The Highwayman's Folly

by Daria Vernon

  A small chorus of footsteps went up around the house, but Beth did not stop moving. She steadied herself on the hallway wall and pushed forward toward the stairs. At the bottom of them, she near collapsed into her father’s arms.

  “Where? Where is he?”

  “Darling.” Her father kissed her head and embraced her with what little support he could offer. “You should not be out of bed.”

  “Where—?”

  Her father’s expression halted her. His brows were drawn together in concern and confusion. The room spun a little, then everything stilled as she sobered from her fright. Clutching him, she realized that she must choose her next words more carefully.

  “I’m sorry, Papa. I don’t know what I’m saying.”

  “Here. Let’s get you back to bed, and we can talk.” She nodded and allowed him and Mrs. Brimble to help her back up the stairs.

  As soon as she laid eyes on the bed again, she knew she didn’t want to be in it.

  “No. Please. Anywhere but there.”

  “A wise choice,” said Mrs. Brimble. The housekeeper went to fluff a cushion for Beth on the little divan at the end of her well-trimmed room. “There wasn’t enough rose water in the world to keep that bed from smelling stale. I’ll send Lily up later to change all the linens.”

  “Thank you.”

  Mrs. Brimble took the words as her dismissal but paused in the doorway.

  “’Tis good to have you back, Miss.”

  Mrs. Brimble’s dour appearance was ever mismatched to how kind she was. Beth smiled as the older woman closed the door.

  Then she was alone with her father, whose eyes were glassy with the need to hear his daughter speak. His chin trembled as he pressed his lips into a taut smile, trying to control something there. Was it just her or had he aged years in the mere months she’d been off to care for Dahlia?

  Her arm felt heavy and uncooperative as she stretched out a hand to place on his knee.

  “I’m all right.”

  “Seeing you on your feet was a welcome sight indeed, but you’re not in any condition yet—”

  “I will be soon.”

  Papa pressed the back of his hand to her cheek. “I think you’re right. How do you feel?”

  “Just weak.”

  He looked guiltily away and cleared his throat. “I don’t want to distress you, but whenever you’re ready,” he looked back to her, all hope in his eyes, “do you think you’d be able to share who did this? They should be brought to justice, even if—”

  “Desmarais.”

  She expected him to pull away in shock. Instead, he nodded solemnly.

  “Yes. I suspected.”

  “Why even ask?”

  Her father’s eyes probed hers curiously.

  “He sent a note. Said you’d all been accosted by highwaymen and split apart. Claimed he was too ashamed of losing you to show his face here.” Her father scoffed out a bitter laugh. “Even swore on his mother’s grave that he’d investigate and return you to me. I knew it was all rubbish.”

  Beth let out the breath she’d been holding, as she was spared from lying. Yes. All rubbish. That was what it would have to be. She could never tell anyone.

  Her father placed a hand on hers. “We’ll find him, Beth. He’ll see justice. Now then, do you need anything?”

  Yes. Many things.

  But she shook her head and squeezed his hand. His head dropped into a hand propped at his knee, his silver hair flopping forward. He looked a mess, like he’d been living in his banyan and hadn’t donned a proper waistcoat for days. Days.

  “Papa?”

  “Yes, darling?”

  “How long have I been home?”

  The moment he squeezed her hand back, she knew that she would not like the answer. “Five days.”

  There it was. Rhys was five yawning days away from her. He could be anywhere on the isle. Worse, he might even be sailing away from it.

  “Beth?” She hardly heard him. “Perhaps you should lie down again.” In a daze, she let her father gently lower her back onto the cushion.

  Five days. A century. He hadn’t even said goodbye.

  Beth needed to know what others knew. “How did I get back to Greenthorne?”

  “A very kind stranger, a Mr. Osbourne Booker, brought you home. We’re all very grateful to him. Do you remember him?”

  Booker?

  Her father continued. “Tall chap, dark hair, black horse.”

  She looked into her father’s eyes and nodded gently.

  “A little.”

  “Is he the one who patched you up?”

  Beth searched her memories, trying to catch up to what her father spoke of when she realized he was pointing to her shoulder. She raised a hand to the wound, which peeked out from the scooped neck of her shift. It felt flatter. The stitches were still there. It didn’t cry out at her touch.

  “Perhaps,” she said.

  The warmth of Rhys rushed back to her—as he leaned on her, breathed on her, concentrated on the stitches. As he rolled away from her with the relief that his gruesome little task was over. As he rolled away not knowing that some wicked instinct deep within her wished him to stay near.

  “You remember nothing else?”

  She shook her head against the lush pillow.

  “I’m sorry. It’s all very strange and hazy. It feels like a dream, and I can’t quite remember.”

  That last part, at least, was fast feeling very true. It did feel like a dream. She couldn’t reach out and touch any of it. She couldn’t confirm it. The days of fever had robbed her of something. Her mind felt centered on Rhys, yet his features, his voice, all felt like they were disappearing at the borders of her consciousness, like a great swell of fog was already swallowing him up.

  Beth could tell that many questions yet lingered in her father. He would open his mouth to speak and then his lips would settle back together into a weak smile. A pitying smile. He didn’t want to bother her. She must have looked as tired as she felt.

  “I’ll leave you, dear. Lily will bring up some broth when she comes to take the sheets.” Her father pulled a knit blanket over her feet and departed.

  Beth curled herself into a ball. Shutting her eyes, her mind chased the memory of Rhys. She would catch up to him, hold his face before her and remember. But then his features would fade even as she looked at him. She wished her mind were lined with thorns to ensnare him. To hold him put.

  Why had he not waked me? Said goodbye?

  For days, she’d felt underwater. Little memories of the surface were only just hitting her now. A teacup pressed to her lips. Lily changing her shift. Tiptoeing shoes that hit her aching head like thunder while she slept. Perhaps, somewhere before all that, Rhys had said goodbye. But she would never know. What else wouldn’t she know?

  In the days that followed, Beth found her physical strength quickly. She got back into her dresses, came down for breakfasts with her father, and returned to her soul-saving routine of morning rides on Cutter.

  Then the guests began to arrive.

  She was all too familiar with this custom from her first ruination. There would be distant cousins whose names she did not know. There would be mere acquaintances who claimed the rights of age-old friends. They would all come to gawp at the kidnapped woman, just as they had once come to see the impure waif who had stroked her friend in a shed. With their curiosity thoroughly sated, they might then launch into lectures and make a great show of their departure. Through their abandonment of the Clarkes, they could signal their righteous moral purity to all.

  She was braced for it, and yet it passed differently this time. Her father delivered swift dismissal to the majority who showed up on their stoop. Slamming the door on the gossip-hungry hopes of these cretins, he would throw up his arms and complain of their pitying fa
cades. Beth was heartened to realize he had not forgotten her pain from before—that he was even changed by it.

  And then Lady Weldon arrived. Beth’s aunt on her mother’s side, and a countess, Lucinda Weldon could not simply be turned away. Perhaps more well-meaning than the rest, any indignation would be in earnest, not merely for show. She would not play the Clarkes for gossip, but still, she’d abandoned Beth all those years ago, just like the rest.

  She brought her daughter with her, Beth’s cousin Lady Allison who, at nineteen years, was looking forward to her second season—that exciting part of life that had been wholly skipped over for Beth when she’d stained herself at seventeen.

  One day at tea, apparently bored by her mother’s prattling about their plans for London, Allison leaned in confidentially. “Tell me, Beth. When you were taken, did anything—hmm, how shall I put it? Were you harmed in any . . . you know . . . way that a lady might be? No one will tell me.”

  Beth admired the impropriety of it. It was on every woman’s mind, but Allison had been the only one to come out with it.

  “No, Allison, I was not.”

  “What a relief to hear it.” Allison’s green eyes glittered with earnest concern as she sighed. “They said you were returned by a man, and I just didn’t know what that might mean for you. Everyone acts as though someone must have taken you abed.”

  Beth felt a pleasant twitch at the corner of her lip for the first time in days—if the girl only knew.

  Beth hadn’t seen Allison Weldon since she was a toddling imp balancing with the aide of a basket. Her hair, now a shiny straw blonde, had been like white cobwebs at that age. While Beth could do without endless talk of the season, she suddenly wondered if Allison might be an interesting companion when not sharing the same space as her mother.

  Early the next morning, Allison accosted Beth on the staircase, nearly sending her tumbling down the last few steps.

  “I’m so sorry!” blurted the girl.

  “No harm.” Beth straightened the jacket of her redingote and continued down the steps. “I’m just not used to seeing any but the scullery maid about at this hour.”

  Allison looked her up and down. “Off to ride so early?”

  “Every day.”

  “So soon after your illness, though, and so cold out.”

  Beth’s father didn’t like it either.

  “I enjoy it just fine.” Indeed, it was the only thing keeping her mind intact. It rescued her daily from the melancholy that hovered overhead, always ready to drop on her like a weighted net.

  “Of course.” The girl lowered her head. “It’s probably very nice to be outside, and you certainly seem the most self-assured woman of any I have ever known.”

  Beth paused in her step, warily assessing whether it was meant as an insult. Most women would sling it as such. Self-assured was not what women should be. It was Allison’s downturned head that told Beth she needn’t worry.

  “Thank you, Allison. What has you up so early then?”

  “Anxiety.”

  Beth cocked her body against the wall and began to lazily play with her whip. “Oh goodness, what for?”

  “I was very sorry to have asked you such an inappropriate question yesterday afternoon. It plagued me all night.”

  Beth waved a hand between them. “Oh please, no. Don’t be anxious on my behalf. I thought it was brave of you to ask and . . . well . . . we’re friends, aren’t we?” Beth shrugged as if it were that obvious. But of course, it wasn’t, even to herself. Banishment was no time to try making friends, but something about Allison put Beth at ease.

  Allison’s eyebrows crept all the way up her forehead, drawing up the corners of her smile in unison. “Yes. I believe we are.”

  “Would you like to ride with me?”

  Allison’s cautious eyes looked ready to form excuses, but with a glance to the door, the expression was exchanged for one of eagerness. “I believe I would.”

  On their ride, Allison didn’t complain once about the cold, even though the goose pimples between her gloves and her cuffs gave her away. Instead of calling herself cold, she said things like, “Isn’t it bracing?” and smiled into the sunrise. Instead of complaints about her numb, red nose she pointed out with a laugh that they were both afflicted. For their time together, outside, Beth forgot about her sadness.

  They returned to the house before breakfast. They clung to one another for balance as they swayed in the foyer, swapping their muddied shoes for clean ones.

  “It is too bad that you don’t know more about that Mr. Booker.”

  The name still caught Beth off guard when in reference to the man she had only ever known as Rhys.

  “Your father seemed so very fond of him.”

  At this, Beth fell off her heel, pinching her ankle sharply and taking her companion briefly off balance. Allison helped her steady herself.

  “Fond of him? Of who? Are we still talking about Mr. Booker?”

  Allison nodded, unsure.

  “Just how long was Mr. Booker here for?”

  “I’m sorry, I don’t know. I don’t think it was long. Your father just said something of being grateful and called the man upstanding.”

  Beth was still taking this in when Mrs. Brimble entered, fracturing her line of inquiry.

  “Good morning, ladies. Breakfast is just going on the table. May I take your cloak, Lady Allison?” Allison untied it and handed it to the housekeeper.

  Beth put an arm around her cousin. “I hope you’ll come on more rides with me, Allison.”

  Allison responded, but Beth failed to hear her words. Something had caught her eye over the girl’s shoulder. Mrs. Brimble held open a coat cupboard that Beth had scarcely ever used and saw a long, dark, woolen thing hanging there. Her heart slammed against her ribs. Rhys’ cape. The cupboard was shut almost as soon as she recognized it. Cheerful Allison had already grabbed Beth by the wrist and now led her, dazed, toward the dining room.

  A floorboard creaked as Beth placed a foot beyond her bedchamber door. The hallway was quiet. Her father’s room was at the end of the corridor, and the Weldons had been put up in a room down the opposite hall. She hoped she was far enough from everyone for the sound to go unnoticed.

  A chill in the air bit straight through her chemise, but she’d not been able to find her robe in the dark. No matter, what she sought would keep her warm.

  She carefully descended the staircase that had been expertly navigated on so many nights of her youth when she’d slipped out for rendezvous with Dyckson. A pleasant shiver ran up her spine—the small thrill of reliving rebellion.

  There it was, the inconspicuous cupboard near the fireplace, bathed in moonlight from the front windows. She hurried across to it.

  The unhooked latch thudded against the wood and she cringed. She eased the door open.

  It was certainly his. It was what had made him so large and menacing that first night, and it was what had kept her warm and dry when they’d lain together in the woods. Overlong for the cupboard, its abundant fabric rested in folds below.

  She dragged it up to her face, inhaling.

  There he was. The pine, the earth, the wool. And at last, she could see his face again. She could feel his rough cheek on hers. The scent was a tonic, clearing her mind of all her fretting about remembering. It made reminiscence as easy as taking a breath.

  She lugged it the rest of the way out, and her arms sagged with its formidable heft. Wrapping herself up in it, she returned to her room.

  Cocooning herself in it in her bed, she was suffused with comfort and . . . trust. But it was easy to feel such things from a distance, was it not? Her memory could now mold him into whatever she wished him to be. Yet a new memory was rising against her better judgment. She sifted through the confusing visions of her final, fitful night at the folly. Reached out past all the nightmares—


  Rhys had entered her room. He had apologized. He had sworn to get her safely home.

  Beth would have to lay such thoughts to rest. She would wrap them up with the cape into a tidy bundle and put it all into a box. If she did not, she might never get on with her own life.

  But for now.

  His warmth. His scent.

  One last time.

  Three years later . . .

  PART II

  Chapter 15

  April, 1786

  “Goodness! You love Lenten pie? What do you know but that so do I? It’s my very favorite. There—just another thing we have in common.”

  Everyone in this shire loves Lenten pie. Beth smiled politely at Captain Hamilton Eadwald before pointing her nose away from him to obscure an eye-roll that could not be further postponed.

  Hamm went on, “Add that to horseback rides, and sips of gin, and uh . . .”

  “Don’t forget warm weather and comfortable homes, Hamm.”

  “Yes! See, aren’t we a pair?” He pulled up alongside her. “And to top it off, you’re the only one on God’s green earth permitted to call me Hamm.”

  He flashed her a handsome, if barmy, smile. Poor chap. He was very good-looking, but he should go find some other girl. Somewhere there’s a woman out there for him, or very likely, many. Someone who is just as blandly fine-looking, who enjoys savory pies and nice weather as much as everybody else in the bloody country. Someone who likes those things and little else.

  This was Hamilton’s second round of courting her, and it wasn’t making much more sense than the first. He’d attempted it long ago, when she’d been just barely twenty. She’d been flattered at first, particularly as he’d come sniffing around in spite of the rumors that surrounded her.

  But she couldn’t tolerate him well. He always referred to her in terms of awe—magnificent, curious, provocative, stimulating, mysterious—

  “I find you so exotic.” Yes. Just like that.