by Nancy Butler
“You would know about that,” MacHeath murmured.
“See!” Quincy hissed to Mr. Featherbridge. “See how he baits me? A gentleman should not have to endure such abuse. I cannot believe you would take the word of this vermin, this felon. Look at him, look at his tattered clothing. I wouldn’t give that coat he is wearing to a stable hand.”
“This isn’t a question of fashion, sir,” the vicar reminded him. “It is a matter of truth. A man’s future hangs in the balance.”
“So instead you impugn my word as a gentleman?” His gaze shifted to MacHeath. “You have no proof of anything.”
“It was you. I swear it on my father’s grave.”
“Such melodrama,” Quincy sniffed. “Well, Uncle. Has he convinced you?”
Prescott paused before he spoke, one fisted hand tapping his chin. “This has all taken me unawares ... accusations flying left and right. I need time to think.”
“Think on this, Father,” Alexa said forthrightly, “Darwin is so deep in debt that to keep the moneylenders off his back, he lied to his friends, told them that he and I were betrothed.” This pronouncement was met by silence all around. “So cousin,” she said scornfully, “are you going to deny that, as well?”
Quincy cleared his throat several times, but when he spoke his voice was full of easy confidence. “A minor falsehood, and I admit that it was badly done. But I was feeling a momentary pinch and assumed Alexa would not mind my subterfuge. We are blood kin, after all.” He laid one hand on Prescott’s shoulder. “Dear Uncle, surely I would not have come here to support you, if I’d been involved in this business. Could you possibly imagine I could be so duplicitous?”
“I could,” Alexa said hotly.
He disregarded her outburst. “This man is nothing more than a base opportunist. It’s clear he took my cousin with hopes of redeeming her for a reward, and then made up some nonsense that cast me as the villain. The truth is, he sniffed money in the air and came after it like the cur he is.”
MacHeath’s eyes narrowed. “I risked my neck by coming here, Quincy. Would I do that for a few gold coins?”
Prescott stepped between them. “You betrayed me for a few gold coins, Hastings. I wouldn’t put anything past a man who would ill-use someone who trusted him.”
MacHeath heard the lingering pain in Prescott’s words, like a wound that was still tender after many years. It gave him some faint hope.
“Sir,” he said, holding Prescott’s gaze. “I neither betrayed you nor ill-used you. Rather it was I who was betrayed—”
Quincy interjected with an impatient snarl, “This is a waste of our time. I, for one, have better things to do of a Christmas Eve than listen to these pitiful, whining lies.”
“Quincy’s right. Come away, Alex. The carolers will be at the house anytime now. You must forget this man—”
“No!” She clutched at his arm, her fingers digging into it. “None of this has gone the way we intended. There are things I need to say to you in private ... things MacHeath needs to say. And there are two evil men out there, in truth there are, Father. They carried me off from the gates of your house—”
Prescott set his hand over her mouth. “You are delirious, child.”
“I fear Hastings has drugged her,” Quincy remarked. “Look at her color, Uncle. Her cheeks are an unnatural red ….” His cool fingers drifted down over her face. “And her eyes are far too bright.”
Alexa pushed roughly away from both of them. “That is because I am agitated beyond words, Father, by your sheer, blind stupidity.”
“Alexandra!” Prescott’s warning voice echoed out in the near empty church.
“How am I to behave when my own father has once again turned his back on me?” She dashed away her tears of frustration with one hand.
He regarded her, his mouth agape. “You expect me to side with this … this rogue? I begin to think your cousin has the right of it, you are turned about in your head.”
“Look at this!” she cried, frantically pushing back the cuffs of her coat. “Look at these bruises on my wrists. Am I imagining them? Are they a phantasm?”
“Did this blackguard tie you up?” Quincy muttered.
“No, this was the handiwork of your men, cousin. After they dragged me from Papa’s gate, they bound me with a cord. But MacHeath again came to my rescue.”
Alexa laid her hands upon her father’s broad chest. “Please, Papa, if you won’t listen to MacHeath, at least let him leave in peace. I asked you once before, and you refused me. Don’t refuse me now, I beg you.”
“I do believe one thing you said, that he offered you no harm. And so, as it is Christmas Eve, I will not send for the constable. I don’t want your visit sullied by such a sordid business. I will send him on his way—”
Quincy cried out, “No!”
Prescott shot him a look of reproof. “I have said that I will let him go. Alexa can consider it an early Christmas gift.” He turned to MacHeath. “If you are wise, sir, you will not linger here.”
Quincy gripped his uncle’s arm. “How can you let him go without so much as a whipping? Are you totally lost to propriety? Your daughter is ruined, Prescott. Hastings might not have done bodily harm to her, but he has damaged her beyond repair as far as her reputation is concerned.”
For the first time that evening, Prescott openly glared at his nephew. “If that information leaves this building, I will know who let it slip.”
“What if he says something,” he protested, pointing to MacHeath. “What if he brags to his friends about spending five days with my cousin?”
The vicar stepped forward. “I think that we are forgetting the main issue here—that Miss Alexa is returned. Now, you three go on home, there’s no sense in agitating yourselves further.” He then pointed to MacHeath. “You, sir, come along with me.”
Alexa tried to catch MacHeath’s eye as he sidled past her, but he refused to look in her direction. She had failed him, she knew. So much for being his advocate—her fearful temper had gotten the better of her, and she’d lost any power of persuasion. It was not all the fault of her temper, however. Her father’s abrupt dismissal of her pleas on MacHeath’s behalf had shaken her to the core; it still cut like a knife.
I am sorry, she moaned silently as he walked away from her without so much as a backward glance. So terribly, terribly sorry.
* * *
MacHeath leaned back in a padded chair in Mr. Featherbridge’s cozy study and toyed with his glass. Dashed if Prescott hadn’t been right—the vicar did serve an excellent brandy. And he set a fine table as well, which perhaps accounted for his substantial girth. Now well-fed and with his frustration and anger mellowed a bit by French spirits, he agreed to tell Mr. Featherbridge about his misadventure with Alexa.
“I never heard ill of you, young man,” the vicar said, once MacHeath had completed his tale. “For the three years you worked for Prescott, nothing but praise came my way from the workmen and the shopkeepers. My own housekeeper swore you were wronged when we heard of the theft. She said you were more likely to be putting money into the safe than taking it out.” He paused to cough softly. “And everyone in the village knew how Miss Alexa felt about you.”
“Everyone but me,” MacHeath said with a rueful grin. “It took me a few years to sort out why she was always around when she barely ever said a kind word to me.”
“And now?”
“I don’t wish to be rude, vicar, since you’ve wined and dined me, but I cannot speak of Alexa’s feelings and will not speak of mine for her.”
“So I take it you will not be bragging about her to your friends?” Featherbridge’s eyes chided him gently.
“I’d like to rip out Quincy’s black heart for even suggesting it,” he muttered. “He truly did set those two men on her, they had her in their hands only three hours past. I left them trussed up in a barn on the old Kincaid property.”
“So you rescued her once again, and got naught for your troubles.”
“Then, there is risk in remaining here.”
“I’m not running away this time,” he declared. “If they take me, I will stand trial. And then the truth will come out. And if that does me no good ... well, I’d rather hang than spend the rest of my life on the run.”
“So you don’t care what your death will do to Miss Alexa?”
He shifted toward the vicar and speared him with his gaze. “Miss Alexa might have a chance at a real life if I were to hang.”
To his surprise, Featherbridge gave a loud chortle. “Ho, you are full to the brim with foolish nobility. If you think your death will free her from your spell, then you don’t know the first thing about women. Nothing could guarantee a lifetime of pining like knowing the man she loved went to his death on her account.”
MacHeath cursed softly.
“Yes, you are in a bit of a spot. If you don’t mind listening to the advice of a country parson, I could make a recommendation or two. Before you can clear your name, you need to gain Prescott’s ear. A good first step might be getting him to see that he nurtures a viper by encouraging Quincy.”
MacHeath’s brows shot up. “You believed me about Quincy?”
The vicar sighed and steepled his fingers against his round chin. “Darwin Quincy has been taking money out of the collection basket since he was in shirttails. He used up all his credit with the local shopkeepers while he was still at Oxford. Every gentleman’s son in the district has been warned not to sit at cards with him, and my stable lad tells me that he’s now reduced to playing at dice with the lowest men on the waterfront. In other words, Darwin Quincy is a loose screw.”
MacHeath grinned, but then his face grew instantly sober. “He still means to have Alexa, Mr. Featherbridge. You could hear him angling for that very thing in the church. Pointing out to her father that she is ruined so that he can offer himself as husband to his sullied but incredibly wealthy cousin. I brought her to this, with my cork-brained plan. If I’d just warned her of his intentions—”
“Oh, there you go being noble again. It’s a distressing tendency, Mr. Hastings—
“MacHeath,” he interjected curtly. “Simeon Hastings is no more.”
“Very well, MacHeath it is. But as I was saying, you came here with a goal in mind. Now Prescott can be pig-headed when it comes to some things—especially regarding his daughter—but he is a fair man at the end of the day. You find some way to connect Quincy to those two rogues, and once you’ve discredited him, you’ve got a chance at gaining Prescott’s trust. We might start by getting our hands on those fellows you left in Kincaid’s barn.”
He looked up in surprise. “We, Mr. Featherbridge?” He rose from his seat with a wry smile. “I believe spending the night cleaning up the neighborhood is not a bad way to start off Christmas. I’ll ring for my carriage.”
* * *
The barn was empty. No bedrolls, no soiled dishes, and most disturbingly, no trussed-up ruffians. There were the remains of the wires MacHeath had twisted around both men’s wrists and ankles, and that was all. He scouted in the clearing with a lantern and found the bloodied patch of grass where Finch’s wounded arm had bled when he fell. Hardly enough evidence to convince the cleric that he was telling the truth. But Mr. Featherbridge did not appear at all skeptical, only disappointed.
“Quincy must have found them and set them free,” the vicar said as they went back into the barn. “Though, how he managed to locate them in so short a time—”
“No, I don’t think so,” MacHeath interrupted him. He was crouched down beside a remnant of wire that lay beside a rusted jumble of farm implements. His fingers traced over the coil of metal while he pondered its location on the floor. “I left both men by the door. One of them must have rolled over here when he came to and loosened the wires against the edge of this old scythe.”
“So you think they’ve left Cudbright?”
“I doubt it. Finch will want my blood, for one thing. And I believe Quincy still owes them money. Men like those two don’t skulk off, not if there’s a profit to be made. If they’re still here, I will find them.”
The vicar scratched behind one ear. “You can’t go back into the village.”
“That is exactly where I’m going.”
“What about the constables? You won’t do yourself much good if you are arrested the instant you set foot in town.”
MacHeath gave him a sly smile. “I’ve rethought that. I don’t think Quincy will bring the law into this. He’s sailing too close to the wind right now ... oh, sorry, I mean he’s running the risk of being found out. He defended himself very neatly in the church, I will give him that, but he knows I recognized him in that tavern. He won’t want me held here in Cudbright, where I might convince an enterprising lawyer to look into the matter.”
“So we’re back to finding those two men.”
“Not we, this time, Vicar. I think I must do this alone.”
Mr. Featherbridge nodded. “Then, I’ll do what I can on the praying end of things.”
* * *
They drove back to the rectory and went inside; the vicar watched from the kitchen doorway as MacHeath pilfered his cutlery drawer.
“A little insurance,” he said as he tucked a long carving knife into his coat pocket. He then leaned back against the drawer and looked across at the man. “Why?” he asked. “Why did you help me?”
Mr. Featherbridge cocked his head. “For Alexa,” he said simply. “The morning they carted you off to jail, I heard her crying in the church vault. I knew she sometimes hid down there, and usually left her alone. But that day her sobs alarmed me, and so I went down there to comfort her. It’s the most difficult part of being a priest—consoling those who are grieving—and perhaps it’s the thing that brings us closest to God. At any rate, she told me what had happened, that the night before you’d injured her cousin when he caught you stealing, and that when they searched your rooms, they found a cache of money.”
“Yes, it was rather damning.”
“She was never the same after they took you away. It was as though something bright inside of her was extinguished. I reasoned at the time that she had a father who doted on her, who would do everything to ease her grief. But she soon grew to womanhood, and I saw Prescott increasingly distance himself from her.
“He should have had a son, you know. He treated Alexa like a lad ... well, you saw how she was, untamed and fearless. She had no graces, no manners. Her father realized too late that she would never make an advantageous marriage unless those tendencies were curbed. So he sent her away from here. The morning she was to leave, I again found her hiding in the vault. This time she was not crying, but striding about, railing at her father for his perfidy. It nearly broke my heart when she told me that the two men she esteemed above all others had betrayed her.”
“She said something like that the night I carried her off. I had no idea she was referring to me, no idea my arrest affected her so deeply.”
The vicar said softly, “Would you care to tell me what really happened that night?”
MacHeath’s brow lowered. “I haven’t spoken of it to a soul. I suppose I’ve been saving the truth for Prescott.”
“Ten years is a long time to keep your own counsel, sir. And you could do a lot worse than telling me ... the confidentiality of the confessional and all that.”
MacHeath nodded slowly, and just as slowly began his tale, massaging the false hand with the real one while he spoke. When he was done, Mr. Featherbridge sat silent for a moment, his head bowed.
“Few men could have weathered the aftermath of such an injustice,” he said when he looked up. “I congratulate you on surviving it. No, don’t start to protest, sir. I see clearly that you have fallen on hard t
imes, yet there’s a core of goodness in you. Simeon Hastings may be gone, but something of his spirit burns on in MacHeath.”
“You’re starting to sound like Alexa,” he muttered sourly.
“She’s a wise young woman when she troubles herself to keep her temper in check.” He grinned briefly. “You can make things right for her, Mr. MacHeath. I have a notion that if you can convince her father of your innocence, Alexa will begin to mend. It’s got a nice symmetry. You make your peace with Prescott, and Alexa will make her peace with the world.”
“I can’t stay with her,” he said quietly in response to the unspoken question in the vicar’s eyes. “I’ve determined to go away as soon as I’ve settled things here.”
“Why? Because you are poor? Or is it this?” He reached out and tapped MacHeath’s right hand. “Don’t appear so surprised. I watched you while you ate—you never removed your gloves and you never once used this hand.”
“Alexa knows about this, it doesn’t seem to trouble her. But I’m not going to spell out my reasons for leaving. Suffice to say, we should not suit.”
“I think you would suit admirably. You don’t require a simpering damsel, and she doesn’t require a puffed-up popinjay, regardless of what her father believes on that score. But it’s not my business, Mr. MacHeath. You will do as you choose.” He followed MacHeath to the kitchen door. “You didn’t by any chance arrive at the church in time to hear my sermon?”
“I was there.”
The vicar grinned. “Interesting, isn’t it, the possibilities the Bible holds out to us? All those new horizons, Mr. MacHeath.”
Chapter 13
Alexa kept silent on the drive back from the church and went to her room the instant they arrived at the house. She needed time to compose herself before she again faced her father. Word of her return had been sent ahead; her maid had a bath waiting, and one of the dinner gowns she kept at the house was laid out on the bed. Obviously her luggage had not arrived, which meant that neither had Mrs. Reginald.
She stood gazing around the bedroom, blocking out her maid’s excited prattle. She looked at the familiar lilac-papered walls, the elegant walnut bed, the books that were stacked on her writing desk, and tried to muster up some feeling of relief. Somehow this room, this house, had ceased to be her haven. Her eyes went to the drawing of a black-and-white spaniel, which hung over her desk in a gilded frame, and she felt an acute ache in her throat.
