Page 93 of How to Cross a Marquess (The Way to a Lord's Heart 3)

That tend on mortal thoughts, unsex me here,

And fill me from the crown to the toe top-full

Of direst cruelty! Make thick my blood;”

Fenella was transfixed. The power of Mrs. Thorpe’s voice and expression was undeniable. One couldn’t look away. Her gestures were small and subtle, but riveting. She commanded attention.

“Stop up the access and passage to remorse,

That no compunctious visitings of nature

Shake my fell purpose, nor keep peace between

The effect and it! Come to my woman’s breasts,

And take my milk for gall, you murdering ministers,

Wherever in your sightless substances

You wait on nature’s mischief!”

“Yes, exactly that,” hissed a woman’s voice in Fenella’s ear. A loop of thick cord fell over Fenella’s face and down around her neck, quickly tightening until it was painful. The cloaked and hooded figure beside her leaned close and pressed the barrel of a pistol into her side. Fenella had thought this person was part of the pageant, one of her fellow actors. Now, the cord was jerked, forcing Fenella to move out from under the arch into the gathering darkness behind the ruined wall.

The cord dug into her neck, choking her. Fenella tried to get her fingers under it and pull it loose. But the cord was too tight. The pistol’s barrel came up and banged against her temple, leaving her momentarily dazed. Her captor dragged at the cord again. Fenella gagged and stumbled along in her grasp as Mrs. Thorpe continued.

“Come, thick night,

And pall thee in the dunnest smoke of hell,

That my keen knife see not the wound it makes,

Nor heaven peep through the blanket of the dark,

To cry ‘Hold, hold!’”

“Oh yes, a woman can kill,” her captor muttered as she forced Fenella along. “You know it. You lured my poor gentle daughter out into a storm so that you could take her place.”

“Daughter?” Fenella tried to say. It came out as a croak. She couldn’t speak.

“Inflammation of the lungs,” the woman growled, jerking on the loop of cord. “A broken heart more like.”

Could this be Mrs. Crenshaw? What was Arabella’s mother doing here? Andwhatwas she doing?

“She wrote me that you were her friend, you know. ‘I’ve found one friend here,’ she said. Poor deceived lamb.” She stumbled, and the cord loosened a bit.

“I did try to be her friend,” Fenella managed, her voice barely above a croak. “I tried to keep her from riding out that day.”

The pistol struck her again, painfully, as the cord tightened. “Don’t give me your lies! My cousin heard Chatton say it, out loud at White’s club. Thought you’d rid yourself of my Arabella and take him for yourself, but I’ll see that ended tonight.”

They’d come to a dip in the ground, well past the end of the ruined arches. Fenella could hear the sea streaming over pebbles nearby. Mrs. Crenshaw jerked at her, and they both nearly fell. But she recovered and pulled Fenella downhill.

Fenella clawed at the cord and stumbled over rocks. Water poured over her ankles. And still her captor yanked her on. Fenella felt a trickle of blood where the cord had cut into her neck.

At last, when a larger wave made her captor sway, Fenella got hold of the cord and managed to loosen it. “Help!” she cried. Her voice cracked. She doubted it could be heard over the sound of the surf.

Mrs. Crenshaw hit Fenella with the pistol again, a ringing blow that left her reeling. Grasping Fenella’s tunic with her free hand, she dragged her into the sea, releasing the cord for a moment.

“The tide hasn’t gone out,” Fenella croaked. “We can’t leave the island now.”

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