Raven's Bride (19 page)

Mrs. Woodleigh gave a soft smile. “So you believe him innocent of the crime for which he was to die? I am thankful for that. Tom was always such a sweet boy, and it would sadden me to think he was capable of such an ill deed.”

He shook his head sorrowfully. “I am grieved I cannot, in good conscience, protest his innocence. He is my nephew, and as such I am bound to love him, however he has disgraced the family name. I know he is not innocent. I saw him strike the fatal blow.”

Anna felt as through a spear had pierced her through the heart. Lord Ravensbourne had protested his innocence and faith to her in accents that demanded she believe him. Now here was his own uncle, an honest and God-fearing man, swearing he had witnessed the crime. Her head swam with fear and confusion. “Surely you are mistaken, Mr. Melcott,” she cried, in her distress and alarm. “It was a dark night. Could you not have mistook another for him?”

“I see you do not want to believe in your favorite’s guilt,” he said, his voice sad, as he sat on the hard-backed chair in the corner and crossed his legs in front of him, “but I have proof enough that it was him.

“I had seen you looking pale and miserable at the ball and then noticed your absence from the company. Your dear mother kindly informed me that you had felt a trifle unwell and had decided to retire for the night.”

Mrs. Woodleigh stifled a cough in her handkerchief, and nodded. “So I did, indeed.”

“I was on my way to call on you, despite the lateness of the hour, to satisfy my concern for your health when I caught sight of Lord Ravensbourne looking pale and disordered, rushing along the lane.”

Anna shuddered. Lord Ravensbourne had seemed calmness and happiness itself when he had left her, but it was possible his demeanor had simply been a mask he had put on to hide his agitation from her. Although all had been resolved satisfactorily between them in the end, she had certainly given him some upsetting news.

“His appearance, so unusually wild and distracted, alarmed me to the extent that I followed him. He was muttering wildly to himself as he hurried along. ‘Can this be true? Yes, it must be. How could I doubt the words of her I adore? And how shall I be revenged on the villain, for revenged I must be.’ In the distance, I spied a figure walking towards him.

“
All of a sudden he gave a leap of joy. ‘Is God so good that he delivers him up to me on the very night that I learn of his infamy?’ With these strange words, he drew his dagger from his side and held it concealed in the palm of his hand.”

She did not want to believe him. She could not believe him without injuring her betrothed, but his story had a ring of truth to it. Lord Ravensbourne
had
been at walking along the lane that night, after the secret visit he had made to her house.

That very night she had confessed to the squire’s attack on her. In his anger, her cousin had sworn to kill the evil beast. Could God have been so cruel as to throw the squire in his way, just as the knowledge of his injury to her was so fresh and biting in his mind? Had he given in to an urge to defend her honor by murdering the man who had injured her?

Mr. Melcott swore, with truth writ in his face, that he had seen him. What reason could Mr. Melcott have to lie? Lord Ravensbourne was his nephew and his host. Nothing short of the basest ingratitude would allow him to spin tales about such a matter.

Melcott seemed not to notice the conflicting emotions raging in her face. He continued with his story, his voice unperturbed. “He passed the stranger, who nodded at him cordially, as one would nod to a stranger you met on a dark road and from whom you fear no evil. Just as they had passed each other, my nephew whirled around and stabbed the stranger in the back. He did not even trouble to withdraw his knife, but went on his way again, whistling merrily as he walked.”

This did not sit well with what Anna knew of her cousin. He was a gentleman, not a rogue and a vagabond to attack an unarmed man without warning, even though the man had deserved to die. “You saw him knife the dead man in the back?” A fair fight, she could understand, even forgive, but to stab a man in the back was worse than criminal. It was the work of a base coward.

He leaned forward in his chair and held her eyes with his own. “Believe me, Anna. I do not lie to you when I tell you that I saw the squire murdered.”

She did not know what to believe. Her love for her cousin and her newly betrothed warred in her breast against the probability he had committed a vile murder and lied to her about his guilt. “Then I am sorry for it.”

The freshness of her love was bruised and battered, but she would not forsake him. She was too just to condemn him without a fair trial. Charlotte would secure him a pardon, and when he returned, she would search out the truth from him herself.

She would not condemn him for murder. God in heaven knew how close she herself had come to killing the self-same man. But if he had lied to her that he was innocent, she would cast him out of her life, though it break her heart in two to do so. She would not marry where she could not trust.

All depended on Charlotte securing him a pardon from the king. If Charlotte failed, Lord Ravensbourne would be lost to England forever, and she would have no chance to find him either guilty or innocent. “Has Charlotte left for the court already?”

Melcott growled into his beard with irritation. “No niece of mine will ever be allowed to pay court to the popish king and his profligate court of rascals and whoremongers. She has not even a companion to help guide her through the stormy shoals of intrigue that surround the royal ménage. Disgrace would be sure to follow her.”

“You would not go along with her as her chaperone?”

“I care too much for my immortal soul to have truck with the devil’s agents. Besides, I mislike requesting a pardon for a man mired in guilt.” His voice, not for the first time, struck her as pompous and irritating.

Anna’s heart sank. It was just as she had feared—Charlotte would get no help from Mr. Melcott in her errand. “You forbade her to go then?”

“I did.” His voice was stern and authoritarian, admitting of no further argument. “She threatened to go, indeed, but I have locked her into her room until she gets over her nonsensical ideas.” He turned to Mrs. Woodleigh. “I know the disappearance of your nephew could severely affect your fortunes,” he said, his tone newly solicitous. “I do not know how the trustees of the estate appointed by the king will regard your just and proper claims to his charity, but rest assured I will do everything in my power to make your situation easy for you.”

Mrs. Woodleigh smiled her thanks. “You are too kind.”

Mr. Melcott looked at Anna, a gleam of covetousness sparkling brightly in his rheumy eyes. “I would be kinder still, if I had the right to be. But I will talk of that anon.”

She hoped he did not mean anything serious by his last comment. Although she liked him well enough, as a pale replacement for her dearly-loved father whose home was now in heaven, she had no wish to wed him.

Melcott’s visit did not long. Anna was too sleepy, Mrs. Woodleigh too unwell, and Mr. Melcott too disturbed in his mind to make much conversation.

Mr. Melcott,
Anna thought, as she saw him to the door,
cared more for justice and righteousness than for charity or forgiveness. Or love.

His intransigence disturbed her greatly. Guilty or innocent, Lord Ravensbourne would go to the gallows a thousand times before Mr. Melcott, his own uncle, would lift a finger to save him.

When Lord Ravensbourne awoke, the sun was high in the sky. His stomach growled with hunger, and his throat was parched. “No
Bonny Lady
yet?”

Daventry shook his head and tossed him a hunk of bread and a flask of ale. Ravensbourne tilted his head back and let the warm liquid trickle down his throat, before attacking the bread with gusto.

“Did they not feed you in prison?” Daventry asked, as he tore another hunk off the loaf and began to eat it with rather less enthusiasm than had his friend.

Ravensbourne shook his head. “Mouldy black bread and hard cheese is little to my taste,” he said around his mouthful. “Besides which, living under the sentence of death gave no sauce to my appetite.”

His hunger was soon abated and he began to look for the
Bonny Lady
with some eagerness. Was it not due soon? But the horizon was clear of sails, and not a ripple marred the soft sheen of the water.

Together they sat in companionable silence in the gently rocking boat as noon turned to afternoon, and the shadows started to lengthen, and still no
Bonny Lady.

A distant sound of horses’ hooves and the clattering of weapons broke the stillness of the afternoon. Daventry scanned the beach with an air of anxiety. “I think it’s time we chased a few deep water fish,” he said, as he took up the oars. “We have company.”

Lord Ravensbourne followed the direction of his gaze. “’Od’s blood,” he said with feeling, at the sight of the party of men gathering on the shore. “I had not thought they would catch up to me so quickly.”

Daventry took up an oar and passed the other to his friend. “They have no boat. We are safe as long as we stay off the land.”

A musket shot that sent a ball whistling over the bow of their boat quickly proved his hope illusory.

“If we can get through the rocks at the entrance of the cove to the open sea, we’ve got a chance,” Lord Ravensbourne said, matching his oar strokes perfectly to Daventry’s so the old rowboat cut cleanly through the waves as if it had wings. “If the
Bonny Lady
turns up before they figure a way out through the rocks, I can be on board in a trice, with no one the wiser.”

Daventry grunted his assent, and the two of them redoubled their efforts, pulling the oars through the water with all their strength. They ignored the shouts behind them ordering them to stop, and tried, with rather less success, to ignore the occasional musket ball as it whistled over their heads, or splashed into the sea at their side. Luckily, the distance between the boats was too great for the muskets to be used with any great accuracy.

The ebb tide had just turned and the cove was starting to fill with water again. Choppy waves from the open sea came rushing in over the rocks, boiling furiously as they came, before they settled down into the quiet of the cove and broke unhurriedly and without violence on the sandy beach.

As boys, they had only ever dared to sail this route at a high, ebbing tide, when the worst of the rocks were submerged and the incoming waves dashed against the rocks with less force, pulled back out to sea by the vagaries of the moon.

They settled back on their oars for a heartbeat, looking at the boiling water in front of them. Just then Lord Ravensbourne caught sight of a sail turning around the head. “The
Bonny Lady
?” he yelled at Daventry above the noise of the breaking waves, pointing to the sail.

Daventry searched the rigging with his eyes and gave a quick nod. “Could well be.”

The sight of the boat he’d waited for all day gave new hope to Lord Ravensbourne. He took hold of his oar again. “Be ready to pull when I give you the word,” he instructed Daventry, as he set his face towards the rocks. “I’ll navigate us as best I can.”

The waves were stronger as they approached the shoals, and the eddies of water made steering nigh impossible. By dint of pulling first one way and then another, they brought the boat close to the passage through the rocks. “One more pull and we’re through,” shouted Daventry, with jubilation, as they fought their way into the narrow band of safety through the treacherous shallows.

Just then, a huge wave broke over the boulders to the left of them, and the force of it as it crashed into their boat sent them hurtling towards a wicked-looking group of rocks, whose sharp points reached towards the sky, and where treacherous currents swirled.

“
Pull for your life,” yelled Lord Ravensbourne as the boat slammed against a boulder and spun crazily in the tide.

The incoming waves battered and pounded them, the currents tried to suck them back into the cove, and everywhere loomed the menacing points of rocks honed to a knife’s edge by the actions of wind and rain, as the two of them fought the elements for their lives.

In the tumult, Lord Ravensbourne heard screams of fear and agony behind him. The pursuing boat, larger and less able to maneuver through the waves and rocks, had come to grief on a submerged boulder, and its desperate inhabitants had taken to the water to flounder their way back to safety if they could.

He gave another mighty pull with his oars and then they were through and into the larger waves of the open sea, as the
Bonny Lady
itself came into sight, less a quarter of a mile away out to sea.