Sweet Love of Mine

Chapter Twenty-Four

Chapter Twenty-Four

A niggling pain finally brought her round.

Her cheek was ground against an abrasive surface, smarting where the material and the hardness of the surface beneath had chaffed her skin. Blinking, several discomforts made themselves blaringly obvious to Emily immediately.

Foremost, she couldn’t breathe. Some sort of sack was covering her head and face, tied loosely at her throat, while a gag had been stuffed far into her mouth. She panicked instantly, her pants jilted and short through her nostrils, gagging on the rag in her mouth that tickled the back of her throat and parched her tongue. She tasted it, too, and it was revolting, as if it had been used to wipe down the unclean surface of several tables before being stuffed against her tongue. Heaving and gagging vehemently, Emily then noted that she couldn’t move.

Her arms were bound behind her back with rope that burned the tender flesh of her wrists having been tied much too tightly. So, too, were her ankles and her struggles only increased the corrosion the rope caused to her limbs.

Emily sobbed, the sound muffled against the confinements covering her face and mouth. Her lungs were beginning to burn and she felt the warmth of her own breath against her eyes and temples.

A hard boot landed against her hip with a grunt. “Stop that,” a voice decreed gruffly and with a sinking heart, Emily realised she recognised who it belonged to: the brute who had accosted her in her chambers. “There be no point in strugglin’,” he continued. “I’ll only shoot yer knee if yer do.”

Oh, God! She was going to suffocate, she was sure of it. The air gushed from her nose in frantic wheezes and puffs, desperate for breath. But Emily knew that the only way to she was not going to faint again was if she calmed herself. Quickly, she took in the coarse fabric covering her face. Thick, yes, but perforated enough so that air could permeate. If she evened out her breathing and took shallow breaths instead, she would be fine.

It was easier to utilize this theory in her mind than in practise. When the pounding of her lungs and her heart had finally subsided slightly, and she realised that she could just breathe after all if she focused her inhalation with short, shallow breaths rather than frantic gasps, and the panic lessened- but only marginally.

She lay on her side on an unsteady surface, her shoulder aching dully from the awkwardness of her position. With a jolt that rolled her onto her stomach, Emily concluded that she was in a carriage or a coach and they were moving. Judging from the direction the kick had landed, she surmised that the villain was sitting adjacent from her. And she did not doubt that he would shoot her knee if she protested again.

So she remained unmoving, stifling the nausea that rose to the back of her throat every time she took a breath, shrouded in shadow, on the floor of a carriage that was taking her somewhere she did not want to go, and endeavoured to ignore the staggering pain originating from the base of her skull, which she estimated had been issued to her in her chambers earlier.

How long had she been unconscious, she wondered, and how long had they been travelling? If it were still dark out, she may be able to deduce just how far they had rode, but she couldn’t tell. No light seeped through the minuscule perforations, only shadow.

Shivers began wracking her body, partly from the cold and mostly from fear, uncontrollable in their varying lengths and degrees. If her teeth could be allowed to chatter, she was sure that they would, but such an action was prevented by the revolting gag stuffed against her throat.

They travelled like that for what seemed like hours, but she had soon lost track of time- her sole focus on the even breaths she took. By the time the conveyance finally drew to a stop, her fingers were numb and tingling, her hip and shoulder protested savagely with pain, and her head had begun to throb with a steadiness that made her vision swim, what little of it she had, anyway.