the dowager’s rapid words filtered through the fuzz in her brain. Her father? Collect her?
The dowager clucked her tongue, her head still bobbing above Ness. “I heard you last night, dear, pushing Conner to take the title. It won’t do. He does not need you in his life. And I imagine your father will agree. Your father will surely have other plans for you. Did you know he once tried to sell you off when you were fifteen to our neighbor, Sir Hawlins? The old lecher was sixty-three at the time. But then the old goat died in his soup.” Her head shook. “Your father has a very sick sense about how to use his property.”
Her head stubbornly foggy, Ness frantically tried to clear it enough to follow the ramblings of the dowager.
Her look focused on the dowager’s left eye, because it was too much work to shift her head enough to see both of her eyes at the same time. “You brought me here to get away from Talen?”
Good. Her tongue worked. Now onto her body. Ness tried to shift, to sit up, and she understood for the first time that she couldn’t. That her arms were bound together. She stretched her bent legs.
Hell, her ankles were strapped together.
She looked down to see rough rope twined about her wrists.
“I did.” The dowager slipped her hands under Ness’s left arm and pulled her upright with a grunt. “I thought with you gone, Conner would return to London and forget he ever came to Washburn. If you hadn’t pushed him to take the title, I wouldn’t have interfered and you two could have moved on from here and lived a nice life in London. But you pushed.”
“I didn’t push, I—”