Page 50 of The Gilded Lady
She shook her head to dislodge his hand and tried her best to speak through the gag. “Leave me alone. Leave me here.”
“What’s that?” He made a show of leaning forward even more. “You want me to leave you?” He gave his head a sad shake. “I wish I could, darling. Believe me, I stopped looking for you long ago, but I hope to be the next lieutenant governor of South Carolina. Politics have a way of bringing the past to light.” He sat back, grinning at her. “Now you probably don’t know this, but there was gossip when you left. Some people said that I’d killed you in the middle of the night and buried you in the swamp. Some people said that you’d run off with Hiram since he’d disappeared at the same time. As you can imagine, both of those are a detriment to my chances in the election.”
She didn’t know what he was up to. He couldn’t honestly think that she’d go home with him and play the dutiful wife. Could he? There was no way he would trust her to play that role. Something else was happening here.
The carriage drew to a sharp halt, making her neck jerk and her head bang against the seat behind her. The door swung open and a man she’d never seen before appeared in the opening. He was big like Zane, but mean looking with a snub nose that was crooked as if it had been broken and not reset properly. The worst part of him were his eyes. They were cold when he looked at her, as if he didn’t care who she was or what part he was playing in destroying her life.
“Get her inside, Jenkins,” Justin said and put the burlap sack over her head again.
She struggled but the man’s hands were unyielding as he tossed her over his shoulder. Before the burlap sack had gone onher head she’d noticed they were at the train station. The early train usually departed well after six in the morning. She had no idea what time it was or how long they had before Justin took her away.
They walked down the wooden platform that ran next to the cars, but she could feel when Jenkins took the steps down to the dirt along the tracks. His boots crunched on the gravel. That probably meant that he was taking her to a private car. Those were hooked on in the back to make it easier to connect and disconnect them when they reached their destination. Her last hope of escape faded away. No one would even know she was on the train if they didn’t check. The conductor would have no reason to check the private car for tickets. Private cars paid per car for passage, not per passenger.
Panic spurred her to resist even more, but it didn’t seem to help. Jenkins only tightened his grip and then they bounded up some steps and a door closed behind them. When the burlap sack came off, she was sitting on a narrow bed facing the window. An orange glow lit up the sky in the distance. She knew it was the fire from her home. Despite herself, tears burned her eyes as she realized she might not get away from Justin before morning.
She ran for the door that would lead her into the main part of the car, but Justin stood in the way and Jenkins jerked her back before she even reached him. The ominous clink of metal drew her attention and she saw him grab one end of a shackle that was attached to the bedframe.
“No!” She screamed the word over and over but it was muffled against the gag. The cold metal tightened around her wrist. Jenkins tossed her down onto the bed so roughly that the breath was knocked from her chest. She gasped through the cloth in her mouth, and he was able to tighten another shackle to her ankle. The rope tying her wrists together was cut, but it was too late todo anything about the shackles. She grabbed at them with her free hand, but they were locked tight.
“We don’t need to tie her down just yet.” Justin intervened and Jenkins stopped short of strapping down her other ankle. He glared at her though, silently daring her to kick him.
Justin opened a cabinet set into the wall, temporarily blocking him from her view, but when he came around it her blood ran cold. He grinned as he held up a hypodermic needle. A drop of brown fluid oozed from its tip.
“It’s like this, Annabelle. We see if this can work its magic and make you a biddable wife. If yes, then we’ll have some interesting years together. If not, then one day soon I’ll find your body at the base of the stairs dead of an apparent suicide. You see, I’ve told everyone that you spent the past twelve years in a sanitarium in France. They know you’re touched.” He tapped his temple as he walked over toward her.
He nodded toward Jenkins who leaned over her, pressing his weight into her thighs to keep her still. He twisted her free arm so hard that she was certain she’d hear the bone crack in a moment. It didn’t, but she felt the prick of the needle as it broke through her skin and the burn of the drug Justin injected her with. She closed her eyes, desperate for some way to escape. Instead, she only saw Zane as he’d been the moment he’d told her that he loved her.
She screamed against the injustice of it all. She screamed so hard that her throat felt raw, and the shackle bit into the skin of her wrist. Her body felt heavy, as if her blood had become too leaden to make it all work. Still she screamed.
Chapter Twenty-one
Zane coughed as he pushed out from under the bar in the dining room. He’d dove behind it the moment he heard the blast that came from the large pantry off the kitchen. Plaster fell from the wall as he pushed a hunk of the wooden bar back into it in his attempt to pull himself out.
“Pierce!” Able’s deep voice was unmistakable.
“In here!” Zane kept trying to get himself out and got to his feet as Able came through the open doorway.
“Come on.” Able led him through the smoke and dust to the front of the house.
It was like they were in a dream. Zane could feel the coolness of the night air blending with the heat from the fire in the distance and realized that half the house was gone. He coughed again, nearly doubling over and Able helped him the rest of the way out. When he looked back, he could see that the back of the house was rubble. The front might be salvaged if they could work fast enough. Fire blazed in the back and he figured the boardinghouse was a lost cause.
It was chaos outside. People scrambled around them running in all directions. A group of women who worked at Victoria House stood in a huddle, watching it all come down. Gasping for fresh air, he looked around, expecting Glory to be there taking care of them, but he didn’t see her anywhere. Able was running off to help when Zane caught up to him. “Where’s Glory?”
He shrugged. “I don’t know. She was going in to find you, but I told her to wait here and let me go.”
They both looked around. Zane’s stomach churned with the knowledge that something very bad had happened. What if the fire had been set to lure them out? What if she’d been taken?
“Glory!” He screamed her name, his throat already raw from the smoke he’d inhaled. Turning in a circle in the middle of the street, he couldn’t see her anywhere. She should be there with her ladies or at the very least with the people who’d formed a bucket line. He searched them all for her face, but she wasn’t there.
He ran over to the women and asked, “Where’s Glory?”
They all looked at him with blank faces. He turned back around to see Able doing the same thing, walking down the street and asking every person he saw. Everyone shook their heads. Dubose had her. He knew it with a certainty he felt deep in his bones.
It was utter chaos. Everyone was so consumed by the fire and stopping it from spreading to the other buildings, that he had no hope of finding his men in the crowd. Miraculously, they found him. Two of them came out from behind Victoria House, covered in soot and smoke.
“It was dynamite,” one of them said. “Probably thrown through a window in the back of the house.”
He nodded. It wasn’t what he was concerned with at the moment. “Where’s Glory?”
