The Prodigal Hero

by Nancy Butler

  “Get up, all of you,” she snarled. She was breathless and wild-eyed, and MacHeath thought that there wasn’t a more beautiful woman on all seven continents.

  “Well met, cousin,” Quincy said as he climbed to his feet and brushed a legion of cobwebs from his coattails. “Still defending this rogue, I see.”

  “What I see,” she said brusquely, “is something I’ve prayed to witness for five long days. And that is you with these ugly customers. You’ll have a hard time explaining this to my father.” Her gaze darted to Finch, who was sidling toward her.

  “Get Quincy’s gun,” MacHeath said quickly. “And hold it on him. They won’t touch you if you’ve got him.”

  She drew his weapon from his waistcoat, and then stepped behind him and set his own pistol against his ear, keeping the other one trained on Finch. She ordered Connor to untie MacHeath.

  “You won’t shoot your own cousin,” Quincy said evenly.

  “No, not if you tell me what really happened in my father’s office ten years ago.”

  “I’ve told you what happened. I caught that scoundrel stealing, and he sliced my head open.”

  “I’ll tell you, Alexa,” said MacHeath as Connor freed him. He stood up, and rolled his shoulders to get the feeling back into them. He then took the second pistol from Alexa and motioned Connor to join Finch on the other side of the room. “I’ve kept it from you long enough.”

  He spared a glance at the blond man. “Now you’re the one who’s sweating, Quincy. You see, I knew you would come after me tonight—I saw your face in the church when I said I’d remembered a great deal about you. The pity of it is, when it happened I didn’t recall any of it until days later. Too late to keep me from Exeter jail.”

  “Go on,” Alexa said. Her gaze drifted momentarily to something out in the hall, and her eyes brightened.

  “I was working late, and I’d fallen asleep at my drawing table. The candle must have gone out, because when I awoke it was dark in the workroom. I thought I heard someone moving about in your father’s office. When I went to investigate, I found Quincy in there, at the open safe. I’m not sure which of us was the more surprised, but he acted first. He leaped up and struck me on the head, with something from the desk I assume, a paperweight or a bottle. He hit me several times ... there were at least three lumps on my head when I finally came to.”

  “This is utter nonsense,” Quincy hissed. Alexa jabbed him with the gun and told him to keep quiet.

  “The next I knew, I was being roused by the constables. They’d already bound my hands, and when they carted me away, I still had no idea what I’d done. I suppose I was in shock.

  “I sorted it all out while I was in Exeter.” He added ruefully, “You have a lot of free time when you are sitting in a prison cell. The thing was, Quincy knew I could identify him, and so he turned the tables and made me the scapegoat. But to do that, he had to strengthen the case against me. I would guess he went directly to my quarters at the shipyard and planted more money there, plus some things he’d taken from your father’s desk. Then went back the office to rouse the watch.”

  “I was cut on the head,” Quincy protested. “How do you explain that?”

  “You tell me. What did you use?”

  “What do you mean? You think I faked an injury to myself? No wonder you had to escape from Exeter ... no judge would have believed that sorry tale.”

  “No, but I would have,” Alexander Prescott said as he stepped into the room. Three men filed in behind him, each of them carrying a carbine.

  “I was wondering when you were going to stop loitering out there on the landing,” Alexa said.

  “I had a mind to eavesdrop,” Prescott responded. “And you looked to have everything well in hand.” He gazed around him with distaste. “Though it looks like someone’s been up to no good in here.”

  Fishing out his handkerchief, he handed it to MacHeath. “You’re bleeding, sir. And is that my good William there on the floor, all trussed up like the Christmas goose?” He motioned one of his men to untie him.

  “Uncle!” Quincy cried, trying to push away from Alexa. “Thank goodness you are come here. Your daughter and that madman have been holding us here—”

  “Us?” Prescott asked in a voice like ice. “Are you referring to these two ruffians? The ones you claimed you knew nothing about?”

  “I ... uh ... that is ... you’ve got to see that—”

  When he approached Quincy, his blue eyes had gone black. “Somehow I doubt you can talk your way out of this, nephew. But if you are inclined to try ... I suggest you do it to a magistrate.”

  “No!” Quincy cried, thrusting past his uncle and running to the door. “You don’t understand ... none of you understand ... I didn’t do anything wrong.”

  “You were caught stealing—”

  “It wasn’t stealing!” His fingers clutched the worn door frame. “I didn’t break into the safe ... I had taken the key off your watch chain ... you’d fallen asleep in the library after dinner.”

  “So you stole the key, as well.”

  “I was planning to put the money back ... it was just a loan.” His eyes darted around the room, seeking one face that was not looking at him with harsh judgment in their eyes. Even his hirelings were gazing at him with scorn, though perhaps more for his loss of control than for his larceny.

  Prescott shook his head sadly. “And for that you let an innocent man get sent to prison? I am ashamed that I ever offered you a crust of bread, Darwin Quincy, let alone years of charity.”

  “Charity!” Quincy snarled. “It wasn’t charity, it was what you owed me. You were nothing compared to my family, just a self-inflated merchant.”

  He pointed a shaking finger at Alexa. “She was nothing. No beauty, no breeding.” His eyes nearly bulged out of his head as his gaze fell on MacHeath. “And him. A wretched, worthless Scot come begging at your door, who ended up gaining all your favor.”

  “Take him out of here,” Prescott muttered. “I won’t listen to his slander.”

  But before anyone could lay hands on him, Quincy ran up to Finch. “It’s all your fault! You and that weasel Connor. Inept, dunderheaded fools. You brought me to this—”

  “It’s not my bleedin’ fault, you poncy, clutch-fisted leech!” Finch cried, breaking away from the man who was guarding him.

  He launched himself at Quincy, and together the two men careened out the door and onto the landing. As they slammed into the ancient railing, there was the sharp crack of wood breaking. Quincy’s eyes widened with sudden awareness as he and Finch teetered there, and then Finch’s weight sent them crashing through the damaged barrier and into the open core of the stairwell.

  Their screams mingled as they tumbled the three stories to the hallway below.

  Prescott instantly wrapped his arms around Alexa. “Sorry, sorry,” he whispered raggedly into her hair. “I could have avoided this if I’d only listened to you.”

  “It wasn’t anyone’s fault, Papa,” she said weakly. “Nobody’s fault.”

  From over her father’s shoulder, her eyes sought out MacHeath, but he would not look at her. His face was pale and drawn, his mouth a grim slash.

  The men from the shipyard muttered their condolences before they went out, a bound, shaken Alf Connor in their midst. MacHeath started after them, assuring Prescott that he’d see to removing the bodies, and suggesting that perhaps he and Alexa should remain in the room until that grisly task was accomplished.

  Prescott’s voice stopped him at the door. “Hastings,” he said slowly. “Words have little merit ... but for now that’s all I can offer you. I am very sorry.”

  MacHeath met his eyes, and then drew in a long breath. “So am I, sir. So am I.”

  William was sitting up now, holding the false hand in his lap. “I plucked it out of the fire,” he said in a dazed, faraway voice. “It’s only a bit scorched, though the leather is damaged. Pity they killed my Henry ... the lad could have repaired it.”
<
br />   “Henry was still alive when we left the house,” Prescott said. “They’d knifed him in the back, but I don’t think it hit anything vital.”

  “Praise be,” William murmured.

  Alexa sank down into the greasy armchair, which was still wrapped about with rope. She had a fair idea, from the seeping wound on his wrist, what had made MacHeath scream. And knowing that, she could not find it in her heart to mourn her cousin. She certainly wasn’t going to waste a second mourning Bully Finch.

  There were footsteps out in the hall, and one of the watchmen came into the room. “He’s still alive,” he announced breathlessly. “Mr. Quincy, that is. He landed on that big rogue ... must of broken his fall.”

  “Oh, blast,” Prescott muttered.

  “His back’s all twisted, though. Don’t know that he’ll ever walk again.”

  Chapter 15

  MacHeath slept until three that afternoon.

  Someone had alerted Mr. Featherbridge to the tragic mishap down near the waterfront, and he’d appeared, just as dawn broke, to take over the arranging of things. “It’s what vicars do, dear boy,” he’d said to MacHeath. “You just get on back to the rectory and have my housekeeper put you to bed in the spare room. And have her take a look at that wound, as well.”

  So MacHeath had dragged himself to the vicar’s house, where he immediately tumbled into bed. He’d only stirred slightly when the church bells tolled to announce the Christmas morning service, and he wondered if Mr. Featherbridge had returned from Fuller Lane in time to give another of his heartening sermons.

  At three, the housekeeper came in with a tray and set it on the bed. “There’s Miss Alexa waiting for you downstairs. She’s been here since one o’clock, actually, but I told her you looked like you needed a week’s worth of sleep.”

  “Thank her for her concern,” he said gruffly as he ladled up a spoonful of hot soup. “But I am in no state for visitors.”

  She nodded and went off without argument. She privately agreed with his assessment—he cut a sorry figure, with his beard all coming out in bristles and his clothing dashed with mud and blood—though she had a notion he’d be something to behold once he was cleaned up proper.

  A youth who looked the way Simeon Hastings had, could not possibly age badly. Pity about that hand, though. She’d bandaged his wounded left wrist that morning, and had managed to get a peep at the severed stump while she was at it. Not as gruesome as she’d expected, but still a sorry shame.

  MacHeath lay back, once he’d finished his Christmas lunch of invalid fare, and wondered what to do.

  He could stay here in Cudbright, no doubt with the old man’s blessing. For ten years he’d dreamed of that moment in the rooming house, of facing Prescott and receiving absolution. But now that it had finally happened, there was none of the joy or relieved elation he’d expected to feel. No victory, no sense of vindication ... only a dull awareness of completion.

  An icy shivering began deep inside him. It was too late, he realized. He was too broken to be mended by mere words. Or by any forthcoming offers of restitution. Ten years of his life, his prime years, had been wasted because of Quincy’s falsehood, and there was nothing Prescott could offer him that would undo that.

  And there was another thing gnawing at him now.

  He’d thought during the church service last night that he could take on a new mantle. There, with Alexa standing beside him, he’d felt like he could do anything. But this morning, in that seedy rooming house, he’d been made humble. It was hard not to feel humbled when you’d screamed your heart out in front of other men.

  The instant Finch set that knife against his wrist, any chances he might have at a new life had vanished. It hadn’t taken a blade cutting through flesh and sinew, it only took the threat of it. The pride that had been his sole bulwark through all his deprivations—the thing that had kept him from sinking completely into despair, from taking on cutthroat work in the East End, or from succumbing to the lures of gin—was gone. He’d been humiliated, reduced to a whimpering, abject cur.

  It didn’t matter that he’d been saved in the end. The horror of that threat, coupled with his own horror at his reaction to it, had destroyed him. His honor with Prescott might have been restored, but the price of that restoration had been his soul.

  * * *

  Alexa also slept for a few hours that morning, though fretfully, hearing MacHeath’s screams blended with those of her cousin and Finch, every time she started to doze off. Afterward, she rode off to Mr. Featherbridge’s rectory to find MacHeath. The housekeeper had kept her cooling her heels for two hours, and then announced that although Mr. MacHeath had awakened, he was not feeling up to any visitors.

  She’d come home in a funk, and had barely managed to choke down a bit of Christmas dinner. Both she and her father spent the meal conversing in hushed whispers. He told her that Quincy had been moved to the surgeon’s house, which adjoined the shipyard. The prognosis had not been good—a broken back, and two broken arms, at least.

  “He’ll spend the rest of his life in a Bath chair,” her father said wearily. “I’ll have to find someone to look after him.”

  “You wouldn’t bring him here?”

  The expression on his face answered her well before he uttered a soft, final, “No.”

  “His family home is let,” she said after some thought. “But we could find him a place somewhere near there, in Salisbury, perhaps.”

  “You are generous, Alexa. I didn’t think you’d want anything to do with him.”

  She set down both fork and knife on either side of her plate, and leaned toward him. “He went a little mad, don’t you think? I saw it in his eyes up there in that room. So I’m not sure he was totally sane any of the time. It’s why he could lie and deceive, and still think himself a gentleman. He was all turned about in his head.”

  “Yes,” he said, “what was it Mr. Shakespeare wrote? That ‘a man might smile, and smile, be a villain.’ “

  “And meanwhile there was MacHeath, with all his scowls and bitter melancholies who ended up the hero.”

  Her father looked as though he was about to say something, and then thought better of it. He fidgeted with his napkin, then rose and excused himself from the table, “I’ll be in my study, if you need me. We’ll open our gifts tonight, if you don’t mind.”

  It was nearing six o’clock when Mrs. Reginald arrived, unannounced and completely unexpected. Alexa greeted her with cries of relief, and then sat with her in her bedroom and patted her hand while the lady tried to weather the shock of Quincy’s tragedy. Alexa insisted she nap, and promised that later that night she would fill her in on everything that had happened.

  Well, she thought as she went down the stairs, we’re all here now. All together for Christmas. Just like old times.

  Yet the pall that hung over the house, reminded her of Christmas the year her mother had died—the whispered conversations, the servants tiptoeing about. No laughter or gaiety, only a somber determination to acknowledge the holy day.

  A footman approached her. “There is a gentleman here to speak with Mr. Prescott. Your father asked me to put him in the drawing room until he was free, and he suggested you might want to entertain his visitor in the meantime.”

  Alexa slid open the double doors, wondering who would intrude on her father at a time of family crisis.

  MacHeath rose from the sofa and bowed once as she stepped into the room.

  “Oh,” she said in a small, flustered voice.

  “I didn’t expect to see you,” he said bluntly. “I have business with your father.”

  “Yes,” she said with a bit of her usual spirit. “I’ve heard that before.”

  Without asking her permission, he sat down again and began to study the ceiling, his arms folded over his chest. She noticed that he was not wearing gloves; there was a bandage on his left wrist, and the cuff of his shirt was pinned up under his right-hand coat sleeve. It jarred her a bit, seeing that unnatural tru
ncation, and then she shrugged it off. She’d get used to it soon enough ... well, if she was ever given the chance.

  He’d also managed to find a razor—his chin was clean shaven—and someone had removed most of the road grime from his greatcoat. He looked a lot less piratical now, almost civilized. But no less attractive.

  “Did my father send for you?” she asked as she settled on the far end of the sofa.

  “No. As I said, I have—”

  “—some business with him,” she finished. “Is this business anything to do with me? Because if it is, I think you ought to tell me first.”

  MacHeath shot her a look of rebuke. “It’s not that kind of business, Alexa.”

  She decided to overlook this unsatisfactory disclosure. “So what will you do now?”

  He shrugged, “Go back to Nat’s, I expect. See if I can’t scrape up a ship somewhere.”

  She shifted closer to him on the cushions, fighting the urge to take him by the shoulders and declare herself. It was nearly impossible to hold back. Her heart would be heard. “Why wouldn’t you see me at the rectory? I waited there for hours.”

  “I wasn’t in the mood for visitors,” he said in a flat, distant voice.

  “What’s wrong with you?” she cried softly. “Why won’t you look at me? You are talking to me as though I were a stranger. Is it this house? Is it being in here, sitting in this drawing room for the first time, that has struck you dumb?”

  His eyes flashed at her, the first sign of animation she’d seen in him since she came through the door. But his voice was icy and remote when he answered her. “I haven’t very much to say, I suppose.”

  She flew off the sofa and faced him, her hands clenched. “You hate us now, don’t you ... not just Quincy, but me and my father. Because we wronged you horribly, and then stood by while you were humiliated and imprisoned. And it happened again last night ... no one believing in you, no one listening to you. No one there to aid you when that fiend laid his knife on your good hand—”