Raven's Bride (18 page)

Tears misting his eyes, he turned to Charlotte and hugged her close. “I am relying on you to watch over your cousin. Behave yourself, little sister. Do not stay up late at night dancing. Do not spend overmuch on your bonnets. Avoid gambling—you have never had the head for cards. Careful with those muskets, crack shot though you are. And above all, do not throw yourself away on a no-good, no-account wastrel in my absence.”

She grimaced. “Have no fear of that. Uncle would not allow it. You must take care and return before he has married me off to an old merchant crony of his with bags of money, a face ridden with the smallpox, breath that stinks of onions, and one foot in the grave.”

Anna could not bear to see him go. She had found perfect happiness, only to see it stolen from her so quickly she had barely had the time to snatch a mere taste before it had turned to ashes in her mouth.

She hugged him close again, her mind taking refuge in seeing that all his possible wants were satisfied. “There is food and drink in your saddlebags, enough to keep you for several days if you have need of it. The horse will not be missed. It belongs to Captain Daventry, and he will lead it safely home again once he has seen you on to the boat.”

“Will you miss me, cousin?”

“I will count the hours until you return home once more.”

“As I will until I see you again.”

Anna and Charlotte clasped each other close as Lord Ravensbourne, brother to the one and beloved of the other, rode away into the night.

As the last faint hoofbeats disappeared into the stillness, wearily they mounted up again and plodded the last few miles home.

The dark of the sky was lightening into day as they rode the horses into the stables. Arms dropping with exhaustion, Anna took the saddle and bridle off her mare, and rubbed down her coat and hooves until not a trace of their night’s adventure was left. Charlotte, equally weary, worked beside her.

The first birds were starting to carol out their morning’s song as Anna, clad once more in female garb, picked her way back over the fields home. Her britches and smock were rolled up in a tight bundle under her arm.

No one in the house stirred as she crept into her chamber. She barely had the energy to step out of her gown before slipping into her bed, and falling instantly in a deep, deep sleep.

Disregarding their express wishes, he had secretly followed them the last few miles back to the manor house. He would never have forgiven himself if they had come to harm on his account. They were young and tired, the night was still dark—and someone had murdered the squire close by only a few nights ago. The murderer might still be lurking in the area, marking out his next victim. He would not let it be either of them.

It was a miracle the two of them had come so far and done so much already. He would not tempt the fickleness of fortune by leaving them unprotected now he was able to see to their safety.

Only when they had both disappeared into the stable did he turn his horse’s head around and set off for the coast where his friend Daventry and a boat were waiting to carry him over the water to Holland.

Turning his back on his sister and his newly-betrothed bride had been the hardest thing he had ever done. More than anything else in the world he wanted to follow them into the house and encamp there, declaring his innocence from the rooftop, and defying the law to come and take him away. He could barricade himself in his manor for weeks, if need be, and none would be able to come near him or take him back to jail. He was innocent of murder, and should not have to suffer for it.

But the squire
had
been murdered. Whoever had been the murderer had planned from the outset to pin the blame on him—or why would they have gone to the trouble of stealing his distinctive dagger to use as the murder weapon?

Someone had intended he hang for murder. When he found them, they would pay dearly for their crimes. He would stay alive, and stay free, until he had brought his would-be murderer to justice.

The pair of them had come to this stretch of the coast often enough as boys to know each little nook and cranny of the coastline. As eager ten-year-olds, they had discovered a secret bay, where the water was a deep, deep blue and so clear you could see right to the bottom. Fringed with clean white sand, and guarded at the entrance by a line of lethal-looking rocks, it had become their secret hideout whenever the pair of them had wanted to escape from their tutor. There they could swim and frolic and sail the raft they had made by lashing planks of wood together, capturing many a proud Spanish frigate in their imaginations, and burying the treasure they stole in secret places, which they marked with cryptic maps.

As foolish lads, they had explored the treacherous rocks at the entrance to the harbor in a small boat, and found a safe passage through them. That very passage was the one by which he hoped and prayed to escape today.

The beach was empty. Only a tiny rowboat, pulled up on the beach above the high-tide mark, gave evidence that someone had ever been here.

He turned his horse’s head around again, intending to tether the horse where he would not easily be seen and hide himself among the dunes, when from out of the bushes stepped Captain Daventry, fishing pole in his hand.

“Ah, you have decided to join me on my fishing trip,” Daventry called out jovially. “I was beginning to fear that an unforeseen circumstance might have prevented you from accompanying me this fine morning, or that my two messages of invitation had not reached you, or that, unaccountably, they had failed to persuade you to come.”

Lord Ravensbourne slid off the horse in relief. “So, you were behind my rescue, you rogue.” He embraced Daventry heartily. “But what on earth induced you to send Charlotte and Anna to break me out of prison? They could have been caught.”

“Anna loves you far too well to let herself fail. She knew your life depended on her success, and she would not hear of me sending another in her place. If my heart were not already spoken for, I would fight you for her. As for Charlotte—” Daventry’s voice grew soft with deeply-felt emotion. “—I would place my life in her hands ten times over. I was needed elsewhere, and I trusted the pair of them to do their part, and to do it well. But enough of this delay. We must go fish.” And he shoved a fishing pole into Ravensbourne’s hands and pushed him towards the boat.

“And your horse?” Ravensbourne asked. “What shall I do with him?”

Daventry stepped back a pace or two, whispered in the horse’s ear, and gave it a slap on its rump. The horse ambled off perfectly at ease, snatching a mouthful of grass as it went. “She will find her own way home,” he said, with a grin. “She knows the way and looks forward to the bucket of hot mash she knows is waiting for her in her stall when she arrives.”

The rowboat was ancient and strangely familiar. Lord Ravensbourne helped Daventry push it into the water of the bay and stepped into it gingerly. “It’s not the same boat?” he asked.

“Yes, the very same we used to use all those summers ago. I have taken good care of it over the years.”

Daventry settled back into the bow and rested his pole on his knee.

“
How long do we have to fish for?”

“Until the
Bonny Lady
comes along. The skipper expects to be passing this stretch of coastline shortly after noon, when the tide will make it easier for us to get out through the rocks.”

Ravensbourne leaned back against the side of the boat. “I have always found fishing to be the most soporific of sports. Would it ruin the game if I rested for a while?”

“I will wake you the instant I need you.”

With a grateful sigh, Lord Ravensbourne closed his eyes and let his mind wander.

A summer wedding would be best—on a bright, sunny morning without a cloud in the sky. The sky would not dare to be black on such a joyous occasion.

Daventry would stand up with him as his witness, and Charlotte with Anna. He sighed, thinking of Daventry. The poor man had loved Charlotte ever since he had been a boy, but his fickle sister could not bring herself to look on him as a serious suitor. Maybe his own wedding would send Charlotte’s thoughts in a matrimonial direction. And who better for her to attach herself to than her childhood friend—now an upright and honest man, and one he would be proud to call his brother.

And Anna, his lovely Anna. Any man would be proud to have her as his wife. Once they were married, he would shower his bride with rose petals—and with love.

Just the thought of holding her in his arms again made him sigh. Every moment of his exile would be spent working to obtain his pardon. He would not live again until he was back in England and could call her his own.

And with thoughts such as these slipping through his mind, and his body gentled by the rocking of the boat as it undulated over the waves, he fell fast asleep, blissfully unaware of the dogs and men that had been painstakingly tracking his path for hours, and were even now preparing for his capture.

The next morning Anna rose late, her joints so stiff she could barely walk without grimacing, but her heart as light as a mote of dust spiraling through the air in the sunshine.

She was dozing in her chair in the warmth of a fine summer’s morning, dreaming of how life would be when Lord Ravensbourne returned, when a heavy knock sounded at the door. Anna started from her seat and ran to open it. Her heart thumped in her chest and her throat constricted so she could no longer breathe. Had her cousin be retaken? Had her complicity in his escape been discovered? She raised the latch with trembling fingers, but it was only Mr. Melcott who stood outside.

With her heart light with relief, she opened the door and ushered him into the chamber where she and her mother had been sitting. Mrs. Woodleigh had been bothered lately by a return of the cough on her chest and was sitting up next to a good fire, wrapped in her shawl.

Melcott took the chair Anna had vacated on the other side of the fireplace. “I have come to inform you ladies that my vagabond nephew has broken out of his prison, as I have been told, setting fire to a goodly building on his way to distract the guards.”

Anna sat silent, willing her guilt not to show on her face. Melcott would not approve of her helping Lord Ravensbourne escape the law, or of such a wanton destruction of property.

Mrs. Woodleigh gave a little start. “Tom has escaped from his prison?” she said, in a great surprise. “How could he have managed that? Surely you are jesting.”

“I have never been more serious in my life. He has not even the courage to face his punishment like a man, but has taken to his heels like any common rogue or thief.”

Anna stifled a yawn. Despite sleeping until late this morning, she was bone-tired and her looking-glass had shown her the large, purple smudges that ringed her eyes. She knew she looked nigh as bad as she felt, but she hoped her ill looks would be put down to grief at her cousin’s sentence, rather than to exhaustion.

With luck, her sex would prevent her from being suspected were it ever found out that he’d had accomplices in his jailbreak. “How could he have escaped? Was he not locked in a cell. And guarded?”

Melcott rose from his chair and strode up and down the room, his hands behind his back, a forbidding expression on his brow. “The men who were supposed to be guarding him were found this morning, too drunk still even to piss in a straight line. Ravensbourne’s cell was found unlocked and he was long gone, flown away on the wings of a fiery red devil, who set the stables alight as he left so they could not follow them, the guards said. As if they could have stayed on any horse’s back in their condition.”

She enjoyed the secret warmth that spread over her at his words. The previous night seemed so far away—it was like a wonderful dream that had dissipated under the morning sun into a harsh and unfriendly world of iron shackles and hangings. She was glad to have its reality confirmed by Melcott’s news. “I am glad my cousin will not hang.”

But Melcott’s temper was not to be assuaged. “His running away is an admission of guilt.”

“He had already been tried and found guilty.”

“Pah,” he spat. “Everyone knows there is no justice in the world, and that for every twenty men who are hanged, at least ten of them are guiltless. Now Charlotte has the harebrained idea she will to court herself and try to obtain a pardon for him.”