He shook his head. “I know none of them, sir. And not knowing, I’m not prepared to pay towards their burial. I have an idea that these men once attacked me, and were the cause of my friend’s disappearance.”
“Red Babbington,” snorted the warden, “abducts poor wandering folk to sell as slaves abroad, and takes hostage any he thinks may bring him a bigger payment. He kills and he’s brutal. They call him the Beast of Kent.”
“They call me Dickon the Bastard,” Richard murmured, turning away, “although I have never known why since I’ve killed no one in my entire life, even though there’s been provocation enough. Now,” he thanked the warden, “I have even more reason to wish someone dead. But first I have to find someone living.”
“Then I wish you good luck, sir,” the warden said, walking with him into the street. “Go search under them trees where the fight took place. You may find a trail to follow.”
Richard had every intention of doing that and he took his horses reins, mounted, and rode directly west. He did not know the countryside but the place where the fight had occurred had been thoroughly explained. He found it easily and the story of what had happened still lay strewn. Snow was blood stained. Tree branches lay broken. Boots bloodied and fallen, capes lost, the remains of a burned out fire, and signs of a deserted camp were evident. Richard began to search.
But no corpse, unnoticed in shadow or bush, lay forlorn and there was no property left there which he could identify as having belonged to his friend. Nothing indicated either Thomas’s presence, nor that of any woman. But amongst the turmoil of recent struggle, a story clearly told, there was some sign of small feet running through the trees, as of someone escaping the fight. It meant little. Many of the men might have preferred to avoid such mayhem. But there was no other trail to follow except for that, and since he had already combed each tedious detail of Dover itself and its immediate surroundings, Richard now headed where the churned and muddy footsteps led.
He rode slowly, careful not to miss a sudden twist or turn. But as the snow was melting and the trail was several days old, he lost it in the seeping twilight, and realised that the path was as cold as the day itself.
At first he considered returning to sleep at The Sleepy Oyster Inn. But he disliked retracing his own travels, and so headed onwards. The only milestone pointed back towards Dover, but he guessed there would be villages nearby, and continued riding into the waning daylight.
The forest thinned. A natural pathway, visible now through the slush of melt, led west. The choice was either to take the path, or to head directly towards the forest’s edge and the slope he glimpsed beyond.
He turned the horse, and headed west.
The small township of Lydden offered little distraction and no news, but Richard booked in at the only inn, taking a chamber that looked out across the rooftops and beyond to the rolling farmlands and scrubby plains. He did not expect, smiling as he finished a large tankard of hippocras, to be able to see distant travellers, nor his friends come galloping across the hills towards him before breakfast. But a sense of distance offered a form of hope which he found reassuring. So he ordered the bed warmed, a small fire to be lit on the hearth, a jug of hippocras left beside the bed, and bread, cheese, ham and ale to be brought to the bedchamber shortly after dawn the following morning. Before rolling into bed and disappearing beneath the piled blankets, Richard examined his wounds. He could see the slash down his jaw reflected in the window diamonds, and considered it closed, and unimportant. Other cuts and bruises were fading fast. But sitting on the edge of the mattress, he unbound and examined the more pronounced injury in his side, touching it carefully, looking down at the thick black scar. No open seepage remained. The pain was considerably less. He rebandaged his ribs, rolled over into bed, pulled the sheet to his ears, snapped shut his eyes as if turning off the memories, and gradually fell deeply asleep.
He awoke to the light tap on the door. Exhaustion had brought many hours of dreamless sleep and he opened his eyes to new hope. Dawn was ablaze and only a slight breeze rattled the window frame. He ate in his own room, sitting on the stool by the empty grate where the previous evening’s fire had burned out but sooty embers remained warm.
Then, fully dressed and refreshed, he stretched and walked to the window.
Two tired sumpter horses were approaching the inn from the eastern road. And, although thinking himself assuredly crazed, since it was a virtual impossibility, Richard recognised them both immediately.
Within moments he was standing out in the courtyard between the stable block and the inn’s main entrance. The two riders saw him. Richard smiled wide. It was pleasant to know that, sometimes, and after considerable effort, miracles did occasionally still happen.
Jemima gazed in wonder and amazement and was tempted to tumble out of the saddle into his arms, but, suddenly timid, kept her seat and clung tired and frozen fingers to the reins. Thomas leapt from his horse, dashing towards Richard with both arms outstretched. “It’s inconceivable, Dickon. I can’t believe it’s you.”
There was a pale sunshine and a wintry attempt at warmth. The faint sheen gleamed across Richard’s smile, shadowed the cut on his face, and brightened his eyes. He clasped Thomas’s hands, but gazed past the feathered hat, smiling up at Jemima as she toppled a little in the saddle. Reaching past his friend, Richard reached out a hand. “Before you fall, mistress?”
She nodded. Taking his hand, very slowly and stiffly she dismounted, stood a little unsteady, and mumbled, “My shoes are too small, you see. They belong to a young girl in the next village. And the horses belong to the blacksmith, who expects their return within three days.”
She was not quite sure how she found herself in Richard Wolfdon’s embrace, but she did not complain. She could hear Thomas laughing, closed her eyes and nestled close to the deep velvet coat against her cheek. Beneath the padded doublet the steady throb of his heartbeat seemed like the most beautiful music she had ever heard, and the strength of the arms holding her was without doubt the greatest protection. She had no idea she was crying until, swept from the ground, she found she was being kissed.
The kiss was brief, but the heat of his breath was suddenly exciting and she gazed up into the smooth reassuring face. She found her feet again, but his arms remained around her. His voice was the softest murmur, deliciously warm against her forehead. “I make no apologies,” he told her. “Nor for what I will do next.” And once more she was swept up as he carried her inside where the innkeeper was staring somewhat bemused, and a huge fire awaited them in the public chamber. Thomas followed. He was still laughing.
From the Lydden Inn’s public chamber where a young boy was busily sweeping the floor, Richard strode to the small private antechamber beyond, where he ordered another fire to be lit, a table set with cloth and platters, and wine, ale and a substantial breakfast to be served. He set Jemima down carefully on the bench and immediately sat beside her.
Thomas had not stopped laughing as he sat on the opposite side of the table, and Jemima, half snuggled in the corner, sighed deeply with a pleasure she had not felt since recently leaving her father. Richard stretched out, leaning back against the wall by the hearth, allowing the new sparking flames to paint one side of his face crimson, leaving the other side in dark leaping shadow, obscuring the sharp profile of his autocratic nose. Beneath the dazzle, his face had softened, smooth and cheerful, as though having experienced the refreshing dawn of his own new day.
Thomas, who had never seen his friend appear so complacently placid, turned to the young woman he had so recently come to know, and also noticed the distinct change in her expression. Yet where Richard had adopted the rare appearance of sublime satisfaction, Jemima seemed animated, agitated, strangely jittery and very much unsettled. Thomas smiled and decided that he understood those two contradictory attitudes very well indeed.
While eating, they compared stories. “I set out many days ago to search for you,” Richard told Jemima, “with Thomas
as my sensible watchdog. Your disappearance struck us both as dangerous, and speaking to your reborn father did nothing to resolve the doubts.” He nodded, grinning. The grin had become constant. “We were attacked by brigands. My fault through lack of caution. I escaped simply by luck, while Thomas was taken. So my search then turned to him, and I’ve since lost all count of the days I have tramped this countryside in that search.”
“I cannot see,” decided Jemima, mouth full of cold ham, “why you thought you had to come after me in the first place. Am I so stupid to have rushed off without preparing for danger? Am I so weak that I couldn’t travel on my father’s business without needing your help and protection?”
“Exactly that, madam.” Richard drained his tankard, and replenished it himself.
“Oh well,” said Jemima, swallowing hard. “You were right. I didn’t count the danger and I rushed off without thinking, and Papa was really overestimating my strengths. I was taken prisoner too.”
“But,” added Thomas, she saved herself and me as well. First time a woman has saved my life since I was born. My mother, presumably, did the same at that time. I’ve avoided danger ever since. But knowing Dickon the Bastard means danger follows.”
“A lawyer of meagre means?” Richard lifted one eyebrow. “Have I improved or damaged your life, my friend?”
“Improved. Without a doubt. Until I joined you on this madcap adventure.”
“Well,” decided Richard, “this escapade may have threatened your routines somewhat, Tom. It has certainly solved the problems of tedium.”
“And presumably,” Thomas grinned, “My dubious friendship has made up part of that past tedium?”
“Not in the least,” Richard said, eyes half closed in the hazy smoke of warmth. “You have frequently alleviated it. But at present I cannot help feeling that at precisely this moment, you are needed elsewhere, my friend. To organise a chamber for Mistress Jemima, for instance, and to arrange for your own additional place in my own room. I had intended to vacate it today. Now I believe that a prolonged stay is essential. You, Tom, are the one to make those details clear to the innkeeper, I am sure. Then there are the horses to settle, the borrowed sumpters to be returned to your benefactor the blacksmith, and a good dinner to order for later in the day. Take your time. Jemima and I will await you here.”
Thomas, smiling roundly, did as he was told. Richard turned lazily to Jemima. She was avoiding his gaze, and having finished her breakfast, now stared down into her lap. Finally she asked, small voiced, “Did you think it rude of me, sir, to run off in the night like that? It was rude, I know. As a guest in your home, and a guest so very generously and kindly treated, I am ashamed not to have returned that trust. I am sadly no lady and was never brought up to etiquette and respectability. I apologise. But hearing from my father in such an astonishing manner, and the message asked me to keep his return secret, I had no idea what else to do, nor what to expect.”
“You might have noticed,” Richard suggested, “from my greeting when you appeared this morning, that I am not in the slightest annoyed, nor had I expected an apology.” He nodded, smiling. “My decision to chase after you was inspired by a desire to help, not from any desire to criticise.”
“Oh dear,” she said on a hiccup, and Richard was abruptly aware that she was crying. Without hesitation he moved along the bench and took her immediately into his arms. She sniffed into his shoulder.
He spoke softly, one arm nestling her to him, his hand to her shoulder. His other hand, grasping the napkin from the table, wiped her eyes. “I have some idea of your life until now,” he murmured. “And your enforced reliance on a father who was rarely home and when he was, saddled you with a shuffling stable of temporary surrogate mothers, all of whom appear to have cared for you, but none of whom was surely suitable, nor had experience with young children. Meanwhile your father was earning himself the reputation of a pirate and adventurer, which would hardly have helped his daughter’s acceptance in the eyes of her wealthy neighbours.”
“They all hated us.”
“Which left you embarrassed, unhappy, and increasingly defiant.”
She managed to smile through the tears. “You seem to understand me very well.” She was clutching at his coat, her fingers no longer cold but warm as the reflections of the fire, tucked deep in velvet. “But I stopped caring after a time. It made me grow up. When I was little, I stuck my tongue out at them. I don’t suppose that helped, but it made me feel better. And all my shocking Mammas used to run through the garden down to the river without proper clothes, and Papa would chase them and call out terrible things and they would laugh, and I would stand at the window and laugh too.” She peeped up at him. “Some things were hard. Some things were happy.”
Richard nodded. “I had an entirely different family and a vastly different upbringing,” he told her. “But most of our neighbours hated my father, and with good reason. I disliked him myself. I also grew up embarrassed, unhappy and increasingly defiant.”
Jemima blinked up at him. “You’re fabulously rich and I’m ridiculously poor. Your grandfather was a nobleman and mine was a tanner’s assistant. You’re respected by everybody including the king and the queen and a palace full of courtiers. None of those people know I exist and the few who do, dislike and despise me.”
“Anyone who dislikes or despises you, my love, is a fool.” He laughed, his arms tightening around her.
A short and hesitant silence was interrupted only by the crackle of the fire and the sparking logs, the hiss of the oil lamp on the table, and Jemima’s attempts to stop sniffing. She felt the strength of his gaze on her, but looked down to the scatter of empty platters and the folded napkins. The silence seemed to echo. Then finally, in a breathless whisper, she stuttered, “You called me – your love.”
“Should I first have asked your permission?” He grinned down at her. “I have raced half way across the country to find you when I thought you in danger. I have risked my life and more pertinently that of my friend, in order to save yours. I have now embraced and kissed you, and intentionally sent my friend off on pointless duties in order to be alone with you. Have I done all this, my love, from a misguided sense of duty, or because I am sadly deluded or even entirely insane? Or am I, do you think, utterly besotted with the girl in my arms?”
She had been trying very hard to stop crying. Now she collapsed, flung both arms around him in return, and howled against his doublet. “I don’t deserve it,” she said between gulps. “I’ve been such an idiot myself. And I was sure – so terribly sure – that you didn’t like me at all.”
“In that case,” Richard told her, “in spite of all your other incontrovertible strengths and virtues, you are an exceedingly bad judge of character.”
Jemima shook her head, entangling her uncombed hair in the ribbons which fastened both his shirt collar and the front of his doublet. “What you said about me before was right,” she admitted. “I was so unhappy. I loved all my father’s women and they did mother me. Every one of them was kind to me. But I don’t think it was like having a real mother. Mostly because they only lasted a few years before another one came. And they didn’t dress most of the time and spoke of things that they probably should not have. I’ve never been respectable, you know. I learned to swear when I was five. I blasphemed and cursed before I ever went to church. I learned even worse things when I was too little to understand them. You wouldn’t want me as your mistress. I’d be shocking – and you’d be – ashamed.”
“I did not ask you to be my mistress,” Richard pointed out, voice gentle as his arms held her tightly and his hands caressed her.
Jemima was silent and suddenly disappointed. “I understand,” she whispered, hiding the disappointment. “But would you mind, very much, having me as a – friend?”
“I accept your friendship,” he murmured, kissing her ear very lightly, and twisting back the curls from his ribbons, “and I intend helping you, as friends do, in finding your father’s
lost funds, and ridding the world of one Red Babbington, a man I have learned to loathe. Your dear Papa, meanwhile, needs the assurance of a message and the knowledge that his daughter is safe.”
“I missed him so dreadfully,” she mumbled through sniffs. “People thought I didn’t love him. Even your half-brother presumed I didn’t love my own father, just because he was supposed to be wicked. But of course I did. I adored him. He was so gallant and exciting and he laughed all the time. I mean is. Knowing he didn’t drown is so wonderful. I was so amazed and thrilled. So of course that’s why I rushed off to do what he wanted without stopping to think of the difficulty or the danger.”
“I have spoken to your father,” Richard told her. “Once I claim a position of slightly greater authority and family responsibility in his eyes, I shall have a good deal more to say.”
Jemima did not entirely understand. “He isn’t a responsible man. He never was. He thinks life is an adventure.”
“How I do wish,” Richard sighed, “that I might share such a view. My life has been dull in the extreme. The country’s citizens, and in particular the upper echelons of humankind, are entirely lacking in any grain of intellectual contemplation, artistic endeavour, moral capacity, or general curiosity. All such pursuits having been eliminated from England’s gentry, the remaining demands of responsible duty and the fulfilment of other people’s expectations do not endow life with adventurous options.”
She managed to giggle. “I can’t ever imagine you dutifully doing what other people expect of you.”
He also smiled. “You are right. I do not. But the dull limits of what is left in life have always appeared absurdly ordered and drearily narrow. A certain avoidance of royal expectations has narrowed the scope further, and yet that avoidance has never been successfully achieved.”
The Deception of Consequences Page 25
