Raven's Bride (15 page)

The squire, his face contorted with a combination of passion and fury, was still peering through the window at the shadowy figures inside as he stroked himself with desperate violence.

Melcott watched in disgust as the squire brought himself to orgasm with a series of noisy grunts, taking care to milk every last drop of pleasure from himself before wiping his hand on the wet grass.

Truly the squire disgusted him, but he was a fit tool to be used for God’s purposes. Even depraved fools formed a vital part of God’s plan. He gazed with distaste at the pool of slime on the ground in front of the quire.

“
I hope you have not unmanned yourself,” he said with a sneer, making no attempt to hide his contempt and revulsion. “The real work is still to come. You heard how he vowed to kill you. Better you get to him first, or he will lie you out in the road as a feast for the crows.”

The squire grunted as he retied the laces of his breeches in a hurried knot. “I’m ready. I’ll stick my knife in the poxy back of that whore-mongering son of a scab-ridden old bitch as soon as he sets foot out the door.”

But it was some minutes still before Lord Ravensbourne appeared. The squire paced up and down, swearing under his breath whenever he stumbled over the uneven ground. Melcott sat on his heels, possessing his soul in patience for the end of the night’s work. All he needed to do now was to wait and to act appropriately when the time came. His plan was perfect. It could not be faulted in any way. He would not fail.

There was a soft noise at the front of the house, and a shaft of light glimmered over the front step. The squire started, jumped into the shadow of an old oak, and drew his dagger into his hand.

“Not so fast, not so fast,” Melcott counseled him, in a voice so soft it could barely carry through the air to the squire’s ear. “We cannot kill him so close to the house as to risk witnesses. The girl would talk, and all our labors would be in vain. Tail him to the lane and beyond, and kill him there. Make it look as though he was set upon by a wandering footpad. Make haste and do not lose him.”

The squire grunted again, and stole away after Lord Ravensbourne on silent feet.

Melcott crouched on his heels a while longer, his eyes half-closed, but his mind alert and his ears attuned to the night noises. An owl hooted. The wind whistled eerily through the topmost branches of the elm trees. A rabbit squealed its last as it met its death at the hands of a hungry fox or stoat. And still he waited.

His legs were beginning to cramp when, in the distance, he heard a hoarse human cry and the sound of blades clashing together. The noise continued for barely as long as it took him to struggle to his feet, then all fell silent once more.

Hurriedly he made his way to the source of the noise. A figure sat on the grass by the side of the lane, groaning and cussing by turns. Melcott recognized the squire, and hurried up to him.

“Melcott, you damn devil,” the squire hissed between his teeth, his voice thick with pain. “Why did you not tell me that yon nephew of yours has a way with a weapon?”

“Did he pink you?”

“He didn’t touch me. I took him by surprise and pricked his arm with my sword. He grabbed a stick from the hedge to parry my strokes, and we fought, but he was no match for me. I was about to stick it to him in the heart, when I stumbled over a poxy hole in the lane. God’s blood, but I am bruised and battered from head to toe., I have broken my ankle bone in two, and I cannot stand. I need a horse. Or better yet a carriage.”

A smile curved over Melcott’s face. The only carriage the squire would ever ride in again was the one that would carry him to his grave.

“Come, give me your arm,” he said as he reached down and took the squire’s knife hand in his left hand. With his right hand, he slid a gold-chased dagger neatly in between two of the squire’s ribs, all the way to the hilt, so that the squire’s lifeblood ran down his side and mingled with the dust of the road.

The squire looked up at his murderer, his face a picture of disbelief, and of the agony of dying. “You filthy, double-crossing, whore-mongering bastard,” he whispered. Then the blood gurgled up into his throat, and he fell on his back into the roadway, his life draining out of him. “God will damn you to seven hells for this.”

Melcott gave him a vicious kick with the toe of his boot. “Do not take the name of your Savior in vain,” he advised, satisfaction making his voice harsh with mockery. He snuffed up the sweet scent of the squire’s lifeblood into his nostrils with delight. He had done a good deed that night, and one the Lord would thank him for. “Consider that you are on your way to meet him anon.”

The squire’s face was dead-white in the moonlight and his fingers were scrabbling feverishly at his side, where the dagger had entered.

Slowly their movements grew ever more slow, until they stopped altogether.

Melcott prodded him gently with his toe. The squire did not even twitch, but lay, still and silent, in a pool of congealing blood.

Anna rose the next morning to a bright new day. She was betrothed to Lord Ravensbourne, and he had taken her to a place she’d never known existed on earth. He had laid his mark on her, and she had accepted him willingly, as the man who would be her husband.

He had vowed to come to her that morning to ask permission from her mother to marry her. Then they would tell their joyous news to the world, and all would rejoice with them.

She knew her mother’s permission would instantly be forthcoming. Mrs. Woodleigh would be delighted. She loved Lord Ravensbourne as if he were her own son, and she would be glad to see her daughter settled safely in the world.

As promised, her lover arrived with the sun, his arm in a sling, but his face wreathed in smiles. Anna and her mother were eating breakfast when he arrived at their door.

“You have hurt yourself, my lord?” she asked, at the sight of his bandaged arm. Leaving her uneaten muffin on her plate and rising hastily from the table, she rushed over to him to inspect the damage.

He dismissed her concern with a shake of his head and put his uninjured arm around her shoulders possessively. She leaned against his side, taking comfort in his presence. “Just a scratch. Not worth mentioning. But, Mrs. Woodleigh,” he said, and he winked at Anna, “with your permission, I would like to ask you the most important question of my life.”

The interview went just as Anna had predicted it would. Lord Ravensbourne, Anna’s hand tightly clasped in his own, broke the news of their desire to be betrothed, and, as expected, received Mrs. Woodleigh’s fondest assurances of her full consent and of her great happiness at the prospect of having him not only as a nephew, but also as a son.

Their happiness was short-lived. In the middle of Mrs. Woodleigh’s protestations of delight, a loud stamping, as of many feet, was heard at the door. A voice called loudly to ask if Lord Thomas Ravensbourne was inside.

He strode to the door and flung it open. Anna gasped with surprise and apprehension at the sight of a half-dozen strange men, armed with a motley collection of antique weaponry, clustered outside on the stoop.

“Constable Williamson,” Lord Ravensbourne said curtly to the leader of the men outside his door. “What can I do for you.”

The constable shuffled his feet together, before deliberately squaring his shoulders and saying in a loud voice. “Lord Ravensbourne, you must come along with me. I arrest you in the name of the king.”

Mrs. Woodleigh shrieked. Anna grew faint and clasped at the edge of the table to steady herself. Lord Ravensbourne himself looked only mildly curious. “God’s blood, Williamson, what in heaven’s name for?”

“For the murder of Squire Grantley, found dead last night in a ditch by the side of the lane in the copse, not more than three hundred paces from here, with your dagger in his back.”

Anna gasped at the sound of that hated name. She had not killed him, then, with her iron candlestick. She mouthed a quick prayer of thanks to the Lord for sparing her conscience from that particular sin.

But her bout of thankfulness was quickly over. The squire
had
been killed, though not by her.

She had told Lord Ravensbourne only last night of the squire’s attack on her. Surely he would not, he could not, have moved so quickly to take revenge on the man who had threatened her.

Still, he had been whole last night, and this morning he was bandaged. She did not want to suspect him, but the idea that he had murdered the squire crept into her imagination like the plague, infecting everything it touched.

On shaky legs, she made her way to his side and took his good hand in hers. “Tell me it is not true.” She could not yet unreservedly place her trust in him. It was only yester-night that she had placed her trust in him at all. She needed his honesty and his reassurance so badly.

His face was grave as he turned to her. “A man jumped me last night, at the place in the lane, as I returned home. I took him for a common footpad, but it could well have been your squire. He wounded my arm when he first attacked me, we fought for a few moments, then he stumbled and fell. I did not kill him, Anna. When I left him, he was hurling curses after me at the top of his lungs.”

She believed him with all her heart, but his story did not tally well with the fact that a man lay dead in the ditch. “But your dagger? In his back?”

“Believe me, Anna. I would never stab a man, even vermin such as he, in the back.” He turned to the constable and his men. “I am innocent of this charge. I have nothing to hide and nothing to fear. Come, take me along to the justice, and we shall soon sort out the truth of the matter.”

Anna could not believe how quickly things moved. Before she had had time to utter a single protest, Lord Ravensbourne had been carried off to Norwich to be hauled before the justice of the peace, and she and Charlotte and Mrs. Woodleigh were sitting weeping together in the carriage, as it jolted along after them.

Melcott crossed his legs in front of the fire of Norwich’s best inn and poured out another measure of the best French brandy for Justice Willoughby, who sat across the table from him. “My nephew was picked up this morning for murder.”

The Justice’s eyes lit up with eager greed, and he rubbed his hands together with glee. “And you want to make sure he goes free. Anything to oblige an old friend.”

“On the contrary. I saw him commit the murder myself, and I would not have so grave a crime go unpunished.”

The light went out from Justice Willoughby’s eyes, and he heaved a sigh. “I would have done my duty in the matter, whether you had asked me to or no.”

Melcott mentally calculated how much he would need to offer the justice to ensure the verdict went his way. Justice Willoughby was as greedy for riches as his fellows, but was also proud of his reputation as a strict law-enforcer. “I have every confidence in you, my dear justice,” he said. “And to show my appreciation, I will be happy to send you a brace of pheasants and another of geese when my nephew is found guilty.”

Willoughby coughed delicately. “I will do what I can, my dear Melcott, but juries can be so difficult these days.”

“And a case of Spanish wine when he is hanged.”

That offer evidently found favor. The justice licked his lips greedily and swallowed the spittle gathering in his mouth. “Malmsey or Madeira?”

Melcott sighed. “Shall I say a case of each?”

The justice raised his glass. “Then it will be my pleasure to hang your nephew forthwith, and we shall toast his burial together in fine style.”

Anna shivered with fear as Lord Ravensbourne stood before the jury, and the justice who presided over them. Even though he was accused of a heinous crime, he held his head erect, and his eyes flashed fire. “Who accuses me of this murder?”

The justice, an old man dressed in a black suit gone rusty with age, fished in his pocket and brought out a coarse handkerchief, with which he wiped the drip off the end of his long, hooked nose. “You are here to answer my questions, my fine young lordling,” he sneered. “I am not here to answer yours.”

He had only one ear, Anna realized with dismay. What hope for mercy, or even of justice, from a lawgiver who himself had been on the wrong side of the law and had lost an ear for it?

“Have I not the right to face my accusers?”

The justice tapped his fingers impatiently on the bench in front of him. His pale blue eyes were cold and merciless. “I have a witness who places you at the scene of the crime.”

Anna shivered at the severity of his tone. He was looking at Lord Ravensbourne with an implacable gaze, as if he could stare a confession out of him.

Lord Ravensbourne shrugged. “I do not deny that I met the squire last night, if it was he, indeed, who jumped on me in the dark and stuck his sword in my arm.”

“Do you deny that you fought with him?”

“The man attacked me, and I defended myself.”

The justice leaned forward eagerly, his beady eyes glittering with an evil delight. “So you admit to killing him then?”

“I did not kill him. He was alive when I left him.”

“A likely story. You fought with him, but did not kill him? So who did? And why were you out that night at all? In the middle of your own ball? Did you hope the crowd would cover your absence so you could sneak away unnoticed on your errand of murder?”