The Taker-Taker 1 Read online

  I touched the woman’s arm. “I shouldn’t be here. I’m in no state for a fancy affair. I’m not even fit to be a kitchen girl in this fine house. I will take my leave—”

  “You will stay until we give you permission to leave.” She whirled and dug her fingernails into my forearm, making me gasp at the pain. “Now stop being a ninny and come along. I guarantee you will enjoy yourself tonight.” Her tone told me that my enjoyment was the last thing on her mind.

  The four of us burst through a set of doors into a bedchamber, a massive room as big as my family’s entire house back in St. Andrew. The woman led us straight into the dressing room where a man stood with his back to us. He was obviously the master of the house, a valet waiting at his side. The master was dressed in bright blue velvet breeches and white silk stockings, fancy slippers on his feet. He wore a lace-edged shirt and waistcoat to match the breeches. He hadn’t donned his frock coat, so I had a clear view of his true form without a tailor’s tricks to enhance his build. He wasn’t as tall and athletic as Jonathan—my yardstick for the masculine ideal—but nonetheless possessed a magnificent physique. A broad back and shoulders blossomed from his narrow hips. He’d be terrifically strong, judging from those shoulders, like some of the axmen back in St. Andrew, stocky and powerful. And then he turned around and I tried not to show my surprise.

  He was much younger than I expected, in his twenties I would have guessed, older than I by only a few years. And he was good-looking in an unfamiliar way, vaguely savage. He had an olive complexion, which I’d never seen before in our village of Scots and Scandinavians. His dark mustache and beard were wispy along a square jaw, as though they’d not been growing in for long. But his strangest feature was his eyes, olive colored and struck through with gray and gold. They were like two jewels in their beauty, and yet his stare was wolfish and mesmerizing.

  “We’ve brought another entertainment for your party,” the woman announced.

  His appraising gaze was as rough as a pair of hands; after one look, I felt I had no secrets from him. My throat went dry, my knees soft.

  “This is our host.” The woman’s voice drifted over my shoulder. “Curtsy, you simpleton. You are in the presence of royalty. This is the Count cel Rau.”

  “My name is Adair.” He stretched a hand toward me, as though to keep me from bowing. “We are in America, Tilde. I understand Americans will not have royalty in their country and so they will not bow to anyone. We must not expect Americans to bow to us.”

  “You’ve just arrived in America?” Somehow I found the courage to speak to him.

  “A fortnight ago.” He dropped my hand and turned back to his valet.

  “From Hungary,” the short, dark man added. “Do you know where that is?”

  My head swam. “No, I’m afraid not.” More snorts of laughter sounded behind my back.

  “It’s not important,” this Adair, the master of the house, snapped at his minions. “We cannot expect anyone to know of our homeland. Home is farther away than the miles of land and sea we have put behind us. It is another world from this place. That is why I have come here—because it is another world.” He gestured toward me. “You—do you have a name?”

  “Lanore.”

  “You are from here?”

  “From Boston? No, I just arrived today. My family”—I stumbled over a hitch in my throat—“lives in the Maine territory, to the north. Have you heard of it?”

  “No,” he answered.

  “Then we are even.” I don’t know where I found the nerve to joke with him.

  “Perhaps we are.” He let the valet adjust his cravat, eyeing me curiously before addressing the trio. “Don’t just stand there,” he said. “Get her ready for the party.”

  I was led to another room, this one filled with trunks stacked on more trunks. They threw back lids, rummaging until they found clothing that would fit me, a nice dress in a red cotton and a pair of satin slippers. It made for a mismatched outfit but the clothing was still much finer than anything I’d ever worn. A servant had been ordered to prepare a hasty bath and I was instructed to scrub thoroughly, but quickly. “We’ll burn these,” the blond man said, nodding at my homemade clothes, now lying discarded on the floor. Before leaving me to my bath, the frightening blond woman pressed a goblet in my hand, good red wine sloshing inside. “Drink up,” she said. “You must be thirsty.” I drained it in two gulps.

  I could tell the wine had been drugged by the time I left the washroom. The floors and walls seemed to shift and I needed all my powers of concentration to make it down the hall. By then, guests had begun to arrive, mostly well-dressed, bewigged men with masks obscuring their faces. The trio had vanished and I had been left alone. In my daze, I went from room to room, trying to grasp what was going on, the raucous bacchanalia spilling all around me. I remember seeing card games in a huge room, men sitting four or five to a table, amid roars of laughter and anger as coins flashed as they were tossed in the pot. I continued to roam, randomly drifting in and out of room after room. As I stumbled through the halls, a stranger would try to take my hand but I would pull away and run off as best I could, given my disorientation. There were confused young men or women without masks, all very pretty, being led off by partygoers in all directions.

  I began to hallucinate. I was convinced I was dreaming, and that I’d dreamed myself into a maze. I couldn’t make myself understood; words came out in mumbles and no one seemed inclined to listen to me, anyway. There seemed to be no way out of this hellish party, no way to the relative safety of the street. Just then, I felt a hand alight on my elbow and then I passed out.

  When I woke up, I was lying on a bed on my back, and I was nearly being suffocated by the man hovering over me. His face was unnaturally close to mine, his hot breath raking my face. I shuddered under his weight and the insistent slamming of his body against mine, and heard myself moan and cry in pain, but the pain was detached, blunted for now by the drug. I knew, instinctively, that it would all come back to me later. I tried to call out for help and a sweaty hand covered my mouth, salty fingers pushed past my lips. “Quiet, pet,” the man on top of me grunted, eyes half closed.

  Over his shoulder, I saw we were being watched. Masked men sat in chairs pulled up to the foot of the bed, goblets in hand, laughing and urging the man on. Sitting in the middle of the group, one leg crossed over the other, was the host. The count. Adair.

  I awoke with a start. I was in a large bed in a dark, quiet room. Just the act of waking sent bright sparks of pain shooting through my body. I felt as though I’d been turned inside out, stretched and raw and stiff, numb from the waist down. My stomach churned, a sea of bile. My face was puffy, my mouth, too, with lips dry and cracked. I knew what had happened to me last night, my pain all the evidence I needed. What I needed now was to survive it.

  Then I saw him lying next to me on the bed. Adair. His face was almost beatific in sleep. From what I could see, he was naked though covered by sheets from the waist down. His back was exposed to me and mottled with old scars, hinting of a horrific beating once upon a time.

  I leaned over the edge of the bed and, clutching the mattress, threw up on the floor.

  My retching woke the host. He moaned at his hangover, or so I assumed, and raised a hand to his temple. His green-gold eyes blinked uncertainly.

  “Good God, you’re still here,” he said to me.

  I lunged at him in anger, raising a fist to strike him, but he knocked me aside with a lazy, powerful arm. “Don’t behave stupidly,” he warned me, “or I’ll break you in half like a stick.”

  I thought of the other young men and women I’d seen last night. “Where are they? The others?” I demanded.

  “Paid and gone, I hope,” Adair muttered, running a hand through tangled hair. He wrinkled his nose at the smell of my fresh vomit. “Get someone in here to clean that up,” he said as he lurched off the bed.

  “I’m not your servant. And I’m not a—” I groped for a word I didn�
�t know existed.

  “Not a whore?” He pulled a blanket off the bed and wrapped it around his body. “You were not a virgin, either.”

  “That doesn’t mean I want to be drugged and savaged by a group of men.”

  Adair said nothing. He held the blanket closed at his hip, walked to the door, and bellowed for a servant. Then he turned to face me. “So, you think I wronged you? What will you do about it? You could tell your story to the constable and he will lock you up for being a prostitute. So I suggest you take your pay and get a meal from the cook before you go.” Then he cocked his head as he looked me over a second time. “You’re the one Tilde found on the street, the one with no place to go. Well … let it never be said that I am not a generous man. You can stay a few days with us. Rest up and get your bearings, if you like.”

  “And am I to sing for my supper the same as last night?” I asked tartly.

  “You are impertinent, aren’t you, to speak to me like this? All alone in the world—no one knows you’re here, I could eat you up like a little rabbit, a little rabbit in a stew. Doesn’t that frighten you in the least?” He smirked at me but with a glimmer of approval. “We’ll see what comes to mind.” He sank onto a sofa, wrapping the blanket around him. For an aristocrat, he had the manners of a ruffian.

  I tried to stand and search for my clothes, but my head went light and the room swirled. I fell back onto the bed as a servant came in with rags and a bucket. He paid no attention to me as he got down on his knees to attend to my puddle of sick. It wasn’t until then that I felt the throbbing pain at my gut, just one sensation lost amid an ocean of hurt. I was covered, head to toe, in scratches, welts, and bruises. The pain inside had undoubtedly come the same way as the pain outside: at the hands of a brute.

  I intended to flee the mansion if I had to crawl on my hands and knees. But I didn’t make it beyond the foot of the bed; I collapsed dead away in a faint of exhaustion.

  Months would pass before I’d leave the house.

  SIXTEEN

  AROOSTOOK COUNTY, PRESENT DAY

  The dawn this time of year has a characteristic hue, the dusty yellow-gray like the rime on the yolk of a boiled egg. Luke could swear it hangs over the land like a miasma or a ghost’s curse but knows it’s probably nothing more than a trick of light playing on the water molecules in the morning air. Whether it is light waves or an ancient curse, it gives the morning a peculiar appearance: the yellow sky a low ceiling of clouds in ominous shades against which nearly bare trees stand in grays and browns.

  After seeing the police car in the rearview mirror, Luke decided that they can’t continue the trip to the Canadian border in his truck. It’s too recognizable, with its MD plates and bumper sticker from Jolene’s former school proclaiming the driver’s child to be an honor-roll student at Allagash River Elementary. (Since when, Luke had wondered when Tricia insisted they put the sticker on his old truck, were there honor rolls in elementary schools?) So they have spent the past half hour backtracking to St. Andrew, hurtling over single-lane roads to get to the house of someone he believes he can trust. He called on his cell phone first to see about borrowing a car, but mostly he wants to see if the police have been asking around about him.

  He stops in front of a large reconditioned farmhouse outside the St. Andrew city limits. The house is a beauty, one of the biggest and best kept, with touches like pussywillow wreaths decorating the wraparound porch and solar lanterns lining the driveway. The house belongs to a new doctor at the hospital, an anesthesiologist named Peter, who moved up from the city so he could raise his children in the country, where he believes there is no crime or drugs. He is a pathologically nice guy, even to Luke, who, prickly and still grieving from all his recent trouble, had withdrawn from everyone in the past few months.

  When Luke knocks at the front door, Peter answers it in bathrobe and slippers, a grave look on his face. He seems to have been rousted out of bed by Luke’s phone call, for which Luke is inwardly embarrassed.

  Peter puts a hand on Luke’s arm as they stand in the doorway. “Is everything all right?”

  “I’m sorry to ask, it’s a strange request, I know,” Luke says, shuffling from foot to foot, head down. He’s practiced this lie in his head for the last ten minutes. “It’s just … my cousin’s daughter has been staying with me for a few days and I promised her mother I’d get her home in time to make the bus for some school trip. Only my truck is acting up and I’m afraid it won’t make it up there and back …” Luke’s tone blends the right amounts of ineptitude and apology for inconveniencing a friend, projecting a sort of bumble-headed, well-intentioned haplessness that only an ogre would refuse.

  Peter looks over Luke’s shoulder at the truck parked at the end of the long driveway, where—Luke knows—he will see Lanny standing beside the truck, her suitcase at her feet. She is too far away for Peter to get a good look at her, in case the police come by later with questions. She gives Peter a little wave.

  “Didn’t you just get off shift?” Peter peers back at Luke, so closely that he might be inspecting him for fleas. “Aren’t you tired?”

  “Yeah, but I’m okay. It was a quiet night. I got a little sleep,” he lies. “I’ll be careful.”

  Peter pulls the keys from a pocket and drops them in Luke’s hand. When Luke tries to give him the keys to the truck in return, Peter balks.

  “You don’t need to leave your keys with me … You’re not going to be gone long, are you?”

  Luke shrugs, trying to appear nonchalant. “Just in case you have to move it or something. You never know.”

  The door to the three-bay garage rises slowly and Luke checks the key fob to find that Peter is entrusting him with a new luxury SUV, gleaming steel gray. Heated leather seats and a DVD player for the second row to keep the children appeased on long road trips. He recalls how people at the hospital gave Peter a hard time the first day he drove up in it, as the vehicle was so uncharacteristic for the area, its shiny coat likely to be eaten up by road salt by the end of its third winter.

  Luke backs the car out of the garage and waits at the mouth of the driveway for Lanny to scramble into the passenger seat. “Nice car,” she says as she reaches for the seat belt. “You know how to trade up, don’t you?”

  She hums to herself as Luke guides the car down the road, once again headed for the Canadian border-crossing station—this time, half hidden behind darkly tinted windows. He feels guilty for what he’s done. He can’t quite put his finger on why, but he suspects he will not be turning right around once they’ve crossed the border, which is why he left the keys to his dented old pickup with his friend. Not that Peter needs the truck; he obviously has other vehicles if he must go somewhere. Still, it makes Luke feel better, as if he has posted bond or left a token in good faith, because he knows Peter will think less of him soon enough.

  Lanny catches Luke’s eye as they coast into an empty intersection. “Thank you,” she says with heartfelt gratitude. “You seem like the kind of man who doesn’t like to ask for favors, so … I want you to know that I appreciate what you’re doing for me.”

  Luke just nods, wondering how far he will go and at what cost to help her escape.

  SEVENTEEN

  BOSTON, 1817

  I woke in a different bed in a different room, the dark-haired man from the carriage sitting at the bedside with a bowl of water and a cold compress for my forehead.

  “Ah, you’re back among the living,” he said when I’d opened my eyes. He lifted the compress from my brow and dropped it into the water to soak.

  A cold light was visible through the window behind him, so I knew it was day, but which day? I checked under the coverlet to see that I was dressed in a plain night shift. They had given me a room to myself that was clearly meant for a senior member of the household staff, small and dutifully appointed.

  “Why am I still here?” I asked, groggy.

  He ignored my question. “How are you feeling?”

  The pain came
on dully, sour and hot in my abdomen. “Like I’ve been stabbed with a rusty blade.”

  He frowned slightly, then reached for a soup bowl sitting on the floor. “The best thing for you is rest, complete rest. You’ve likely got a puncture somewhere, in there”—he pointed obliquely to my stomach—“and you need to heal as quickly as possible, before infection sets in. I’ve seen it before. It can become serious.”

  The babe. I pulled myself upright. “I want to see a physician. Or a midwife.”

  He pushed a spoon through clear broth, metal ringing against china. “Too soon for that. We’ll watch awhile, to see if it gets worse.”

  Between daubs of the compress and spoonfuls of clear soup, he answered my questions. First, he told me about himself. His name was Alejandro and he was the youngest son of a fine Spanish family from Toledo. Being the youngest son, he had no hope of inheriting the family’s property. The second oldest had joined the military and was captain of a fierce Spanish galleon. The third oldest served in the court of the Spanish king and would shortly be sent as an emissary to a foreign land. Thus, the family had fulfilled its customary obligations to king and country; Alejandro was free to decide his own way in the world, and through various incidents and twists of fate, he eventually found himself with Adair.

  Adair, he explained, was bona fide royalty from the old world, as wealthy as some minor princes, having managed to hold on to property that had belonged to his family for centuries. Tired of the old world, he’d come to Boston for the novelty, to experience the new world for himself. Alejandro and the other two from the carriage—Tilde, the woman, and Donatello, the blond man—were Adair’s courtiers. “Every royal keeps a court,” Alejandro said, the first of many circular arguments. “He must be surrounded by educated people of breeding, who can see that his needs are met. We are the buffer between him and the world.”