A Bride Unveiled

by Jillian Hunter

  The boy said nothing. In fact, he appeared so unmoved that she wondered whether he had understood her. She waited a moment. She wanted to run, but her instincts warned her it was too late. She had hoped to make a friend. It was obvious that he did not return the feeling.

  But then his eyes changed. Color flickered behind the cold silver. His thin lips curved into a smile. “My name is Kit,” he said in a courteous enough voice, but before she could let out her breath, he drew the sword that had been concealed beneath his tunic and leveled it at her shoulder. “I think I’ll have to take you hostage.”

  Eldbert dropped his shovel. “What has she ever done to you?”

  He glanced up briefly. “Mind your business.”

  “Run, Violet,” Eldbert urged her. “Fetch my father and the servants while I hold him here. Fetch Miss Higgins if you can find her.”

  The boy gave a mocking laugh that indicated he wasn’t intimidated in the least by Eldbert. “Well, go on,” he said to Violet. “Why don’t you take your sister’s advice and run home?”

  “You don’t need to be unpleasant,” Violet said without considering the consequences. “I said that we only came here to make friends.”

  “And I said that I was taking you hostage, in the vaults, and there isn’t a thing that Guts and Garbage can do to stop me.”

  At that insult to Eldbert, Violet finally came to her senses, leaping into action before she could consider the consequences. She snapped off her shawl and flung it in her would-be abductor’s face. “I’m sorry that I ever watched you. I don’t wonder that you’re alone in this awful place. What good is it to ply a sword against invisible enemies?”

  Kit lifted his sword to disentangle the shawl, but the fringe had wrapped itself around the hilt. No matter how deftly he plied the weapon, the bits of wool refused to detach, until in the end the girl, who had no understanding of what a dangerous person she was dealing with, snatched it free and gave him a withering glare.

  She wrapped the shawl back around her shoulders with a dignity that made him feel dirty and ashamed. He recognized her as the girl who watched him from her window, and knew that she would have reported him to the workhouse by now if she meant to. She served as an audience of sorts for his sword practice. She was better company than the dead rivals Kit summoned from the vaults for frequent fencing matches. The ghosts wouldn’t hurt him. The parish overseers would if they caught him wasting work hours.

  The overseers liked flogging boys to the bone, or hanging them upside down for a night, or putting them in solitary incarceration. Kit hated that punishment the most, especially when the warden sneaked a few rats into the cell to make the offender less lonely.

  Kit had lived in the workhouse ever since he was taken from the foundling orphanage almost twelve years ago, when he was two. It was recorded in the workhouse registry that an orphanage nurse had found him when he was a bundle of squalls, abandoned and wrapped in a fox-lined cloak outside the orphanage door.

  Now he was allowed out three hours every other day to gather stones and serve as a scarecrow in the old farmer’s fields. He came to the churchyard for peace. He wasn’t sure why the catacombs and lopsided tombs attracted him, aside from the fact that they concealed a drainage tunnel that led to the workhouse.

  A century and a half ago plague had swept through Monk’s Huntley, sparing only a few families. The cemetery lay under a curse. Nothing but grass and toadstools grew beyond the shade of the encircling yew trees, and these fungi Kit beheaded with a vengeance as soon as they cropped up.

  Sometimes he staged a great sword fight for the girl’s benefit. She was far enough away that she might not be able to tell he was a fourteen-year-old pauper. Or that the sword hidden in the crypt was really a farmer’s hoe and not a Toledo steel blade.

  She was pretty enough, with dark hair, sparkling eyes, and a clear voice. Her face reminded him of one of those brooches worn by the nice old charity ladies who visited the pauper palace.

  The inmates never got a chance to eat any of the custard tarts and meat pasties that the old ladies baked for them, though. The wardens confiscated the food baskets, and that was that. So let the girl at the window look. Looks cost nothing. It was the touching Kit couldn’t tolerate. He’d learned how to defend himself at an early age against the calloused hands that stole under his blanket. The day would come soon when he’d either rise up and fight or he would run away. He’d given himself until October. It was run or be sold to a stranger as an apprentice when he turned fifteen. The workhouse didn’t give a pauper the luxury of choosing his future.

  He frowned at the girl. “I wasn’t serious about taking you hostage. Not with this.” He threw the farmer’s hoe over his shoulder. “It was a game. Sword fighting is a game. I wouldn’t have hurt you. Go home.”

  “I’m sorry,” she said.

  “For what?”

  She bit her lip. “For ruining your secret.”

  Kit was certain that he would never see her again.

  The first time he’d seen her in the window he had thought she was an invalid. Then he’d speculated that she was an heiress from London being held for ransom. No one in his right head would look for a missing girl in Monk’s Huntley.

  After a few weeks he concluded that she was being locked up as punishment for disobeying her parents. He had felt sorry for her. He had come to a lot of conclusions about her before the moment she became his friend.

  And not a single one of them turned out to be true.

  Chapter 2

  Four days later Ambrose discovered Violet and Eldbert’s secret. Ambrose suspected the pair of them were up to something, and it irked him to no end to be excluded from an activity in what he considered to be his domain. Ambrose took orders from no one, except his mother, who scared him witless, and his schoolmates, whose bullying filled him with anger and shame.

  He nearly had a fit when he found out that Violet and Eldbert had not only ventured into the forbidden churchyard to befriend a boy from the workhouse, but that the boy was teaching clumsy old Eldbert how to fence. Violet was sitting upon a gravestone, of all the disgusting places to sit, threading clover from the slope into a crown.

  The thin fair-haired boy noticed Ambrose first. His eyes narrowed in hostile recognition, as if he knew who Ambrose was, which was as it should be. Then he straightened in a stance that seemed to challenge everything Ambrose stood for.

  “What are you doing here?” Eldbert asked in a masterful voice that he’d never dared to use before this day.

  Something had changed. No. Everything had changed. Violet and Eldbert had always played the games that Ambrose chose. But now Violet rose from the gravestone, and a few clovers slipped from the crown she had woven for . . . a rough boy, a poor one, a nobody, a—God bless—a boy who was wearing the missing pantaloons that Ambrose had been accused of misplacing only last week.

  “What are you doing?” he sputtered, shaking his head in disbelief. “Why are you associating with—”

  “The Knight of the Unconquerable Sword,” Violet said, stealing a look at the other boy. “You’re not allowed in his realm unless you follow his rules.”

  “Rules? Rules? I am to follow a beggar’s rules, am I? A beggar who”—his face turned purple—“is wearing my stolen trousers? You stole them off the laundry line!” He hopped up and down in howling indignity. “Go home, the two of you, or I’ll tell my mother what you’ve been doing.”

  “No,” Violet and Eldbert said in unison. Eldbert added, “If you tell, our friend will get in trouble.”

  Ambrose’s jaw dropped as the other boy reached back for the sword lying across one of the graves. “That belongs to your father, Eldbert!” Ambrose exclaimed. “It—”

  “You’ll have to promise to keep our secret if you want to join us,” Violet broke in sweetly. “Won’t he, Kit?”

  But Ambrose and Kit were locked in a staring battle that ended only when Eldbert said, “If you keep our secret, Kit will teach you how to fight, Ambrose,
and no one will ever hurt you again.”

  “I can’t carry a sword to school.”

  “There are other ways to fight bullies.”

  Ambrose returned the next afternoon with two of his father’s smallswords.

  They met whenever they could that summer, two on each side to compete in treasure hunts using the maps that Eldbert had drawn. The only true find they made was friendship. Violet invented enchanted kingdoms and drew pictures, exasperated that the boys rarely held still. Kit had taught Ambrose the rudiments of sword fighting and how to throw and duck a punch, skills he had perfected in the workhouse yard. Although Ambrose was as obnoxious as ever, he had given one boy at school a black eye and admitted reluctantly that he had Kit to thank.

  Four friends, Violet thought with satisfaction, frowning in concentration over her sketchbook. Five if she included Miss Higgins, who was spending more time with Violet since she had discovered that her bricklayer was marrying another girl in September.

  One afternoon Kit got careless. He was showing off at swordplay for his friends, and by the time Violet’s governess realized it was time for tea, Kit could not gather more than a few stones from the field. Before he knew it, dusk had fallen.

  The older inmates at the workhouse claimed the tunnels after dark. He would lose his privileges of underground passage if he broke the rules. Besides, he felt like a human being after being in Violet’s company. He liked to keep that illusion of integrity, at least until he returned to the palace.

  But now, because of his dallying where he didn’t belong, he would have to walk through the woods and hope he could sneak through the main yard before supper. Which would be a bowl of old piss. If no one covered for him, he’d get flogged until he bled through his shirt. The pain of it would be bad enough, and he didn’t know how he could keep his outside friends from finding out that he lived like a mongrel, for all he tried to impress them.

  To add to his mounting woes, he realized he wasn’t alone in the woods. He heard whispering from the undergrowth up ahead. He slowed and swung himself into the crotch of a sessile oak. If anyone thought to jump him, he didn’t have to make it easy. He could swing down, kick one of them in the nose and the other in the thingamabobs. He waited. Shit. He counted three heads in the thicket.

  Then after another moment he realized that he wasn’t the intended victim. A middle-aged gentleman in a short cape crested the footpath. He carried a walking stick under his arm. He looked to be enjoying a leisurely stroll. He appeared to have no inkling of the three men lying in wait for him. Kit might have whistled out a warning if he didn’t have his own worries.

  There was nothing to do for it but twiddle his thumbs while the oafs divested the gent of his pocket watch and whatever else he was fool enough to carry in the woods.

  None of my business, Kit thought, and crossed his arms behind his neck.

  The three darted out with all the subtlety of wild boars. One butted the older fellow in the belly. Another charged from the rear. The third, who had a meat cleaver, went for the gent’s knees.

  It was going to be a slaughter.

  “Here, little piggies!” Kit shouted before he could stifle the impulse, reaching into his pocket for a palm-ful of stones.

  He threw hard and fast, positioned on one knee. The three obliged themselves as targets by looking up to locate his hiding place. So did the victim, who upon Kit’s closer assessment appeared neither as unaware nor as helpless as Kit had assumed.

  His eyes pinned Kit for an instant, as if he knew who he was. Of course, by then it was too late to do anything but join the fracas. He would as soon get flayed in a decent fight as in the yard.

  He rose from his position in the tree, bracing either hand to propel him into flight. He was almost to the ground when a flash of silver caught his eye, and the gent’s walking stick transformed into a lethal-looking sword.

  The blade flashed in the falling dark, and the first assailant’s arm flowed bright red. Kit hurled the remaining stones stashed in his pocket for the hell of it, laughing as the three failed thieves ran away. “Pitiful,” he mused. “Amateurs.”

  “Indeed,” said a deep voice in the dark.

  Kit’s nape crawled with foreboding. He turned, curious despite himself, to study the walking stick before he met the man’s eyes. “The morons never had a chance. Nice work, mister.”

  “I have seen you in the graveyard,” the man said slowly. “Are you not afraid of being caught?”

  Kit stumbled over a stone.

  “What is your name?”

  As if it mattered. As if anything mattered except that because of this man he was going to lose the only friends he had ever made in his miserable life.

  “I am Captain—”

  Kit didn’t wait to hear another word.

  He ran.

  Violet realized that she seemed ungrateful. It was her birthday, and she had walked into the parlor after breakfast to find a dancing master waiting for her.

  Her uncle cleared his throat. “This is your present from us, Violet.”

  “Thank you,” she said, staring past him to the window. She could see Eldbert lurking in the rosebushes. He was motioning her to come outside. She made a face.

  “Violet,” her aunt said in embarrassment. “You’ve been asking your uncle for dance lessons ever since we moved here.”

  “I know, but . . . does it have to be today, Aunt Francesca?”

  “Why not? Are you unwell?”

  “I think I might be.”

  “Then excuse yourself this minute. Do not get the master ill when he has traveled so far to give you lessons. Dr. Tomkinson said at church there is—”

  Violet darted to the door before her aunt could change her mind. She loved dancing. She did want lessons. But not when she was too miserable to care about performing the proper figures of the cotillion.

  Kit hadn’t appeared in the churchyard for three weeks. She watched for him from her window every morning and every night, as she had before she was certain he existed. Eldbert braved a daily walk through the churchyard to the edge of the woods with his father’s telescope to scan the palace outskirts.

  “Did you see any sign of him?” Violet asked over and over. She couldn’t help but ask, even when she knew that Eldbert would have told her if he had.

  “There were too many people milling about in the yard,” Eldbert replied. “It looked as if a procession of coaches were lined up outside the gates. As if visitors had come to tour.”

  Ambrose scoffed at him. “Honestly, Eldie, who’d want to tour what is practically a prison?”

  “A prison?” Violet said in horror. “I thought it was—”

  “A palace?” Ambrose regarded her in despair. “You don’t really think there is anything palatial about a workhouse? Next thing I know you’ll tell me Kit’s convinced you that he’s on holiday when he sneaks about the churchyard. He’s a born liar and a braggart.”

  “He never bragged to me about anything,” Violet said numbly. “At least, not about where he lives. It isn’t a prison.”

  Eldbert threw Ambrose a warning look.

  And Ambrose ignored him.

  “Who do you think starts life in a foundling orphanage?” Ambrose asked Violet.

  “Well, orphans, of course. Unfortunate children, like me, who have lost their parents.”

  “Chance children,” Ambrose countered, folding his arms like a satisfied genie. “Lawbreakers and little bastards.”

  An unbecoming pink infused Eldbert’s cheeks. “I lost my mother. Are you calling me a name?”

  Ambrose looked past Eldbert to Violet, who knew that she ought to cover her ears for what was to come but couldn’t make herself. “Watered-down porridge for every meal,” he said. “Hiring you out to strangers. Whippings. That’s the workhouse life.”

  “Kit has never complained to us of being hungry,” Violet said, her voice warbling. “Not once. He’s never asked me for anything to eat.” At least, not out loud. Yet now that Viole
t thought about it, Kit had never refused one of Eldbert’s ham sandwiches, either. Violet had thought it was polite of Kit to wander off to eat. But had she once considered the possibility that he was starving? That his sharp-boned face had been a sign of a deprivation he was too ashamed to admit?

  “You’re the one who’s lying, Ambrose,” she said with conviction. “You have envied Kit since the day you saw him. He’s better than you with a sword. He’s handsomer, more noble, more—”

  “He doesn’t ask for anything because he steals what he wants,” Ambrose replied. “Good grief. He stole my pants. He’s a beggar, a thief, and a liar.”

  Eldbert made a fist and drew back his arm. “Don’t look, Violet,” he said, pulling himself up to an impressive height that made Violet wonder whether he had grown overnight. “I shall address this insult to Kit’s honor.”

  Violet would have protested if an all-too-familiar voice had not called her name from the top of the slope. She glanced up distractedly and recognized Winifred amid the sheltering stand of trees.

  Reluctantly she picked up her skirt to heed the summons. Eldbert threw his punch the moment she turned away. She heard Winifred calling again, a compelling urgency in her voice. “Your uncle is coming, miss! He’s been looking for you everywhere!”

  She gasped, ducking on instinct as Eldbert’s fist extended over her head for another punch and caught Ambrose on the chin. She cared not a jot about the clumsy battle that ensued. She was too upset about Kit’s disappearance.

  Violet reached Winifred’s side as the baron huffed through the coppice to the top of the slope. He stared at his niece and her governess for an unmeasured interval, as if he sensed something were amiss and could not name it.

  “What on earth are you doing this close to the churchyard, Violet?” he demanded.

  Violet could not lie to him. Miss Higgins, however, could—and did.

  “She heard Eldbert and Ambrose fighting, sir, and tried to intervene.”