Lord Tony’s Wife, Baroness Orczy [bill gates best books TXT] 📗

“Let me go! Let me go!” she cried, panting.

But she was held and could no longer move. She looked up into the face of Martin-Roget, who without any hesitation or compunction lifted her up as if she had been a bale of light goods and carried her back toward the coach. She had forgotten the man who had been picked up on the road awhile ago, and had been sitting beside the coachman since.

He deposited her in the barouche beside her father, then quietly closed the door and once more mounted to his seat on the box. The carriage moved on again. M. de Kernogan was no longer lethargic, he looked down on his daughter’s inert form beside him, and not one look of tenderness or compassion softened the hard callousness of his face.

“Any resistance, my child,” he said coldly, “will as you see be useless as well as undignified. I deplore this necessary violence, but I should be forced once more to requisition M. Martin-Roget’s help if you attempted such foolish tricks again. When you are a little more calm, we will talk openly together.”

For the moment she was lying back against the cushions of the carriage; her nerves having momentarily given way before this appalling catastrophe which had overtaken her and the hideous outrage to which she was being subjected by her own father. She was sobbing convulsively. But in the face of his abominable callousness, she made a great effort to regain her self-control. Her pride, her dignity came to the rescue. She had had time in those few seconds to realise that she was indeed more helpless than any bird in a fowler’s net, and that only absolute calm and presence of mind could possibly save her now.

If indeed there was the slightest hope of salvation.

She drew herself up and resolutely dried her eyes and readjusted her hair and her hood and mantle.

“We can talk openly at once, sir,” she said coldly. “I am ready to hear what explanation you can offer for this monstrous outrage.”

“I owe you no explanation, my child,” he retorted calmly. “Presently when you are restored to your own sense of dignity and of self-respect you will remember that a lady of the house of Kernogan does not elope in the night with a stranger and a heretic like some kitchen-wench. Having so far forgotten herself my daughter must, alas! take the consequences, which I deplore, of her own sins and lack of honour.”

“And no doubt, father,” she retorted, stung to the quick by his insults, “that you too will anon be restored to your own sense of self-respect and remember that hitherto no gentleman of the house of Kernogan has acted the part of a liar and of a hypocrite!”

“Silence!” he commanded sternly.

“Yes!” she reiterated wildly, “it was the role of a liar and of a hypocrite that you played from the moment when you sat down to pen that letter full of protestations of affection and forgiveness, until like a veritable Judas you betrayed your own daughter with a kiss. Shame on you, father!” she cried. “Shame!”

“Enough!” he said, as he seized her wrist so roughly that the cry of pain which involuntarily escaped her effectually checked the words in her mouth. “You are mad, beside yourself, a thoughtless, senseless creature whom I shall have to coerce more effectually if you do not cease your ravings. Do not force me to have recourse once again to M. Martin-Roget’s assistance to keep your undignified outburst in check.”

The name of the man whom she had learned to hate and fear more than any other human being in the world was sufficient to restore to her that measure of self-control which had again threatened to leave her.

“Enough indeed,” she said more calmly; “the brain that could devise and carry out such infamy in cold blood is not like to be influenced by a defenceless woman’s tears. Will you at least tell me whither you are taking me?”

“We go to a place on the coast now,” he replied coldly, “the outlandish name of which has escaped me. There we embark for Holland, from whence we shall join their Royal Highnesses at Coblentz. It is at Coblentz that your marriage with M. Martin-Roget will take place, and.⁠ ⁠…”

“Stay, father,” she broke in, speaking quite as calmly as he did, “ere you go any further. Understand me clearly, for I mean every word that I say. In the sight of God⁠—if not in that of the laws of France⁠—I am the wife of Lord Anthony Dewhurst. By everything that I hold most sacred and most dear I swear to you that I will never become Martin-Roget’s wife. I would die first,” she added with burning but resolutely suppressed passion.

He shrugged his shoulders.

“Pshaw, my child,” he said quietly, “many a time since the world began have women registered such solemn and sacred vows, only to break them when force of circumstance and their own good sense made them ashamed of their own folly.”

“How little you know me, father,” was all that she said in reply.

Indeed, Yvonne de Kernogan⁠—Yvonne Dewhurst as she was now in sight of God and men⁠—had far too much innate dignity and self-respect to continue this discussion, seeing that in any case she was physically the weaker, and that she was absolutely helpless and defenceless in the hands of two men, one of whom⁠—her own father⁠—who should have been her protector, was leagued with her bitterest enemy against her.

That Martin-Roget was her enemy⁠—aye and her father’s too⁠—she had absolutely no doubt. Some obscure yet keen instinct was working in her heart, urging her to mistrust him even more wholly than she had done before. Just now, when he laid ruthless hands on her and carried her, inert and half-swooning, back into the coach, and she lay with closed eyes, her very soul in revolt against this contact with him, against the feel of his arms around her,