The Highwayman Incident

by Kristy Tate

  “You are undoubtedly marveling at my boldness,” Montgomery said as they crossed the wide veranda.

  Celia didn’t know what to say, so she just nodded her head and hoped that was the ladylike thing to do.

  “But even in this late season, the gardens are lovely. Each season has its own merits, wouldn’t you agree, Miss West?” Montgomery said.

  Celia nodded again. Her heart told her that Montgomery wasn’t really all that interested in his gardens, but since he kept on talking, she kept on nodding.

  “Autumn, of course, is nature’s true show piece with its blaze of bold colors, and while our own harvest is coming to an end, it’s always a pleasure to see Autumn’s glory.”

  They walked in companionable silence through boxwood hedges and recently pruned, nearly-naked rose bushes. A flash of the Queen of Heart’s men painting the roses red came to Celia and she smiled.

  Montgomery must have taken the smile as encouragement, because he took her hand and turned to face her.

  Celia looked around. Other than a few birds in the trees, squirrels gathering acorns, and a bunny chewing in the hedge, they were alone.

  “I must speak my heart.” Montgomery cleared his throat. “Forgive me. It will be difficult for me to be so bold. I fear that you will treat my feelings harshly. How I pray that you won’t. No. I can perceive that you are all kindness.”

  Celia lifted her brows. Montgomery sounded a lot like Colin Firth when he acted as Mr. Darcy and professed his love to Elizabeth Bennet. But how was that possible? Mr. Montgomery couldn’t love her. They had just met.

  “I’m afraid that what I say next may cause you pain and embarrassment.”

  No, I’m afraid it might cause you pain and embarrassment, Celia thought.

  “You see, I’m hopelessly in love.”

  “Hopelessly?”

  “Well, not entirely hopelessly,” Montgomery said. “But I know my lady well enough to know that should I speak, I will certainly be rebuffed.”

  Again, Celia didn’t know what to say, so she nodded.

  Montgomery blew out a sigh almost as big as himself. “I thought…I rather hoped that if my love thought my affections otherwise engaged, she may take notice of me.”

  Comprehension dawned on Celia. “You’re in love with Penelope?”

  Montgomery groaned. “Is it so obvious?”

  “And you want to make her jealous? Why don’t you just tell her how you feel?” Celia asked. “That will make her notice you.”

  Montgomery shook his head. “She wants an adventure…she thought she wanted that scoundrel Alexander.”

  “But now she knows he was a mistake.”

  “That does not mean that she isn’t searching for another mistake.”

  “Like my…brother?”

  Montgomery looked pained.

  “If you felt that way, why did you try and arrange for them to spend the morning together?”

  “I suspected, and my suspicions were confirmed, by the by, that your brother’s affections are not so engaged.”

  Celia nodded and tried to use Montgomery’s vernacular. “My brother’s heart lies at our home.”

  “I thought so,” Montgomery said.

  They walked in silence for a few moments, then Montgomery turned and took her hand. “My kind, dear Miss West, would you do me the honor of staying as my houseguest as long as you wish?”

  “And pretending to…” how had he put that? “appreciate your affections?”

  Montgomery bowed his great big head.

  “I would be honored,” Celia said, smiling. “But believe me—trying to make someone jealous just never works. You’re much better off telling Penelope how you feel.”

  “You do not know my Penelope,” Montgomery said despondently.

  Celia took a deep breath. “I don’t, but I know women, and they like good guys. And you are a good guy.”

  #

  Jason stood where the dead rabbits once lay. The outbuilding where he had agreed to meet Robert hid him from Celia and their enormous host.

  I’m not hiding or spying, Jason told himself. I’m simply waiting.

  But the longer he stood watching Celia and Montgomery, the more waiting seemed like spying. He wished he could hear their conversation, but when Montgomery lifted Celia’s hand to his lips, Jason really wanted nothing more, or less, than to go home. So what if he got to lie next to her, hold her hand, and inhale her perfume all night? The dangers of staying in Regency England were mounting.

  And Montgomery was a mountain that Celia needed to stay away from.

  Jason’s heart beat with resolve. He would take Celia home tonight.

  Robert pushed a wheelbarrow around the corner. “Still skulking around the chicken coop?”

  Jason glared at the kid. “Are you going to take me to meet Mrs. West or not?”

  “Depends,” Robert said.

  “On what?”

  “On what’s in it for me.”

  “Can’t you just be, you know, nice?”

  “What’d be nice is someone helping me kill rabbits.”

  “I can’t help you kill rabbits!”

  “Why not? Afraid you’ll get your fancy clothes all bloody?”

  Jason looked down at the clothes that he’d been wearing now for how many days? “Because I don’t know how, that’s why!”

  Robert’s top lip lifted in a half grin. “Pay me a penny for a rabbit, and I’ll take you.”

  “I don’t have a penny,” Jason said.

  Without saying a word, Robert handed Jason the sling shot, picked up the handles of his wheelbarrow and walked away.

  #

  Three dead rabbits later, Robert and Jason stood beside a shack at the edge of the woods.

  “Is this right? This can’t be right, can it?” Jason asked.

  Robert shrugged and walked away, leaving Jason alone in the autumn woods. Above him birds called, squirrels chattered, and somewhere a woodpecker worked on a tree. It would be so easy to believe he was in Connecticut. He wondered what would happen if he closed his eyes and wished to be home. It worked once. Would it again?

  No. He couldn’t leave Celia.

  He knocked on the door, wondering what he would say to Mrs. West. He knew what he planned to say would sound crazy, but looking around at the ramshackle shack, he thought that maybe Mrs. West was comfortable with crazy. Crazy might be what she was used to.

  Over the hill, he heard the sounds of the nearby village. He wondered what it would look like, and a memory of a BBC production of a Charles Dickens novel popped in his head, even though he knew that Charles was, at this moment, just a kid. Strange to think for this instance, he was actually older than Charles Dickens, Darwin, or even Mark Twain. Dickens had yet to create Oliver Twist; Darwin had yet to give the term evolution a new definition, and no one had ever heard of Tom Sawyer or Huck Finn.

  The door of the shack creaked open and a tiny woman with frizzled gray hair stuck her head out. She eyed Jason, and must not have liked what she saw, because she slammed the door closed.

  “Hey!” Jason called out.

  “Whatever it is you’re selling, you worthless piece of twaddle, I’m not buying!” she called through the door.

  “I’m not selling anything,” Jason called back.

  “And tell your lying scamp father that I’m done with him!”

  “My father?” Jason leaned against the door frame. “You don’t know my father.”

  “What do you mean. I don’t know your father?”

  The door cracked back open, but instead of the woman’s head, Jason backed away from a dog that was roughly the size of a small cow, and twice as ugly.

  Jason and the dog studied each other.

  “I gave birth to him, didn’t I?” The woman stood behind her mastiff-creature.

  “No, you didn’t. I’m obviously not who you think I am.”

  “Percy West?”

  Jason shook his head.

  She lowered her eyebrows and ran
her gaze up and over him. “You look like Percy.”

  “Not my fault.”

  “Those are his boots.”

  “No, they aren’t.”

  “How come you’re wearing his boots?”

  “I’m not. It’s a long story I’m hoping you’ll want to hear.”

  The woman cocked her head, considering. After muttering something through twisted lips, she opened the door all the way. “Pay no mind to Cherubim, he is as harmless as a bee.”

  Jason balked on the doorstep. “Bees aren’t harmless.”

  The old lady’s eyes twinkled. “Don’t I know it?” She tugged on Cherubim’s collar and he moved a fraction without taking his black eyes off Jason.

  Sighing, Jason side-stepped past the dog and into the dimly lit shack.

  The woman motioned for Jason to sit in a ladder-back chair while she took the rocker beside the fireplace. Cherubim settled next to her feet and let out a doggy-humph. Placing his enormous head on his front paws, he closed his eyes.

  “Now, how is it you look like my good-for-horse-pooh grandson and you’re wearing his boots, but you don’t talk like him?”

  “Because I’m not him.”

  She leaned forward, braced her elbows on her knees and fixed her greenish eyes on Jason’s face. “Then who are you?”

  “Can we first start with you?” Jason asked. “Are you Darla West?”

  “Who wants to know?”

  “Is your son, Henry, married to Charlotte Williamson?”

  The woman made a great show of picking up a ball of yarn and a pair of knitting needles, as if she was bored, but Jason suspected she was trying to hide her surprise.

  “You also had a daughter, Mable West.”

  The woman began to knit furiously, her needles clicked and clacked in the otherwise silent room. Jason looked around at the table and lone chair, small cupboard, and the one interior door that presumably led to the one bedroom. Darla lived alone.

  “What happened to John?” he asked.

  Darla sighed. “He’s with Mable, now.” She clacked her needles some more before she said, “If you aren’t my kin, how do you know my family?”

  “I didn’t say I wasn’t your kin.”

  “But I…there isn’t…” She set her knitting in her lap and frowned at him. “Tell me who you are before I ask Cherubim to chew on your rascally hide.”

  Cherubim, on hearing his name, lifted a lazy eyelid and considered Jason before going back to sleep.

  “I know I should be scared, but I’m not,” Jason said. “And you have no reason to be scared of me. I won’t hurt you.” Jason sat back in his chair and pressed his hands together in front of him. “There’s no reason for you to believe me. And just so you know, if someone showed up on my door and told me the things I’m about to tell you, I wouldn’t believe them either.”

  “Curious,” she muttered.

  “Very curious.” He told her his story. “And so you see, I think it’s just too coincidental that out of all of places and times, God, the Universe or Dr. Whoever chose to send me here.”

  With her legs crossed and her elbows on her knees, Darla propped her chin in her hand and studied Jason. Neither doubt nor suspicion flickered in her eyes. Only bright and shiny inquisitiveness stared back at him.

  “And this girl? Who is she?”

  “Celia?”

  “Yes! Is she originally from here, too?”

  “I don’t know…I wouldn’t think so.”

  Darla tapped her cheek with a long, skinny finger. “But didn’t you say that she looked like Percy’s lady-love?”

  “Well, yeah, but…” Jason considered the coincidence. “You can’t think…”

  “Oh, I do think, and so do you!”

  “But that still doesn’t explain why we’re here.”

  “Oh, yes it does!” Darla jumped to her feet and began to pace the room. As she walked, her gray-haired bun bounced on her head.

  Cherubim lifted his eyelids to watch, and lazily flicked his tail.

  Darla stopped in the middle of the room. “Tell me, do you know if Percy and Honoria have a child?”

  “They must, because I’m here.”

  “Of course!” Darla threw her arms in the air. “This explains everything!”

  Jason thought it explained absolutely nothing.

  Darla pointed her finger at him. “You must get me that child!”

  Jason leaned away from her. “I can’t. There’s no way.”

  Darla took two large steps so that the edge of her skirt touched Jason’s boots. “You must. I’m certain that this is why you are here.”

  “But I’m leaving. I can’t stay here. I have a life in the twenty-first century—a good life.”

  “Well, sometimes sacrifices have to be made.” She turned and settled back in her chair. “Did it ever occur to you that if you don’t bring me Percy’s child, you might not ever exist?”

  “What?”

  “Well, just think about it. What kind of parents will Percy and Honoria make? What sort of home could they provide a child?”

  “You don’t know. They may make excellent parents.”

  “Rubbish! I need that child, and he needs me.”

  “We don’t even know when that child will be born. It could be years from now.”

  “I don’t think so,” Darla said slowly. “I think she’s with child now.”

  “If you just think she may be pregnant—”

  Darla gasped, reminding Jason that pregnant was possibly an offensive term in nineteenth century England, but since he couldn’t worry about offending a want-to-be kidnapper, he continued. “The baby can’t be due for months, and I’m not staying that long.”

  Darla fixed him with her bulging eyes. “We shall see.” She resumed her knitting. “I think you should go in search of them.”

  “Me?”

  “Yes, you. I can’t go. They like to give themselves airs and have nothing to do with me. They would be mortified twelve times past Sunday if anyone knew that I’m Percy’s grandmother.”

  “How can they keep you a secret?”

  “I’m a cagey old thing. I keep to myself, mostly.” She stood and shuffled over to the table. Taking down an ink pot and a quill, she wrote on a slip of paper. “You will find them at the Huntly House in Trevena. I would like a report when you return.”

  Jason stood, took the paper from her, and read it. “And why should I do this?”

  “As I said, because I’m afraid that if you don’t, there is a very good chance that someday you will not be born.” She leaned forward, her eyes, which looked so strangely like his own, pierced him. “Is that a risk you want to take? A future in which you have no place?”

  #

  Celia sat in a large overstuffed chair in front of a roaring fireplace, a piece of paper and a contraption called a stylus in her hands. She looked up when she heard a sound in the doorway.

  “There you are.”

  Jason made it sound as if he had spent the morning looking for her, when she knew very well that he had been the one to disappear.

  He looked over her shoulder at her sketches. “What are you doing?”

  “Dress designs,” she told him, smiling at her drawings. “The clothes here are pretty fabulous.”

  “Do you think you could make them?”

  She frowned at him, remembering that she no longer had a dress shop, and hating him for spoiling her good mood. She went back to drawing. “I don’t know. They use a lot of fabric, so the dresses would be expensive. Besides, who would wear them? No one wants to look like Jane Austen.”

  Jason dropped onto the sofa across from her. “I bet some people do.”

  “True. Did you know they have Jane Austen festivals? I think they’re probably more of a thing in England, but they have them in the U.S., too.”

  “I bet those Jane Austen wanna-bes would like your dresses.”

  “I don’t have any of my own dresses.”

  “But you could.” Jason pi
cked up her hand. “Do you want to know what I think? I think you’re just as afraid of your own talent as you are of horses.”

  Celia scoffed. “Shows what you know. I’m not afraid of horses, and I’m certainly not afraid of design. That’s what I went to school for. It’s what I’m good at.”

  “So why are you so caught up in running a shop?”

  “The shop.” Celia sighed. “What do you think’s happening at home?”

  “See? You don’t even want to talk about it.”

  “I don’t have time to design…I have to keep the shop afloat!”

  “No you don’t. Remember, the shop doesn’t exist anymore.”

  “I don’t know if anything the way we know it exists!” Panic tinged her voice. “Do you really think time just stopped?”

  “I’m not sure time starts or stops. It seems a lot more fluid than that.”

  Celia nodded. “I know you said that we should just enjoy where we are right now, but that’s hard. At least, I think so, don’t you?”

  “Even when you have Montgomery kissing your hand?”

  She stared at him open mouthed. “Were you spying on me?”

  Before Jason could answer, Penelope and Mary came into the room looking windblown and happy.

  “What a beautiful morning for a ride,” Mary said. “I’m so sorry you were unable to join us.”

  “Yes, Mr. West,” Penelope said, “what pressing matter denied us your company?”

  “I went to call on a relative living in the village of Trevena,” Jason said.

  “You did?” Celia asked.

  Mary laughed. “Is he not your relative as well?”

  “Not that I know of,” Celia said. “I didn’t know we had relations nearby.”

  “Yes, it turns out we do,” Jason said, using his courtroom voice, the one that Celia had learned he liked to use when he didn’t want anyone to challenge him. “A very distant relative.”

  “I would like to meet this person,” Celia said.

  “I’m not sure that’s a good idea,” Jason told her.

  “Why?” Celia liked challenging Jason when he used his courtroom voice.

  “Should we invite him to the ball?” Mary asked.

  “The ball?” Jason asked.

  “Have you not been paying attention, Mr. West?” Mary asked.