The Prodigal Hero

by Nancy Butler

  After securing the ketch to an old piling, they hiked up from the river through a dense scrub of leafless bushes, and then scurried across the main road that led into the village. Beyond it lay open fields, fenced-in pastures, and the occasional small wood. If they kept parallel to the road, they would eventually come to her father’s estate.

  He had built his house on a hill overlooking the village; from its front windows, one could survey the whole of the riverfront, including his shipyard. To guarantee that view, he had chosen a secluded location. Their nearest neighbor was a quarter mile down the road, and the village was separated from the house by a terraced stretch of heavy woodland that fell away below the front gate.

  As they tramped north, MacHeath handed her over stiles and guided her around tangled windfalls, but other than those brief courtesies, he barely paid her any notice. It was caution, she realized. He was totally focused on crossing this last stretch of ground that lay between them and the safety of her father’s home.

  They came to the edge of a beech wood, and she saw the house rising up in the distance. The sight of the smoking chimneys and the slate roof made her heart quicken. If the place held meaning to her before, it had now taken on the aspect of an El Dorado.

  “Wait here,” she said to him, “in the cover of the woods. Give me half an hour with Papa and then come around to the front gate.”

  Before he could answer, she broke from the trees and began to run toward the high iron fence that surrounded the estate, MacHeath called her name, but she was too overset to heed him. She knew this would likely be the last time they were alone together, and she didn’t have the fortitude to withstand any good-byes. She covered the open space swiftly, running from more than the threat of hired rogues.

  There was a gate at the rear of the property, behind the stable block, and she breathed a sigh of relief when she reached it. When she heard a guttural noise off to her right, her head jerked up. A burly man was racing toward her along the fence. She rattled at the gate frantically and cursed when she realized it was locked. With a strangled gasp, she spun back toward the woods where MacHeath was waiting, but it was too late. Finch chased her only a short distance before he caught her around the middle, swinging her off her feet and muffling her cries with one enormous hand.

  He set her down, one hand twisted in her hair, and placed his pistol hard against her throat. “You make a noise,” he muttered, “and I blow you to kingdom come.”

  He marched her along the fence, forcing her in the opposite direction from the woods. Fool, fool, blasted fool, she chanted to herself in time with her footsteps. She prayed MacHeath was watching from the woods, that he’d not gone off somewhere to wait out his half hour. It was an idle hope that one of her father’s servants would see her being trundled along like a fugitive and raise an alarm—the inside of the iron fence was lined by bushes, and furthermore, she knew most of the servants would be in the house preparing for the holiday.

  Finch gave a short, sharp whistle once they reached a copse of alders, and two minutes later Connor appeared. His eyes widened in surprise when he saw Alexa. “This is a right piece of luck.”

  “Looks like MacHeath abandoned her in the end,” Finch remarked.

  Alexa began to protest and received a cuff on the side of the head for her troubles. “You’ll keep quiet if you don’t want me to slice your pretty neck.”

  He drew a cord from his pocket and tied her hands behind her. She winced as he knotted a filthy handkerchief over her mouth.

  “Now, walk along nice and ladylike.”

  They dragged her between them to another group of trees, where two horses were tied. Connor mounted and waited while Finch heaved Alexa up onto his own saddle. He climbed up behind her and set one beefy arm around her middle.

  “A man once told me that Society ladies weren’t worth the trouble,” he said quietly against her ear as he slid his hand along the front of her coat. “I’m thinkin’ he lied.”

  Alexa flung her head back sharply and butted him in the chin.

  “Jee-zus!” he cried. “Alf, did you see that? She’ll be lucky if I let her live long enough to have a taste of my—”

  “Leave her be!” he exclaimed. “She isn’t for the likes of you. You sully her, and our money goes out the window.”

  “Ain’t gonna sully her,” Finch said gruffly. “Just want to sample her a bit.”

  Connor sighed.

  * * *

  They trotted along above the village, keeping off the road, until they came to a small, tumbledown barn. Alexa knew the owners had moved away years ago and that the property had never been let. It was growing darker, the long winter twilight had begun, and she had despaired of MacHeath reaching her before Bully Finch did something unspeakable to her. Even if he’d seen her being marched off, he’d have no way of keeping up with two men on horseback.

  Finch prodded her into the barn, while Connor went forward to light a single lantern. They had taken her to their hidey-hole, she noted numbly—there were bedrolls shoved into a corner, and a packing-crate table, with soiled dishes strewn upon it, was pushed against a wall.

  Finch forced her down onto a rusted trunk and seated himself beside her.

  “We got to send a note now,” Connor insisted.

  “Plenty of time for that,” Finch countered. “Why don’t you just take yourself off for a bit while I get acquainted with the ladv.”

  Finch turned to his companion, his eyes puckered under his heavy brow. “Alf, we bin mates for a good long time. I would hate to have to put a pistol ball through your innards.”

  “He ain’t gonna pay us if she is soiled. He warned you ... Damn it, Bully. When we get paid off, you can have any woman you want.”

  “I want this one. Got my appetite up chasin’ after her. Anyway, I’ll tell him that bastard MacHeath was the one who tupped her.”

  Alexa growled through her gag, and her eyes blazed.

  “She’s pretty when she’s riled, ain’t she?” He ran his hand down along her throat. “Smells good, too.” He leaned his bulbous head into her hair. When he looked up, there was annoyance in his eyes. “You still here, Alf? Jehosephat, I never took you for a man who liked to watch.”

  Alf knew when he was beaten. There was no way he was going to challenge Bully and win. He slid the barn door open and sidled through it, while the visions of his windfall from Quincy disappeared. He couldn’t imagine any man wanting Alexa Prescott, heiress or not, once Finch was finished with her.

  As he wandered the perimeter of the clearing, he fumbled absently in his pocket for a peppermint. It popped out of his hand, and with a soft curse, he bent down to grope for it in the dry grass. He managed to locate it a few feet from his boots and was about to straighten up, when he realized he was looking at another pair of boots.

  The length of wood hit him solidly on the side of the head, and he toppled forward like a clubbed ox.

  “Sorry, Alf,” MacHeath whispered as he stepped over his limp form.

  He went immediately to the door of the barn and slid it open a few inches. Alexa was suffering Finch’s attentions with icy disdain. Finch did not seem to be noticing, all his attention was fixed on the buttons of her coat.

  MacHeath softly whistled a tune into the opening ... “Christmas is coming, the goose is getting fat.”

  Alexa’s gaze darted to the doorway, her eyes wide with shock.

  “Alf!” Finch called out in a warning voice. “You get yourself away from there.”

  “But, Bully,” MacHeath responded in Alf’s whining tenor. “I heard somethin’ in the bushes. You best come out here.”

  “It’s like you to start at a bleedin’ rabbit. Now, get away or you’ll be the worse for it.”

  MacHeath swore silently. His ruse to get Finch out of the barn hadn’t worked. It had, however, put some color back into Alexa’s pale cheeks. He thought for a moment, and then hastily gathered up some oak leaves in the folds of his cape. On the side of the barn he found a place wh
ere several boards had fallen off, and he quickly piled the leaves under the opening. He scratched at his tinderbox until the leaves caught fire, and waited impatiently until they began sending up a thick haze of acrid smoke.

  “Hang on, Alexa,” he murmured as he used one of the fallen boards to fan the billows of smoke directly into the barn. He waited for a count of sixty, and then ran around to the entrance.

  When Finch emerged, staggering and coughing, he had Alexa’s wrist in one hand, in the other he held a raised pistol. MacHeath struck down hard with his false hand, knocking the gun away into the high grass as he tugged Alexa away.

  Finch, still blinded by the smoke, bellowed, “Alf!” as he stumbled forward. His eyes narrowed when he recognized MacHeath through the hazy light that spilled out through the barn’s door. “You’re a dead man, Mackie!” he cried, coming forward again, his ham-like fists lashing the air.

  MacHeath moved nimbly away from those fists. “And you, Bully ... are about to be taught a lesson.”

  He ducked under the larger man’s roundhouse swing and landed a punishing uppercut to the chin with his left hand before he again moved out of range. Finch roared in disbelief and launched himself forward like a missile. His head barreled into MacHeath’s chest, and he lifted him right off his feet.

  MacHeath clapped both hands smartly over Finch’s ears and heard the man shriek—the wooden hand was turning out to be a surprisingly effective weapon. Finch dropped him and spun around the clearing with his hands fisted against his head. He finally stopped some ten feet from MacHeath, his eyes glowing red with rage in the dusky light.

  “Dead!” he screamed. “You’re dead now, ye bleedin’ cripple.”

  He heaved himself across the space that separated them, with surprising agility for such a large man, but MacHeath sidestepped his onslaught and got in another satisfying blow. And then another.

  Finch retreated with a loud hiss as he reached down into his boot. MacHeath saw the gleam of a knife in the failing light. He quickly pulled off his cape and wrapped it around his right arm. It occurred to him that he was still carrying a loaded pistol, but he had a score to settle with Bully Finch and merely blowing a hole in his midsection would have been distinctly unsatisfying. He wanted to see fear in the other man’s eyes.

  “Come on,” Finch urged him, curling his forefinger tauntingly.

  MacHeath smiled grimly, “It’s hardly a fair match.”

  “Why, because I got my steel and you got none?”

  “No,” said MacHeath as he drew his own knife from a leather sheath at the back of his waistcoat. “Because there’s not a landsman born who can beat a sailor in a knife fight.”

  “Sailor,” the other man cawed. “That’s a laugh.”

  But MacHeath was already advancing on him, holding his knife loosely, with the edge up. Finch feinted and MacHeath shifted back, and then retaliated swiftly with his own weapon. Finch grunted as the knife sliced into his forearm.

  “First blood,” MacHeath muttered. “Or second, rather, if you count my little gift on the bridge.”

  Finch cursed as he leaped forward, swinging his knife in a wide arc. It slashed through MacHeath’s bundled cape. Before he could move back, MacHeath lashed out with one leg, catching him behind the knees. He tumbled down onto his back with a thud that shook several shingles loose from the barn’s roof. MacHeath was on him in an instant, straddling his chest and leaning the edge of his blade against his throat. Finch’s eyes widened as he felt the pressure on his windpipe.

  “I should slice you from gullet to gizzard for laying your filthy hands on my lady,” MacHeath growled softly.

  Finch was making a gasping, whimpering noise deep in his throat.

  “Still, I don’t want your death on my conscience. But I will leave you with this small memento.”

  MacHeath tossed down his knife and quickly drew out his pistol. He raised it overhead and brought the butt down sharply on Finch’s temple. The man’s eyes rolled up, and the pitiful whimpering ceased.

  MacHeath stood up slowly, willing himself to stop trembling. He wondered when he’d turned into such a cold-hearted bastard. Probably when he’d seen Finch stroking his hands over Alexa’s body.

  Alexa watched him, watched the blood lust slowly leach out of his face. She was leaning against the barn, trying to stay upright on legs that felt like jelly, trying to breathe through the noisome gag. She didn’t know which was more disturbing—the liberties Finch had taken with her person, or the expression of icy, lethal rage she’d seen in MacHeath’s eyes as he squared off against the big man.

  There hadn’t been a shred of fear in his face, only stark, deadly purpose. She now understood what he meant when he said he’d been hardened by his life in the East End. Though hardened barely began to describe what she’d seen.

  She’d forced herself to stay quiet during the fight, fearing to distract MacHeath. But she’d nearly cried out against the gag when she thought he was going to cut Finch’s throat. That he had to fight to protect her, she understood, but she hated the thought of him becoming an executioner.

  He crossed to her now and wrapped his arms around her. “I’m so sorry,” he murmured hoarsely against her hair. “Thank God I got here in time.” He tugged the front of her coat together, trying clumsily to do up the buttons. “When I saw him take you, sweetheart—”

  She mumbled something against her gag, and he quickly untied it.

  “I wasn’t sure you even knew I’d been taken,” she rasped, leaning into him to keep from falling down.

  He set his hands on her waist. “Do you think I took my eyes off you for even one instant? I saw him catch you, but I was too far away to risk a shot. Fortunately, your father’s gate has a lock a child could pick. I ran into the stable and stole a horse.”

  “You s-stole a h-horse?” she echoed shakily. “You stole a horse from my father’s stable?” She was laughing and choking. “Oh, Simeon. Cut me loose ... I want to hug you back.”

  He quickly sliced through the cord, and then massaged her wrists gently. “Better?”

  “Mmm.” She slid her arms around him and tipped her head back. The frightening, fierce expression in his eyes had completely disappeared, replaced by one of tender concern. “Take me home now, Simeon. Please.”

  “Not just yet,” he said, brushing a lock of hair back from her cheek. “Quincy may have other men posted there. We need to get to your father when he’s away from that house. Or send a message to him somehow.”

  “Church,” she said. “He’ll be going to church in the village tonight.”

  He looked skeptical. “Your father will be fretting over you, Alexa—you were due home yesterday, after all. And if Quincy’s there, he has doubtless played on those fears. Do you think he’d really go off to church while he’s worried about his daughter?”

  She gave him a tolerant smile. “My dear MacHeath … that is precisely when people go to church. We can wait in the church’s basement for the service to begin. There is a vault beneath the sanctuary, where they keep old pews and hymnals and such.”

  “It might serve,” he said. “You’ll be safer in a crowd of people.”

  He went into the barn and came out with a length of wire. Alexa helped him truss up the two men, and then they dragged them into the barn.

  “Don’t want to scare any stray passersby,” he said when she’d wondered aloud why the ugly customers couldn’t just stay where they’d fallen.

  They rode back to Cudbright on the horse he’d appropriated from her father. She hadn’t protested when he’d boosted her up, then leaped up behind her, and settled her back against his chest. Truth was, she wanted to plead with him to keep on riding … past the village, past the city of Exeter, right on out of Devon.

  Cornwall was a maritime county, a smuggler’s paradise, in fact. They could live together, and she wouldn’t care if he went back to his old ways. She’d be a smuggler’s lady, waiting for her lover in the darkness, standing at the top of a high cliff
with a shuttered lantern in her hand. Waiting for him to sail home from France. Home to her.

  But MacHeath had a mission with her father. He wouldn’t set foot out of Devon until that mission was accomplished. And then, she feared, he’d be gone forever.

  * * *

  Alexa guided him as they rode through the village, in a convoluted route that took them along the narrowest lanes and the darkest alleys, places no gently bred lady should have known about. MacHeath could imagine her as a child, slipping out of her father’s house after dark to wander through these secret, shadowed byways. She wouldn’t have felt any fear—she’d have known there was not a man or woman in Cudbright who would dare to harm Alexander Prescott’s daughter.

  Tonight there was no longer any surety of that.

  Fortunately they passed few villagers during their circuitous journey. A few workmen in front of a grogshop goggled up at them, at the tall man and the slim young woman riding bareback upon a blooded horse, but they were too full of Christmas spirit—the smuggled French variety—to voice their amazement.

  Eventually they came to the low stone wall that enclosed St. Peter’s Church. Candlelight spilled out through the narrow, leaded windows, setting ghostly rectangles of bleached white on the dark, grassy surround. MacHeath halted the horse at the very back of the church grounds, behind a garden shed, before he dismounted and lifted Alexa down.

  They crossed the yard swiftly, keeping to the shadows. The door to the vault at the rear of the church was locked, but Alexa quickly located the spare key under one of the flagstones on the path.

  “I used to sneak in here as a child,” she said as she pushed open the iron-bound door. “Whenever I’d done something to make my father cross.”

  “To repent your sins?”

  She chuckled. “No, to wait for him to cool off. And to make up stories about pixies and hobgoblins. The vault is a rather fanciful place.”