The Lady Has a Past (Burning Cove #5) - Amanda Quick Page 0,25

that had wafted up from the bedding in room two twenty-one at the Labyrinth Springs Hotel—Madam Guppy’s Violet.

I never did like that perfume. Too heavy.

At least she was no longer blindfolded. And her hands were free. The lamps in the room were on. That was a good thing, because the faded, floral drapes were pulled tightly shut across the window.

She sat up slowly. That was when she heard the clanking of metal links and became aware of an uncomfortable weight on her right foot. She looked down. The light from the wall sconce gleamed on the manacle around her ankle. One end of a metal chain was attached to the manacle. The other end was secured to an iron ring bolted to the wall.

She was wearing the trousers, shirt, and sport shoes she’d had on when she was in her hotel room. At least she was fully dressed. It was always easier to deal with disaster when one was wearing good clothes.

She got up slowly. The chain was just long enough to allow her to go into the adjoining bathroom. She could also get to the dressing table. It would not let her go as far as the door.

She went to the window and pulled the faded curtains aside. There was nothing to see except the solid wall of boards that had been nailed across the window.

Someone had gone to a lot of trouble to create a prison cell—far too much effort for just a single kidnapping. She knew then that she was not the first woman who had been chained in the very nice, somewhat old-fashioned bedroom.

She saw a plate of breakfast rolls, a large teapot, and a cup and saucer sitting on a small table. The design of the plate and the cup and saucer was familiar. The food she had ordered from room service had been served on dishes decorated with the same design. The rolls were not homemade. They looked as if they had come from a professional kitchen—a hotel kitchen.

It occurred to her that food might help settle her queasy stomach. She clanked her way across the room, picked up one of the rolls, and took a bite. It went down and felt like it would stay down.

She lifted the lid of the teapot and inhaled cautiously. The contents were only lukewarm, but that was not what made her decide to forgo a cup of tea. It was the faint trace of an all-too-familiar herbal scent that worried her. It triggered a memory. A pot of the same tea had been brought to her hotel room, courtesy of the hotel management. She’d poured herself a cup while she waited for her visitor. Not long after finishing the tea she had been plunged into the hallucinations. At some point she had collapsed on the bed.

She knew something about poisons. She would not drink the tea. She picked up the pot and went into the black-and-white-tiled bathroom. The towels were monogrammed with the logo of Guppy’s House of Beauty: a violet orchid. She poured the tea down the sink and set the pot aside.

There was a glass on the white-tiled shelf above the sink. She used the soap to wash it out and then drank a full glass of water. When she was finished she clanked her way back into the bedroom, ate the rest of the breakfast rolls, and sank down on the edge of the bed. She examined the manacle around her ankle.

She was a captive locked in a deceptively pleasant prison. With the curtains pulled shut, one didn’t even notice the boarded-up windows.

She knew a lot about outwardly attractive prisons, too. She had spent her short nightmare of a marriage locked in one in Bar Harbor.

She fought back a surging wave of panic and tried to think. She had been tricked. It wasn’t the Ghost Lady who had made the telephone call that had brought her to Labyrinth Springs. Someone else—someone who knew the secrets of her marriage—had made that call.

Her nightmares had come true. The violent psychopath she had married had not died in a fall down the stairs. He was alive and he had hunted her down. This time he would kill her.

But she was no longer the lonely, naïve young woman who had been easily deceived by a handsome, charming, wealthy older man.

The manacle. She had to do something about it before she could try to figure out a way to escape. She had faced a similar problem the last time