by Rebecca King
“Hello, sis,” Ben grinned as he stalked into the kitchen.
She waited for him to close the door behind him then began her tirade.
“You do know what the magistrate will do to you if you get caught with those,” Jess bit out through teeth clenched with fury.
The need to yank the birds off him and take them into the woods for burial was so fierce that she had to tighten her grip on the laundry in her hands.
Ben’s grin vanished. His gaze turned defiant.
“They haven’t caught me yet,” he replied carelessly. “Do you know how much we would have to pay for just one of these birds?”
“But we are going to pay a far higher price if you end up behind bars,” she snapped. “For God’s sakes, Ben, what do you think you are doing? At some point, the gamekeeper is going to see you, or realise that several of his birds are missing.” She threw him a dour look. “He won’t have far to look for the culprit if he starts to search for his missing birds, will he?”
“Just keep hiding the feathers and there will be no reason for him to suspect us,” Ben reasoned. He disappeared into the scullery to hang the birds before she could chastise him some more.
She quickly folded the rest of the washing and waited for him to reappear. When it became clear that he didn’t intend to, she went after him. It was terrifying just having the wretched things in the house. If the magistrate wanted to search the homes in the area and found them, it wouldn’t be just Ben who was carted off to gaol. She would have to go too because she was essentially an accomplice.
“Heaven knows what that makes the guests,” she grumbled.
She dropped the basket of laundry onto the floor and pushed open the scullery door.
“We need this food, you know we do,” Ben began as soon as she appeared in the doorway. “The guests pay us rent and expect a certain standard of food that we, dear sister, cannot provide on their rent alone. You know that.”
Jess closed her mouth with a snap. She knew he was right but couldn’t bring herself to admit it.
“You are still taking too much of a risk. I cannot run this house by myself if you end up behind bars. You know I can’t. We would have to sell up and move to somewhere smaller.”
Ben shrugged. “Is that a bad thing?”
He had made his hatred of the house, and the life they lived, known on numerous occasions from a very early age. All of it had fallen on deaf ears.
Jess sighed. “I know what you mean.”
“Do you?” he snapped.
“Yes, I do. But what else is there? I am not trained to do anything except run a place like this. I have no skills. How am I supposed to earn a living if we lose this place?”
“You could charge the guests a bit more. The pittance they pay is downright insulting,” Ben muttered.
“We are lucky to get guests at all in an out-of-the-way backwater like this. Nobody ever travels through here. People travel through the village but rarely venture this way. I cannot expect the guests we do get to pay any more. They would pack up and leave, and you and I both know it. Look at what we provide,” she sighed.
Ben knew she was right.
“We could sell it,” he suggested hopefully. “This house may be a little run-down, but it has value.”
“Only to someone who would want to buy it, Ben,” Jess sighed sadly. “Look at it. It is only the termites holding hands that are keeping this place upright. It should have demolished years ago. Nobody is going to want to buy it in its current state. Besides, even if we do find anyone stupid enough to pay good money for it, we can’t expect much for it. It needs too much work.”
“We could sell it and buy a smaller place. You know, for the two of us. I can get a job to provide for us,” he suggested, his eyes full of youthful hope.
While Jess didn’t want to extinguish that innocent enthusiasm, she couldn’t allow him to live in ignorance either. She struggled to keep the emotion out of her voice when she was able to speak past the lump in her throat.
“Doing what?” She nodded toward the pheasants now hanging from a hook on the ceiling. “I won’t let you make a living out of stealing. What other skills do you have, Ben?”
She did manage to put enough menace into her voice to dampen her brother’s enthusiasm. For the first time in a long time, her always happy brother began to look solemn and doubtful.
“What else can I do?” He shrugged as though he had never contemplated the issue before, and was a little stymied by it.
“Stop,” Jessica pleaded. She captured his shoulders between gentle hands and shook him once. “Just stop stealing. I cannot bear to see you behind bars, Ben, and that is what is going to happen if you keep helping yourself to things that don’t belong to you. It isn’t the kind of life mother would have wanted for you. Don’t forget, because you keep bringing the stolen goods here; I could face arrest too. That is not fair to me, Ben. I need to be here. I need to work to keep a roof over our heads.”
Ben snorted and glared at her. “What roof? It is barely keeping us dry,” he countered.
It was clear from the hardness in his gaze that he wasn’t going to listen to her today any more than he had any other day they had argued about this.
“Mother wouldn’t want this, Ben,” she replied.
She sighed with regret when he yanked her hands off him and stepped away. Her heart broke just a little more. She wanted to hug him but made no attempt to touch again. It was as though human emotion, or physical displays of affection, made her brother acutely uncomfortable, and it hurt.
Maybe it makes him think too much.
She watched him scour the room furtively. He looked like he was trying to find somewhere he could hide something.
“Ben, what’s going on?” she whispered.
She didn’t know how she knew, but she suspected he had something to hide. Secrets he didn’t want to share with her and, given his recent exploits, it was deeply disturbing.
“If our mother doesn’t like what I am doing then she shouldn’t have died, should she?” he replied quietly.
The confused and wounded look in his eyes made her want to cry even more. She was at a loss to know how to get him to open up to her. At the minute, she wasn’t sure what she would do if he did. Her emotions were scattered to the four winds already; driven into despair by the financial problems they were suffering. Ben’s increasingly errant behaviour didn’t help. Nor did the guests, who appeared to be getting stranger and stranger with each day that passed. To add to that was her lack of ability to do anything significant to change everything that kept going wrong in both of their lives.
“It wasn’t her fault she had influenza, Ben. She would have stayed if she could. You know that,” Jess whispered. “This hurts me too, you know. Unfortunately, at the moment, this is the situation we are in so we have to do our best and get by as well as we can. That means we have to stay safe because all we have is each other. You are the only family I have, Ben. If you go off to prison, I will be here all alone and I cannot-”
Her voice trailed off beneath the weight of defeat she struggled to contain. There were times when she just didn’t want to get up in the morning, but she did. Each day was the same. If she wasn’t preparing food she was sweeping, cooking, cleaning, and seeing to other people’s needs. The monotony of it; the sheer relentlessness of it, was getting to her. Nobody ever seemed to stop and consider her wants and needs. She desperately wanted to take a breath and simply enjoy her day. But, besides Ben, there was nobody around to care much at all about what happened to her.
“I sometimes wish this bloody place would burn down,” Ben snapped suddenly. “Then you would have to leave it behind and move somewhere else. We could live in a house where we are not forced to pick up after useless lodgers.”
“Ben, we need their money,” she said fervently.
“I mean it, Jess. I wish this house would go to Hades.”
“Don’t say that,” she admonished. “Then what would we do? We would
have no money to use to buy somewhere else. We cannot sell it if it a pile of ash, can we? It will be worthless. Do you want to see me out on the streets, Ben? Because that is where it would put us.” She waved a hand toward the hanging birds. “It is no good expecting to survive getting your hands on stolen pheasants then. Not only will we not have a fire to cook them on, but we won’t need a house then. We will be behind bars, where you put us.”
“They feed us at the minute, Jess.” Ben’s voice was suddenly considerably younger than his one and twenty years, but Jess wasn’t about to be swayed.
“Just stop taking them.”
Their conversation was interrupted by a sudden series of knocks on the front door.
“It’s your turn,” Ben said.
He leaned his hips against the dresser behind him and folded his arms to show her that he had no intention of answering the door.
“Just hope it is not the magistrate,” she warned as she stalked out of the room, and slammed the door behind her.
When she saw who it was on the doorstep, her anger at her brother vanished in an instant and turned into something infinitely more protective.
“Hello, Miss Parkinson,” the magistrate, Lloyd, drawled arrogantly. “Might we come in for a minute?”
“Why, yes,” Jessica murmured reluctantly.
She tried to keep her face a mask of civility as she stepped back to let them in but, deep inside, carefully tucked away from the magistrate’s prying eyes, she was panicking. Her mind was in frantic turmoil while she tried to think of a way to warn Ben to hide the stolen pheasants.
She preceded the magistrate and his assistant, Carruthers, into the front sitting room, hoping that Ben had overheard the voices, and had realised who it was.
“This isn’t a courtesy call,” the magistrate warned as he moved to stand before the fireplace.
Jessica didn’t offer either man a seat, nor did she take one herself. They were not making a social call, and neither man was welcome. It was imperative she got both of them out of the house as quickly as possible. Preferably, before they asked to search the place.
She watched Carruthers wander aimlessly about the room inspecting various small vases of flowers dotted here and there. The way he stalked around had a somewhat predatory air about it; as though he was sizing the place up. It irked her to see the man’s arrogance and wished she was socially adept enough to issue him with a scathing put down. However, she knew both men had reputations for being devious and manipulative. Their arrogance was legendary, and their conduct more questioning than the criminals they attempted – and frequently failed - to capture. If she challenged them, they would be apt to make her life a lot harder than she needed it to be, and she couldn’t risk that.
“We have had reports from the gamekeeper at the Priory that someone has been poaching on the estate.”
“Oh?” Jessica’s heart thumped heavily in her chest.
“Yes. Have you heard about it?”
“Me? No. Why would I?” she asked blandly.
“Excuse me,” she snapped as Carruthers lifted the lid of a porcelain pot sitting beside the fireplace, and took a look inside.
Striding over to him, she yanked it out of his hand with a glare and put it back on the pot.
“I don’t think you will find whatever you are looking for in there,” she snapped pointedly.
“Take a seat, Carruthers,” the magistrate murmured as though he had every right to offer guests a chair in her house.
Rudely, Carruthers took a seat and settled back as though he intended to remain there until he got the truth. To her disbelief, Lloyd then sat down.
His gaze slid nonchalantly over Jessica. The slow, steady perusal was insulting; and held a particular hint of sleaze to it that made her shudder in disgust. However, she was determined not to allow the man to know just how much he upset her.
She threw him a filthy glare and lifted one snooty brow.
“So, why are you here?” she snapped. “I seriously doubt any of my guests would be bothered even to try to find the Priory. If you want to ask them, you will have to come back later. They are all out at the moment.”
The magistrate nodded, but Jessica had no intention of being fooled by the man’s bonhomme. The look in his eyes was cold and ruthless.
“Who do you have staying here now?” he drawled.
Jessica sighed and turned her glare on Carruthers. However, without seeming rather too defensive, she could see no reason not to tell the magistrate what he wanted to know. She doubted he had any interest in the guests, or would be bothered to speak to any of them. He was stretching out the visit; trying to irk her. If she refused to tell him, she knew he would suspect she had something to hide, and would badger her even more.
“I have four guests here at the moment. But they are not likely to want to steal anything.”
“Do they take their meals here?” the magistrate asked.
Although Lloyd’s face was placid, there was a slight hint of a sneer on his lips as he looked around the shabby room. It left Jessica with no misunderstanding that he considered it less than satisfactory.
“Not all of them. I provide breakfast and an evening meal if the guests wish to eat here in an evening. Otherwise, they eat out.”
She hated being made to feel that she had to tell him so much. As far as she was aware, she had done nothing to give either man any indication she had done anything wrong. It wasn’t her they should be pummelling with probing questions. Still, it was better than them questioning Ben. Thankfully, neither of them saw fit to mention her brother yet. Unfortunately, neither had they come up with a justifiable reason for even lingering so much either.
Placing her hands on her hips, she turned a fierce glare on the magistrate.
“Just what is your purpose for calling round?” she demanded bluntly.
Lloyd shrugged and plucked absently at a piece of lint on his breeches. “We are just seeing what you are doing; that’s all.”
“I cannot help you. I don’t know who is poaching. I doubt you will find the person responsible for the lord’s loss sitting in my sitting room,” she replied flatly. “I suggest you tell him to keep an eye on his staff. Now, I am sure that if you are making house calls, then you need to move on and pester some of the other villagers. I haven’t ever been to the Priory, much less taken anything from them. Moreover, I haven’t seen or heard a thing. However, I cannot speak for the guests. If you want to talk to them directly, you will have to do so later. Now, if there is nothing else, I have things to be getting on with.”
She knew she was rude, but their behaviour was offensive so they could hardly take her to task for not welcoming them with open arms.
When neither man made any attempt to leave, she stalked toward the door.
“Before you go,” Lloyd called after her.
She turned to glare at him. She refused to show him how discomforted she was in his presence. It took effort not to take her instinctive step back from him, especially when he suddenly lunged to his feet and practically flew across the room until he was inches away from her.
“I am sure the owner of the Priory can withstand the loss, but I don’t expect anything else to disappear,” he murmured quietly.
“I don’t see why you are telling me,” Jessica protested brazenly.
She struggled to withhold her shudder, especially when the magistrate’s gaze dipped to her cleavage and lingered. She wished there was enough material there to cover her, but there wasn’t. Ignoring his visual assault, she squared her shoulders and threw the man a defiant look of contempt.
Lloyd studied her for a moment. He hesitated, as though about to tell her something. At the last moment, he appeared to change his mind. With a quite false smile, he bowed politely and clicked his fingers at Carruthers.
“Come on, Carruthers. It is time we were going,” he drawled.
“We are just trying to find out if anybody has seen anything, that’s all,” Carruthers mumbled.
&n
bsp; “I haven’t,” she protested again.
“Are you sure?” Lloyd drawled quietly.
“Yes, I am sure. Now, if you don’t mind? As I have said, I have work to do,” Jessica repeated, trying to keep her desperation out of her voice.
“So do we, my dear. We are just reporting that the Priory has had a brace of pheasant stolen. If you know where they are likely to be you should tell us,” Lloyd warned without taking his eyes off her.
“I have told you what I know. I suggest you get out there and find the person responsible,” she ground out through clenched teeth.
She refused to break eye contact with him while she spoke. He would see that as some twisted victory, and she couldn’t allow that to happen, or she would never get rid of him.
“You won’t find him this house,” she added for good measure.
The magistrate suddenly glared at her. There was something in that direct look that warned Jess the man knew more but wasn’t telling her. It left her to wonder if either Lloyd or Carruthers had seen Ben with the pheasants.
Determined not to lose her freedom, Jess tipped her chin up and gave the man her most withering glare. She refused to be cowed but struggled to keep her dismay from her face when his warm, damp hand captured her chilled fingers.
The silence thickened as she watched him lift her hand to his lips. The moist kiss he placed on the back of the soft skin lingered far longer than was polite, but when she tried to pull her hand away, his fingers tightened. All the while his lips rested on her skin, his gaze remained locked on hers. She couldn’t quite make out of he was trying to be intimate or was threatening her. Either way, it was repulsive.
“Let me know if you hear of anything,” Lloyd murmured quietly.
Jess yanked her hand out of his grasp before he had lifted his head. Wiping it on the back of her skirts, she sidled around him and hurried into the hallway. Thankfully, without holding a sit-in protest, both men had to accept their direction to leave.
“I have to be getting on with dinner,” she declared in a loud voice as she moved toward the door.
