By The Sword

by Alison Stuart

Nell caught his hand, her face anxious.

  "Is this Major Prescott's work? Did he...?” She could not bring herself to finish the question.

  Jonathan looked up at her, his mouth a grim line. “Did he rape her?” He finished the question for her. “No, but he came close. As you can see Kate fought hard for her honour."

  "Why?” Nell's voice was anguished. “I don't understand, Jon. What had Kate ever done to him?"

  Jonathan's face closed over. “I'm too tired, Nell. I'll tell you the whole story in the morning, I promise."

  "Where is Prescott?"

  His eyes met hers and she saw a cold, hard glint in them she had never seen before. “Prescott is dead. Now, Nell, I am leaving Kate to you. Giles and I have unfinished business."

  He slipped into the night with Giles and Jacob Howell and did not return until nearly dawn. There had been no time for Nell to ask where they had been or what had happened. Both men were clearly exhausted and to add to their woes Colonel Price had arrived.

  Nell barely had time to make sure they were secured in the priest hole before summoning all her courage to face the man who had stolen her home.

  He bowed stiffly. She did not return the compliment. As she looked into his podgy, ruddy face she felt only the deepest contempt for him.

  "I was expecting Mistress Ashley,” he said looking around the room, his discomfort in her presence obvious.

  "Mistress Ashley is indisposed today,” Nell said coldly.

  He twisted his hat nervously in his hands. “This is a little awkward but I have some questions for you then, Lady Longley.” He coughed. “One of my officers, Major Prescott, was found dead by the Kidderminster Road this morning."

  Nell put her hand to her throat in apparent alarm. “How awful!"

  "It appears to be the work of footpads. He was knifed. We found the knife and his purse was missing."

  Nell suppressed a shudder. Jonathan and Jacob had done their work well. Footpads did not carry swords. A knife disguised a sword wound that would otherwise have excited some comment.

  The Colonel continued, “Major Prescott was, I believe last seen heading in the direction of this house."

  "Yes,” said Nell, “indeed Major Prescott was here yesterday evening. He came to advise us that his soldiers would no longer be occupying this house."

  "When did he leave?” Price asked.

  "After dark,” Nell replied.

  "Are you sure?"

  "Yes quite sure,” Nell said firmly. “We warned about travelling abroad after dark in these unsettled times."

  Colonel Price sighed. “Well, it would seem evident that he was set upon after leaving this house.” He gazed thoughtfully out of the window. “I shall have to order a search of the general area but I do not hold much hope of finding his assailants. In the meantime I had best go and make the funeral arrangements. Sadly, he will not be greatly mourned. I shall not take up any more of your time, Lady Longley. Thank you for your assistance."

  He bowed stiffly and joined the rest of his men in the courtyard.

  Nell released her fugitives from the dark confines of the priest hole and took Jonathan to Kate's bedchamber. Kate lay unmoving, deep in the sleep induced by one of Ellen's potent draughts. Jonathan leaned over her and brushed a stray tendril from her forehead.

  Nell smiled tenderly at him. Ellen had cleaned the cut and the bruise above his eye and despite the remains of the bruising around his other eye, he had a little colour back in his drawn and tired face. He straightened and walked across to the window where, stooping, he looked out of the long, low casement at the sweep of the Thornton land.

  She stood next to him, looking at his profile. “Jon?” she said softly. “Why don't you go and get some rest?” she suggested.

  He shook his head. “Not until she wakes."

  "I can sit with her,” Nell said.

  "No, Nell,” he said firmly. “Thank you. What did Price want?"

  "He came to advise us that the body of Major Prescott was found this morning. It would appear he had been set upon by footpads on his return to Longley Abbey last night,” Nell commented dryly. “They'll not be back."

  "I am glad they found him so quickly,” Jonathan said quietly. “A Christian burial is the least he deserved."

  Nell shook her head. “Giles told me about your affair with Prescott's wife. Small wonder he hated you so much.” She put a hand on his shoulder. “Will I ever understand you, Jon?"

  He smiled at her and took the hand. “My dear sister,” he said. “It was another lifetime ago. I'm only sorry to have had to involve any of you at all."

  Nell shrugged. “I just hope that this is the end of it, Jonathan. For all of us."

  Jonathan sighed. “Just a couple more days, Nell, and then I'll be gone,” he said, “back to France and out of your lives."

  Nell sighed. “That's not what I meant. What of Kate?” She looked towards the bed. “You really love her, don't you?"

  He looked away. Wearily, he nodded.

  "Will you take her with you?” Nell asked.

  He sighed. “Dearly as I would like to, Nell, what can I offer her? She is needed here."

  Nell nodded sympathetically. “Well, that is for her to say. Now I'll leave her with you. Let me know if there is anything you want."

  Catching her skirts in her hand she left the room.

  * * * *

  In the three days following Prescott's death, Nell came to a realisation. All her life she had been protected from the ordinary troubles of life. There had always been someone else to bear the burden of responsibility—her parents, grandfather, Kate—now, for the first time she realised she was utterly on her own and that everyone else seemed to be relying on her to provide the continuity and support they all needed.

  Kate had not stirred from her bedchamber. Normally so strong, Kate seemed to have been utterly shattered by the events at Long Barn. When a dim memory returned, she had clung to her friend and described her ordeal. Nell had held her close and listened in horror, providing the silent empathy that only another woman could.

  Jonathan had retreated to the library with several bottles of wine, brooding and unapproachable. Nell had never seen him in such a black mood before, although Giles assured her they were not uncommon. It concerned Nell that once he had satisfied himself Kate would recover, he had not been near her.

  Giles, the last person, Nell had to admit, that she could ever call reliable, was also of little help. After the exertion of that night, his knee troubled him again and for a couple of days he was short-tempered and very poor company. Nell had to wait until Giles had regained a little of his strength and good humour before she felt she could entirely abandon her brother to him. If anyone could break Jonathan's mood of dark despondency it had to be the one person who knew him best.

  For Giles’ part, he was glad of an excuse to escape the cloyingly feminine world of his wife to which he had been subjected in the days since the battle. He pushed open the door of the library and for a brief moment he thought time had gone backwards. Jonathan sat on the broad window ledge, his long legs cramped into the window space, a book in his hand and a table with a half-empty bottle of wine at his elbow.

  It reminded Giles of their childhood when he would quite frequently find his friend in just such a position, brooding over the latest injustice perpetrated upon him by his parents. Jonathan looked up at Giles’ footstep and pushed his hair back from his face.

  "Has my sister sent you to cheer me up?” he asked sarcastically.

  "No,” said Giles evenly.

  He pulled up a chair, rested his bad leg on the window ledge and stretched lazily. “God's blood, Jon, as dearly as I love my wife I am beginning to yearn for the freedom of France."

  Jonathan cast him a sideways glance. “And the freedom to choose your bedmate?"

  Giles shrugged. “Nell thinks she is with child again,” he said, changing the subject.

  Jonathan raised an eyebrow. “Well that should occupy her idle ho
urs in your absence! God's blood, Giles, I swear you just have to hang your hat on a nail and you get her with child. It's a miracle you don't have by-blows from here to Paris."

  Giles ignored the jibe. “Well in your idle hours have you considered how best you and I are to escape this tangle?” he asked, changing the subject.

  Jonathan shook his head. “I'm too tired,” he admitted. “My only thought is to head for London. How about you?"

  Giles shook his head and ruefully rubbed his knee. “It'll be a while before I can sit a horse,” he said.

  They lapsed into silence again. Jonathan poured them both another glass of wine from the rapidly diminishing bottle by his side.

  "I've been wondering if Prescott was telling the truth?” he said at last.

  "What about?” Giles asked, idly shuffling a stained and battered pack of cards.

  "Prescott told me Mary's child still lived."

  Giles’ hands stilled. He snorted. “My dear Jonathan, under the circumstances he probably would have said anything if he thought it would put you off guard. He told Kate he had the boy, don't forget!"

  Jonathan swilled the wine in his glass. “But I have to know, Giles and there is only one way to find out."

  "You're surely not thinking of going to Oxford?” Giles asked in horror and saw in his friend's face that was precisely what his thoughts were. “You'd be mad. The Woolnoughs would turn you in as soon as you knocked on their door."

  "I am sure they would,” agreed Jonathan. “You're quite right. It would be madness. It was just a thought. Now are you going to deal those cards?"

  He swung his legs off the window ledge and cleared the table. Giles obligingly cut the pack.

  "Bear in mind, old friend—” Jonathan placed a heavy emphasis on the last two words “—I don't have a groat to my name."

  Giles waved his hand expansively. “Neither do I but as I see it you can add the debt to the ledger,” he said, rewarded by the first glimmer of a smile he had seen in Jonathan's face.

  They played a hand before Giles remarked, “Nell says you've not seen Kate?"

  Jonathan's face closed over again. “I don't know what to say to her,” he admitted.

  "Well, sorry might be a good start."

  "Sorry? The word is barely adequate to compensate for what she has endured for me. The best thing for both of us would be to end it and for me to leave her to her own life."

  Giles laid his cards face down on the table.

  "You're running away again!” he snapped. “You ran away from Mary Woolnough and now you're running away from Kate. God's blood, Jonathan, you are entirely undeserving of the love of either of them!"

  "Since when have you started lecturing me on how to treat women?” Jonathan angrily slapped his cards down.

  "Since I met Kate Ashley!” Giles shouted back. “Jonathan, that woman has lied for you, risked her life and nearly died for you and now you are running away from her? How much more do you intend to hurt her? Good God, man, there are times I don't understand you!"

  "Jesus, Giles!” Jonathan swore, running his fingers through his hair. “What can I offer her? I have nothing, nothing at all. No home, no future, no money."

  Giles regarded his friend for a long moment before he said, his tone controlled, “Have you asked her what she thinks?"

  Jonathan glared sulkily at the bottom of his wineglass. “I know what she thinks. I saw it in her eyes. You're right. I've hurt her, Giles, and I will go on hurting her."

  "All right, end it then!” Giles said irritably. “But do her the courtesy of telling her to her face. She deserves that at least."

  Jonathan picked up his cards and they resumed their game in relative silence, disturbed only by the driving rain on the windowpanes. The warmth of the room and the wine took its toll on Giles and he slumbered, snoring sonorously, in his chair.

  Jonathan pushed aside his chair and stood up. He crossed to the window and looked out at the moat. He opened his jacket and drew out the small, hard object he had carried since the morning after he killed Prescott. For a brief moment his fingers tightened around it before he opened his hand and looked down at the gold ring on his palm.

  Jacob had found it when he went to restore the barn to a semblance of normality. It had betrayed Kate. By giving it to her, he had betrayed Kate. He opened the window and heedless of the sudden rush of cold air, hurled the ring into the water. It hit with a small plop, barely disturbing the surface of the water, and sank. Giles was right. He had to speak to Kate, tell her to her face.

  He found Kate in her bedchamber, huddled in a chair beside the fire, her feet drawn up underneath her, her arms around her knees. Although she had a woollen shawl draped over her shoulders, in her night rail with her hair unbound she could, Jonathan thought, pass for the White Lady that was said to haunt Longley Abbey.

  "Kate?"

  She turned a deathly pale face towards him, her eyes sunken and smudged with grey. Beneath the livid bruising, he saw only utter weariness and indifference.

  Jonathan's heart sank. He knelt down by her chair and took her battered face in his hands. “We make a fine pair,” he said lightly.

  She did not smile but instead twisted her face away. “Don't, Jonathan."

  He took his hands away. “Kate...” he began but could go no further. He did not know what to say, how to assuage the hurt in those lovely grey eyes.

  "I've nothing to say to you,” she said. The bitterness in her voice cut him to the heart.

  "Giles said I should try to make amends, Kate, but I don't know how. I don't see that anything I can say is going to make a difference. Somehow simply apologizing does not seem enough."

  She tossed her head back, her eyes brimming with unshed tears.

  "It's not that, Jonathan,” she said in a weary voice. “It's not what happened in Long Barn. It is the utter futility of clinging to hope where there is none. You'll be gone tomorrow or the next day or next week—it doesn't matter—I'll be left with nothing but memories. We were both fools to think that we could even dream. Our dreams ended that night."

  He sat back on his heels as if she had struck him. He forgot everything he had been dwelling on for the last two days. Instead he wanted to take her in his arms and tell her she was being a fool but her stiff, defensive posture refused him. He looked down at his hands then up at her.

  "You're wrong, Kate. Nothing ended that night except a tortured and unhappy life."

  She looked at him, her face twisted in anguish. “But he hasn't gone, Jonathan. Every time I close my eyes, I see his face, hear his voice. I can feel his hands and I know I am utterly powerless. Prescott will haunt me forever, Jonathan. I can't make him go away. He's in my dreams, everywhere..."

  The tears streamed down her face, and she wrapped her arms tighter around her body.

  Gently, Jonathan took her shoulders, forcing her to look at him. “Kate, Stephen Prescott is dead and the guilt for his death is my burden, not yours. Sometimes we have to learn to live with memories that we think are too horrible to bear. We have to learn to recognize them for what they are: ghosts from a past that no longer have a power to hurt us."

  "But I don't understand your ghosts, Jon! Who was Mary Prescott? What did you do to cause Stephen Prescott to hate you so much? I have a right to know ... I have earned that right."

  He drew a long breath. “I agree, Kate. I should have told you at the beginning. It goes back long before the war when Giles and I went to Oxford.” He paused thoughtfully. “As anyone in my family will tell you, we were a pair of wild things. We weren't there to study. We learned to drink, to fight, to play cards and to chase women. If the war had not intervened I would probably look back and think those the best days of my life. As it is...” He tailed off.

  "You know, my mother always blamed Giles for leading me astray but I don't think either of us needed much leading. Giles had the luck with cards and I had a not entirely undeserved reputation with women. Giles and the others wagered no small amount that
I could seduce the daughter of one our dons, a girl called Mary Woolnough.

  "What made it a particular challenge was that the Woolnoughs were Puritan, unusual in Oxford at the time. Mary was betrothed to a young lawyer called Stephen Prescott.” He caught her eye. “He was the son of a farrier and by dint of his own perseverance he had turned himself into a lawyer with a promising career. He was socially ambitious and a snob. It made him easy prey. He was easily flattered. However, he learned that it was flattery at his cost after several nights of being cheated at cards and waking up dead drunk in the gutters of Oxford.

  "While Giles and the others diverted Prescott, I paid court to Mary. Dear God, Kate, it was so easy. She was fifteen and so totally innocent. She was also impossibly pretty and had the sweetest nature, despite her ghastly family. Of course she fell for me without much persuasion. Why would she not? The Thornton charm can be quite irresistible,” he said without conceit. “What I had not counted on was actually falling in love with her myself. Can you imagine the irony?” He smiled bitterly at the memory.

  "Her family was outraged when they found out that Mary had been meeting me secretly. I think her grandmother found some letters I had written her.” He looked sideways at Kate. “It may be difficult to believe but despite my reputation with women, my relationship with Mary was utterly innocent. I had won her but I had not seduced her to my bed. However, neither my family nor Mary's were willing to believe that. Letters were written to my father and I was summoned home in disgrace."

  He closed his eyes, the bitter lines in his face reflecting the memory of his father's wrath and his mother's tears.

  "I've told you that I was banished to London to redeem myself by becoming, of all things, a lawyer. Mercifully for the legal profession, the war broke out and when I returned to Oxford as an officer under Prince Rupert, naturally I sought out Mary. I found that her family had succeeded in marrying her to Prescott. Prescott, not surprisingly, had joined Parliament, and Mary was trapped in Oxford with her father and grandmother. Despite my yearning to see her, I thought I would do the honourable thing and not pursue the friendship anymore."

  Jonathan pushed back his sleeve and looked at the scar on his arm. “I took this at Marston Moor. It made me pretty useless for fighting for a while and I found myself back in Oxford kicking my heels until my wound was healed. I could have had the choice of any number of court beauties but I was bored and lonely and despite my best intentions I went looking for Mary again and found her."