Page 32 of Weave me a Rope
He kept recalculating how long it would have taken her to climb down the rope. The trouble was those moments in the tower room when the marquess had been sawing at the rope had stretched out into an eternity. She should have been able to make the descent in a couple of minutes, but had that much time elapsed?
Her scream had been short and cut off. A fall? A small one, perhaps. Or some other shock as she reached the ground.
His mind went round and round, covering the same thoughts again and again. He had asked the guards, but they refused to speak to him. There were four, all unknown to him, two ofthem with him at all times, day and night. He assumed the two not on duty traveled elsewhere in his father’s retinue or bedded down with the other servants. It didn’t matter. By contrast to his desperate worry for Cordelia, what was happening to him seemed to be unimportant.
Towards the end of the fourth day, the coach pulled off the road and through a pair of tall wrought iron gates. They had arrived somewhere, but where was it? Through the rain that hit the carriage windows, all he could tell was that trees hemmed them in on both sides, but the change in the pitch and sway of the coach hinted they were now traveling a relatively well-kept carriageway.
Finally, the coach pulled up and someone opened the door. One of Spen’s guards knelt to undo his chains while the other watched Spen for any wrong move. Spen had learned the futility of any resistance. He waited until the chains fell away from the ankle shackles, and even then, didn’t move until the guard who had opened the door spoke. Spen thought of the man as Chatter, partly because he spoke so little and partly because he was the only one of the guards who spoke in Spen’s presence. Chatter said, “Come along, Lord Spenhurst. We have arrived.”
Arrived where, though? The house was large—what he could see was four stories high, at least, and perhaps one hundred feet across. It wasn’t a place he had been before. The sun was setting behind the house, so the carriageway, at least, had brought them west. For a moment, curiosity roused Spen from his misery.
His father had already mounted the tall flight of steps to the front door and was entering the house. His guards conducted him in another direction. “This way, my lord,” said Chatter, and they went through a secondary door at ground level, along a passage, and up several flights of stairs. Servant stairs—unadorned, narrow, and steep.
“Where are we?” Spen asked. As usual, the guards acted as if they had heard nothing. The guard in the lead opened a door on one of the landings and led the way into a more elegantly proportioned hallway. Still shabby and neglected, but clearly part of the main house. The third door on the left led into what might once have been a nursery, or so the barred windows suggested. The room they entered had two doors leading off on one side, and one on the other.
“A bath has been ordered for you, my lord,” Chatter said. “We will leave you to settle in.”
Spen pointed to the shackles that had been clamped on him at Deercroft. “Do I get these off?” He asked.
No answer. Chatter regarded him in silence for a moment, then walked to the door, two of the other guards following. The three of them left, and Spen heard the tumblers fall as they locked the door behind them. The fourth remained in the room, his arms crossed, his face blank.
Spen was not going to be left alone then.
Fine. It would not stop him from investigating his chambers—a suite of rooms with mismatched furniture. He found a living room, a bedchamber, a smaller room that had hooks on the walls for clothes, and another of the same size containing nothing but a pallet on the floor. Was one of his guards going to stay with him each night? Spen hoped not.
The door to the hallway opened and in came a procession of footmen with a bath, buckets of water, and a couple of trunks. A bath! A man could get clean with soap and a jug of water, which was all he’d been allowed since the day weeks ago when his father arrived home unexpectedly and confined him in the tower. But there was nothing quite like a good soak in a tub of water deep enough to get wet all over.
No one would tell him anything, but apparently his father was changing tactics, for the trunks proved to be full of his ownclothes, and one of the footmen remained to put them away in the dressing room and to set out breeches, stockings, a shirt, and a banyan for Spen to wear after the bath.
The guards remained to watch, and no one would speak to Spen, even when he asked to have the metal cuffs removed so they would not get wet. When no one answered, he decided to ignore all of them in return. He stripped and got into the bath.
As soon as he relaxed back against the towel-draped edge of the bath, his pleasure in the warm water evaporated and he tensed up again. Cordelia was all he could think about.She is my future. I have to believe she survived and is unharmed.
His job was to remain unmarried and look for any opportunity to escape. If a guard stayed with him at all times, it would be harder, but eventually, their attention would slip, or his father would get tired of the battle, or would die, putting Spen in control.I just have to hold on.
He would be polite and cooperative with his gaolers. He would continue to refuse his father’s choice of bride. He would listen and try to learn where he was. What else could he do?
Perhaps the guards had not expected him to get into the bath, but after he did his best to dry the shackles, the guard he had dubbed Big Nose went off to find Chatter, and they came back with a key. This meant Spen was clean and unchained when he sat down to the best meal he’d seen since his father ordered him to be starved.
He had little appetite, but he savored the tastes and enjoyed being served by a deferential footman. Amazing how he once took such luxuries for granted. And having the shackles off made him feel a full stone lighter.
When the marquess arrived to see him the following morning, he was leaning against the window ledge in the sitting room, looking out of the window. The park in front of him was unkempt and hedged around with trees. In the distance beyondthe trees, he could see mountains, largely shrouded in clouds. He was no wiser as to where they were than he had been yesterday.
He had not turned at the sound of the door, but he came alert when his father spoke his name. “Spenhurst.”
Spen inclined his head in response.
The marquess took a seat on one of the sofas, spreading his arms along the back to take possession of the whole thing. He did not invite Spen to sit. Spen considered doing so anyway but decided not to aggravate his father before he had to.
“Did you enjoy your privileges yesterday?” the marquess asked, ignoring their audience of three guards (two had arrived with the marquess) and the two footmen who were clearing breakfast from the table.
Spen inclined his head.
“I make the choices, boy,” the marquess declared. “I decide whether you starve or whether you eat, whether you wash or go dirty, whether you are chained up or not. And I decide who you will marry.”
So much for not aggravating his father. “I shall marry Cordelia Milton or no one, my lord,” Spen replied.
“You can’t marry a dead woman, boy,” the marquess growled.
