by Sophia James
The sobbing began again, quieter though now. ‘She has been difficult since her father’s death and I have not been as strong as I have needed to be.’
‘Then take a lesson and begin in London, Elizabeth. The school there is a good one and the girls will have all the care and direction they require. A new start is exactly what you all need.’
‘Could you come back to Tillings with me now and talk to her, when we have found her? She listens to you just as she used to listen to her father.’
Tay’s heart sank. He knew that it would be dark before he could return home to Alderworth. He was also worried about Lucinda, but with a carriage waiting outside and an anxious mother inside he had no time to go upstairs and explain everything to her.
Tomorrow he would take his wife out riding and show her the estate. Perhaps if she was willing he could also take her back to his bedchamber and find the same magic that they had discovered last night.
It was already morning. Lucinda had fallen asleep fully dressed under the cover of a thick blanket that lay at the bottom of her small bed after waiting nearly half the night to see whether Taylen would return.
But he had not come home. He had gone with the beautiful dark-haired woman and as the hours had tumbled one across the other she knew that he would not be back. She felt sick with the implications of what that might mean.
Had he left again, this time with the full intent never to return? My God, her brothers had been right. Exactly right. She should have heeded their word and refused to accompany him to his estate. Once a snake, always a snake. Yet he hadn’t been that at all. He had been honest and honourable. It had been her memory at fault and he was the one who had suffered.
A knock on the door had her sitting up, running the back of her hand quickly against her eyes and trying to place a smile where anguish had just been.
‘May I come in? I have your breakfast tray.’
Scrambling up, Lucinda unlocked the door and a maid came bustling in with freshly baked rolls and a pot of tea.
‘Mrs Berwick said I was to tell you that the master will be a-riding home this morning from the direction of the local village, your Grace. She said that the groom could find you a mount should you wish to venture out and meet him.’
The idea appealed. A ride might blow away the cobwebs Lucinda felt building and give her freedom to think. The added bonus was that meeting him out in the open would allow them to talk in private.
If she got one of the stable hands to show her the way she would not get lost and the weather outside looked finer than it had in weeks. When the dog came through the door she decided to take him, too, reasoning that the exercise would be good for the hound.
The horses standing in the stables were by and large older hacks, though one smaller filly caught her attention.
‘What of that one?’ she asked the stable boy. ‘The roan mare at the end?’
‘Her name is Venus. She’s a mite skittish in temperament, though, for she came with his Grace’s black as a pair and when Hades is gone she’s apt to fret.’
The perfect ride, then. If she had any chance of meeting up with the returning Duke, the odds had just got better.
‘Who usually takes her out?’
Silence told her that nobody did.
‘I can saddle up a more docile horse if you would rather, your Grace.’
‘No. This one will be fine.’ Lucinda liked the lines of Venus and she felt desperate for a good long stretch. None of the other horses here looked as if they would give her any more than a slow canter.
With anticipation she mounted and was surprised by the docile way the horse allowed her a seat. The day was blue and it had been a while since she had sat on the back of a horse in the countryside and raced across the land, feeling the wind in her hair and liberty in her veins.
After all that had happened she needed to simply feel. The wonderment in such an unexpected loving still left every fibre in her body alive with promise and had her heart racing.
She had lain there when she had awoken and felt … different. A woman who understood exactly what it was that others spoke of in the hushed tones on the far side of rooms. Yet now with Taylen’s absence everything had returned to only bewilderment.
Veering left at the main gate as the stable boy had directed, she allowed Venus her head, racing across the line of fence and bush with the sun on her shoulders. The silence of the place was absolute, the birdsong long since diminished and the day shaping up into a glorious one. The dog loped at her side in an easy gait.
At the top of the incline the lands of Alderworth spread out around her as a tableau and Lucinda wished she had brought her drawing things to capture such a view. Her eyes searched out the paths coming in from all directions, but there was nothing. Perhaps Tay had stayed on longer, lying entwined in the arms of the beautiful widow, and regretting the confidence he had allowed in his marriage bed.
A brace of loud shots had her turning as a group of men burst from the trees a good five hundred yards away.
Hunters. Lucinda felt the quiver of her horse’s fright even before she bolted, whipping the reins from her hands and tearing off in the opposite direction from where they had appeared.
She could only hang on, her fingers entwined in the hair of the mane and her feet solid in the stirrups. A hundred yards and then two, the hilly terrain giving way to a long valley and trees. The branches whipped her face as she tried to stop, shouting at her horse to slow as hooves beat faster against the muddy ground. Then she was off, flying through the air with the rush of landscape beside her and down on to the slope of a gully. She might well have stopped if there had not been a disused well at the bottom, the slopes rolling into the mouth of it and over into darkness.
A good six feet down she clung to the roots of a tree and tried to force her body into the space between earth and wood. Already she felt sick, disorientated, dizzy. Pain brought her back to the moment and the last thing she remembered was the dog looking down before turning away from the gap in the sky, the sound of his panicked barking disappearing on the wind.
One of the lads came out to meet him as Taylen cantered in to the stables. He had left the village as early as he could and made excellent time back to Alderworth. Looking at his timepiece, he saw it to be twenty minutes short of twelve. Emily had been reunited with her mother after a number of hours of searching and was suitably apologetic, though with a night behind him in the local inn Tay was glad to leave and head for home.
A sort of panic had gnawed at him for hours, the idea that something was not quite right pervading all his thoughts.
‘Will you be joining her Grace out riding, your Grace?’ The young stable hand’s face was tinged with worry.
‘The Duchess has taken out one of the horses?’
‘Venus, your Grace.’ A full frown now lingered on his forehead.
‘You let her take Venus?’
‘I offered her the choice, but she was most insistent. The stray dog went with her, your Grace, and I had the impression she hoped to meet you on the way.’
Tay scanned the hills behind Alderworth and the pathways to the front.
‘What time did she leave?’
‘Two hours ago, your Grace.’
‘Saddle Exeter for me then, and see to Hades. I will be back in fifteen minutes ready to leave.’ Dismounting, he took his leather satchel and hurried inside.
Mrs Berwick was in the kitchen when he found her and up to her elbows in flour.
Tay tried to temper his worry so as not to disturb his housekeeper, but he could hear it in his voice nevertheless as he asked his question.
‘Did the Duchess tell you where she was going riding today, Mrs Berwick?’
‘Towards the village,’ the other answered quickly. ‘I gave her the directions for the pathway you would take home and she rode out to meet you.’
A whining at the door stopped him and the dog came in, panting from its exertion. Relief budded for the stable hand had said
Lucinda had left with this animal, so perhaps she had already returned. The arrival of the same lad a second later put paid to such a hope.
‘Her Grace is still not back, your Grace. The dog came a few minutes ago and I thought she would follow. But nothing …’
Mrs Berwick was now wiping her hands off, a look of alarm spreading across her face. ‘The weather is changing, your Grace. I think it will rain soon.’
‘What was my wife wearing?’
‘Her riding jacket and skirt. They looked both serviceable and warm.’
Almost three hours since anyone had seen Lucinda after she had left. Kneeling down, Tay lifted the front paws of the dog and saw the telltale red dirt of the hills to the east on his feet. He had not crossed a river then or the silt would have been washed away. The choices narrowed.
Venus was not an easy mount and the terrain became hillier past the track into the village. Other more sinister thoughts followed. Had Lucinda fallen and knocked her head? He distractedly swiped away his hair. The Wellingham physician had been most explicit about the consequences of such a mishap.
Half an hour later Tay rode across the land to the east calling Lucinda’s name. Six Alderworth servants fanned out on horses all around him doing the same and at every pathway that dissected the main trail he sent a man off to see if she might have branched off. Forty minutes and then fifty went past, with not a stirring of anything untoward.
His hands gripped the leather reins as the thought of not finding her consumed him. He seldom panicked, yet here he was allowing ideas to come that took him to the edge of it.
If she had hit her head somehow … The warnings that Posy Tompkins had spoken of in the park had been specific. Even a little knock might do it …
His wife’s soft honesty, her smell, the way she smiled at him and stood by him. The colour of her hair falling across his body, pale against the dark, a perfect match. He could not have just found her to lose her again. The dog ran next to him, easily stretching to the pace of his horse, as one by one the miles were swallowed up.
She was shivering and even that small movement dislodged dirt from the spaces between the timber, hurling them down the steep sides of the hole where they fell into water.
Fifteen feet, she reasoned.
Two hours at least since she had been here, the sky above darkened with rain. Her head ached with the fall.
‘Please, God, don’t let it end like this,’ she prayed and then found herself shouting Taylen’s name, as loud as she could manage again and again into the silence.
A spider startled her as it jumped on to her riding jacket. She had always hated insects, but as this one with its tiny spiky legs tiptoed up her sleeve, she felt strangely aligned with it, both of them down a hole in the cold and far from safety. She watched as it crossed to a leaf further away towards the light.
‘Go well,’ she whispered and watched as it spun a web and swung up to another twig and then another. If only she might do the same, she thought, but her hand could not reach the branch above and the lip of the well on the other side was just too far away with skirts to hinder her.
Her throat was scratchy from shouting and her only hope of rescue lay in Dog. Please let him have gone back to Alderworth, she prayed. Please let him bring help. Her husband would come, she knew he would, and surely at the house the alarm must have already been raised.
But what if he did not come by dark? The thought crept into panic, stuck down here amongst what was left of the old tree roots. What would crawl out when the sun set and the moon rose and the cold of the night became apparent?
Again she shook away such thoughts. She was a Wellingham and she was strong. A little dark and cold could not hurt her and spiders did not bite.
She would sing, that is what she would do. She would sing and sing until they came, with her rusty voice and her lack of tune and her spirits would be raised. Sound would echo from the hollow stone and if Taylen was somewhere nearby he must surely hear it.
A sea shanty he remembered on the ship back from the Americas rang out around the small glade that Tay had followed Dog down to and he tilted his head to ascertain the exact direction.
Oh Blow the man down bullies, blow the man down,
Way, hey, blow the man down …
Lucinda. She was alive. He did not question the pure ache of relief as he dismounted and ran to an old disused well on the side of a hill.
Not wishing to scare her by suddenly appearing, he chanted the next line of the words back to her loudly.
A pretty young damsel I chanced for to meet …
The only sound then was that of sobbing, heartbroken wailing that had him lying across the edge of the opening.
When he looked down fear caught in his throat.
His wife was positioned precariously and the only thing allowing her any purchase was an old rotten tree that had fallen over, creating a makeshift ledge.
Nothing looked stable or safe.
‘I think the bough beneath me will break if you come down here,’ she said, her voice strained and hoarse as she tried to contain her crying. Even as she said it more dirt dribbled down the wall to be lost in the darkness of the bottom. A splash told Tay that water lay below. ‘There are spiders here, too. At first I did not mind them, but now …’ She stopped, giving the impression she had made herself do so.
‘Stay very still, then. Don’t move at all.’ He glanced around for something to tie a rope to and found it in the trunk of another tree.
‘No. If you fall …’
‘Then we both go,’ he replied, and across the rain and the dirt and in the space of eight feet their eyes caught, saying things to each other that they had not been brave enough to voice as yet.
‘Is she your mistress?’ Her quiet words were lost in worry.
‘Who?’
‘The woman I saw you with in the downstairs parlour?’
‘Elizabeth Montcrieff. She was Lance’s wife, my partner in the gold mine in Georgia. I have been helping her financially.’
‘But the ring you were wearing was on her wedding finger?’
‘Because it once belonged to her husband and I gave it back to her. That was all.’ Her chin wobbled and he saw her swallow, but another falling piece of the ledge brought them back to the present danger. ‘Don’t move while I get the rope and push yourself to the very back so that I can come down to you.’ The dog ran in circles around the top of the well, barking wildly.
A moment later he had the lifeline fastened and started to climb down the side of the drop. When he reached Lucinda he simply laid his arms about her and held her close. She was cold, her teeth were chattering and her hair was plastered to her head with the rain. It felt so good to hold her and cast away all the nightmare thoughts he had had on the ride here.
‘It will be all right, sweetheart. Here, grab the rope and I will push you up.’
He took both her hands and guided them about the thick plait of jute. ‘Don’t look down. As I push you need to pull as hard as you can and try to scramble up on the rope. When you get to the top, find the tufts of grass and heave yourself over. Do you understand?’
She nodded.
‘Are you ready?’
She nodded again.
Making a stirrup with his hands, he got her to place her boot upon it before bringing it up as far as he could go. ‘Can you see the edge?’
He felt her flurry of movement though he could not look up, his face jammed against the earth and his breathing heavy. Then the weight was gone, her boots disappearing as she levered herself across the mouth of the hole, a few errant stones coming down upon him and stinging his back.
She was safe. Lucinda was safe. He thanked the Lord for her deliverance just as the ledge crumbled away completely and he disappeared into the blackness of space.
Chapter Fifteen
Taylen was gone. The rumble of earth had taken him to the bottom, the tree he was jammed in against disappeared with him, leaving only emptiness where a second be
fore he had stood.
There was no reality to it, no recognition of the horror of it all, only an aching searing loss that had Lucinda lying down on the grass and screaming out his name.
She could just make him out at the bottom of the hole, partly buried beneath a pile of rocks and dirt, his head turned downwards. Thankfully the width of the old tree had missed landing on him and lay at an angle to one side. Grabbing the rope, she measured the full length of it and determined it finished a few yards from the bottom. Could she get down there or would she dislodge more of the crumbling walls and damage him further? The rain solved the question completely as she saw the water running in a steady stream. He would drown if she waited too long.
Removing her stockings and boots, she tied hooped knots all the way along the stem of the rope in the way her brothers had shown her how to do so many times in her youth. Coiling the rest of the line, she then threw it over the edge, watching as it swung heavily against the side of the well. Would it hold? The tree Taylen had fastened it around had not moved at all and the anchor looked well fashioned. Fear made her sweat, the close cloying air in the hole would be even worse at the bottom and she could not see how she might be able to climb out carrying him. She would be stuck there again until help came.
Swallowing away panic, she took a deep breath before making two good tight fists and levering herself over the side, the knots and their hoops allowing both her fingers and toes a good grip as she descended.
It was easier than she thought and within a few moments she was at the bottom of her lifeline. It was a few feet short and, letting it slip from her hands, she dropped the rest of the way to land on her feet to one side of Taylen, the mud slithering between her toes and the water icy cold.
He was still alive when she touched him, still breathing as she sat to take his head carefully upon her lap, away from the water.
‘Please, please be safe,’ she whispered, the echo of it hollow in the depth of the earth. Blood dribbled down his face from a cut on his brow and there was a large swelling at the crown of his head. Reaching for the hem of her riding skirt, she wiped at his cheeks, the red and brown of blood and mud strangely mixed, and his skin pale beneath their hues.
