Royalist on the Run

by Helen Dickson

  They travelled on quiet tracks, for not only were they more likely to run into Roundheads on main thoroughfares but they were also notorious for thieves. Arabella was relieved that Edward had a flintlock pistol in his belt. They avoided villages, only stopping in deep undergrowth to eat the food Alice had prepared.

  Despite the ever-present dangers of discovery, and seeing how difficult it was for Edward to play the part of a common countryman, Arabella loved being out in the open air and for the first time since Elizabeth had died she felt young and alive. The September weather favoured them. She loved autumn, with the smell of harvest in the air, the orchards with trees hung with soon-to-be-picked apples and pears.

  When Dickon fell asleep Arabella made him comfortable in the back of the cart, tucking a blanket around him, conscious of the fact that she was arranging the coming weeks and maybe her whole life about his father. What was it about Edward Grey that had made her decide to do this reckless thing?

  They’d been on the road for hours. Arabella was tired and hungry and sore from bumping up and down on the wooden seat.

  ‘Where are we going to spend the night?’

  ‘There’s sure to be a tavern in the next village. We will stay there.’

  ‘And if there isn’t a tavern?’

  He turned to look at her and a ghost of a smile lit his face. ‘Does a night under the stars appeal to you?’

  She laughed at his suggestion, meeting his eyes. ‘If the weather is kind to us, then I will not mind. We have enough food to last us for a couple of days. It might also be better to avoid coming into contact with others unless we have to.’ She turned to look at the sleeping child. ‘I don’t think Dickon will mind. He is treating it all as an adventure—as I did when I left Wales to come to Bircot Hall.’

  ‘Stephen told me you went to live in South Glamorgan.’

  ‘Yes—in my husband’s house. His parents were dead and he was an only child. The house was lovely—not far from the sea.’

  ‘Were you happy living there?’

  Looking straight ahead, she spoke without much enthusiasm. ‘I liked the country.’

  He turned his head and looked at her, saying carefully, ‘And your husband? Were you happy in your marriage, Arabella?’

  She heard the concern in his voice and a preoccupied expression drew over his face, showing that his mind was working swiftly. ‘It was not what I expected,’ she answered honestly, unable to tell a lie. ‘John could be—difficult.’ She wanted to add that her husband had been a dark, vicious man, his manner cold, but unwilling to humble or humiliate herself, instead she said, ‘He did not always treat me kindly.’

  ‘I am sorry to hear that.’ The quiet sincerity with which he spoke struck a chord in Arabella. ‘Did he hurt you?’

  ‘Emotionally, yes. He was not an easy man to live with.’

  Edward became quiet and the silence bit keenly into her nerves.

  ‘I’m sorry to mention it, Arabella.’ There was outrage in his tone.

  ‘Don’t be. I found a way to live with my marriage.’

  ‘But you were not happy.’

  She considered the question. ‘I was safe and well fed. John wanted a son.’ She remembered how disgusted he had been when he had been told he had a daughter. Her hands were trembling and she hoped he would not notice. Then her eyes found his and she spoke frankly, with much relief that someone else knew. ‘After the birth of Elizabeth, with sporadic fighting breaking out, hoping to be well rewarded if Parliament were overthrown, he went to take up arms for the King.’

  He looked at her, his face holding a rare look of softness. ‘And he was killed at the battle that took place at St Fagans.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Then he cannot hurt you further.’

  Arabella recalled the contents of Robert’s letter and later what Colonel Lister had told her about John and that he might not be dead, but she refused to believe that. He had to be dead. He must be dead. Her throat tightened and her hands clung to the seat when she thought what it would mean to her if he wasn’t dead. She looked at Edward. His eyes were fixed on the road once more and he was solid, steady as a rock in the middle of a world that would spin wildly out of her control should John not be dead.

  But if he wasn’t dead, where was he?

  As she looked at Edward, in a moment of clarity she saw him as if for the first time: the frown lines on his brow, the firm, strong angles of his face, the strength of his jaw and the firm sensual line of his mouth. She knew what that mouth felt like, how it moved over hers, and she felt the warmth that threatened to uncoil inside her. For a moment she wanted to reach out to him, to have him take her in his arms, to feel the solid security of his chest, to let herself feel safe.

  She was shocked by how much she desired him. She could not deny it no matter how through sheer force of will she tried. The effort weakened her, defeating her will until she was floundering, longing for more.

  Only now did she realise how familiar he had become to her. How important he was to her.

  * * *

  Edward had heard the sudden catch in her voice when she had been talking about her husband and it disturbed him greatly. The soul-stirring sadness and raw vulnerability had struck him as hard as a fist in the gut and he wondered just how much ugliness she had been forced to endure married to John Fairburn.

  Intuitively, he had known something had not been right with her marriage. He guessed at the bullying she must have been subjected to, but he was careful to hold his opinions back. It was not his place to pry into her personal life, but he felt moved to sympathy.

  * * *

  The hours were long as the old horse’s tireless trot ate up the miles. Dusk was fast approaching. Only the gentle undulation of the Cotswold Hills were rosy with the setting sun. The land and the hillsides were black with shadows. Every now and then they would pass travellers on the road, but as darkness closed in they saw no one.

  Tired and hungry and aching from being jolted about on the wooden seat, they found a place to spend the night in a clearing sheltered by trees and away from the road. Arabella prepared their supper before washing in a nearby stream. When Dickon became fretful she made a game of sleeping outdoors, making makeshift boats out of twigs and leaves and floating them on the stream, playing peekaboo and telling him stories she remembered from her own childhood. Cradled in her arms he listened intently, but gradually his eyes fluttered closed and he slept.

  Smiling down at him, his small dark head peeking out above the covering blanket, looking up she saw Edward leaning against a tree watching her with an odd expression on his face.

  ‘He’s tired,’ she said softly, sitting on the grass and drawing her knees up in front of her. ‘He should sleep until morning.’

  ‘He seems to trust you.’

  ‘I’d like to think so. Dickon is a quiet boy. I suspect there hasn’t been much happiness in his young life.’

  His gaze was studying her, searching her eyes, lingering on her face until her cheeks grew warm with his quiet perusal.

  ‘You’re right—and I know that’s my fault. Others have been employed to look after him since he was born, but they cannot compete with a mother’s lifetime care. Because of the war I’ve been occupied with other things and unable to spend the time with him I would have liked. I confess that it worries me. Every time one of them he’s become attached to leaves it is like a lesson in heartbreak.’

  ‘That’s probably why he’s such a quiet boy. But he needs other children as well as his father. I saw how happy he was with Alice’s children for company.’

  ‘His safety is my prime concern, but it will also be good for him to be with Verity. She has two children, Maria and Thomas—Thomas being just a little older than Dickon. It’s time he had some stability in his life.’

  ‘She’ll be surpris
ed when you turn up with Dickon and me. But he’s still very young. Children are resilient. They adapt.’

  ‘I hope so. I intend to be there for him in the future, to protect him. I had to act quickly to keep him from falling into Malcolm Lister’s hands. He wants to make him his heir.’

  ‘He could do that without taking him away from you.’

  ‘No. He wants to take him and mould him into what he wants him to be—as he would his own son if he had one. I can’t let that happen. No one knows how long we will have to remain in France. With my father dead and my sister in France, my estate seized by Parliament and myself declared a traitor, one thing is certain. I cannot—I will not return to England while it is ruled by Cromwell.’

  ‘Maybe, in time, pardons may be issued to those who supported the king, if they agree to abide by the rules of the Commonwealth. Would you return if that happened?’

  He shook his head. ‘I cannot plan beyond the present. I—and many like me—have fought too long and too hard to do that. I am a hardened soldier, Arabella. I will not live and abide by the laws of the Commonwealth. If making my home in France is the price I have to pay, then so be it.’ Shrugging himself away from the tree, he came and sat by her on the grass. ‘I’m glad Dickon has found someone to look up to in you.’

  The absurdity of his statement made Arabella smile. ‘I’ve only known him a short while so I doubt he will miss me when I go back to Bircot Hall.’

  ‘I disagree.’ His eyes held hers, communicating their sincerity. ‘You don’t have to return to England.’

  ‘Yes, I do. My care is only temporary. When Dickon is settled with your sister, I will come back. I remember Verity. She was several years my senior, but she was always kind and never treated me like a child.’

  ‘Unlike me.’

  Even in the dusk, she could see his eyes sparkle with mischief. ‘Sometimes.’ She laughed to soften her rebuke. ‘Although in those days I suppose I did seem terribly young to an experienced soldier of your years.’

  ‘There’s still the difference in years as there was then.’

  ‘But I was still very much a child in many ways, an innocent, far more naïve than I care to remember—far more than the women with whom you usually kept company.’

  ‘You were very young, Arabella,’ he said, taking her hand in his. ‘I remember the day you were born. I remember my mother taking Verity and me to see you, making us pick some flowers from our garden to take to your mother.’

  ‘My goodness! Did she really?’ She laughed, finding the picture he had planted in her mind warming. ‘Of course I don’t remember,’ she remarked, with a mischievous quirk to her brow.

  He laughed. ‘I would not expect you to.’

  ‘Did you see me?’

  ‘Of course. You were tiny, with the tiniest little fingers,’ he said, raising those same fingers to his mouth and brushing them with his lips. ‘You really were a pretty little thing, although you slept all the way through our visit.’

  ‘I remember when I was a child—I couldn’t have been more than five years old—and you would come to ride out with Stephen. I would cry because you wouldn’t take me with you—even though my father had given me my own pony by then. I thought you were very handsome and I soon realised I wasn’t the only one who thought so. All the girls I knew thought the same as me.’ She laughed, unable to shake off the effects of his winning smile and the feel of his hand hold hers. ‘Although I soon realised you were adept in brushing away admiring young maids placed before you by their parents hoping you would look at them and form an attachment.’

  ‘I had eyes only for you, Bella. You were the one I became betrothed to.’

  She sighed resignedly, unwilling to spoil the intimacy of the moment by raking through the unpleasantness of his later rejection of her. ‘I regret it didn’t last.’

  ‘So do I,’ he replied softly, staring into her translucent eyes that had ensnared his somehow. ‘You no longer resemble that precocious, happy child I knew. Now you are a beautiful and fascinating young woman, a woman I respect, and that is how I will treat you. But you must forgive me if I forget myself now and then and attempt to draw you closer. I have been too long a soldier that I forget how to be a gallant.’

  She had no idea how her hair hanging loose tempted his fingers. Her eyes sparkling and clear, her lips trembled in a smile. ‘But you do not forget how to flatter a lady, Edward.’

  ‘It is not flattery.’ His face was serious.

  A lock of his dark hair had fallen forward across his brow and the fading light softened his angular face. With the silence around them broken only by the water in the stream wending its way over its rocky bed to the River Severn, the potency of his gaze was intoxicating, sending tingling down through her body. They sat without moving, their gazes arrested, held in silent communication of attraction. Arabella’s mouth became dry and her heart quickened its beat. She longed for him to kiss her as he had before and ran her tongue over her bottom lip, unaware of the sensual invitation of her action. His eyes still holding hers were dark with desire.

  Suddenly a memory assailed her of the clumsy and aggressive assaults John had made on her body and her flesh went cold. A new, dark fear crept through her. Had John scarred her mentally so that she was unable to respond to another man’s touch, a lover’s touch? No, she thought, her mind rebelling at the thought, she would not grant him that kind of power over her. She would not allow him to triumph over her in death. And had she not responded to Edward when he had kissed her at Bircot Hall? She had certainly not been repelled by it—quite the opposite, in fact, despite his dishonourable behaviour to her in the past. She was haunted by the whispering memories of the passionate response of her body to the intimacies he had shown her. She was tormented by the rapture she had tasted in his kiss and the passion his touch had ignited.

  Edward could give her pleasure and that was all she wanted—a tender, skilful lover. In fact, she would not object if he were to kiss her again. A sudden longing for him to do just that must have shown in her eyes, for he exhaled sharply.

  ‘Arabella.’

  Leaning a little towards him, she watched his eyes darken. His lashes lowered, his eyes focused on her lips. Instinctively she leaned a little further, willing him to kiss her. But he made no move. The sound of the rippling water ticked off the seconds as their gazes locked. Instead of kissing her lips, Edward raised her fingers to his mouth. A subtle gasp, barely a whisper, passed her lips, and he smiled, releasing her hand.

  ‘I think it’s time we retired. Lie down,’ he said softly, breaking the silence, and Arabella imagined that there was the small hint of a plea in his voice. ‘We have a long journey ahead of us tomorrow and you need to rest.’

  Getting to his feet and fetching a couple of blankets from the cart, he handed one to her, spreading his own on the ground. Taking hers, she moved away from him to sleep closer to Dickon.

  ‘You don’t have to sleep so far away, Arabella. I won’t bite.’

  She looked at him. ‘I don’t expect you will.’

  ‘Then what are you afraid of?’

  She stared at him as he settled on his blanket, wrapping it around his long body.

  ‘I am not afraid. I merely wish to sleep beside Dickon in case he wakes.’

  ‘Goodnight, Arabella. Sleep well.’

  Bravely suppressing a worrying thought at sleeping out in the open, Arabella still didn’t know if she trusted Edward totally. He had asked her to travel with him to France to care for his son on the journey, but he had said nothing of his purpose for her. When she had told him she would return to Bircot Hall when Dickon was settled with his sister, he hadn’t tried to persuade her to remain in Paris. What was she to do? Edward possessed a mysterious power to stir her blood. He assailed her senses whenever he was close.

  Fortunately the night was warm and the
grass soft and springy, providing the perfect mattress. Sitting down, she wrapped the blanket around her and lay back, watching Edward do the same. Suddenly sleepy, she yawned behind a hand and, closing her eyes, she listened to the sounds of the night, the quiet rustling of some unseen animal in the bushes, the soft wind riffling through the leaves and the gentle munching of the horse. She longed for the oblivion that would give her respite before the sun rose.

  * * *

  They were on the road again when the morning sky was still streaked with the lingering salmon-pink-and-gold tones of dawn. The morning air was damp and crisp and filled with the lingering smells of leaves and earth. Arabella was chillingly aware of how vulnerable they were. Edward was quiet, wary and watchful, looking out for Commonwealth soldiers. They did see the odd small troop, but no one took any notice of the bearded peasant hunched in his wagon with his wife and child beside him.

  When they were just ten miles from Bristol they spent the night in a tavern on the edge of a small hamlet with a village pond. Dickon was tired and after eating his supper he was soon asleep on the small cot in the room all three of them were to share. They had told the innkeeper they were man and wife, and to have asked for separate rooms would have raised his eyebrows and probably his suspicions that they were not what they seemed.

  In the quiet of the room, both pairs of eyes were drawn to the only bed.

  Arabella saw Edward’s eyes brighten as if his thoughts had risen in some eager anticipation. When he looked at her, his eyes were steady and remained still. She was drawn into those eyes. She wanted him so much. She moved closer, seeking solace from the turmoil of her emotions. Edward represented safety and security.

  ‘I think you’re going to have to help me,’ she whispered. ‘I’ve never been in a bedroom before with a man who is not my husband.’

  His reserve and wariness that had been present all day disappeared. His eyes held hers in one long, compelling look, holding all her frustrated desires, all the restraints she had forced on her nature for so long, everything she had been keeping to herself in the days they had been on the road.