Captive Surrender Read Online Free PDF Page B

the worst
place in the entire house but, if the gun was up there, then she
had to find it.
    Minutes later, armed with
nothing more than a feeble candle, Prudence eased open the small
door to the uppermost room in the house. Cold immediately chilled
her flesh and she shivered at the sight of the heavily dusted
cobwebs that hung practically everywhere. She lifted her candle in
the vain hope of being able to see through the gloom and almost
screamed when there was a sudden movement beside her.
    “ It’s only
me,” Robbie grinned. He rolled his eyes at the squeamishness of
females and peered through the gloom. He was the man of the house
when it came to dealing with the eight legged beasties, and he
couldn’t resist ribbing Prudence just a little bit.
    “ Do you want
me to go in and collect a few of them, you know, so they don’t nip
at your toes while you are in there?”
    Prudence merely threw him
a dirty look. “I wouldn’t stand behind me if I were you. I can
promise you this, Robbie, if I see one of them, I am going to be
the first one out of there and you will be all alone in the dark.”
She wrinkled her nose up and watched the smug smile leave Robbie’s
face. She knew that he was a little bit afraid of the dark, even
though wild horses wouldn’t be able to make him admit to
it.
    “ I am not
going in there,” he muttered. “I have to go and help
Eloisa.”
    Before Prudence could
even draw breath, Robbie had disappeared down the stairs with a
clatter of heels. “Coward,” she muttered and puffed out her cheeks
as she briefly contemplated what it would take to try to coax one
of her sister’s to go in there for her. Unfortunately though, they
were even more scared of spiders than she was.
    The image of the tall,
handsome stranger flew into her mind. The memory of the shadowed
figure watching the house was enough to propel her forward and,
with a fortifying breath, she squared her shoulders and broke the
first line of webs as she walked into the attics.
    It was worse than she had
feared. The approaching storm howled around the chimney stack and
rattled the tiles on the roof alarmingly. The strangely haunting
sound was awful in its own right, but nothing could match the
scuttling movements on the wooden joists above her head as she
moved through the cobwebs toward the old trunks against the far
wall.
    Her stomach knotted at
the sight of the old dusty leather box that had the emblem JHF
emblazoned on the front. Joseph Harold Freestone was her father; a
dissolute wastrel who had abandoned his wife and children and left
them to fend for himself so he could live the life of a gambling
womaniser in the bright lights of London. Well, until his money ran
out, at which point, penniless, pox ridden, and wanted for unpaid
debts, he had taken his own life by throwing himself off a bridge
over the River Thames. The innocuous trunk before her now held so
many awful memories that Prudence wasn’t sure that she could bring
herself to actually lift the lid. The last time she had seen the
horrible thing had been on the day that their mother had received
the news from father’s mistress that Joseph had died. Agatha had
wailed and wept, screamed and ranted, until her voice was hoarse
and there was wildness in her eyes that had unnerved all of
them.
    That had been the
beginning of the downward spiral of their mother’s mental health
and she had deteriorated each day since. They hadn’t thought
anything of their father’s belongings and had tried to carry on
regardless once they had learned of his demise. Eventually, Agatha
had ordered Joseph’s belongings be removed from the house, although
she hadn’t stated what she wanted to happen to them. Confused,
scared and more alone than ever, the girls had hastily packed the
one trunk left in the house with their father’s clothing, and had
shoved it upstairs in the attic where it had remained for the last
five years.
    Unless Prudence was
mistaken, they had been worried about