My father was speaking emphatically to the staring man from the churchyard, the one he’d denied knowing. The man had a markedly disrespectful expression of supercilious disbelief on his face, and the Duke looked angry. My father finished the conversation with what looked like several very hard words indeed and an eloquent hand movement that I wouldn’t particularly have liked directed at me, and strode off. The man looked sullenly after him before stalking away in turn.
I slipped between two cart horses into the next alley and walked as fast as I could back to the coach, slowing to an amble as soon as I came in sight.
My father was already there. “Not having second thoughts already?” he teased.
I smiled a rebuttal and let him hand me into the carriage.
~+~
“Dear me,” said the Duke, as we drove home. “I have never made a worse purchase in all my days. We haven’t seen its paces, haven’t backed it, and we know it bites and kicks and it’s called Hellfire! I unreservedly apologize to the shade of your mother; I have just lost any right to call myself a judge of horseflesh.”
I let him grumble, looking out the window to check that Hellion wasn’t savaging the footmen—and trying to put my father’s deception from my mind. Perhaps it’s just some slightly disreputable associate he’d rather you weren’t exposed to, I reasoned to myself. Though if the man were, I didn’t think the association was proving very amiable...
Satisfied that the coach was moving fast enough for my new horse’s attention to be sufficiently engaged on the task of keeping up, I sat back in my seat and gave my father’s hand a consolatory pat. “It was me who wanted it,” I reminded him.
He smiled at my comforting tone, but his expression became firm. “You’re not to get astride that beast until I say you can, do you understand? The animal may be completely unrideable. Five guineas, indeed! The yard owner was right; it was worth only three. Next time perhaps I will make it a surprise.”
I patted his hand again and smiled. “If you’d surprised me with a horse, I’m sure it would’ve been a lot finer than anything we saw today.”
The Duke sighed, perhaps somewhat mollified, at least until we drew to a halt at Albany House, and a sharp, “Zounds, watch it!” came from the back of the coach.
“The grooms,” he said to me, sotto voce, “are never going to forgive you.”
I winced.
~+~
CHAPTER 18
OF BOLTS AND BRANDY
I had accompanied my father on a call to Bride Well that day because the people he was visiting had several daughters near my own age, and he had clearly hoped that I would be able to strike up a friendship with them. In truth, I had gone to please him more than from any real hope in that direction. I had long since called on my childhood friends, those that were in London, and been called on in return, but such calls had already petered to nothing.
I had nothing to say to butterflies like these, I thought glumly, struggling to maintain an expression of polite interest as the oldest of our host’s daughters described in exhaustive detail the love note she had received at a ball the previous week, before finally producing it from her bodice with affected sighs.
My attention was wandering, and the back of my neck prickled slightly, uncomfortably. I ascribed it to boredom and blinked, trying to put the sensation from my mind. Despite my best efforts, my ears gravitated to the adults’ conversation, helped by the mention of a familiar name.
“...And that Baron Hendfield, you know him, of course, Alban,” said the lady of the house, with a little titter. “Well,” she became more serious, “it’s looking like there’s little doubt about it. The rumors are true. He’s vastly overspent—that’ll be through living off what was not his own—and now he can’t pay his debts. Nothing’s out in the open, yet, but unless he can get an informal loan from someone to pay off the moneylenders, he’s for the debtor’s jail a’fore too long.”
My brows drew together. That again. I could go nowhere without hearing the rumors of my uncle’s troubles. It was getting on my nerves. It was like seeing a vicious stray lying in a gutter with broken legs. It might have bitten you, but you still wanted to either help it or put it out of its misery.
Would my father give my uncle the money to pay off his debts, strictly as a loan, of course, but an informal one that could be paid back gradually? If anyone could sort out my uncle and set him fair on the path of his unexpected second chance, it was my father. I had to admit that my motives were not the best. I just felt sick of hearing my uncle’s name all the time. My father would have to be pretty sick of it, too, to give him any money. But he might be.
He didn’t look greatly enthralled by the turn of the conversation, rubbing the back of his neck absent-mindedly, and as the speculation continued, he excused himself to leave. Delighted at this unexpectedly early escape, I politely withdrew from my own circle and joined my father at the room door, my mind still on that human dog of the gutter, my uncle.
“It’s very good for one’s soul to help an enemy, is it not?” I asked my father a trifle musingly, as we walked towards our carriage, which was waiting opposite the house in the square outside St Bride’s church.
He glanced down at me and half-smiled. He looked away again, as if to hide it, and I saw the sharp jerk of his head as something caught his eye. The next moment he cannoned into me, throwing me violently forward. Even as my reeling mind tried to identify the ‘thwack’ sound that still echoed around the square, he was pushing me onwards, and I hastily threw myself behind the nearest carriage. He was beside me in a moment, leaning against the coach, his breathing heavy and catching slightly.
My mind went near blank with shock as I saw the crossbow bolt that protruded from his upper left arm.
He reached up swiftly and snapped the shaft off, throwing it away and catching my shoulder again with his right hand. “Run to our carriage,” he ordered, “run, now...”
I had already sprung forward, hearing him following me, and not needing his breathless, “weave, weave,” to do so. Despite the precautionary weaving, I ran as fast as I possibly could, skirts raised clear of my flying feet, not blind to the fact that by running immediately behind me, he was effectively using his body as a shield. I made to spring up the steps and through the nearest carriage door, but my nape positively seared and I pulled up short with a convulsive, wholly instinctive jerk, gasping as another bolt smacked into the door just in front of me.
Without further hesitation, I turned and dived between the horses’ legs, reaching the far side safely. To my huge relief, my father was right behind me.
“Into the carriage, stay on the floor, that’s right...”
He crawled in after me, staying low, and reached up his uninjured arm to lift down his crossbow. The horses were no longer armored, but the rest of the coach hadn’t been touched. I quickly chose a slender bolt from the box and offered it to him. He took it with a grim smile of thanks and got on with the awkward business of loading and cocking a crossbow with one wounded arm while lying on the floor. He managed surprisingly well and carefully poked aside the curtain with the quarrel tip and peeped out.
“Where are you...?” he whispered, then said to me, “prod that curtain above you with a bolt.”
I did as bidden, keeping my head down, and jumped as another bolt thrummed through the window and clean out the other side.
“Got you.” The Duke set the crossbow butt to his shoulder. He sighted along the weapon with eyes utterly hard, and his hand closed on the trigger.
A terrible choked off cry came from across the square, but the Duke simply held out his hand for the bolt I held and reloaded the weapon.
“Swap places with me,” he told me quietly. “Keep your head down.”
I obediently switched with him and again prodded the curtain now above me. A bolt cracked into the wood of the coach wall and the Duke’s weapon thwacked in almost the same moment. This time the scream was drawn-out and long, but it finally ceased.
“Stay down,” cautioned the Duke, then banged on the wall of the coach. “Richard, are you all right?”
The coachman’s reply came swiftly. “Aye, m’lord.”
“Home, then. Fast as you can.”
Only once we were well away from the square did the Duke allow me to sit up, and even then he reloaded the crossbow, applying the safety latch and putting it beside him on the seat. There was no color left in his face, and his entire left sleeve glistened wetly. I hastened to look at it.
The head of the bolt was still lodged in my father’s arm. “Shall I try and get it out?”
He shook his head, bracing himself with his other hand against the swaying of the coach. “No, we’ll do it when we get home.”
“It ought to come out as soon as possible,” I persisted.
“Yes, hence...” He cocked his head forward, where Richard’s whip was most unusually audible.
I yielded and lifted my skirts to reach my petticoats, from which I cut strips with my dagger. “If you read stories, this is the only apparent reason why the women wear these things.”
He smiled a little tautly at this, and I bound his arm to try and stop the bleeding. When satisfied I’d done all I could for the time being, I sat back in the seat.
He did not look happy. “I’m a cursed fool,” he said, more to himself, but at my inquiring look he gritted his teeth and expanded, “I assumed there was just one and that he wouldn’t have had time to reload. It’s only by God’s good grace that the second was a bad shot, or one of us would not be here.”
I snorted, “I think you managed everything perfectly. How did you even know?”
“I saw the first one standing by the corner of an alley. I wouldn’t have noticed, but he held his arms up to fire and that’s not a normal position for anything else I know of.”
I stared at the makeshift bandage, quickly turning crimson. “He was aiming at me, wasn’t he?”
My father nodded. “Yes, I think so. But they were after both of us, hence why there were two. We came out sooner than they expected; they weren’t ready. I’d guess the second one wasn’t cocked. The first was, unfortunately, but at least the bolt missed the bone...” He trailed off with a grimace. He would have lost the arm, I knew, and probably his life with it.
“Do you have any enemies?” I asked him quietly.
He shook his head. “I’ve been out of the country three years, and out of London for most of a decade before that and never inclined to enemies even before that thanks to my disinterest in politics. I’m afraid that this enemy I have inherited—backwards, so to speak—from you.”
“My uncle,” I said.
Alban nodded. “Your dear uncle.”
~+~
My dear dead uncle, I thought grimly. I could see that my father was kicking himself for leaving the man alive, and I too had underestimated him. Or overestimated him, depending on how one looked at it. My father would not make that mistake again, of that I was certain.
“So he wants us both dead, so he can have Ma’s property back?” I queried my father, sure I was right but wanting confirmation from an older, wiser head.
My father nodded. “Aye. And it makes me wonder... I have no near relations, you understand, with the single exception of yourself. Could he have somehow hoped to lay his hands on the rest of my estate through his relationship to you? It’s possible. But in truth, from the sounds of things, his difficulties are extreme enough that he might have thought only of your mother’s things. He should have paid more on the assassins, though I doubt he would have even if he had the money.”
“Well, I’m glad he didn’t have the money,” I said.
“Oh, so am I,” replied my father with feeling, then added rather wryly, “I would wish that he’d had even less.”
When we got home we immediately turned our attentions to the removal of what was left of the crossbow bolt from the Duke’s arm. Anna dithered so much at this evidence of violence that I delegated the acquisition of bandages and ointment to her and took over. Eventually I had to use a pair of pliers to get a grip while my father held the back of a chair, white-knuckled.
“It’s not barbed,” he told me through gritted teeth, “so it can come out the way it went in. Now stop being so gentle with me and pull it out or give me the cursed pliers and I’ll do it!”
Nettled, for all I knew that his anger stemmed merely from discomfort, I set my teeth, got a good grip, and yanked with all my might. It came out with a nasty sucking sound that almost masked my father’s long drawn-in hiss of pain. For a moment, he said nothing, as if he did not trust himself to speak, then, finally, he remarked, “There, that wasn’t so hard, was it?” His voice only shook a little.
“It’s all very well for you,” I grumbled as I went after the brandy bottle across the room, “you’ve been in battle and so forth. I didn’t want to make it worse.” I bore the brandy back to where the housekeeper was dabbing frantically with a piece of clean linen, trying to stem the fresh flow of blood.
Relenting, the Duke told me, “You did a very good job. I’m sorry if I was a bit harsh. It was fine to give it a good yank, you see, for it was nowhere near the vein, but you could not know.” He noticed what I was carrying and winced slightly, “Oh Lord, protect me,” he said with near seriousness.
I gave him a pleading look.
“Oh, all right then,” he said resignedly and wrapped his fingers back around the chair.
I tipped a good measure of the brandy into and over the wound, making him flinch and take deep strained breaths. His pain was so obvious that I found myself casting my mind back, seeking greater certainty that this torment did actually help. But it did seem to. Somehow, it was better than water for keeping wounds free of infection. I took the bottle back across the room to give him a chance to suppress his gasps.
“That must be very good for my soul,” my father sighed, as soon as he was able to un-grit his teeth.
“I’m sure your soul is fine,” I retorted, but my father did not reply.
I helped the housekeeper bandage his arm in an uncomfortable silence, but it was not uncomfortable enough to quiet my anxious thoughts. A wound like my father’s, if it became infected, as it all too easily could, would kill even the strongest of men. My stomach knotted at the thought and something must have shown on my face, for my father said, “If it will make you feel better, you can tip that cursed stuff in every time the bandage is changed, all right?”
I was touched that he would volunteer for such torture just to alleviate my worry, but I wasn’t going to spurn the offer. “Then I will,” I declared, and laughed at the glum look he shot to Anna.
“That’s better,” he said when he heard the laugh. “I’ve had worse than this before now, you know.”
~+~
CHAPTER 19
ACORNS AND WILLOW
“It’s very good for one’s soul to help an enemy, is it not?” I asked my father a trifle musingly, as we walked towards our carriage, which was waiting out in the square with several others.
He glanced down at me and half-smiled. He looked away again, as if to hide it, and I saw the sharp jerk of his head as something caught his eye. The next moment, he cannoned into me, throwing me violently forward. My reeling mind tried to identify the ‘thwack’ sound that still echoed around the square, even as I clutched him, trying to support him as he slumped to the ground. I flung myself down beside him, trying not to see that bolt, that deadly bolt protruding from his chest. His head had fallen sideways and I brushed aside a tangle of black hair, calling his name desperately. His eyes were open and glassy, and they stared lifelessly through me.
I awoke screaming soundlessly, my hands batting at the enveloping blankets as though they were what might have been. I emerged at last into the faintly moonlit darkness of my bedchamber, breathing raggedly and trying to quell the sobs that rose in my throat. Raven ran to my shoulder and rubbed her face against my cheek, crooning softly in comfort. I raised a hand to stroke her cool
aliveness, struggling to get my breathing under control. A dream. Just a dream.
That could so easily have been.
I swallowed hard, struggling to push it away. But the memory of that glassy stare was not going to leave me quickly and foolish as it was, the dream had left every nerve screaming that my father was in danger. After some minutes, it became too much, and I got out of bed and put on my chamber gown. I wasn’t sure I wanted to risk going back to sleep just yet, even if I could. And I just wanted to check.
I stopped and bit my lip. My father was fine. A dream was just a dream and the danger it spoke of was past. But still, his arm must be hurting him; he might not be asleep. Perhaps I could get him something.
It was a good enough excuse, anyway, and I hurried out into the corridor without any further ado. Raven wound herself in a fold of my gown and lay down, for the night was cold.
I reached my father’s room and knelt briefly to check for light under the door. Nothing. I would not knock and wake him, then. I turned the door handle as quietly as I could and peered in. It was dark, but enough light from the cloudless full moon outside seeped around the curtains to illuminate the room dimly. I could make out my father’s form in the bed, his breathing deep and steady. I could smell willow tea in the air. Willow tea was the best thing for pain, I knew. Releasing a breath I had not even known I was holding, I backed out of the room and closed the door silently.
Burrowing under my own covers, Raven cupped to my chest, I felt increasingly furious with myself. Reason and the evidence of my eyes had shown me that there was nothing whatsoever the matter, yet the feeling of dread continued wholly unabated.
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