by Anne Gracie
She sent up a quick prayer that their journey would be speedy, safe—and most important of all, fruitful—and the carriage set off.
* * *
“What do you mean her betrothal to Cambury is off? Didn’t you give her my letter?”
Gil nodded. “I rather think that was why she broke it off.”
Zach stared at him. “But I told her to marry him.”
Gil shrugged. “Been my experience that women don’t much like being told what to do. Especially who to marry.”
“But what if I’m found guilty? What will she do then?” And why hadn’t he heard from her? He’d expected an answer to his letter, at least. Some kind of message. Not this . . . silence.
It unnerved him. Silence always made him assume the worst.
He resumed his pacing. Was she angry with him? Despite what Gil had said, Zach was sure it was Cambury who’d dumped her, the dishonorable swine. Cambury had had him arrested. So why do that if he was going to abandon Jane? For revenge?
And what was Jane doing? Was she all right? Was she utterly disgraced? A target for scandal and vicious gossip?
The possibilities seethed endlessly in his brain. He paced, not even noticing when Gil quietly left.
He’d trapped a bee in a bottle once when he was a boy. It had buzzed endlessly from side to side, hitting a wall and bouncing in the opposite direction, random, frantic, senseless. Zach felt like that now.
Chapter Twenty-five
The distance is nothing when one has a motive.
—JANE AUSTEN, PRIDE AND PREJUDICE
It was the longest journey Jane had ever made. Though the yellow bounders were known for speed and efficiency, and the postilions and the horses were changed regularly, it took more than three days of practically endless traveling to get to Wales. And by the time they reached the small village of Llandudno, it felt like every bone in her body had been shaken loose and every inch of her bottom was black and blue.
Darkness had fallen by the time they arrived, and William, by now well apprised of the intent of the journey, and unable to change Jane’s mind, took charge. By dint of questioning and mime, he managed to find them some accommodation; a small local hostelry facing the sea, too small to be called an inn, more a house with a taproom below and two bedchambers to rent above. It was small, but clean and respectable.
Jane and Polly shared the larger bedchamber. They were exhausted, and after a bath and a light supper of hot soup and bread and cheese, both girls fell into bed and slept like the dead until morning.
When Jane awoke and looked out of the small upstairs window, the sun was shining, dancing on the waves below. The sight filled her with optimism.
Over a hearty and delicious breakfast, Jane chatted to the landlady, Mrs. Price, who spoke good English accented with a lovely Welsh lilt.
Determined not to arouse the lady’s suspicions by asking questions about Mary Thomas and Cecily Aston-Black, Jane acted the innocent traveler. “Such a pretty place this is,” Jane commented. “A school friend of my older sister’s was from Llandudno, and she always said it was wonderfully scenic. My middle sister, Damaris, would love to paint this view, I’m sure—she’s a talented artist.”
Mrs. Price was a plump, motherly-looking woman who clearly enjoyed a chat. They talked about families and sisters and the village for a while and then, as Jane had hoped, Mrs. Price could not resist asking the name of Jane’s sister’s school friend.
“Mary,” Jane told her. “I don’t remember what her married name is—Tomlins? Thompson? Something like that. But she’s probably not living here anymore—she was widowed, I think, and no doubt moved away.”
“Mary Thomas, that will be,” Mrs. Price said in triumph. “And she hasn’t moved, she lives just down that road there, around the corner and down the hill a short way—a white house with a big blue pot of geraniums by the doorway.”
“Oh, I don’t think she’d want to see me,” Jane said, playing coy. “It was my sister she was at school with, not me. Abby’s quite a bit older than me.”
The more she demurred, the more Mrs. Price insisted. “She’d love to see you, I’m sure. A sweet, pretty girl like you are, miss—who wouldn’t want to have you call on them? Go along with you now.”
And Jane went.
She found the house with the big blue pot of red geraniums with no trouble and knocked. A slender, dark-haired woman of about thirty-five answered—Mary Thomas. Jane told her that Mrs. Price had suggested she call, and as she’d hoped, Mary Thomas invited Jane to step into the parlor for a cup of tea. Polly waited outside in the sun.
“I’ve come about Cecily Aston-Black,” Jane said bluntly when she was seated.
Mrs. Thomas stiffened. The friendly expression dropped away. She stood up. “I don’t know any Cecily Aston-Black. You’ve come into my home on false pretenses. Please leave.”
Jane didn’t move. “First I want to tell you a story. I know men have been here looking for Cecily, but did any of them explain why they were looking for her?”
Mrs. Thomas shrugged. “They were from England. Like you. Please leave.”
“I’m not going to leave until you tell me where Cecily is. I don’t know what you think those other men wanted with her, but I’m here because the only person who can save the life of the man I love is Cecily. When he was a boy of just sixteen, he risked everything to save Cecily from the brutality of her husband—his father—so I think it’s only fair that Cecily save him now. Because right now he’s in prison in London and expected to hang for murder—Cecily’s murder!”
Mary Thomas’s eyes widened. “Cecily’s murder?”
Jane nodded.
Mary Thomas sat down again. “I think you’d better explain.”
Jane told her everything, and when she’d finished, Mrs. Thomas was silent for a long moment. Then she gave Jane a troubled look. “I would help you if I could, but—”
“Oh, please,” Jane burst out, “I’ve told you what’s at stake. If you know where she is, you must tell me!”
“I made a sacred promise that I would tell no one,” Mary Thomas told her with a regretful expression. “I understand your problem—and I sympathize—but I cannot break that promise.”
Jane said desperately, “You’d let him hang for a crime you know he didn’t commit?”
Mary Thomas stood up. “I’m sorry, I can’t help you.”
“He’s not going to be hanged for her—I won’t allow it. I’m going to stay here and force you to tell me where she is.”
Mary Thomas hesitated. “Perhaps you should try the church.”
“The church?” Jane stared at her, trying to fathom the mind of a woman who would let an innocent man hang rather than break a promise. “What would I find at the church? Do they know where Cecily is?”
Mary Thomas shook her head. “I cannot tell what they might know or not know.”
“Then why would you send me to the church? What will I find there?” She added with sudden dread, “Oh, God, you don’t mean Cecily is buried in the churchyard, do you?”
“No, she is alive—that much I will say. But go to the church. There you might find peace of mind.” And with those words of scant comfort, Mary Thomas ushered Jane out of her cottage, and shut the door firmly behind her.
Polly was waiting outside. “Any luck, miss?”
“No,” Jane said bitterly. “She knows, but she promised not to tell, and she won’t break her promise, damn her! She told me to go to the church, that I might find some peace of mind there.” She snorted. “Peace of mind! How can I have peace of mind when Zachary is rotting in jail? And she could help us save him but she won’t tell.”
They trudged back toward the inn. After all that traveling, to end up with such a . . . a frustrating nonanswer. Jane felt totally deflated.
She is alive—that much I will say. If Mary Thomas testi
fied to that, it might save Zachary’s life. And if she refused to go to London to testify, perhaps they could kidnap her and take her to London by force.
William wouldn’t like it, though, and without William’s cooperation, how could she kidnap anyone?
“Would that be the church she meant, up there, miss?” Polly pointed. On a hill overlooking the town and the sea sat a small gray stone church.
Jane sighed. “I don’t suppose it will hurt,” she said. “It’s not as if we have any other alternative.” They climbed the hill to the little church. It was a stiff climb, but when they reached it, puffing and panting, the view was spectacular.
They hadn’t come for the view, however. There was no sign of a house; clearly the minister didn’t live on the premises. The place seemed deserted.
The churchyard was dotted with gravestones. Jane didn’t look at them. The woman had said Cecily was alive. Perhaps some clue might be found inside.
The door was unlocked and Jane peeped inside. It was small, plain and simple, with a spare beauty. A woman was polishing the woodwork. Jane could smell the beeswax.
The woman turned, saw Jane and came forward, speaking Welsh. She was fair and pretty.
Jane shook her head. “Sorry, I don’t understand.”
The woman smiled. “Sorry, we don’t get many English up this way,” she said in faintly stilted English with the musical Welsh lilt that Jane found so attractive. “Welcome to our church. Reverend Williams is away at the moment, but I am his wife. Can I help you with something?”
“I don’t know,” Jane said. “I am looking for an Englishwoman called Cecily Aston-Black, the Countess of Wainfleet. I believe she lives in this village.”
The woman stilled.
“You know her.” Jane’s heart leapt.
“No,” the woman said. “She was here many years ago, but she’s gone now. I don’t know where she is. And I’m sorry, I have no time to talk. I’m very busy.” She turned away and resumed vigorously polishing the wooden fretwork at the front of the church.
“Please, it’s very important,” Jane said.
“I’ve told you all I know.”
Jane hesitated. She was sure the woman knew more than she was saying, but she could hardly grab a minister’s wife and choke the truth out of her, right here in her own church. She glanced at Polly. Polly shrugged, as if to say, “What can you do?” and reluctantly Jane conceded. She left the church on leaden feet. She needed to think. There was some mystery here and she was determined to get to the bottom of it.
She stood in the bright sunshine, gazing out across the sea, trying to work out what to do next. She was feeling rather foolish, having come here in such a melodramatic fashion, behind everyone’s back, certain she could make a difference, be the knight instead of the damsel for once.
She’d found out precisely nothing. But—she stiffened her spine—she wasn’t finished yet. She would go back to Mary Thomas and demand she tell Jane what she knew. And ask her about the woman at the church.
She headed toward the church gate, and stepped back as a black and white puppy bounded through the gate and cannoned into her, splattering mud all over her skirt. Laughing, she bent to pat him, holding his muddy paws off her skirt, which he took to be a wonderful new game.
A young girl following hard at his heels stopped dead when she saw what had happened and apologized profusely—at least Jane assumed it was an apology. It was a torrent of Welsh.
“He’s a lively little fellow, isn’t he? Did he get away from you?” Jane said, hoping the girl might understand from her tone that she wasn’t upset. She looked up at the child to reassure her.
And looked straight into a pair of silvery gray-green eyes that were only too familiar.
Something of Jane’s shock must have shown in her face for the girl stepped backward, a wary look on her face. She was young, perhaps eleven or twelve, with thick, dark, wavy hair, a pale complexion and a pair of wide, dark-lashed eyes that were like silvered sage leaves.
It was like a punch to the stomach.
Zachary Black’s daughter.
And yet he’d sworn there was nothing between him and Cecily. Another of his lies? He could hardly wriggle out of this; the child was his very image, only young and female. Zachary would have looked much like this at the same age, all long legs and endearing, adolescent awkwardness.
“What is your name?” Jane asked gently. “And where is your mother?”
The girl took another step backward. She glanced around, like a gangly young doe about to flee from hunters, but Polly had anticipated the move and had stepped in between the child and the gate, blocking her escape.
“It’s all right,” Jane assured her, speaking slowly. She had no idea whether the child understood English or not, but she hoped her tone would carry the message. “Nobody will harm you. I just want to meet your mother.”
“Maaam!” the girl suddenly yelled at the top of her voice, and a moment later the minister’s wife burst from the church and skidded to a halt.
“Leave her alone, she doesn’t know anything,” she said. She addressed the child in rapid Welsh. The girl gave a quick nod and braced herself to run.
“It’s not her I came looking for, Cecily,” Jane said. “It’s you. And before you try to deny who you are, may I just say your daughter is the living image of her father.”
Cecily sagged in acceptance. She gave a defeated nod.
“We need to talk,” Jane told her.
“All right, but in private—let my daughter go.”
Jane nodded. Cecily said something in Welsh, and the young girl shook her head. “No, Mam, I want to stay,” she said in perfect English with only the faintest hint of a lilt. And Jane realized that just now Cecily had spoken with no accent at all.
Cecily shook her head and answered in Welsh, and reluctantly the girl turned to leave.
“May Polly go with her?” Jane asked. She didn’t trust Cecily and her daughter not to have hatched an instant plot to run away. “Polly is my maid,” she added. “Your daughter will be perfectly safe with her.”
Cecily hesitated, then nodded, and Polly and the child left. Cecily indicated a bench outside the church and they sat down.
“Does Zachary know he has a daughter?” Jane asked.
“I don’t know any Zachary.”
“Zachary Black.”
Again, Cecily shook her head, and just as Jane was about to argue, she remembered. “I mean Adam George Zachary Aston-Black, though he calls himself Zachary Black.”
Cecily said tightly, “He’s not Winnie’s father; he’s her brother, her half brother.”
“Oh. Of course.” The tight fist in Jane’s chest loosened, though why she should dislike the notion of him having a child, she didn’t know. It was long before she met him.
“Does he know he has a little sister?”
“He can’t have her.”
Jane frowned. “I don’t understand.”
Cecily didn’t bother to explain. “I’m not going anywhere. I don’t care how many men—or ladies—the earl sends, I’m not going back, and neither is my daughter.”
Daisy was right: Cecily had been hiding from her husband. “It’s all right, Zachary—I mean Adam—is the earl now. His father died last year, as I underst—” She broke off, frowning. “But you must have known that—you said you were the minister’s wife.”
Cecily paled. She looked down at the ground and said nothing, her face tense and set.
And Jane understood. No wonder Cecily wanted to keep hidden, and why it was all such a secret.
“How long have you been married?” she asked quietly.
Cecily swallowed. “You mustn’t tell. He—my husband doesn’t know.” The husband that was away at the moment.
Jane tried not to let her shock show. Cecily had not just married bigamously�
�she’d bigamously married a minister!
“I had no idea when I first came here that I was with child,” Cecily explained in a low voice. “I must have conceived just before I left Wainfleet. And I didn’t want anyone here to know who I was, in case my husband came after me, so Mary and I agreed I should live under my maiden name. She introduced me as a spinster friend of hers from school.”
“It must have been awkward when you learned you were increasing.”
Cecily nodded. “It wasn’t until I started getting fat that I realized. I had no morning sickness, nothing—and my courses had always been irregular, so by the time I realized it, I was well along.”
She gave Jane an embarrassed glance. “In fact, I didn’t even realize it then—I was shamefully ignorant, I’m afraid. It was Michael who broke it to me.”
“Michael?”
“Reverend Williams, my . . . my husband. He’s a good, kind, compassionate man, and he realized before I did what the problem was. He assumed I was an innocent girl, you see, taken advantage of by some English rake.” She gazed out over the sea. “He told me I was going to have a baby, asked me about the father—of course I couldn’t tell him, in case he wrote to the earl—Michael is such a good man, he has no idea how . . . evil . . . other men can be.” A shudder racked her slender body.
“He told me then I must marry him, and give the child a name.” She glanced at Jane. “Of course I refused him, but he kept on.”
She bit her lip. “I know it was wrong, but by then, all the villagers knew—I was really showing, and the looks I was getting . . . It was horrid.”
“Why didn’t you explain?”
“I couldn’t. What if someone wrote to the earl?”
Jane could sympathize, but the thought crossed her mind that Cecily could have simply explained she was widowed. But she was the gentle, helpless type and no doubt the thought of raising a child on her own—among villagers who would probably suspect the child was a bastard anyway—would have been quite daunting.
