Page 50 of Hooked

I didn’t realize until that moment how much I had been counting on those few more days. How much I had believed that some escape, some salvation would present itself. All my hope had been wrapped up in that scrap of time, but the ticking of the clock was speeding up.

Now I sat in my lack of power, remembering all the rumors of the first wife, and the second, and the third.

Were their deaths all just a result of his uncontrollable temper? Had he killed each wife in a fit of passion or jealousy?

No, they couldn’t have been fits of temper. He’d been to sea when his second wife had died. Something more sinister and calculated then? Did he plan their deaths? Revel in them? Did he enjoy frightening them into submission, making them cower and weep before watching the life drain out of them?

The tears came faster. The sobbing became more violent. This was why I hadn’t let myself think of his wives. A forced marriage to a cruel man was terrifying enough without the threat of death close at hand.

“Dry your tears, miss. The captain is coming.”

I looked up, surprised to hear the warning. There was only one person in the room. A footman who stood at the doorway. I was so stunned by his helping me that I didn’t move right away.

“Quickly,” he said with a nervous glance over his shoulder.

I straightened and wiped at my face, grabbing a napkin before standing and walking over to the window so that I could turn my back to the door. I dabbed under my eyes with the napkin and sniffed back my residual tears. I forced air slowly into my lungs and then back out.

I felt more than heard the captain enter, the darkness that surrounded him seeping into the room and hooking around my ankles, ready to drag me down.

“Appreciating the view?” he asked in a voice much more benign than I would have expected from the man who had just screamed in my face.

I cleared my throat, hoping my voice would sound normal when I answered with a simple, “Yes.”

“Good. I hope you will learn to appreciate all your surroundings.”

I nodded without turning to face him. I just wanted him to leave so that I could think clearly. I must find any means of escape as soon as possible.

There was a rustle of papers—apparently he had returned for his letters—and then he granted me my wish, leaving the room without another word.

I allowed my head to fall against the window, exhausted from the effort of trying to hold myself together. I let my eyes rove over the landscape. The tiny stream winding through the property. The manicured hedgerows, with the untamed trees beyond. The road was there.

How far would I have to travel on that road before I would find help? And which way should I go?

I would have to face that problem once I had escaped this house, because despite the difficulties facing me out there, I knew I would not survive if I remained in this house for four more days.

Pulling myself together, I managed to walk without my legs shaking. I was going to go straight up to my room, but as I passed by the footman who had been kind enough to warn me, I had an idea.

My footsteps paused and I looked at him. After a moment he dropped his professional bearing and returned my gaze.

Then I spoke the question to which I was afraid I already knew the answer. “How did the last three mistresses of this house die?”

Pity flooded his eyes, but he didn’t answer me right away. Instead he studied me, his brow furrowed in thought, before finally speaking one sentence to me. “Go far away if you can.”

***

I spent the next day doing my best to appear as though I was “appreciating my surroundings,” desperate to make Huckley believe I would comply, haunted by the footman’s warning. If I could play the part for just long enough to find a way out—some escape, some argument he would listen to, some weapon I could wield.

My maid had dressed me in a rose-colored dress I would have deemed beautiful under any other circumstances. I tried to let it remind me to play the part of a lady, a woman resigned to a marriage. So I walked the halls, feeling like a shadow of myself as I caressed beautiful vases when I wanted to hurl them at the window. I stared at the elaborate portraits hanging in the gallery as I counted in my head, tracking the amount of time between when one set of footsteps passed the door and another came. Huckley seemed to have a rotating sentinel watching me. Guards, footmen, maids. They each seemed to take their turn passing by. I considered asking one of them for help, but the risk felt too great. I needed more time.

I left the gallery and made my way down the grand staircase, gazing up at the chandelier, trying to appear as though I admired it. I wandered into the parlor, picking up decorative pieces and noting the somewhat garish furnishings before moving on to the library. The fireplace in this room was small—too small, it seemed to me, for such a cavernous room. My footsteps echoed. The library at Sutton Manor was cozy with deep armchairs and heavy rugs. This library was stark and cold by comparison. The seating seemed to deter visitors instead of inviting them. Books took up only three of the walls. The wall with the fireplace in it had the same shelves as the other walls, but these shelves held an assortment of trinkets. I stepped closer, studying the odd collection. An ornate hairbrush. A half-empty bottle of perfume. Ladies’ silk gloves. Another hairbrush.

My brow furrowed, realizing there were three distinct groupings, each containing a similar arrangement of items. I stepped closer. There was a lock of hair resting beside the hairbrush in the first grouping. A ribbon was tied around the perfume bottle of the second grouping, and a necklace lay draped over the gloves in the third group.

My lungs seized.

No…surely this wasn’t—

I squeeze my eyes shut. Three displays. Three wives.