Elinor was completely panic-stricken. These men must indeed be abducting her. But why? Had she made enemies in Russia, done something wrong? Should she risk throwing herself from this careening, fast carriage on this dark, rural road?
Again, she put her head out the window, shrieking and screaming for help. Nothing from the men. No lights in sight, no buildings, only blackest, cold night with stars stabbing the sky.
Eyes wide open, she gripped her gloved hands together and began to pray. She should have prayed more, clung to the God of her youth, not gone off on new thought tangents. In her jumbled thoughts, images of Margot and Juliet flashed through her mind. She’d been a terrible mother. She was an adulteress, however many times Clayton had betrayed her. She and Lucile had argued so much lately.
Again, she grappled with the reason for this outrage. If she could fathom that, perhaps she would know how to argue. Had someone followed her to a foreign place to make her pay for writing an immoral story no one understood? Were Clayton’s creditors going to hold her for ransom or make her pay with her life? Anyone who knew them must realize he did not have sixpence to pay a ransom.
Oh, dear Lord, help. Help me!
Her worst childhood fear of a horse running away with her wagon screamed at her. She was a terrified little girl again, frozen in fear, hurtling toward destruction and death.
Yet, as if her plea had been instantly answered, the carriage came to a hard halt. She slammed into the opposite seats and hit her head on the interior wall. Grabbing her purse, she intended to jump out, hold up her skirts, and run, but—but she heard other voices and peered out to see two men on horseback alongside the front of this carriage. Oh, the men on horseback were in uniform and held some sort of guns, blessedly pointed at the men on the box and not at her.
“Stay inside, madame,” came a voice in heavily accented English. Polish? French? Definitely not British.
“The Hotel l’Europe in Warsaw!” she called out, her voice breaking.
“Shortly, madame. These men have made a dreadful mistake.”
It would do her no good to run. Had she been saved and from what and by whom? George had been right to warn her not to come to Russia nearly unescorted, and then she’d sent poor Williams home with a bad stomach ailment. Could someone have slipped her maid something to make her ill?
Thank God, the carriage turned round, and, with the two men on horseback riding alongside, she was taken at a more normal pace back to Warsaw to the hotel. It was late, but how late? In the glow of gaslights outside the entrance, she unbuttoned her coat and tried to read the timepiece pinned to her gown. The train she had hoped to catch to Berlin was leaving in four hours, hardly time to get a good night’s sleep. Not that she could rest, especially after both her abductors and rescuers had disappeared the moment she alit from the carriage before she could so much as speak to them.
Planning to just wash up and nap, then be certain she made the Berlin train, she went up to the reception desk to explain that she was here late for her reservation her Russian contact had made for her. She realized she knew only his first name. She wasn’t certain she could trace him to tell him what had happened, to see if he could discern who might have caused this nightmare. Or was he the villain behind all this, working for whoever was her enemy?
“I am sorry, Madame Glyn,” the man at the desk said, squinting at her, “but there is no reservation for you here last evening, or this one. Regretfully, we have no rooms, and . . .”
Exhausted, frightened but grateful she was here among people and not lying dead in some ditch, she nodded and walked away, even more shaken. Someone had carefully planned that she not arrive here, so why make a reservation? Would she be pursued farther? For once, she longed to be home. Dearest George had been right that the Russian empire could be a dark place, however kind some of the nobles here had been to her.
At least, if she could not get a thrilling mystery plot for a novel out of this trip, she was not worth her salt.
In May of 1910, King Edward VII died, and Britain, like Russia, was plunged into mourning. Lucile’s shop produced black gowns, and Elinor wrote books, short stories, and articles as fast as she could to pay off debts. Hack writing, some accused, and, she had to admit, they weren’t her best efforts. But then when had the critics liked her?
Sheering Hall, sadly, was sold, and she and Clayton lived with her mother in her little house on the grounds. Clayton still drank and traveled as if he were king of the world, though Elinor felt it was worth the cost to have him gone, until she heard via the grapevine that he was stupid and selfish enough to be gambling in Monte Carlo.
That was nearly the last straw, like a straw smoked down just the way Lucile did on those cigarettes of hers—until Elinor learned there was something worse when George let slip that Clayton had asked him for money, and he had given it to him!
“What?” Elinor cried and sat up in bed. They were in Carlsbad, a spa town in Czechoslovakia in the off-season, just for a few stolen days. “When? He told me nothing of that, but you should have! It makes it sound as if you are paying him for the use of my—my favors!”
They were naked in satin sheets she had brought along, but, for the first time, she nearly assaulted him. She swung the pillow at him, wishing he were Clayton to hit. George seized the pillow, then seized her and sat up beside her, grimacing at the ever-present pain in his back. For once, she did not care.
“I knew, of course, that your family was in dire financial straits,” he explained, holding her wrists in his hands, while her hair streamed loose between them. “It was a loan, not a gift, so calm down. I thought nothing of the sort about buying your favors, though I do have plans for a famous artist to paint a portrait of you for me. I’m going to commission a full-length painting of you by Philip de László, a society portrait painter. You can wear some fabulous gown your sister designed and the sapphire earrings I gave you. Your red hair, white skin, and green eyes will dazzle—”
“Don’t try to smooth-talk, change the subject, or bribe your way out of this, sir politician!” she demanded. “I will pay you back for the loan as soon as we return home! I won’t have it! Besides, that means he knows about us.”
“That surprises you? And he is going to do what to you, the breadwinner of the family he has deserted? And he might do what to me? I was happy to help.”
She could not hold back but burst into tears. She’d felt helpless and ashamed since the night she was nearly abducted and still did not know why. George had said he’d told her that she should have heeded his warning about not going to Russia. He would not have set that up, surely not to teach her a lesson, she’d told herself. But here he was with a financial hold over her, through her wretched husband.
“If I loose you, will you attack me, tigress?” he asked.
She shook her head. He scooted back to put himself against the headboard to prop up his back and pulled her to him, holding her tight. She tried to stem her sobs, tried to be stoic, controlled, the image she had strived to project to this man she adored. At first, she held herself stiff in his embrace, then just clung to him.
“You see,” he said when she quieted, “I believe in you. Even if I had not loaned him a small sum—”
“I’ll bet it wasn’t small.”
“A small sum to me. Even then I did it to help you, Elinor, yes, I suppose to bind you to me, to make you grateful. For, whatever comes our way, I don’t want to lose you.”
She put her arms around his neck and pressed her mouth to the side of his throat where his pulse beat hard.
“I’ll pay it back,” she said, her voice muffled against his skin. “With money, I mean.”
“Of course you will. But you work too hard, when someone should be taking care of you.”
“As much as I love knighthood and chivalry, it’s new times, my dear lord, the Right Honorable George Nathaniel Curzon. Lucile has her designs and I have my writing, and that’s the way of it. Now let me dry my tears, then tell me all about how it happened and how much you loaned him so that he could gamble it away in Monte Carlo—or was that part of your plan?”
“In a perfect world, I would have you all to myself, just like this—and, of course, still enjoy our intellectual talks and arguments, too,” he said and slid them down to lie flat on the sheets again.
And when he pulled her to him, despite anything he might have done amiss, she knew any sacrifice was worth any price she paid to love this man.