by Merry Farmer
The girls were still veiled in tears by the time the group of them set out from the house for the train station. The bulky man let Marshall go, but stayed within feet of him, ready to wrestle him into submission once more, or worse. More than a few of his neighbors watched the odd procession as they hurried down the street and around the corner to the train station. In no time, rumors would be flying through Brynthwaite and speculation would run rampant. Marshall Pycroft had lost his daughters. Marshall Pycroft was not enough of a man to prevent them from being taken away from him.
“Here we are. Right on time.” The spokesman grinned and rubbed his hands together as they approached the train. It was already waiting, steam curling around the engine. “We’ve got us a nice, first-class car booked and everything, so we’ll be all cozy.” He stared at Mary as he did.
Marshall jerked toward him, fist raised. He didn’t make it far. The burly man clamped a hand over his wrist and spun him around to slam him up against one of the metal supports of the station’s porch roof so fast that it prompted a flurry of gasps and curses from the other passengers waiting to board. Marshall saw stars as his forehead hit the pillar.
“I was just joshing with you,” the spokesman laughed, low and teasing.
“Papa, please don’t make me go, please don’t make me go,” Mary pleaded with him, a darker specter of horror in her eyes. She tried to rush up and grab Marshall’s arm, but the burly man kicked her and sent her jumping back. Mary wasn’t deterred. “Get Uncle Jason. Uncle Jason will help. He won’t let them take us away. Uncle Jason!”
One of the porters caught Marshall’s eyes, baffled and more than a little frightened. “Should I fetch Mr. Throckmorton?” he asked, darting terrified looks at the bulky man and the spokesman.
Marshall nodded. The gesture sent a spiral of dizziness and nausea through him, but it served its purpose. The porter dashed off.
“Come on,” the spokesman said. “Train don’t leave for another ten minutes, but I’m thinkin’ it would be in our best interest to find our seats now.”
“You’re certainly right,” Eileen agreed. “Girls, come along.”
The girls launched into another round of desperate protest, but Marshall stilled them with a wave of his hand the moment the burly man loosened his grip. When he saw Marshall wasn’t going to attack him or anyone else, the burly man let go.
“Go with your aunt.” Marshall’s voice cracked with misery. He threw his arms around Mary, squeezing her tight, wondering when he would see her again. Mary clung desperately to him, weeping. “I will get you back. You have to trust me on that.”
“I do, Papa, I do.”
“I’m relying on you to protect the younger ones,” he whispered. His heart quaked to realize how close to being grown up Mary was now, how this experience would spell the end of her childhood, how he wouldn’t be there to guide her through the transition. He couldn’t stop his tears from falling. “I love you. I’m so proud of you for being strong.”
“Oh, Papa.”
The white-haired matron had enough of a sliver of a heart to let the other two girls go so that they could run to Marshall, slamming into him and hugging him for all they were worth. The four of them huddled there together in a tight mass. A hurricane couldn’t have broken them apart, but Marshall knew what he had to do. He loosened his grip and kissed each one of his girls, meeting and holding their eyes so that they could see the promise there.
“I will get you back. I swear to you.”
“Yes, Papa,” Mary groaned, the other two following with the same aching, hopeful trust.
“People are staring,” Eileen grumbled.
“Let them,” Marshall croaked. “Let them all see what you are doing—tearing a family apart.”
Eileen sniffed and humphed. “Enough of this. Girls, in the train, now.”
“Go.” Marshall told them, kissing each one again. He couldn’t manage any more words.
In the end, he had to walk them to the train and lift each one into the first-class compartment with more hugs and kisses. His arms grew heavy as he did, and his heart felt like a rock in his chest. When the girls were inside along with Eileen, the white-haired matron, and the spokesman, the burly man pushed him hard away from the train. Marshall stumbled, falling over and landing on his hip with a painful grunt. A porter and one of the waiting passengers rushed to help him as the burly man leapt into the train and slammed the door shut.
Within only a few minutes, the conductor was calling “All aboard” and the train began to huff and steam. Eileen had made sure that the windows were up, but Marshall could still hear muffled shouts and cries of protest from his girls as they struggled to say one last goodbye. Their faces never appeared in the windows, though. No doubt they were being held back.
The train chugged forward, slow at first, but with increasing speed. Marshall could only stand and stare, heart shattered in his chest, all will to move gone. It was over. Clara’s family had won.
“She’s a thing of beauty, isn’t she?”
It was several seconds later before Marshall recognized the voice next to him. It took every ounce of effort for him to lift his head an inch and turn it to the side to find George Fretwell standing next to him. Marshall’s brain was slow to react, slow to form thoughts and attach them to each other. He glanced at the train once more, this time seeing the beautiful head and shoulders of Lady Arabella Richmond as she leaned out one of the train’s windows, blowing kisses at Fretwell.
“What a darling,” George said, raising his hand to blow a kiss in return. “I snagged the gem of the house party in that one.”
“What?” That anyone could possibly function, let alone smile and gloat at a moment like that was repugnant to Marshall.
“We made the announcement last night,” George went on. “To much felicitation and well-wishing.”
“Lady Arabella?” The name, the story, was something out of a distant dream.
“Mmm,” George nodded. The train rounded a corner and was lost from sight, its whistle fading into the distance and leaving an eerie silence in its wake. “We’re engaged,” George said as though that was all that mattered.
Marshall stared dumbly at him. “But I thought—”
What had he thought? Something. Someone. He could barely remember right now.
“What, that?” George scoffed. “That was just a dalliance. There’s the real thing.” He nodded after the train. “That’s the prize I had in mind all along.”
The words rolled off Marshall’s skin like so much rainwater. He didn’t know what the man was talking about and he didn’t care. All he cared about was that his life had been wrenched away from him.
All at once, the folly of what he’d done hit him. He’d let his girls go without a fight. He’d allowed himself to be duped and hadn’t done a thing about it. Never mind the threats that had been hurled at him and the girls. What kind of a man was he?
Without a word to George Fretwell, he turned and stumbled off to the station’s ticket window.
“When’s the next train to London?” he demanded, panting in his desperation.
“Not until half past ten, Dr. Pycroft,” the clerk told him. The man was sympathetic, but leaned back, as though Marshall were rabid.
“I need a ticket. I have to go after them,” Marshall demanded.
“Al-all right, Dr. Pycroft. That will be twelve and six to get you to far enough to change trains for London.”
Money. Damn. Marshall slapped at his coat pockets. His wallet was at home.
“Tell you what, Dr. Pycroft,” the clerk said, lowering his voice. “I’ll loan you this ticket and the price of your next. You done me good when my Prissy was down with the pox, and I never thanked you properly.”
Marshall gaped at the man in front of him. That was all it took—one tiny sliver of kindness that he didn’t deserve. He felt the sob rise up through his lungs, bursting out in a pitiful cry, and then he double over in grief.
He wasn’t sure wha
t happened next, only that he was on a bench before he remembered walking there, bent over in despair, weeping like his girls had been weeping. He thought one—maybe two or possibly more—fellow travelers were there with him, patting his back in an effort to comfort him, but his mind was a blank, washed out with grief. The people around him couldn’t possibly be showing him sympathy, not when he didn’t deserve it. But there they were.
When the whistle for the next train sounded in the distance, a shred of sanity poked through Marshall’s grief. “Alexandra,” he whispered. He blinked and sat straighter. “Someone bring me paper and a pencil.”
It was a shock to see more than half a dozen station employees and townspeople hovering around him, anxious with concern. Two of them rushed to the ticket window, then returned in a flash with the requested paper and pencil. Marshall nodded his thanks as they handed the items to him. He bent over, using the bench to write a desperate note to Alexandra with shaking hands.
“Eileen has taken the girls. I’m going to London to win them back. The hospital is in your care until I return. I have every confidence in your ability.”
He paused, welling with more things that needed to be said. His heart was wrung out and shriveled with devastation, though, and all he could manage was to sign the note with a simple, “Yours, Marshall.”
The train whistle sounded again, closer this time. Marshall stood to meet it.
“Could someone please take this to Dr. Dyson,” he asked the concerned townspeople around him.
“I will,” a shopkeeper’s wife stepped forward to take the note.
“Many thanks.” Marshall nodded to her.
The desperation and grief of the situation hit him all over again as the train rolled into the station and stopped in a puff of steam. His throat closed anew as the hopelessness of the battle in front of him welled. The allies he didn’t know he had gathered around him, helped him into a private, first-class car, and secured the door behind him. When he was alone, truly alone, he opened up to spend his grief in desperate weeping until the train rolled on.
Lawrence
Not even the comforting heat of the forge could clear Lawrence’s mind of the troubles that beset it. Oliver worked the bellows with his usual single-minded focus as Lawrence pounded a long strip of red-hot iron, shaping it into a graceful curl that would become a part of an elaborate gate ordered by Lord Dyson—or by Lady E., at least. He should find solace in his work. The heat and sweat and flex of muscles should have helped him to focus, to see through his problems. He could barely see through the stinging smoke blowing into his eyes.
With a sigh, he lowered his arms. “There’s too much wind from the west today,” he told Oliver.
Oliver stopped pumping the bellows, but continued to stare at the forge with those distant eyes of his. Maybe he saw something beyond the mortal coil, as it were. Maybe he didn’t see anything. At that particular moment, a part of Lawrence envied his soft-headed employee for the blanket of innocence that enveloped him.
Innocence. Lawrence huffed as he crossed to the edge of the overhang beyond the forge to unroll a screen that would keep the breeze from interfering with his work. Innocence was his problem. Matty’s innocence. There was still no way to prove it beyond her word against Hoag’s. In the weeks since he’d been to Grasmere, not a shred of new evidence had come to light. Nothing beyond Bobbo’s sly confession that he knew the truth but would never rat out his friend. Nothing but the utmost certainty that Matty could never have done such a thing.
Once the screens were in place, the smoke rising from the forge found its way into the vent above without problem.
“Go on,” Lawrence instructed Oliver.
As soon as the billows were pumping once more, Lawrence returned to the alternating task of heating the iron and beating it. Heating and beating. Rhythm and purpose.
He should feel better about things than he did. Jason had called in a favor with a friend in London, a detective or a solicitor or something like that. It was hard to keep all the details straight with so much weighing on his mind. Jason had also talked about calling in a solicitor from London to help Marshall with his problems.
Marshall. With one final pounding of his hammer, Lawrence stopped to take a breath. All day, a bad feeling had rolled through his gut where Marshall was concerned. He couldn’t forget the scene at Mother Grace’s, the prediction that evil was waiting around the corner for his friend. He’d even gone out on a limb and burned bundles of sacred herbs in a three-wicked candle for his friend the day before in the hopes that some of Mother Grace’s magic might have rubbed off on him.
If only he could do the same for Matty. But the heaviness in the air of late, the oppression of a few days of rain followed by unusually steamy nights left him with the gnawing feeling that he’d never be able to overcome what fate had in store.
He resumed his pounding and shaping, fire and metal, muscle and skill. There had to be a solution. He would not give Matty up without a fight, not when his whole life made sense now that she was there. And there was something else, something latent with promise that she wasn’t telling him. He suspected that secret was the very best kind, but he would not press her into revealing it. Still, he would have given anything to glance up and see her sweeping the stairs, to see her pop her head down from their room to ask if he wanted a plum tart. Anything.
“Smith!”
Lawrence sucked in a breath and shot straight. The tightness in his gut grew acid. Somehow his most earnest thoughts had had exactly the opposite effect that he’d hoped for. Mayor Crimpley strode down the Brynthwaite road toward him at a fast clip. A man in a tweed suit who Lawrence had never seen before walked a pace or two behind him.
“Smith,” Crimpley repeated. “I need to talk to you.”
Lawrence grumbled, setting his tools aside. He was not happy about being interrupted when there was so much to be done. He was not happy about a lot of things. As Crimpley crossed the last few yards to the forge, Lawrence reached for a rag on a peg fastened to one of the support beams of the overhang and wiped his face.
“Crimpley,” he greeted the man when he came to a puffing stop several feet from the forge. “What do you want? I’m busy.” He wasn’t in the mood to play games with the mayor today.
“That’s him,” Crimpley panted, twisting toward the tweed-suited man, who took his time approaching. “That’s the miscreant who has been aiding and abetting the fugitive.”
The tweed-suited man held out his hand as he approached. He smiled, though Lawrence only frowned at his pleasantries. He slipped off the heavy glove he wore to protect his hands from the forge’s flames and shook the man’s hand.
“Detective Stapleton,” the man said. “You must be Lawrence Smith, the blacksmith.”
“I am.” Lawrence nodded. He kept his face neutral, but hope pounded in his chest. Was this Jason’s man from London?
“Tell me what you know about Mathilda Wright,” Dt. Stapleton said.
“He won’t talk,” Crimpley interjected before Lawrence could so much as think of saying a word. “He’s as tight a clam as they come. He’s been a pain in my backside from the moment he set up shop here, where decent folks do their commerce.”
Lawrence narrowed his eyes at Crimpley, then rolled them as he switched to Dt. Stapleton. “What do you already know about Matty?” he returned the man’s question with another question.
Dt. Stapleton clasped his hands behind his back and rocked onto his heels. If the heat of the forge bothered him, it didn’t show. “I know that Mathilda Wright is accused of murdering her mother in cold blood after a domestic dispute. I know that she is suspected of attempting to murder her step-father, Trevor Hoag, as a part of that dispute and that Mr. Hoag was grievously maimed in the process.”
Lawrence tugged off his other glove, tucked both under his arm, and shifted his weight. “Did Jason tell you that?”
Mayor Crimpley snorted and opened his mouth.
Dt. Stapleton held up a hand t
o stop him. “What do you know?”
Danger prickled down Lawrence’s back. The detective was cagey. It wasn’t a good sign. There was too much menace about him.
“I know that Matty is innocent,” he said at last, weighing every word as if it were gold. “I know that the accusations against her are false and that Hoag is the murderer.”
The corner of Dt. Stapleton’s mouth twitched. “What makes you say that?”
“Matty told me as much,” Lawrence replied. “She described everything that happened the night her mother was murdered. By Hoag. Hoag’s friend, Bobbo, Robert Carson, all but confessed as well. And I had an encounter with Hoag myself. He’s guilty, I have no doubt.”
Stapleton was still. Silent. His eyes never left Lawrence’s.
Crimpley, on the other hand, bristled with impatience. “Aren’t you going to—”
Once again, Dt. Stapleton held up a hand to silence him. He took a breath. “Where is Mathilda Wright now?”
“She’s safe.” Instinct told Lawrence to keep the rest as close to his chest as he could.
“Where?” Dt. Stapleton asked.
“Not here,” Lawrence replied. “Not in Brynthwaite either.”
“You know where she is?”
“Yes.” Lawrence nodded.
The confidence he felt in his curt answer evaporated the moment Dt. Stapleton’s lips flickered into a sly grin. He continued to pin Lawrence down with a stare, but now that stare held victory.
“There you go, Mayor Crimpley,” Dt. Stapleton said. “I told you I would get a confession out of the man within five minutes.”
“What?” Lawrence took a half step back, his arms dropping to his sides.
Crimpley looked as though he’d been handed a Christmas pudding. “I say, sir. You are good.”
“What are you talking about?” On instinct, Lawrence checked the area, searching for something within arm’s reach that could be used as a weapon.
