My Bratty Wife

The overgrown path, barely discernible in the fading light, ended abruptly before a dilapidated, small house. It stood hunched and silent amidst a tangle of untamed trees and thorny bushes. This had to be it.

Ryan reined Thunder in sharply, the stallion snorting and stamping, sensing his master’s urgency. He didn’t bother tethering him; there was no time. He leaped from the saddle and, without hesitation, kicked open the flimsy wooden door, half expecting a confrontation.

The house was empty. A wave of cold despair washed over him. Dust motes danced in the single beam of moonlight that pierced the grimy window of the main room. It was small, filthy, and reeked of stale beer and unwashed bodies. But Suzy... there was no sign of her.

Then, his eye caught a faint flicker of something metallic half-hidden beneath a rickety table. He lunged for it, his heart hammering. It was a small, gold chain – separated from the Blackwood ring that was no where to be found. He clenched it in his fist, the metal biting into his palm.

"She was here," he whispered, his voice raw with a mixture of hope and anguish. "They took her from here." He slammed his fist against the rough, damp wall in a gush of frustration and fear. "But where? Where could they have taken her to?" The vastness of the kingdom, the countless hiding places, seemed to mock him.

He forced himself to be calm, to think. He began a careful search of the small, dismal rooms. They were mostly empty, save for a few broken pieces of furniture and discarded rags. But as he entered what seemed to be a large gathering area, he detected a faint, lingering scent in the air – a sophisticated, floral perfume. It was expensive, unfamiliar, and definitely did not belong to his wife. He frowned.

"Someone else was here," he thought, his mind racing. "Another woman?" It didn’t make sense, yet the scent was undeniable.

His search led him to a narrow, planked door, bolted from the outside. The storage room where they had kept some important things. He slid back the bolt and pulled it open. The small space was dark and musty, filled with rough wooden crates, their contents unknown. As his eyes adjusted, he saw it – a piece of pastel colored silk, a significant strip torn from the hem of a gown, snagged on a splintered crate. He picked it up, his touch gentle, his heart aching. And then he saw the message.

Scrawled crudely on a relatively clean patch of the wooden crate, at about the height Suzy might have reached while sitting or kneeling, was a single word, written in a dark, dried substance that could only be blood:

PORT.

The word seemed to leap out at him. ’Port.’ Of course. It hit him with the force of a physical blow. They were smugglers – the crates, the shabby house, the ruthless careful abduction. That other scent, the expensive perfume – it probably belonged to a wealthy buyer, someone who wouldn’t come to such a hovel unless the merchandise was exceptionally valuable. And Suzy, a Duchess, was beyond valuable to such criminals.

"They took her to the port," he breathed, the pieces clicking together with horrifying clarity. "They’ll try to get her on a ship, out of the kingdom." He thought rapidly. "To save time, to complete the transaction quickly and minimize risk, they would have to go to the nearest operational port... that would be Aldridge Port."