“Your family are not searching for you, perhaps?” Lucia’s presence clearly confused him, and he was not happy to remain bewildered.
“I imagine not.” Lucia tried to remain calm and not actually think of her father and sister.
“Why would that be?”
“It is of no matter to you.”
“If you are not what you seem, Miss Foxe, it is of very great matter to me,” he replied, in nothing short of a growl.
“I am responsible for Miss Foxe’s presence. If it is a problem to you, you address yourself to me.” Len had turned and caught his last words and was now looking him square in the face. Lucia turned to him too.
“It is getting late,” he said. “We will talk further in the morning.” Obviously, he was not as comfortable challenging Len as he was Lucia. Lucia smiled slightly to herself, and he glared at her as he noticed.
“You ladies will, of course, sleep in the house,” he said. Lucia was mildly surprised by this concession. Len, however, seemed irritated by it.
“I will not sleep in the house,” she said firmly. She got to her feet and faced him squarely. “I will remain here, with my men.”
“I do not mean it as an offence to you,” he said, “merely a consideration.”
“I do not need your considerations.”
“I sleep in the house when my men make their beds here by the fire,” he said. “I am their leader, and it befits my position that I do. It is not that I require the greater comfort, it is only that they remember I am their leader.”
“I am one with my men,” she said stubbornly. Despite her words, Lucia recalled Len’s private room at their own woodland lair and knew she did not wholly speak the truth.
“And yet you are separate from them because you lead them,” Bill said. For the first time Lucia understood there was more to Bill Wilcock than the unpleasant, arrogant criminal she had taken him for.
Len merely glared at him.
Bill went on when neither woman spoke. “I like to preserve such a structure. Like you, I need the men to be loyal. They are loyal more easily to a man—forgive me—to a leader who knows how to lead. Yes, be one with them, but do not let the distance between you ebb away. Sleep in the house.”
“I will not do anything because you tell me to,” Len said.
“No, I imagine not. But think on it. Your men will be here with mine, they will be able to talk, to grow to trust each other. No men, however good, are free to do so when their leader is present. I will not spend the night with them either. Your men are loyal to you, you have nothing to fear from not being with them all night. And besides, I fancy Miss Foxe would like to sleep in the house. I would feel safer if you kept a guard on your prisoner.” He looked at Lucia, and she saw he was still dubious of her status.
To Lucia’s surprise, Len, after a moment’s pause in which she apparently struggled with her pride, let out a deep breath and replied, “I will sleep in the house.”
Chapter Twelve
When Lucia entered the ruined cottage, she almost wondered if it would have been better to sleep outside in the warm orange halo of the fire. Len was not with her, having stayed behind to exchange hurried and urgent words with Julian, just outside the circle of firelight.
The ceiling of the first room was low and sloping. In this room were a large fireplace, the grate empty, and a square wooden table with a bench at one side. It was dark, even the faint light of the fire obscured by the ivy which grew over the window and into the room, as though the cottage had stood here so long the forest was claiming it for its own. Someone had left a lighted lantern on the end of the table, but its light was weak, suffocated by the gloom.
The floor was wooden, but the boards were lifting and warped, and moss grew in the corners. The oppressive smell of damp obscured even the scent of the woodland outside. To Lucia’s right was a dark doorway which led to the only other room in the building. She picked up the lantern from the table and went towards it.
“Not exactly what you’re used to, yet again,” came Len’s voice from the entrance. Len walked a few steps into the cottage. Even as she’d said her last words, Len wished she had not. It would not do to keep reminding Lucia of the differences between this world and her own. She was also aware that she was in danger of treating Lucia with the same condescension she resented so much from men like Julian.
“No,” Lucia agreed and allowed the subject to drop. Len sensed that Lucia was determined to prove she could bear hardship with reasonable stamina. Len could not help but admire this evidence of Lucia’s strength.
“I think it was drier outside,” she said, to express her own distaste. The lantern light did not allow her to make out Lucia’s reaction clearly.
Lucia walked into the next room, holding the lantern before her, and Len followed. This chamber was smaller but felt marginally drier. The smell of burnt wood suggested a fire had been lit in this room within the last few days, and sure enough, when Lucia held the lantern towards the grate, the remnant pieces of blackened wood and ash confirmed it. Lucia swung the lantern around to look at the rest of the room. As she did so, the yellow glow illuminated her face briefly, her eyes shining and her hair golden. Len drew a deep breath as her whole body, even her soul, reacted to that glimpse of Lucia’s beauty in the midst of the dark and the damp. She was like a pure, perfect light in the squalid place, and Len wanted her, she could not deny it. With effort, she made herself ignore the burning longing which could never find its release and pay attention to the rest of the room.
To one side, beneath a glassless window—which was also covered by the relentless ivy—was an old bedstead, complete with sagging mattress and blanket. Len supposed this was where Bill Wilcock had made a habit of sleeping. There was a table, smaller than the one in the other room, and two chairs which looked as though they had once had wicker backs but were now merely stools with spindles rising from their back corners. The odour in here was musty rather than damp, with that hint of acrid smoke.
Len moved closer to Lucia. “It’s not exactly what I’m used to either,” she said. She wanted to create a sense of unity with Lucia. There were lines she could not risk crossing, but there was no reason not to foster a greater companionship with the woman.
“It has to be better than another night on a hilltop.”
“Yes. Probably.”
“Do you trust the frame-breakers?” Lucia’s question was either coincidently well-timed or perceptive. Len felt vulnerable alone in the cottage with Lucia while the men talked outside. Before she’d left them alone for the night, she’d made sure to tell Julian just what could and could not be revealed to them. She trusted him, but she also knew how secrets could slip from careless tongues by the light of a midnight fire.
“No.” She answered Lucia’s question honestly. “But I do trust Julian and William. And I do not need to separate myself from them to prove myself their leader.” True enough. She would not have Lucia think she was sleeping in the cottage because Bill had better leadership skills than she did. Somehow, she found herself explaining her reasons. Even as she did so, she found it remarkable. Len rarely explained herself, not even always to Julian. And yet she wanted to tell Lucia her reasoning. She wanted Lucia to know her. She knew all too well why that was, but she went on anyway. “However, his men are used to such things, and I do not want to disturb them from their patterns. There are, after all, more of them than us, and we are in their territory. I think, perhaps, Bill is also reluctant to have two women to distract his men in the night.”
Len suspected the latter reason was the one uppermost in Bill’s mind, and it was only some rudimentary politeness which prevented him stating it. Still, it was nothing unusual. Even in Lucia’s world, ladies were considered a distraction to men.
Lucia asked, “Do you not wonder what happened with the other men?”
“No.” Len could not help but wonder. But she knew such thoughts were unwise and had no intentions of confessing to them. It was a weakness she s
hould not allow. “It does me no good to wonder. I do not care to know if Peter or Isaac betrayed us, or why. I care less to imagine any of them in gaol or on the gallows.”
“Could you not save them from their fate?” Lucia sounded cautious. Part of her was apparently still a little afraid of Len. Well, that was probably healthy, though part of Len’s heart was saddened by it. She did not want the barrier of fear between them. If Lucia was afraid, she was seeing the highway robber, the authoritative leader. Len was those things. But there was so much more to her she wanted Lucia to understand. Her life might bring freedom, but in that moment she felt imprisoned by it.
“This is no novel, Lucia,” she said with a sigh. “There is no action I can take will save them. Even if there was, do you think I would risk my own life or that of Julian or William to do so? All of the men know the risks, as I do. We thieves are essentially selfish creatures.”
Her words sounded brutal. To Lucia no doubt they sounded harsher still, and she said nothing in response. “Our life is not perhaps as ideal as you thought it to be,” Len said, careful to keep any mockery from her tone.
“I did not think it ideal,” Lucia said, and she sounded thoughtful still.
“In truth, Lucia, there is no ideal life,” Len said, trying to understand what Lucia was pondering. She fell back on the answers she had found in answer to her own questions. “There are only choices between the kinds of life we wish to lead.”
“And you chose this,” Lucia concluded for her.
“I chose to be able to choose,” she returned.
*
At Len’s insistence, Lucia slept on the creaking bed that night. There was really no alternative; she could hardly suggest Lucia sleep on the floor and did not dare suggest they share the small bed. It seemed entirely dangerously inappropriate to Len, though she doubted Lucia would see anything improper in two women sharing a bed. Len would not use that naïvety only to find, later, Lucia felt her trust had been betrayed. It was not that she did not trust herself. But if Lucia were ever to learn the nature of her desires, and Len suspected she might, she could not bear the thought of her feeling even slightly taken advantage of.
Lucia gave Len the old woollen blanket from the bed and spread her shawl out over her upper body to provide her some warmth. She looked so small and fragile in the lantern light that Len wanted to take the blanket and wrap her slender form in it. However, Lucia was no child, and she clearly wanted to be treated as an equal. She had given Len the blanket, and Len would accept the kindness. Len laid the blanket on the floor, not far from the side of the bed, and slept beneath her cloak. Listening to Lucia’s breathing, she was asleep quickly.
When she awoke in the morning, the thin forest light was filtering through the ivy in the window frame and casting a shadowy green illumination into the room. Lucia was still asleep, and Len wondered how restful her night had been. She picked up the threadbare blanket and laid it over Lucia’s legs. Even in the weak, green light, Lucia was beautiful in her repose. Her pale hair awry and her cheeks flushed, her lips slightly parted, breathing softly, she slept on her side with the fingers of one small hand curled close to her face. She looked peaceful, and Len would not wake her and drag her into the world of outlaws and violence she was so drawn to. Let the girl rest in her easy bliss. It was a luxury she herself had not enjoyed for many a year.
Len watched Lucia sleep for a little longer. Such pale and fragile beauty in the murky, damp, derelict cottage. Lucia was out of place here yet somehow not sullied by her surroundings. Len hoped desperately her reputation would not be sullied by the company she had chosen to keep. She did not want to destroy Lucia’s beautiful innocence. Yet she feared the destruction was already inevitable. Was it her fault? Or was Lucia searching for a place in the world just as she had been? How could she do anything but allow that?
Sighing, with a heart heavy with responsibility and a longing she fought not to acknowledge to herself, Len turned her back on Lucia and left the cottage, hoping to find Julian and a report on how the night had passed in the company of the frame-breakers.
*
Lucia emerged from the cottage, blinking in the daylight, to the smell of cooking. Len and Julian were near the fire, along with Tom Smith and Bill Wilcock. She heard a rustling of leaves to her left and saw Tom’s brother and Daniel walking into the woods. The other men were not to be seen, but she guessed they would be drawn back to the fire and food before long.
As Lucia approached, it was Bill Wilcock who looked up and saw her first. “Your prisoner has little trouble sleeping then?” he said to Len, who looked in Lucia’s direction.
“No,” Len said. “Good morning, Miss Foxe.”
Slightly taken aback by Len’s formality, Lucia tried to mirror her reserve. “Good morning,” she said politely.
“Give her something to eat,” Len ordered Julian, who glanced at her, curious too it seemed about this pretence she was attempting to maintain. Lucia wondered what his feelings were about the frame-breakers after his night spent with them. Did he trust them more than Len did? Had he confided such sentiments to Len yet?
Julian handed Lucia a piece of bread he had been toasting in the fire. She took it gratefully and turned her eyes back to Len. It was difficult to know how she was supposed to behave towards her. Lucia saw Bill Wilcock looking at her with some amusement in his expression. “Look,” he said, “I know Miss Foxe here isn’t a prisoner in the usual sense of the word. I really haven’t a clue in what sense of the word she is, but seems to me we can trust you.”
Len was looking at him with a startled expression on her face, as if she could not believe he had intelligence enough to have worked out anything of their peculiar situation.
“She is our prisoner,” she insisted, and Lucia tried not to feel offended.
Bill looked to Julian. Lucia knew Len would be angered by his seeking confirmation from Julian rather than believing her.
“It is true enough,” Julian said with a shrug. “Why else would we drag someone like her across the country with us?”
Bill looked at Lucia suspiciously and back at Len. “Do you not think it would be more practical to release her?”
“That is just the point,” Len said. “Who is to say, if we release her, who she will tell of our secret places, our appearances, our plans for Friday night?”
Len did not meet her eye, and Lucia wondered if there was any truth in her words. Len said Lucia had her trust, but was she allowing her to stay with them as a precaution? It seemed possible. It was also a perfectly good reason to give to Bill Wilcock, by whom she was still intimidated, and Lucia did not choose that moment to launch a defence of her honour.
“I was under the impression there was a certain amount of trust between you,” Bill said. “She hardly seems as terrified as I would expect of a prisoner.”
“There is as much trust as necessary,” Julian replied for Len. “Miss Foxe knows we will not harm her.”
“But how will you ever be able to release her if you fear she will reveal your identities? That will not change after Friday.” Bill was clearly enjoying this demonstration of his intellectual abilities.
“I will tell nothing of what I have seen,” Lucia put in, compelled to speak for herself. Len glared at her, and she looked away quickly, part chastened and part indignant.
“Then you should be released now,” Bill said.
“Miss Foxe remains with us until I decide otherwise,” Len reasserted herself. “That is all there is to say on the matter.” She sat down on the log by the fire and folded her arms stubbornly.
“Not while your decisions affect my men as well,” Bill said, a hint of anger in his words.
“Look,” Lucia said firmly, ignoring the warning glance from Len. “I am here because I choose to be. I was their prisoner, it is true. My family was robbed by them upon the turnpike. Shortly afterwards, this man abducted me in the night from my bed.” She glanced quickly at Julian, who was watching her with what seemed like
enjoyment coloured by no small surprise. “This woman insisted I stay with them until it could be proved it was not I who betrayed them. Of this they are now convinced, I hope. I have given my word I will reveal nothing of them to anyone once I return home. They offered to release me. Only I am reluctant to return to my ordinary life so soon.” Lucia levelled her gaze at Bill Wilcock’s cloudy blue eyes. She did not dare look at Len. Her heart was racing and she felt a little breathless. She held her head high and straightened her back.
“A small taste of our freedoms and you want more, Miss Foxe?” Bill said.
“I do not choose to enter into a discussion of my reasons with you, sir.” Lucia filled her voice with as much pride and determination as she could muster.
“Or maybe you have fallen under the spell of the charms of your abductor?” Bill said with a glance at Julian, who raised his eyebrows and waited for her reaction with interest.
The colour rose in Lucia’s cheeks at the improper suggestion. “Hardly likely,” she said coldly. Julian laughed. In that moment Lucia warmed to him for his good humour.
“Perhaps you have ambitions yourself to lead a band of robbers. After all, you see now a woman can do such a thing, surprising to us all, I’m sure. Or maybe at home you are betrothed to a man you wish to escape?” Bill was merciless, and Lucia found that instead of her usual inclination to back away from any confrontation, she was compelled to answer for herself once more.
“I would not expect my reasoning to be clear to you, sir, and I ask you to desist from your game.” She paused. “Because your breakfast is burning.” Bill turned his attention to his food with a muttered oath. Lucia gasped for breath, amazed at her own audacity.
There was silence. Bill, while clearly not defeated, chose not to continue with the conversation. Lucia felt Len’s eyes on her, but still she shied away from looking in her direction. Julian handed Lucia a metal mug of strong tea, and she sipped the steaming liquid gratefully. He smiled at Lucia as she did so, and she felt the thrill of his acceptance. It mattered greatly to her, because he was Len’s closest confidant. Lucia was oddly proud of herself as she warmed her hands on the tea and steadfastly avoided looking at Len.
The Locket and the Flintlock Page 16
