Revenge of the Heart Read online

She was so frightened that for a moment she could not think and was finding it hard to breathe because of the thickness of the cloth covering her.

  She could feel her whole body trembling and her lips were dry.

  Although she wanted to scream, it was impossible to do so and anyway she was quite certain that nobody would hear her crying for help.

  She was also frightened that the men might strike her to keep her quiet.

  Then, because she thought they were the same men who had pursued her and her mother across Europe, she prayed she might die.

  She knew it would be impossible to face what might lie in store for her and remain sane.

  ‘Let me die, please God, let me die!’ she whispered in her heart and at the same time she prayed for Warren.

  ‘Save me! Save me!’ she cried out to him.

  Then she knew he could not help her and somehow she must find a way to kill herself before the men sitting on the other side of the carriage killed her in an agonising way.

  She was so frightened that she could feel her teeth chattering and the tears running down her cheeks.

  Then she heard one of the men speak to the other.

  “Be it far?” he asked.

  “Nay,” the other man replied. “We be nearly there.”

  It was then that Nadia felt a surge of relief that was so overwhelming that she felt almost as if she was free instead of a captive! No one could mistake the voices of the men in the carriage for anything but English, and she had, feared something very different.

  Her captors, she then knew, had been ordered to abduct her by Magnolia Keane.

  It was frightening, but not as terrifying as she had thought it a few moments ago when she had known she must die.

  Then, because she was sure it was Magnolia Keane who had sent these men to kidnap her, somehow, although she could not think how, she knew that Warren would save her.

  She was certain, so certain that once again she was praying to him to come to her rescue, feeling as if she sent her thoughts towards him on wings.

  ‘Save me! Save me!’

  She could almost see him listening to her plea for help, his grey eyes reassuring her.

  It was then, at that moment, almost as if it was a blinding light in the suffocating darkness, that she knew she loved him.

  She loved him and she had done so for a long time, but had not realised it was love.

  She had known it was a joy beyond words to ride with him, to talk with him and that every time he came into the room, she felt as if her heart leapt towards him because he looked so strong and so handsome.

  ‘I love him!’ she told herself. ‘I love him, but I am nothing to him, except as somebody he has hired to help him get rid of that wicked murderous woman!”

  Almost without thinking, her prayer to Warren became one of deep gratitude to God because he had not married Magnolia Keane, nor did he want her any more as his wife.

  How could he, when she had attempted murder and had only failed in what she had set out to do because a dog was greedy?

  Nadia had lain all that night feeling the horror of what had occurred was like something cold and hard pressing into her breast.

  It was only after she had been alone with Warren the next day, visiting the farms as he had asked her to do, that the pain had gone away and, when she was with him, she could forget about it.

  Now she knew that Magnolia was trying once again to murder her and the only person who could save her from death was Warren.

  ‘Save me! Save me!’ she cried out in her breast.

  Yet she was afraid the men would shoot or stab her before Warren could reach her.

  Then, because she was very intelligent, Nadia worked out in her mind that, if they meant to kill her, they might have done so without taking her away from the garden.

  If they had intended to drown her, the lake was quite handy, but now they were driving away from it, although in which direction Nadia was not sure.

  Their only alternative, she thought, was to throw her into a deep pit, or imprison her somewhere so that she could not escape and would therefore eventually die slowly and miserably of starvation.

  It was all very frightening, except for a faint ray of hope still lingering that Warren would defeat Magnolia’s nefarious plan even at the last moment.

  It was almost, Nadia thought, as if it was a battle between the two of them, a battle of love that had turned to one of hatred.

  They were therefore all the more vindictive and more violent, because they had once felt so differently towards each other.

  She reasoned it all out and somehow, although she was still terrified, she felt as if God was on her side and good must triumph over evil.

  The carriage came to a halt and she heard one of the men opposite her say,

  “Now ’ere we be! And don’t be in an ’urry. We’ve to get the door opened first.”

  They jumped out of the carriage and Nadia realised that she had been left alone.

  There was silence for what seemed a long time before she heard a horse shake its head, making the harness jingle and then the coachman cleared his throat.

  She wondered if it would be possible to free herself from the confines of the thick blanket that covered her from her head to below her knees.

  But she was afraid that, if she moved, long before she could escape from the carriage, the man on the box would give the alarm and the two men would come hurrying back.

  They might then beat her until she was unconscious!

  ‘I am – frightened! Oh, God – I am – frightened!’ Nadia whispered.

  Once again she cried out to Warren,

  ‘Save me! I love you! Oh – save me!’

  She repeated the words under her breath over and over again.

  Then she thought wildly that if she was out of the way Magnolia might by some means trick him into marriage or perhaps, if he would not agree to marry her, she might hurt him in some way.

  ‘She is ruthless and mad!’ Nadia thought.

  Suddenly with a constriction of her heart, she heard the two men talking in the distance, their voices coming nearer as they approached her.

  One of them pulled her out of the carriage and they both picked her up to carry her down a steep incline. At moments, because the ground beneath their feet was rough, Nadia thought they would drop her.

  Then the descent had ended and, as they walked a little way on the level, one of them said,

  “Mind your ’ead!”

  Nadia was sure that they were stooping as if there was a low doorway above their heads or maybe they were in a tunnel.

  It took her by surprise when they suddenly put her down on the ground so roughly that it hurt.

  And, before she could get her breath, she heard them walking away, their footsteps crunching on what sounded like hard rocky ground.

  In the distance a door was slammed noisily into place, a key turned in a lock and a few minutes later Nadia could hear the sound of wheels as the carriage drove away.

  It was then for the first time she moved from the place where they had thrown her down.

  With an effort she eased the heavy blanket up to her shoulders to throw it back from her head.

  For one terrifying moment she thought she must have died or gone blind, for the darkness was just the same as it had been under the blanket.

  Then she was aware of a dank damp smell and a long way from her she saw a glimmer of light.

  After looking at it for some time she decided it must come from the door which the men had closed and locked.

  Afraid to move and yet realising that she must find out where she was, she rose tentatively to her feet and then remembering how the men had to crouch as they carried her to where she now was, she put her hands above her head.

  She touched something cold and with sharp edges. She could just stand upright. At the same time she knew that if she moved she would be wise to bend her head.

  She looked again towards the light and, picking up th
e blanket from where it lay on the floor at her feet, she walked very slowly, bending her head and feeling her way before she took each step.

  The light grew stronger as she drew nearer to it, and she realised that it was coming from the sides of the door.

  It was then she realised she was in a mine, although with no smell of coal she could not recognise which kind.

  She put out her hands to touch the door and found it was very strongly made.

  She pushed at it and then hammered on it with her clenched fists.

  “Help! Help!”

  Her voice seemed to echo back at her along the tunnel, but she was sure there could be nobody outside to hear her, otherwise the men would not have brought her here.

  She could feel the fear of being alone and the horror of how she would die sweep over her, and knew that unless Warren could somehow find her, Magnolia would have won.

  She would die slowly of starvation and it might be months or even years before anybody came to what she guessed now was a disused mine.

  Nadia threw the blanket onto the ground.

  She sat down on it, leaning back against the door and, covering her face with her hands she began to pray.

  It was not a prayer to God, but to Warren.

  “Save me!” she called out loud to him again and again. “Save me – save me! I love you – and I don’t want to – die before I have seen – you again!”

  Chapter Seven

  Outside the front door Warren found waiting for him the cabriolet which he used to drive round the estate and carry him to his mother’s house.

  Without speaking to anybody he got into the driving seat, the groom holding the horses’ heads jumped in beside him and he drove off at a tremendous pace.

  He knew where the slate mine was, although he had not visited it for years and thought it strange that Magnolia should know about it.

  He imagined she might have seen it during the hunting season when the woods and the thick stubble around the old mine, which had not been worked for years, nearly always produced a fox.

  But all that really concerned him was Nadia, for he knew that what had happened would shock, frighten and distress her, so that she would quickly be in the same state of desperation that she had been in when he had first found her.

  Just to think of her suffering made him feel murderous towards Magnolia once again.

  At the same time, he was so deeply concerned for Nadia that it was in itself a strange feeling almost like a physical pain that he had never known before.

  Then, as he drove on, deciding how he would comfort her and try to make her understand this would never happen again, he knew that what he had been feeling for her for a long time was love.

  It seemed impossible when he had sworn to himself that never again would he humiliate himself in loving another woman after the way Magnolia had treated him.

  Yet if he was honest, he had to admit that almost the moment he had met Nadia, because she was so pathetic and at the same time so brave and there seemed to be some close affinity between them which he could not put into words, he had fallen in love.

  When they played their charade first to deceive Monsieur and Madame Blanc, then his mother and his relations, he had realised how exceptional she was and how perfectly she fitted into the part he had designed for her.

  Yet for Nadia it had obviously been quite natural to behave like a great lady and to be charming to his relatives.

  She had moved with an indescribable grace around the great rooms at Buckwood as if she was part of them and, as he watched her something he had thought was dead within himself came to life.

  At first he had not recognised it, because it was so different from his initial feelings for Magnolia.

  What Magnolia had awoken in him was a fiery desire and the flame that lit within them both was a seething, uncontrollable passion that was entirely physical.

  What he felt for Nadia was spiritual and while she attracted him because of her beauty, he knew it was her mind that kept him amused, interested and intrigued.

  Overriding everything else was his longing to look after her, to keep her from coming to any harm, and most of all to sweep away the fear from her eyes.

  He drew in his breath sharply as he thought of how frightened she must be now.

  Although she knew nothing of the Buckwood Estate, she would guess that in a place as obviously unused as the old slate mine, she could remain undiscovered for ages.

  It hardly seemed possible that Magnolia should have brought into the quiet English countryside such horrors as poison and kidnapping!

  Yet Warren rebuked himself for being so obtuse as not to have realised before that she was determined to have her own way almost to the point of insanity.

  She had longed so desperately to be the Marchioness of Buckwood, then she had lost her chance after, if only she had married him, it had been within her grasp.

  The disappointment had brought out all that was fiendish and vile in her character.

  ‘How could I have guessed, when she was so beautiful, that beneath the surface lay the heart of a devil?’ he asked himself.

  It suddenly struck him that possibly because she was so determined to be rid of Nadia she had even instructed the men who had kidnapped her to kill her before they left her in the mine.

  He knew, as the thought came to him, that the horror of it was like a sword piercing through him.

  If he lost Nadia now he would have lost everything that was precious and so incomparable that never, however long he lived, would he find it again.

  He pressed his horses to go faster in a way that surprised the groom sitting beside him.

  Jim was, however, one of the younger lads in the stable, and Warren was glad that he would be too shy and perhaps too stupid, to ask questions or even to think that what was occurring was extraordinary.

  He knew as he settled down to drive the horses that he had to travel along a rough track that led through a wood, then cross a stubble field before there was another clump of trees and beyond that the land dipped down to where the mine had originally been excavated.

  He remembered how when he was a boy his uncle had said that the slate was not worth the trouble of excavating or the cost of paying the men who worked in it.

  He had therefore found them jobs elsewhere on his land and work on the mine had ceased.

  Because it had been left neglected, the tunnels became dangerous and before long his uncle had ordered doors to be put up at the entrance in order to prevent children from playing games inside it.

  It was extremely uncomfortable driving across the rough field, but Warren hardly slowed the pace of his horses.

  When they passed through the clump of trees and he knew it would be easier for him to reach the slate mine on foot, he brought the cabriolet to a standstill and gave the reins to the groom.

  “Wait here for me, Jim,” he said, and jumped down to the ground.

  Then he was running, driven by a feeling of urgency that told him that, if Nadia was not dead, she would be terrified at being imprisoned in the dank darkness of the mine.

  He had reached the top of the dip in the ground and saw, as he expected, that on the heavy doors, which had been erected at the entrance, there was a padlock.

  For the first time he wondered if Magnolia had the key and wished he had demanded it from her.

  Then he thought it more likely that the men who had imprisoned Nadia had either thrown the key away or else had taken it with them.

  He hurried down the incline.

  Then, as he reached the doors, he stood for a moment to wonder if after all Magnolia had tricked him and Nadia was somewhere else.

  In a voice that did not sound like his own he called her name,

  “Nadia! Nadia!”

  He thought afterwards that the few seconds he waited for her reply was a century of apprehension.

  Then he heard her give a little cry, before she asked,

  “Warren – is that – you?”
<
br />   “I am here!”

  “I knew you would come – I have been – praying that – you would – save me!”

  “I will,” he answered, “but first, I have to discover how I can open the door.”

  He looked at the padlock and realised it was a heavy one and it would be difficult without the right instruments to break it away from the wood.

  He saw that the doors were somewhat primitively made by the estate carpenters and merely hanging at the sides on iron hinges.

  It was then that Warren knew that fate had had a purpose in building up his exceptional physical strength in his long journeyings in the desert.

  With a strength he knew he would not have had a year ago, he put out his arms and lifted one of the doors upwards and off the hinges.

  For a few seconds the strain of it seemed almost insupportable, then the door fell out to the ground with a resounding crash revealing Nadia standing inside.

  As soon as she could see Warren’s face, she scrambled over the fallen door towards him, reaching out her arms so that he could lift her from the darkness of the mine into the sunlight.

  With his arms around her, she knew that she was safe and that her prayers had been answered and she burst into tears.

  She hid her face against his shoulder and, as he held her very close against him, she sobbed,

  “I-I was so – f-frightened that you would not – know where I was – and you would not – hear me calling – you.”

  “I have found you,” Warren sighed in a deep voice, “and I promise you, my darling, this will never happen again.”

  Because she was so surprised at the endearment, she turned to look up at him, the tears running down her cheeks and her lips trembling.

  Warren looked down at her and thought that despite her tears she had never looked more beautiful.

  Then his lips very gently touched hers.

  To Nadia it was as if the Heavens opened and everything she had longed for and dreamt of and thought was impossible suddenly came true.

  Warren was kissing her and it was the most perfect, the most marvellous thing that could possibly happen.

  Her lips were very soft and she trembled against him, not with fear, but with a rapture he also felt deep within himself.