Robespierre, an ancient, battle-scarred chestnut, lifted each hoof as if it were a twenty-stone weight. White hairs frosted his muzzle, and his spine jutted down his back like a mountain range. Claire had tried to appeal to Beveridge-Haugh for a better mount, but Arabella insisted. The girl’s mare, Julitta, was attached to Robespierre, she said. The mare nickered for him whenever Arabella pushed her ahead, slowing her young springy strides to match his plodding old ones. Time after time, Claire had to apply her heels to Robespierre to catch up with the steward. Despite her efforts, the animal lagged, making multiple attempts to turn back to his stall and bucket of oats. Her heart went out to the ancient horse, but fear of being alone with Arabella drained her sympathy. “Sir,” she called out for the umpteenth time, “can you wait, please?”
Beveridge-Haugh jerked his horse to a standstill and turned to glare in frustration. “There’s men out there don’t know what to do about the water. I knew it wasn’t good to bring the ladies.”
The whir of a whip sounded, landing with a whap. Robespierre bolted forward into a ragged canter, nearly unseating Claire in her sidesaddle.
“Atta girl,” cried Beveridge-Haugh.
“I make him run!” Arabella called with a trill of laughter.
The steward spurred his mount and they cantered down the lane. In short order, however, Robespierre, wheezing and grunting, slowed to a trot. Arabella whacked him again, and the horse made a good effort, but stumbled badly on a pothole. Claire pulled him up, so angry she could spit. “Why did you give me this mount?”
Arabella’s eyes went wide. “This a sweet, old horse. You say you no ride too fast.”
“I did not mean I wished to crawl.”
“Julitta, she like this old horse. Make her happy.”
Sides heaving, Robespierre coughed, his shaggy head drooping with exhaustion. “This is useless,” Claire said. “I have to go back.”
Though the fog had lightened, Claire still couldn’t see the tower at Bingham Hall. Nonetheless, she was sure Robespierre would take her back safely. Horses possess an uncanny instinct for finding their way home. “Tell me about the flooding when you return,” she said.
Deliberately turning her back on Arabella, she reined the old horse toward home. Robespierre’s head immediately came up, his ears perked forward, and life came into his plodding stride.
“Watch yourself in this fog,” Beveridge-Haugh said, calling after her as the old animal headed down the lane.
Arabella rode between them, cutting Claire’s view of him. “I take her home.”
“I’ll find my own way, thank you.”
“It’s best if you go with her, Miss Arabella,” Beverage-Haugh chimed in, clearly relieved to be rid of them both. The steward put his horse into a trot and drew quickly away.
“Go with him,” Claire said, glowering at Arabella.
The girl smiled. “No, you get lost.”
Rabbit fear gripped her. “Mr. Beverage-Haugh, don’t leave me…” But the steward was already too far down the lane to hear.
Arabella grasped the reins of Robespierre’s bridle just under the bit and pulled him into a stiff-legged trot. The change in stride forced Claire to concentrate on staying in the sidesaddle. “Release the reins. I’m capable of steering my own horse.” She tried to keep the hostility from her voice, but failed.
Arabella ignored her. “We go this way,” she said, turning off the lane. Robespierre shook his head and pulled to go back.
“This is not the way we came.”
“Is short cut.”
“But it’s taking us onto the moor.”
Arabella pretended not to hear.
“Give me the reins,” Claire demanded, trying to yank them from the girl’s grip. Her struggle sent Robespierre into a ragged canter. “Apuro, apuro!” Arabella screamed.
A sudden lurch pitched Claire onto Robespierre’s neck. Her jaw snapped hard—teeth on teeth—thoughts shattered by the blow. When her senses collected, she found herself slipping from the sidesaddle into a fetid bog. Time crawled as she struggled to stay on her mount, but Robespierre, panic stricken, plunged and heaved in the muck. When she hit the mud, it closed over her head, black, cold, and horrifying.
She fought her way to the surface, the heavy skirt of her riding outfit weighing her down. One breath and she went back under. Don’t panic. Don’t panic! her mind screamed. With frantic fingers, she undid the suspenders and found the hooks on the skirt. Already her lungs begged for air.
First hook undone, she pulled down, but the skirt would not go over her hips. Lungs bursting, she yanked on the second hook. It wouldn’t give. Her body shrieked, breathe. Open your mouth and breathe! As she fumbled with the fastener, reason whispered to give up, to let the muck take her in its welcoming arms. Then the hook came free. She flailed at the surface, swimming against the weight and suck of ooze. The skirt fell away and her hand hit Robespierre’s side. She found the edge of the saddle, and with all her strength, hauled her head above the watery surface. Gulp after gulp of air filled her lungs. She coughed bog mire; spitting, gasping, yet so happy to be breathing, she could have laughed.
When at last she scraped the mud from her eyes, she realized Robespierre wasn’t struggling. “Poor old horse,” she said, turning toward his head.
Astride her mare, Arabella sat watching: framed by a haze of moss, heather, yellowed grasses, and the clamshell sky.
Claire kicked forward, but, like a living carnivore, the bog dragged her deeper. “Help!” she cried.
“I find someone,” replied Arabella. But she didn’t move.
“Quickly!”
Robespierre snorted. Making another attempt to free himself, the old horse’s eyes flashed white, spittle foamed at the corners of his mouth and he thrashed heavily in the mud half way up his belly. The animal’s jerky movements sucked Claire closer to its hooves.
She kicked to get away and went deeper into the mud instead. Frantic, she looked to see how far Arabella had galloped. The girl was still there—watching with an odd, distracted look.
“Go! You must get help,” Claire screamed. “Ride for Lord Monroe.”
“Si, si,” Arabella said eagerly. But she didn’t turn the mare away.
With the clarity of a whip cutting the air, Claire knew Arabella wanted to see her die. The thought terrified her. And with the terror came a wave of despair so great it chilled her to the bone. “Please,” she begged. “Please, please help me.”
Arabella’s mouth opened then closed.
Panicked, Claire struggled in the mire. She threw her body away from the horse, but the mud held fast. “Turn away!” she screamed. “Don’t look at me!” But the response was a shake of the head, as if Arabella didn’t understand.
Claire took a handful of mud and hurled it at the girl’s impassive face. It landed with a smack on her left knee.
“You witch!” Arabella screamed. “You maid of the devil. I tell Flavian everything. He know you for the demon you are!”
Claire was stunned. “Demon, me?” Her eyes went hot with rage. “You’re a sick, mad nightmare! Turn away from me, I tell you.”
“I stay here. I stay here until your breath bubble in mud.”
Everything Claire believed about herself—her character, her comportment, her gentle nature—snapped. Like a wild thing, she hurled clods of matted rot at Arabella, trying to pelt the girl in the face, the chest, the arms—but only succeeded in splattering the frightened mare and lowering herself deeper in the muck. “Get away! Get away!” she shrieked at the top of her lungs.
Arabella drew the reins, pulling her mount out of range. Even still, Claire could not stop. “Leave, leave!” she wailed, lobbing fists full of mud until her arms cramped and her lungs ached.
A rain of Spanish curses was the only response. The girl opened her mouth for a new tirade, and with the last of her strength, Claire hurled a clot that smacked between the parted lips. Sputtering and coughing, Arabella spat, “You die now!”
Claire scarcely heard her. Panting, wheezing, beyond hysteria, she closed her eyes and stopped struggling.
“I get help,” the girl taunted. “Look, Lady Claire. I leave now. I get your lover to help you.”
Too tired, Claire clenched her teeth and refused to open her eyes. Every ounce of strength was gone. She lay back in the mud and felt it seep slowly into her hair.
“Watch me go!” Arabella screeched, “Gallopy, gallopy up the hill and down the dell. I find Vav. I tell him, ‘She in peril. I so scared.’”
Robespierre moaned. The filly whinnied from the bank—a pitiful, desperate neigh to her dear friend.
Soon, Claire thought. Soon the mud would fill her ears. Soon she would no longer hear Arabella’s jibes. And oh so terribly soon, ooze would cover her eyes, slide down her nostrils, and cram her mouth. Soon . . .
His Lordship's Darkest Secret: Chapter Eleven
Squire Radcliff, a squat little man in a suit too tight for his paunch, stalked the shore of the freshly-formed pond flooding two fields. His every gesture bristled with righteous indignation. The fool reminded Flavian of a raccoon cornered in a vegetable garden. “Well Radcliff, you’ve done a fine job of watering my barley. How do you intend to harvest it?”
“Nothing but heavy rain caused that dam to break,” Radcliff shot back.
“You built a dam for drought weather?”
“I’ve a right to some fishing on my property.”
Flavian kicked the flattened barley pinned to the ground by a layer of wet dirt. “This will cost you, Radcliff, for I’ll not take a loss due to your stupidity.”
“Ah, the fine aristocracy stealing from the poor working man.”
Movement in an adjacent field pulled Flavian’s attention from his ranting neighbor. About twenty cattle gathered at the water’s edge, mooing in confusion.
At a full run down the lane came a ruddy-faced fellow in a leather apron and boots. “The cows,” he cried, “keep them from the drink!” Flavian recognized the man as Portis Smithfield, one of his farm hands. Poking from the depths of the pond were two posts that obviously held the gate flanking the lane. Married to routine, the cows wanted to be milked and get their feed. A cow with a piratical circle around one eye waded in and started swimming. Frantic moos followed her departure. In a moment, the whole herd might be in the water and in danger of blocking one another from dry land.
“They’ll be drowning!” Smithfield howled.
Flavian spurred Killen over the stone wall into the cow pasture. In the next second, he had the horse splashing into the flood. Whip zinging in the air, he bellowed at the lead cow, her circled eye sullenly focused on him as she cut through the water. Though the freshly made pond was deep, it didn’t top Killen’s head. The horse reared and plunged like a dolphin, until the frightened cows turned before they had to swim. Behind him, he heard Beverage-Haugh yelling “Heyup,” and the splash of the steward’s horse.
When the circle-eyed cow realized she swam alone, she panicked, and bellowing with great urgency, raced toward the herd.
“Radcliff,” Flavian shouted to the squire, “get your men to dismantle that section of the wall.” He pointed toward a rise at the edge of the pasture.
The squire puffed in his ill-fitting suit. “You’ll be crossing them on my land then.”
“I’ll be crossing them on your head if you don’t hop to. Do as I say or you’ll add every heifer that drowns to your bill.”
Radcliff motioned to his men. A small crowd of them had gathered in the last few minutes. Flavian watched with growing impatience as the men—sulky and unwilling—tried to argue their way out of the work. “Watch this vixen,” he told Beverage-Haugh, indicating the lead cow.
Killen’s breath came in grunting snorts. The horse was tiring. “Come on, old steed,” Flavian urged, stroking the animal’s chestnut coat. “One more hop.” He pressed his heals and headed the horse straight for the stone wall at the exact point where Radcliff’s men stood clustered around their master. “Aboard!” he shouted, employing a battle cry from his years in the Royal Navy. The men turned and scattered as Killen landed directly in their midst. “You’ll take down that wall, or I’ll herd you to it like those cattle,” he shouted, swinging his whip.
One man darted away, making a run for the woods. In seconds, Flavian steered Killen in front of him. Tucking the whip into his boot, he grabbed the runaway by the collar, and with one powerful arm, lifted him off his feet. As the man squawked about being choked, about a bad back, about “’ell to pay,” Flavian lugged him toward the cluster of frightened men. Dropping him at their feet, he said, “Any questions about what to do with that wall?”
They all backed away and went swiftly to work.
Portis Smithfield scrambled into the pasture and cooed to his livestock, then slung a rope around Circle Eye’s neck and tugged her away from the water.
By the time the men dismantled the stone wall, the sun had burnt the morning fog away, and that’s when Flavian suddenly remembered he had another pressing matter to attend to. Claire’s answer to his proposal. He looked around. Had the ladies decided to stay home? That Arabella would allow adventure to pass her by was beyond uncharacteristic.
“Where are the ladies?” he asked Beverage-Haugh.
“They saw ‘twas better to stay inside,” the steward said. “Besides, that old Robespierre could scarce carry Lady Claire.”
“Why did you saddle Robespierre–he’s over twenty years old?”
The steward folded his arms, looking uncomfortable. “Miss Arabella insisted.”
Before the man uttered his last word, Flavian turned Killen down the lane. “Report to me later,” he shouted to Beverage-Haugh. Not listening for the steward’s reply, he urged his exhausted horse toward Bingham Hall.
* * *
The first thing Claire became aware of was the translucent pink of sun shining through her eyelids. When she tried to open them, however, the lashes stuck, dried mud sealing them together. That’s when she remembered where she was. Rubbing her eyes on a filthy sleeve, she opened them to a scene of such desperation that tears rose, burning the lids with sudden heat.
She and the old horse had sunk lower in the mud. A fistful of Robespierre’s mane kept her afloat, but the horse’s back was completely submerged.
There were no signs of life at the edge of the bog. Arabella must have grown bored and left.
Afraid to cry out in case the girl lay in wait, Claire shifted in the muck to search for a way out.
Robespierre nickered, lifting his grizzled head. “Oh, thank God you’re alive,” she said, overjoyed not to be alone. Then she listened. Julitta would answer the old horse if she were within earshot. The only sound was the soft swish of wind over the moor.
A few yards beyond Robepierre’s muzzle, a tuft of grass grew higher than the rest of the deceptive blanket covering the bog. Claire moved her legs, and instantly dropped up to her chin. “Help!” she cried, “Somebody please help!”
The rest of her body had grown numb in the cold water, but now her shoulders and neck stung in the chill. The sensation made her aware of the sun. Bright and hot, it had warmed the water enough that she hadn’t died. Panting a little with fear, she looked at the brilliant blue sky and found solace. Closing her eyes, she let the heat soak into her scalp, realizing she must have lost her beautiful Shako hat in the fall. But a hat was the least of her troubles. “No one’s going to help us, Robespierre.” The horse remained motionless.
Taking a firmer grip on his mane, she kept her legs still in an attempt to swim forward. A slight give in the muck gave her hope, but more of her body had to lie on the surface. She’d have to let go of Robespierre to be able to use both arms for thrust. Dread paralyzed her. “Calm yourself,” she commanded. The old horse, still and quiet, sensed her movement, and turned his head. In his brown eyes, she saw expectation. The animal trusted her to get them out.
Taking a deep breath, she ducked her head below the surface and pushed with her a
rms against the viscous ooze. One, two, three strokes and her legs began to rise. She turned her head to the side and took a gulp of air. Putrid, rotting vegetation hung like a curtain over her mouth then back into the blackness—one, two, three strokes. Her arms ached with the effort, but she was past Robespierre now, only a few more feet to the grass hummock.
Midway through the last stroke, she smacked something substantial. Looking up, gasping for breath, she recognized the tuft and dragged herself onto the tiny island. Another hummock rose only a few feet away. Beyond that, was the moor, firm and glorious, and dotted with rock faces baked white from the sun. Her mind emptied of every thought except getting to that rise. She stood, teetering with exhaustion, and jumped to the next hummock. Nearly losing her balance, she used the momentum to make the final leap, then, utterly spent, lay down on a warm flat rock. After that, everything went black.
In a restless dream, Claire examined the image of Arabella over and over, curiosity in her black eyes, watching as Claire flailed in the swamp. Jolting awake, a wave of rage brought tears to her eyes. “I want you gone,” she said aloud, clenching her fists. “And I will never live under the same roof.”
She sat up, remembering Robespierre. The horse had not sunk further. His eyes were closed and he appeared to be sleeping. “You won’t last much longer, poor horse.” Especially once the sun went down. A team of men—a team of strong plow horses—that’s what was needed.
Robespierre stirred and chomped his bit. He seemed resigned, as if the horror of the bog had already swallowed him. That upset Claire more than Arabella’s other misdeeds. No one, no matter how spoiled and insane, should senselessly destroy a creature’s life. The horse had done nothing, and yet he would end in torment. “Hold on,” she said, rising to her feet. “Tonight you’ll have oats in your stall.”
Though the sun had mostly dried her fine jacket with its gold frogs, now caked in mud, the garment was ruined. A fashionable pattern in pale blue merino it was supposed to remind London society of the Albright family’s history of breeding top racehorses. Claire stripped off the jacket and hung it high on a bush. The blue and gold, contrasting with the landscape, would make it easier to find Robespierre. Next, she removed her gloves and used the inside to wipe muck from her face. At the top of the rise she looked out at the open moor, hoping to find a landmark. They hadn’t come far from the lane—if she could just find it again. Blast the fog. Without the morning sun, she had no bearing on the direction they’d traveled, except she knew they had been heading for the north pasture.
Her Perfect Gentleman: A Regency Romance Anthology Page 88
