Captivated

Mrs. Thomas looked up from where she bent over the journal that Robert in his passion had ripped out of Abigail's hands and flung across the room.

'It is merely something that I purchased for my vacation.' She hurriedly spanned the distance that separated them. 'Here, let me have it.'

Abigail grabbed the journal from the befuddled woman. Walking across the room to the foot of the bed, she lifted the lid of the smallest trunk and tossed inside itThePearl, edition number twelve. The brandy-soaked sponge followed. Opening the largest trunk, she retrieved her reticule, rummaged inside it until she located the small key she stored there for safekeeping. Then she locked the small trunk, returned the key to her reticule and wiped her cheeks before turning to Mrs. Thomas with a formal smile. 'Would you help me with my corset, please?'

Mrs. Thomas was as good as her word. Abigail was dressed and packed in plenty of time to catch the train. While Abigail laced up her half-boots, Mrs. Thomas took care of the chamber pot and stripped the linen off the bed. Together they emptied the hip bath, then together they lifted up two trunks onto the back of the worn gig. Dusting her fingers with a handkerchief, Abigail lifted her skirts and stepped high to reach the metal step. There was pain between her legs when she settled onto the worn leather seat, yet it was strangely distant, as if it did not belong to her but to someone else.

Mrs. Thomas stood by the side of the gig. 'Ye be forgettin' a trunk, Miss.'

'No.' Abigail stared at the rhythmical swishing of the horse's tailit was not bobbed, as were those of the horses her brother kept. A brutal operation, she had always thought, involving as it did the removal of several vertebrae. 'There is nothing more for me in the cottage.'

'But'

Abigail pulled out a gold sovereign from her reticule. She looked down into Mrs. Thomas's wrinkled, worried face. 'I would consider it a favor, Mrs. Thomas, if you and your husband would destroy the trunk. Its contents are no longer of any value to me.'

'Of course, Miss.'

Mrs. Thomas turned and entered the cottage. She returned just minutes later carrying the basket Mr. Thomas had left yesterday.

Fleetingly she wondered what Robert had done to the crock of butterif he had put it back into the cupboard or if he had stuck it inside the basket. Just as fleetingly she wondered if Mr. Thomas had told his wife of finding Miss Abigail and her 'mister' frolicking naked in the rain.

But of course Mr. Thomas would have told her.

The mortification that Abigail should feel would not come.

The road to the station meandered around the ocean. At one spot a slip of the carriage wheel would plummet the vehicle over the cliff and into the water below.

'Stop!'

Mrs. Thomas nervously sawed on the reigns to stop the horse. Abigail reached into her reticule and grabbed the key to the trunk that carried her every fantasy.

How ironical that it should be dreams that had kept Robert alive these last twenty-two years.

They had given Abigail nothing but pain, isolating her from those she should emulate.

Before she could think about what she was doing, about what she was leaving behind, she stood up in the carriage and threw the key as far as she could.

It sparkled for a second, arcing over the water, then it disappeared. Into the air. Into the ocean.

It mattered not.

From this day forward Abigail had no dreams.

It was, after all, why she had chosen the isolated cottage, to say good-bye to the erotica that fueled impossible desires.

She closed her eyes against the sparkling clarity of the sea and made the decision she had been unable to make a week ago.

When she returned to London, she would accept the hand of the first man who her meddling siblings presented her with.

'You bloody horse, I should sell you to the glue factory.'

Softly whickering, the horse looked over its shoulder.

And allowed Robert to grab its halter.

After a two-hour chaseand a three-hour hunt.

Robert stared into the horse's soft brown eyes and felt a melting sensation all the way down to his toes.

Toes that now sported a set of blisters, thanks to this great beast.

He had indeed lost his mind if every pair of brown eyes reminded him of Abigail, he thought in disgust.

Grabbing the pommel, he swung up into the saddle.

The sun was brilliant, the sky a cloudless blue as it can only be in the aftermath of a storm.

The melting sensation flowed from Robert's spine to his testicles at the thought of the storm… and Abigail. And of how they would spend the rest of the day.

She would read from her erotica while he soaked his feet. Afterward, he would brush her hair as he had earlier promised. Then he would lick her and suckle her until she begged for mercy. And then…

Then he would propose to her. She wouldn't dare refuse him, hanging on to the edge of release.

It was well after noon by the time Robert returned to the cottage.

He should have been warned by the lack of smoke trailing out of the chimney pipe in the thatched roof. He should have known that a cottage that appeared so utterly alone and desolate was just that. Being a military man, he should have noticed the fresh wagon tracks outside the cottage.

And he did. He merely attributed the lack of smoke coming out of the chimney to Abigail's exhaustion. And the wagon tracks only incited his hungerfor food. He had had nothing to eat since yesterday evening.

Stomach roiling, he burst inside the cottage.

Only to find emptiness.

The bedding had been ripped off the mattress. The floor near the sink was bereft of the hip bath.

For a second he wondered if he had gotten the wrong cottage.

One coastal cottage looked much like another. He could have gotten the wrong one…

But of course there was the cupboard barring the window. And the small trunk at the foot of the bed.

Abigail was gone.

Pain filled his chest; it took his breath away. For a second he wondered if he had caught pneumonia from the storm.

But then the pain was washed away in a flood of rage.

Damn her. She had planned it this way, from the moment he had introduced himself. While he had told her his full name, she had said her name was merely 'Miss Abigail.'She had known then that with the end of the storm she would be gone.

How could she walk away from him after what they had shared last night?

He had felt her pleasure.

She had felthis pleasure.

Damn her to hell, she had accepted him,all of him, his body, his past, his fantasy.

She had taken his pain and turned it into pleasure.

For the first time since Robert had killed theSepoy with a pair of drumsticks twenty- two years earlier, he felt like crying. Bawling like the gullible thirteen-year-old boy he had once been, forever searching for an easier way to live.

Fool that he was, he had allowed Abigail to become more than his fantasy woman. She had become a part of his soul.

Whilehe had given her the weapon that she needed to sever the union. Ladies might dally with men raised on the streets of London, but they didnot marry them.

No wonder she had fled. Last night he had asked her if she accepted himand she had said yes. No doubt when she had awakened alone, she had expected him to return with a preacher.

Angrily he jerked at the lid of the trunk.