Catherine Coulter - Nigt Trilogy - 1 by Night Fire

Author:Night Fire [Fire, Night]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2011-01-16T23:39:13.661000+00:00

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girl had a blanket covering her, for her clothing had nearly been ripped off. She walked, Arielle thought blankly, as if she were an old woman. Tibbens, the laundress who had found her, was saying to Burke, her deep voice hoarse with concern, “I wasn’t in time, milord. He moved away too fast. I wasn’t in time.”

Burke spoke in his most soothing voice to Tibbens. After a moment she continued, her voice more steady. “I heard her screaming and ran toward the sound. He’d just, well, finished with Mellie when I saw him. He was fastening his breeches, standing over her, you know. When he saw me he ran toward the woods.”

“You didn’t recognize him?”

Tibbens shook her head. “He wasn’t particularly tall or short. Just a man, my lord. Maybe on the heavy side. He was wearing a hood over his head. Poor little Mellie doesn’t know who he is either.”

After getting as complete a description of the man as possible, Burke dismissed her. He instructed Cerlew to get a dozen or so men together for a search. He walked back to Arielle and came down on his haunches in front of her. He took her hands in his. Of all the things to happen, and here at Ravensworth.

“I must leave now, Arielle. We are going to look for the man who hurt Mellie.”

“He raped her,” she said, her voice hard. “That is much more than hurt.”

“Yes, it is. When we get him, he will be punished.”

“By whom?”

That made him pause a moment. “There must be laws, very stiff punishments, for rape.”

She looked at him remotely. “A man can do anything he pleases to his wife. I would think that a man can do just as he pleases to any woman, except perhaps kill her. Men have made the laws, after all. Why would they want to punish each other for what they consider to be their right?”

He said nothing, for he had a horrible suspicion she was right. He rose, lightly touched his fingertips to her pale cheek, and left her.

There was no trace of the man except for a small square of dark brown wool snagged on a low branch of a maple tree some twenty yards from where Mellie had been raped.

Burke rode to Sir Edward Pottenham’s manor house, situated just three miles east of Ravensworth Abbey. Sir Edward was a garrulous old man, fascinated by butterflies, and it took all Burke’s verbal facility to avoid seeing Sir Edward’s colorfully gruesome collection. He did, however, accept a brandy.

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