by Rebecca King
TO HAVE
A
HEART
STAR ELITE
A NEW ADVENTURE BEGINS
BOOK 7
by
REBECCA KING
© 2019 by Rebecca King
The moral right of R L King to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988.
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopy, recording, or any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the author.
This book is a work of fiction.
Names, characters, places, and events are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, either living or dead, events or locales is entirely coincidental.
Further books in this series will be published shortly.
TABLE OF CONTENTS
CHAPTER ONE
CHAPTER TWO
CHAPTER THREE
CHAPTER FOUR
CHAPTER FIVE
CHAPTER SIX
CHAPTER SEVEN
CHAPTER EIGHT
CHAPTER NINE
CHAPTER TEN
CHAPTER ELEVEN
CHAPTER TWELVE
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
DAMSEL IN DISTRESS – THE LOCAL HEROES SERIES
MISS FLORENTINE’S SCHOOL FOR INVESTIGATORS
MURDER AT HYNDE HOUSE
TUPPENCE
OTHER BOOKS BY REBECCA KING
CHAPTER ONE
Mallory Reynolds slid a huge pile of freshly washed dishes onto the sideboard and looked down at her raw and chapped hands. She had already spent several hours washing a seemingly endless pile of pots and crockery and wasn’t finished yet. There was another stack of pots waiting for her which would take several hours to get through. She had to wash them. There was no choice, despite the pain in her hands growing considerably worse throughout the day. The thought of putting her hands into water and suffering through the pain made Mallory want to cry. But she couldn’t. She daren’t.
I am not going to show these hideous people any weakness. They are merciless predators and will pounce on me as surely as a cat would on an unsuspecting mouse.
The last time Mallory had cried in front of the below stairs staff she had not been allowed a moment’s peace for several weeks; not days - weeks. The cruelty of their barbed jibs and bold insults had been so spiteful that Mallory had, albeit briefly, contemplated whether she would be better off dead.
“What are you standing there for? You have work to do. Get on with it,” Mrs Cummings, the housekeeper, snarled at her from the doorway.
Mrs Cummings swung a large hand out and smirked when Mallory ducked out of the way of the fist that nearly slammed her into the back of her head.
“We don’t pay you to stand about all day. Get on with it.”
“You don’t pay me at all,” Mallory muttered, hating the woman with everything she was.
This time, she wasn’t so swift in ducking away from the woman’s heavy hand, which slammed painfully into the side of her head with a resounding thump. Mallory clutched her throbbing temple and glared balefully at the older woman, but Mrs Cummings had already turned away.
“Edward, Mallory hasn’t got enough to do,” Mrs Cummings called as she returned to the kitchen. “Find her something useful to do. God knows she is far too lazy and thinks she is here to stand about looking bloody useless all day.”
Edward, the master’s private butler, appeared in the doorway of the scullery and sneered at Mallory with narrow, lecherous eyes.
“I can see if the master wants her upstairs,” Edwards said in a tone that was calculatingly suggestive.
Mallory knew exactly what that meant. The last time one of the serving girls had been sent upstairs she hadn’t returned to the kitchen. Heaven only knows what happened to her, but her screams would stay with Mallory forever. Mallory hated to even think what the poor girl had been subjected to before she had vanished, but Jemima’s plaintive wails of pain had echoed around the house for hours. What followed had been much, much worse, though.
“Silence. Deathly silence,” Mallory whispered. “That’s what followed.”
Rather than show Edward just how much the idea of going upstairs sickened her, Mallory forced herself to look at the pots that awaited her. She did her best to keep her face devoid of all expression. For now, all she could do was wait and let Edward indulge his spiteful nature.
He did that a lot, as did Mrs Cummings. It seemed that a part of their respective jobs was tormenting Mallory, and Jemima while she had been there, with as much abuse and bullying and yes, physical beatings, as they could. From the brief chats she had managed to have with Jemima, Mallory had learnt that the young girl, who had been not a dissimilar age to herself, had not arrived at the house willingly either. Jemima had been kidnapped too and forced to work as an unpaid slave at the house despite her vehement demands to be set free. Jemima had also been threatened with death if she ever tried to escape, and had been kept busy with hours and hours of hard, back-breaking work – until the fateful day she had been sent upstairs to see the master of the house - her kidnapper.
Six months. That’s how long I have been here. Six months, and it has been pure Hell.
Mallory had been swept right out of her life and held captive in a house she didn’t recognise, in the middle of God knows where, with no chance of escape. Like Jemima, she was expected to work morning, noon, and most nights; long tedious hours of toil and suffering with minimal food, little or no rest, and absolutely no reward for her effort. She didn’t get paid. The one and only time she had asked if she was going to receive payment for the work she did, Mallory had been beaten so severely by Edward that she had struggled to walk the following day because of pain in her bruised ribs. It was a mistake she hadn’t dare make again.
Without saying a word, or acknowledging Edward’s lingering presence in the doorway, Mallory returned to washing the teetering pile of pots waiting for her. She didn’t stop to think about what she was doing. There wasn’t any need. The work was tedious, boring, and repetitive. It was now also worrying because of the state of her hands. Mallory had to wonder how much longer she could bear the pain from the callouses.
I must keep washing. It is the only thing I have to do with my time. Stopping only gives me time to think.
Battling tears, she dully washed pots and waited until Edward’s shadow disappeared. Once he had gone, Mallory heaved a sigh of relief, rested her hands on the sink, and dropped her head while she did her best to gather her nerves. She knew she had come close to having another beating. The thought was simply horrible. Mallory usually felt safe in the scullery mostly because it was where she spent her days and was somewhere Mrs Cummings and Edward rarely ventured into. While it was a small, cramped room with no heating and minimal light it had still become her sanctuary; a place to get away from the abuse of her captor’s employees.
Her peace today didn’t last long, though. Before she could return to washing the pots, Mrs Cummings appeared in the doorway once more. She dropped a heavy basket at Mallory’s feet with a dull thud, and threw her a dark, menacing glare.
“Here, get those on the washing line. Hurry up about it. Don’t just stand there. You don’t have all day. When you have done that you can peel the potatoes for dinner. Get to it. Now.”
Mallory knew what would
happen if she didn’t do as she was told. The last time Mrs Cummings hadn’t been happy with Mallory’s work she had sent Malloy to the small cell-type room in the basement that was her bed chamber without anything to eat. But Mrs Cummings hadn’t considered that to be punishment enough because she had refused to feed Mallory the following day as well. Mallory suspected Mrs Cummings would have just starved her to death had Mallory not almost collapsed from hunger on the third morning. Only then had Mrs Cummings relented and slammed a small plate of bread and cheese in front of her together with another pile of dirty pots to wash.
Glad to be able to get her hands out of the water for a while, Mallory eyed the basket beside her warily but gamely tried to pick it up only to find that she was too weak to lift it off the floor. Still, she tried desperately to get the heavy burden off the ground but ended up half-dragging, half-carrying it toward the door leading to the garden.
“Do you think we should allow her out?” Edward murmured to Mrs Cummings.
Together, he and the housekeeper watched Mallory wrestle the basket out of the door but neither of them made any attempt to help her.
“She doesn’t have the energy to run anywhere. Leave the stupid witch. She can struggle,” Mrs Cummings snorted dismissively before turning back to the kitchen. “I am not going to help her. She can suffer. The master wants her rendered incapable of putting up a fight, so that is what we are going to do, Edward. Nothing more than that.”
Mallory was trying her hardest to pretend she wasn’t listening but hung on to every word of their conversation. So she could think about it some more, Mallory was compelled to do everything possible to get outside with her heavy burden. On any other day it would have been nice to get out of the house and savour some fresh air and sunshine. Today, the sky was overcast and accompanied by a bitter wind that was icy. It cut through Mallory’s thin dress with razor-sharp cruelty. So much so, Mallory eyed the house longingly, wishing she would be allowed to go back inside to fetch her shawl. But she knew she wouldn’t be.
“It would almost be a blessing if I dropped dead from influenza,” she grumbled with a miserable sniff.
Mallory turned her attention to the basket of washing. She tried not to cry when the wind tore at her chapped hands and made them sting. The pain was a sharp reminder of just how desperate her life was now. Desperate, and a million miles away from where she had grown up.
“That life is over,” she whispered mournfully.
As Mallory stared down at her familiar fingers, she suddenly felt an acute detachment the likes of which she had never felt before. Her hands felt like someone else’s hands; familiar to her but strangely disconnected from who she was. They belonged to the woman she had been prior to her ordeal; someone who had been free, had made her own decisions in life, and had, without knowing it, been rather settled and content with her lot in life. The hands Mallory was staring at now bore testament to the long hours of suffering she had endured; the tedious and relentless work. It was horrible to think that they were a warning of who she was going to be from now on.
“My hands aren’t ever going to get any better while I stay here. I need to leave,” she whispered as she studied the sore and red callouses.
“Good morning.”
While the deeply rumbling innocuous statement was innocent enough, its unexpected call was enough to make Mallory physically flinch as though she had just been struck. Like an animal scenting danger, her head snapped up as she glanced wildly around for the source of the greeting. It took a few moments for Mallory to realise that the voice had been kindly; far nicer than any she had heard since her arrival at the house.
“Hello?”
Mallory’s gaze collided with an innocuous looking gentleman standing about six feet away. She opened her mouth to speak to him only to close it again with a snap. A furtive glance at the window assured her that nobody was looking at what she was doing. Still, she knew that someone would check on her. If they saw her talking, she would be in deep trouble – again.
Mallory squinted suspiciously at the man. The urge to ask him what he wanted was strong. He was a stranger, that much she knew.
He probably isn’t aware that he shouldn’t speak to me.
When the man didn’t seem inclined to move on, Mallory glared at him. He smiled at her, seemingly oblivious to her growing dismay. Determined not to get anybody else into trouble, Mallory turned her attention to hanging out the washing. There was so much she wanted to say, to ask of the man, that she didn’t know where to start even if she was bold enough to have a conversation with him.
I cannot trust him. He is a stranger and might work directly for the master. I wouldn’t put it past that lot in the house to send him out here to talk to me just to get me into trouble.
Mallory glared at the man once more.
“What?” she snapped, growing impatient.
“Should you be out here without a cloak on?” the man asked.
“I am not out here through choice,” she retorted with a glare.
The stranger frowned slightly but nodded, as if he didn’t understand but wasn’t going to ask for clarification.
Mallory picked up a large sheet and shook it out.
“It’s cold out,” the man continued, completely unconcerned by her reticence.
“Yes. It is,” Mallory murmured politely.
She doubted he had heard her because the wind snatched her words out of her mouth and carried them away the second that they were spoken.
Mallory began to peg the washing out like she had been ordered to do. She tried to ignore the painful sting of the cold wind nipping at her upper arms but couldn’t contain the shiver that tore through her. It was so violent that she had to clamp her teeth together to stop them clattering.
“Would you like me to fetch you a cloak?”
Mallory shook her head. The words: ‘please leave me alone’ lodged in her throat. She daren’t tell the man to stop pestering her in case he told Mrs Cummings or Edward that she had been rude.
“I doubt the washing will dry on a cold day like today,” the man continued in his usual gentle tone.
Mallory knew it wouldn’t, but that didn’t matter to Mrs Cummings. The spiteful housekeeper would get a thrill out of watching Mallory struggle in the chilly autumnal weather. She would undoubtedly be waiting for Mallory to finish and go back inside where it was warm but only so she could send her outside again to fetch the washing in. It was something Mrs Cummings had done to Jemima on several occasions, before Jemima had disappeared. Now that she was no longer in the house, Mallory suspected that all of Jemima’s jobs would be hers, as would the torment.
“Are you all right?” the man asked softly.
“Will you go away?” Mallory hissed impatiently.
It irked her that she was so worried about what Mrs Cummings would say not least because it left Mallory in little doubt about just how much control the housekeeper and Edward had over her. She hated it. She hated them, with a ferocity that made her shake more violently than the wind.
Sucking in a breath, Mallory had to content herself with sliding a furtive look at the window. Mentally willing herself to keep calm, she turned to the man and looked him in the eye.
“You are going to get into trouble if they catch you talking to me.”
The man’s brows lifted. He slid a look at the window. Together, he and Mallory watched the shadows shift. Mallory hastily turned her attention back to the washing. Inside, she was a seething mass of fear and helpless desperation that was suffocating.
It took a moment or two before she realised that the man was still watching her, apparently waiting for her to talk to him.
“What do you want? Why are you staring at me like that?”
Indeed, the man’s acute scrutiny was decidedly unnerving. Mallory slid a gaze to the window. To try to hide the fact that she was talking to the gardener, Mallory picked up a large sheet and stood directly behind it as she hung it so that her upper body wasn’t visible from t
he house. Only then did she glare at the stranger more forcefully.
“What do you want? Do you know how much trouble you are going to get me into if they see you standing out here talking to me?” Mallory cried. “Do you work for him?”
“Him who?”
Mallory knew the second her question was out of her mouth that it was foolish to ask it. Of course the man worked for Melrose. All the staff did, except her – willingly of course.
“You need help,” the man announced, as if she didn’t already know.
In that moment, his gaze hardened. Their gazes clashed. Mallory frowned at him while she tried to comprehend whether he was being serious.
“There is no help for me,” she murmured in a voice that was little more than a plaintive wail.
“Really?” The man’s lips twitched.
“I don’t find anything funny about it.” Mallory’s chin tipped up.
She glared angrily at him, aware that he was likely to start mocking her just like Mrs Cummings and the servants did.
“I am not laughing,” he assured her.
“Well, it seems that way. Why are you smiling?”
“I am not smiling,” the man objected.
Mallory scowled and decided not to argue with him. Instead, she flicked out another sheet and moved along the washing line to peg it out. She desperately wanted the man to mean something more by his statement than she needed physical help to peg the washing out, but she daren’t ask him.
“It is my job to peg the washing out. Please don’t help me,” she pleaded purely because any help that he gave her was only going to double her workload and make her situation worse should Mrs Cummings see him.
The man watched her for several moments more.
“Please go away,” she hissed again when she couldn’t stand his silent scrutiny for a second longer.
It hadn’t been until this man appeared that Mallory had realised how little she had conversed with anybody in the last several months. She had been talked to, ordered, commanded, scolded, and ridiculed, but nobody had ever spoken properly to her like she was a person.
