She just prayed by that point the boat would have been swept out to sea. And that she could find a safe place to hide.
Without waiting for him to fulfill his threat, she kicked off her high heel shoes and raced down the dock back onto solid ground as fast as her fashionable skirt would allow. Her captor’s vulgar calls trailed after her, making her run faster past the warehouse that reeked of fish. She dashed beyond the two weathered homes with their sagging front porches and broken windows.
They were clearly in disuse. Did she dare hide in one of them?
She circled around to the rear of one and tested the door. It was locked. She guessed the door on the other house was bolted too. With a growing sense of urgency, she eyed the road. If she ran, could she reach town before she was recaptured? She grabbed a fistful of her skirt into one hand and wished she could pull off the garment. As it was, she could hardly move in it. Fashion was apparently to be her undoing. If she escaped, never again would she place so much importance on keeping up appearances.
She examined the windows. Jagged glass remained in several frames and boards covered others. She couldn’t enter the house that way. “Think like Tom,” she told herself. “What would he do if he were here?”
Again, she studied the structure in front of her, trying to see it through Tom’s keen eyes. Her sights came to rest on two wooden slabs that had been nailed across a section of siding. Why would someone nail boards to the siding if not to patch a hole?
She crossed to the spot. One of the boards hung by a single nail. She shifted it enough to see that indeed a gap existed. It was outlined with numerous spider webs that were filled with brittle insects. She couldn’t see much of the interior of the house, except more dust and dirt.
She yanked at some of the rotten siding, and it fell away like crumbling toast. For a moment she worked on the hole, making it bigger, but then she realized she was leaving a trail of evidence on the ground. She scooped up the debris and tried not to think about the horrid things she might be touching. Instead, she peeled away the wood until finally she’d widened the gap enough so she could slip through.
The fit was tight, and halfway through she felt her skirt catch and heard a sharp rip. After sucking in her stomach and wiggling against the rot, she found herself face down on the floor of what appeared to be an old kitchen. Once she was fully through, she sat up and shuddered at her surroundings. In the dim light coming through cracks of the boarded windows, she could see that a portion of the ceiling had caved in and now lay in heaps among the remains of a table and two chairs. More cobwebs crowded each nook and corner, along with what appeared to be animal nests of some kind.
The stench of decay was overpowering, and the soft scamper of claws told her rats now made this place their home. She glanced with longing at the opening she’d made. She didn’t relish the idea of spending even a few minutes in the hovel. But she braced her shoulders and again admonished herself to be brave and strong like Tom.
Knowing he would cover his tracks, she returned to the opening and attempted to force the board back into place as best she could, praying that from the outside her captor wouldn’t notice the gap that she’d made bigger.
She tiptoed carefully through the wreckage, her silk stockings providing very little protection for her tender soles. As she moved out of the kitchen into a hallway, she knew if Tom were with her, he’d encourage her to find a good hiding place in case the coachman made it back to shore and decided to break into the house and look for her there.
The stairway was leaning dangerously to one side, and she decided not to attempt the second story. Instead, she peeked into the two remaining rooms—a front drawing room and a small bedroom near the kitchen. She didn’t see any place she might hide except under what was left of the bed. She studied the kitchen again with growing despair and then saw a half door she’d missed in her first inspection because a ripped fishing net