Page 19 of The Curious Story of the Missing Lady
“To a place where no man can hurt you.”
Joyous relief flowed through her. If Papa and Mama could see her now! They hadn’t thought much of Lord Oliver. Despite Papa’s declaration of approval on the night of their engagement, she knew the man in his heart wished for a nobleman. What would he say to this terrible tiger?
The idea of her father’s terror at this very sight thrilled her. “Onward,” she commanded the beast.
“I intend to take you onward, my one, true love,” Lord Oliver replied.
A boar loped in the distance, causing the tiger to crouch low. As Madeline’s eyes lowered beneath the heather, she said, “Oh, My Lord, don’t hurt that animal.”
“I have no choice,” he said, “but to mortally wound anything that is a hindrance to us, my dear one.”
Sorrow for the animal’s fate took over her heart. “Please, Lord Oliver, I beg of you. Spare that poor thing!”
“I cannot,” he replied.
The attack was swift and brutal. With Madeline on its back, the tiger pounced but once, grabbing the boar by the neck and thrashing it about so violently that she was nearly thrown. She cried out for the poor thing, and then tried without success to quell her sadness by telling herself that it needed to happen.
They walked onward, leaving the carcass behind.
“Do you not need to eat?” she asked.
“No,” he replied.
“But ... what was the sense of killing that poor creature?”
“As for poverty, it knew not poverty. As for sense, I have only a sense of our survival. There are more ways to survive by merely taking in sustenance, my love.”
They rode on for days and nights, and soon they were so far from anywhere she could possibly have pointed to on any map, that she finally asked him, “My love, my life, we must stop. We can’t go on forever, can we?”
“Indeed,” he said, “we cannot.”
With this, he stopped and allowed her to dismount. She looked around. They were in the midst of a glen, hillocks on either side rising towards the sun, which was now dipping down and bloodying the sky.
“Now,” said Lord Oliver, “I hunger.”
She looked around. “I have no food.”
“So you say,” he replied, padding closer to her.
“My love,” she began.
“No,mylove,” said the tiger, “there is no one about now. No one can help you.”
The teeth skinned back, and the beast let out a rumbling growl that rattled her entire frame.
Hot fear coursed through her as she looked around. The tiger was right. There was no one.
It pounced on her. She wrestled it, although she might as well have been a ball of yarn to it. It pinned her down, and its head reared back, and she saw the blood-stained teeth and smelled the foul, carrion breath as it lashed towards her throat...
Chapter 13
She awoke with the sensation that she had screamed herself to consciousness. She looked around. Here was the attic. The cot on which she lay. The small window letting in the early morning light. Never had relief been offered to her with such paltry accommodation, and yet she could have awakened in a palace with no less a sense of joy in her heart.
She fell back on the cot, breathing heavily. Her awful surroundings had poisoned her to the core, so that her very mind saw fit to torment her with horrific depictions of her dearest Oliver. How she wanted to write to transport herself to him through the air as if on a winged horse. She dared not think of the dream.
In an attempt to distract her thoughts, she rolled over and saw that there was something on the table next to the door. It was a plate with some bread and farmer’s cheese and a cup of tea that was probably cold. It mattered little. She drank the stuff as if it were ambrosia and ate the meal with a heartiness she’d never known before. It was delicious and nourishing.
She hadn’t even noticed the book.
