Threatening George will ignite every last ember of his malice. Running out into the lane, I shout for Worley to wait. He doesn’t hear. He is galloping away out of sight.
I shout again but my voice is lost in the thunder of hoofs.
‘Is something the matter?’ It is Hope, who has found me clinging to the gatepost, unable to move.
‘It’s nothing. Just a little lightheaded, that’s all. I didn’t breakfast this morning.’ I attempt a cheerful smile – I don’t want to worry her. We walk together towards the house where Rafe is kicking a ball repeatedly against the wall. Thump, thump, thump, the sound like a hammer inside my skull. I turn on him, my misplaced rage undiluted. ‘For pity’s sake, stop that!’
Rafe turns his eyes towards me with a sideways frown, picks up the ball and skulks off, while Hope guides me inside.
‘If he’d been a girl,’ I state baldly, ‘none of this would be happening.’ It is the truth. Girls count for nothing, unless they are wealthy.
The house feels stuffy and dark, and I am sure I can still smell George’s lily-scented pomade, as if he has marked the place, like a dog. I try, but fail, to convince myself that perhaps he will desist in his mission to take Rafe from me, that perhaps I have done the right thing in standing up to him.
I scribble a quick note to Ambrose, informing him that we need to leave urgently, first thing in the morning. I ask Hope to deliver it to Littlemore and set to preparing for our departure, unable to shake off the creeping panic, as if I have been stabbed in the stomach and await the imminent arrival of death.
Hope
Hope lies in the dark, recalling the events of the previous hour or two. She can still feel his hands exploring the secret pockets of her body, can hear him: ‘I must leave you, precious girl. Your sisters mustn’t find me here.’
She wanted to confide in him that they are leaving Orchard Cottage in the morning but Hester has forbidden her to speak of it. In fact, Hester has been infuriatingly abstruse about their plans. Hope doesn’t know where they are going – she doesn’t even know why they are leaving in such a hurry. Her sister thinks of her as a child but she is not, not any more.
It was her first time. She is supposed to regret it. She doesn’t. How could she wish away such pleasure? And he so tender, making her feel things she has never felt. For a moment she wonders if she didn’t dream it, but her thumb finds the hard contour of the ring he gave her. It is too big for the correct finger. He has promised to have it altered.
‘Gold,’ he had said, kissing the back of her hand, ‘just right for your complexion. Most girls don’t suit gold but it’s perfect on you.’ His words had coiled around her tightly, making speech impossible. No one had ever said anything like that about her complexion. She only ever received insults. Gypsy, they would call her, and worse.
But not him. No.
He had said, ‘There is no one like you, Hope. I want to make a wife of you, give you the position in the world you deserve,’ and buried his face in her curls, breathing her in, then removing her clothes, carefully, like someone peeling an apple in a single spiral.
She floats away on the thought.
Then comes the collapsing feeling of loss, of separation, the tug of want, so strong, as if every part of her has his name etched through it.
Now she understands what people mean when they talk of love.
A sound interrupts her thoughts, a scuffling, a small cry, perhaps a fox. But, no, it comes from inside the house.
She sits up, alert now.
There it is again.
She pulls herself out of the bed, listening in the corridor, feeling her way through the dark to the nook where Rafe sleeps, thinking he might have had a nightmare and cried out. He has been unsettled since the duke’s visit. Carefully drawing back the bed curtain, she reaches down to stroke his hair. Her hands find nothing but an empty expanse of pillow, still warm, and a hollow where his head should be. She feels around the bed, finding only the monkey she had sewn for him from an old stocking, its button eyes hard rounds beneath her fingers.
She considers all the possibilities that might have drawn the child from his bed in the middle of the night. He might have gone to get a drink, he might have slipped into his mother’s bed, he might have sleepwalked somewhere. But she has never known him to sleepwalk before.
A door scrapes downstairs.
She hears, distinctly, the sound of Rafe calling, ‘No!’ accompanied by a scuffling sound. ‘Leave me alone.’
She knows the firm voice that tells him to hush.
Guilt has her in its claws.
She runs down the stairs, shouting for help. At the bottom she hears Rafe’s protestations, muffled now, and imagines the hand over his mouth – the same hand that was … The thought is too appalling to allow.
She flings open the door to the kitchen. It bangs loudly against the wall. Worley is struggling with the window latch, Rafe in his grip, kicking and writhing. She can hear her sisters upstairs, roused by the noise.
‘Sweetness,’ he is saying to her. ‘It’s not what you think. I found him down here, quite distressed.’ He smiles but she knows what she sees.
‘Lies, all lies!’ Mustering every shred of her strength, she grabs a heavy pan from the table, rushing at him, striking him hard over the head.
A blunt thump sounds out.
He staggers back, swaying, then staggers further, grabbing the edge of the table to prevent himself from falling. He still holds Rafe by the arm.
‘Let him go this minute!’ comes a shout from behind her. It is Hester. Rafe breaks free, running into the arms of his mother.
Worley, still stunned, touches his head, looking at his hand, seeming surprised to find he is not bleeding. She cannot seem to move. He crumples to the floor. She is horrified, believing she has killed him, but he scrambles back to his feet. Something bright in his hand catches the moonlight.
He has a blade.
Hope screeches like a harpy, charging at him again, swinging the pan, its weight giving it momentum as it whacks across his back with force.
A choked cry explodes from him as he pitches forward, winded.
He thrashes frantically with the knife. It whistles through the air, close. Hester reaches for the poker. Hope thumps the pan against his arm. Something skitters across the floor. It is his blade, coming to rest in the far corner, out of his reach.
She glances to Hester, gesturing towards the pantry. Its door is open just behind him. Between them they can back him in and secure the door. Escape will be impossible from the small windowless space.
Hope edges forward. He steps back, as if they are in a dance. Then, in one swift sudden movement, he lurches to one side, heaving the full weight of his shoulder into the window. It swings open, glass shattering. In an instant he has vaulted out and run off down the lane, with the big yard-dog barking in his wake.
Turning back to the room, Hope sees that Melis has joined Hester, who has her arms wrapped round Rafe’s shoulders: three white faces, staring through the gloom. Heart still rattling, Hope sinks to the floor. Feeling a tickle of pain on her hand, she sees a dark smear: it is blood. Worley’s blade must have nicked her. She sucks at the cut. Her mouth is flooded with the taste of metal and her guts seize as the fear she should have felt minutes ago finally catches up.
‘How did he get in?’ Melis says.
Hope shrugs, looking at the floor as she registers the need to explain how Marmaduke Worley came to be upstairs in the house in the middle of the night.
Hester is talking to Rafe, soothing him, asking him what happened. His response is slurred and incomprehensible. He seems in a stupor, eyes half closed, head lolling, and she can’t get any sense out of him.
Worley must have sedated him.
Hope is appalled by what she has allowed to happen, drowning in her own stupidity.
‘How did he get in here?’ Hester asks this time, her face pallid in the gloom.
‘I’m sorry, so, so sorry.’ Hope haul
s herself to her feet to make her confession, berating herself, preparing for the worst. ‘It’s all my fault. I let him take me for a fool.’
‘He seduced you?’ Hester’s suppressed rage is evident in the tight clipping of her words.
Hope says nothing, gazes at her feet, holding onto the faint tick of the hall clock that penetrates the heavy silence.
‘We can’t stay here.’ says Melis. ‘It isn’t safe.’
‘We need to get to Littlemore,’ announces Hester.
‘That’s the first place they’ll look for us if we’re not here,’ says Melis.
‘Ambrose knows of somewhere we can go. Come,’ Hester chivvies them. ‘There’s no time to waste.’
Hope has the yard-dog on a lead for protection, and Worley’s knife is tucked into Hester’s belt. There is only the one mount, the sturdy little piebald, which Rafe, still dazed, is slumped over like a sack of grain.
As they set off across country, it is barely light but the first birds are already singing. They avoid the roads. Dawn arrives with layers of cloud, thick as porridge, that begin to leak rain, and their clothes are soon heavy with wet hems trailing in the mud.
Hope’s conscience weighs heavy.
Worley’s ring mocks her.
She removes it. She can sell it, at least. But it has left a dark, greenish smudge on her finger – so, not gold but brass. What a fool to think true love can alight in a matter of days.
She throws it into the undergrowth and trudges on through the wet, hauling her burden of shame, hatred simmering for the man who duped her. With each small sound, each crack of a twig or rustle in the hedgerow, she glances back, half expecting to see a flash of crimson jacket dipping behind a tree.
Hester
We reach Littlemore Manor a bedraggled group, weary and wet through. The rain becomes sparse and the bank of cloud rips open, shafts of light forcing their way through so the puddles glisten and wink. A rainbow shimmers above, mocking us with its promise of good fortune.
I bang on the door several times, and when there is no response, I shout and rap at the downstairs windows until the servant girl opens up. It is the same girl with the dirty shoes whom Melis was so sharp with the other day, holding a finger to her lips with a grave expression.
‘Has the mistress shown no signs of recovery?’ In the panic I had all but forgotten about Bette’s illness.
The girl lifts a shoulder, raising both palms to face upward. ‘It’s not smallpox, at least.’
We shuffle inside, quietly, and she leaves us in the hall to wait. Ambrose’s hound, Caesar, lollops over to lick my hand with his warm tongue. I stroke the dome of his head. Even he seems subdued. We cluster close to the hearth, though the fire is not lit, somehow imagining we might find some warmth there.
Eventually Ambrose appears, descending the stairs, eyes ringed in shadow, dark as bruises.
He attempts a smile, just visible behind his beard, which has become wild and untrimmed. ‘What brings you here so early?’ He is well aware that only trouble could bring us to Littlemore at the crack of dawn. ‘I received your note, saying you needed to get away this morning, but I didn’t expect …’ He is desperately agitated, his hands fumbling together. ‘I’m afraid you find us in disarray. Bette has taken a turn for the worse.’
A gulf widens between us. He would normally open his arms and enfold me in an embrace but today he advises me to keep my distance in case of contagion.
‘Come in here, where we can talk in private.’ He opens the door to his study and asks the maid to take the others to the kitchens. ‘Give them something to eat, Joan, and dry out their clothes.’ I peel off my damp coat and dig around in my bag for a shawl.
Once we are inside Ambrose’s study, he closes the door. The room is warmer, a fire burning. I stand near to it, the smell of damp wool rising off me.
‘How is she?’ I ask.
‘She’s reaching the crisis. If she survives until tomorrow, we have reason for optimism.’ His face shows the opposite of confidence.
‘I’m so very sorry, Ambrose.’ He’d always said he was waiting for the perfect woman and had found her eventually in Bette.
‘Now, will you tell me what’s going on?’
As I explain about the attempted kidnapping, Ambrose looks increasingly perturbed. ‘I must confess, Hessie, when you mentioned that the duke had visited, I was worried he might try something underhand. But I thought Rafe was to go to him on his birthday. That’s still some time off.’ He runs his palm over the ashy stubble of his hair. ‘I don’t understand.’
‘Circumstances have changed.’ I can’t quite admit to him that it is my own fault matters have become so urgent. Silently I curse myself for my folly.
‘Why didn’t he simply send a few armed guards to fetch the boy? You would have been powerless to prevent them from taking him.’
‘I know George better than you. To him it would be an insult to his vanity. One of the guards would have been sure to say something to someone and word would have got round that a lowly rural doctor’s daughter had refused him, the great duke, custody of his own son.’ I give a sardonic snort. ‘Sending a trusted agent to steal Rafe allows him to craft the story he wants everyone to believe.’
‘I see.’ Ambrose looks at me directly. ‘He must not only have everything he wants, but it must be seen to be given willingly.’
‘Correct.’ I hold my hands over the fire, thawing them.
‘You can’t stay here. It will be the first place he’ll look.’
‘You said in your letter that you knew of somewhere we could go.’
‘I do.’ He sits at his desk pulling a leaf of paper from a stack. ‘You know what my opinion is of the duke. He could murder a man in the middle of the Strand on market day and get away with it. No mud sullies George Villiers.’ He uncorks his ink and dips his pen. ‘We shall have to make you disappear.’
‘It might be the moment to show you these.’ I reach inside my clothes and draw out the sheaf of yellowing correspondence I have harboured for nine years.
As he reads, consternation spreads over his face. ‘These are real?’ He inspects the pages, back and front, and the seals, holding them up to the light the better to see. ‘Where did you get them from?’
‘From his mother’s house, when I was in service there.’ My voice sounds hard and cold, as if it belongs to someone else. ‘I thought I might one day need something to bargain with.’
‘Dear God, Hessie. It would be a perilous path to try to blackmail him. You’d likely end up dead.’
The pit of my stomach contracts. ‘That is why I haven’t used them before now.’ I still can’t bring myself to confess to him what I have done.
‘I’ve always known you were no fool, Hessie, but this.’ He waves the papers. ‘This is proof of treason. Incontrovertible.’ He hands the correspondence back to me. ‘I don’t understand why George would pass state secrets to an enemy. What could he have gained? Unless …’ he seems to be thinking aloud, ‘… they paid him an astronomical sum. It might be as simple as that – money. And influence on the Continent, playing off the Catholics against the Protestants, perhaps. Is there any way these might be forged?’
‘There’s no doubt of their authenticity. I found them among his own papers.’
A small cough sounds from the direction of the door. We turn. The servant girl has appeared without a sound, as if by magic, making me wonder how long she has been there and what she might have heard of our conversation. She hovers nervously half in, half out of the room, holding a large plate of bread and ham.
‘Goodness, Joan, you startled us,’ says Ambrose. ‘Is everything as it should be?’
‘Yes, sir.’ The girl reddens, barely speaking above a whisper. ‘I was just wondering if you wanted something to eat.’
‘Yes, please.’ He begins to clear a space on the desk. ‘You can put it down here.’
The girl leaves the food and slips away.
‘Do you think she heard us talk
ing of the correspondence?’ Anxiety twists into me. ‘Can she be trusted? She might have caught a glimpse –’
‘Of course she can be trusted. Don’t you remember Joan? She’s the daughter of our cook. She was brought up here. Even if she did see them, she wouldn’t have understood a thing. She’s not the brightest button in the box, that one. I don’t think she can even read her own name.’ His confidence is reassuring. I have become suspicious of every small thing.
‘We need to get you to safety. Then we can form a plan of action. Keep these safely in case we have need of them.’ He taps the letters. ‘But for goodness’ sake, Hessie, they are dangerous. Make sure you keep them well hidden.’
‘What are we going to do?’ Despair nips at me.
‘I know someone who has the duke’s ear, someone he respects. Initially it might be best if I approach him discreetly to see if he can make George see reason.’
The likelihood of George ever being reasonable seems infinitesimally small and any hope I might have had begins to drain away. ‘There’s something I must tell you.’ I finally blurt out the contents of my angry missive, the threat I made.
He doesn’t tell me how foolish I am but silently draws his hand over his head, his mouth tightening in desperation. ‘What’s done is done. It might make him more willing to compromise, now he knows you have the letters. Something to bargain with in the last resort.’ It is apparent he is attempting to find something positive to say. ‘We’ve no time to lose. You do understand’ – an apologetic line folds into his brow – ‘much as I’d like to, I can’t accompany you.’
‘Of course.’ I hold a hand aloft, indicating he has no need to explain.
The Honey and the Sting Page 5
