Raven's Bride, page 4
“H-How?”
“He stopped my coach and ordered me outside. Your sister held a gun on me, and he had two pistols of his own. It was dark. At one point I thought your father was about to fire at—” Ash sucked in a harsh breath. “It doesn’t matter now. Later I’ll tell you all of it if you want to know. I shot him in the heart. He died instantly.”
After a long minute, Harry raised his head. “Well, that’s a kindness.” His voice shook, but he looked genuinely relieved. “The gaffer wanted to die fast, and said more than once that he wished a bullet had caught him when he was a soldier. Always took it back later, because if he’d been killed in the war, he wouldn’t have found me and Glennie.”
Ash turned, astonished to find an unsettling smile on the boy’s freckled face.
“She kept hoping he’d get better,” Harry said, “but I knew it wasn’t no use. I’d been with him nearly a year before she came away with us, and he got worse every day. Most nights he couldn’t sleep from the pain in his lungs. We got scared to leave him, even for an hour or two, for fear he’d die alone. I ’spect that’s why Glennie stole m’horse and went along t’other night.”
Recalling the man’s rasping cough, Ash wasn’t surprised to learn he was ill. But he was stunned at Harry’s insouciant acceptance of his father’s death. He’d expected accusation and had prepared himself to accept blame, not credit.
Harry’s eyes shone with tears, but his smile didn’t fade. “I loved him, y’know. Took him a long time to find me after he came home from Waterloo, but he never gave up until he did. Then he looked for honest work, but there was none to be had. When he was sure he wouldn’t get well again, we went to where Glennie was so he could say goodbye. He never expected she’d follow us, and he tried to send her back to the school. But she wouldn’t go. He did his best for us, guv.”
Unable to speak, Ash nodded.
“I’m glad he went quick.” Harry came to his feet. “Dunno how we’d have managed if he died a bit at a time, with no money for food and medicine. The last few weeks, Glennie nursed him when he took to his bed, and I stole chickens and bread. Then he felt better and took me to Glossop, lookin’ to find a job for me. You know what happened after that. Anyways, I can’t think of nothin’ else to tell.”
His face grew solemn. “You ought to let m’sister go, guv. It was the gaffer and me set out to rob you. Glennie wouldn’t have been there the second try if I hadn’t got sick. So hand me over to the law. Not her.”
Feeling helpless, Ash went to the bellpull and gave it a tug. “We’ll talk again tomorrow,” he said in a flat voice. “For now, you can spend some time with your sister. A room has been made ready for you to sleep, so let the footman know when you are ready to go there. And Harry, there will be guards in the halls and outside the windows, so don’t try to escape.”
The boy gave him a weary smile. “Guv, I couldn’t walk another ten yards if you opened the front door and sent me packing.”
After the footman led Harry away, Ash summoned Robin and told him the trip to Derby would wait another day. He was not yet ready to turn these children over to the constable.
Alone again, he gazed up at the portrait of Ellen. She would have swept Glennie and Harry under her wing in a flash. Ellen thought the best of everyone, and would never have understood why her husband had come to trust no one at all.
Dammit, he wanted to believe Harry’s story. He very nearly did.
But he knew every inch of the territory surrounding Ravenrook, including the winding road between Glossop and Sheffield. He had been there only weeks ago, passing the exact spot Harry described. It overlooked Lady Clough, a barren, deserted stretch of moorland.
There was no such place as the Snake Inn.
5
“WELL?” GLENYS REGARDED her brother impatiently. “What did you tell him?”
Harry looked up from the dishes spread across the writing table in her room. He had a sandwich in one hand, a chicken leg in the other, and his mouth was full. Unable to reply, he shook his head.
Sighing, Glenys forced herself to wait—never an easy task. When the footman ushered Harry inside, he had aimed straight for the food with scarcely a nod in her direction.
She couldn’t blame him for gorging himself. In the six months she’d spent with her father and brother, they generally went to bed hungry. And if there was a bit of money, by silent agreement it was spent on ale for Papa. Near the end, it became a necessity to ease his suffering.
She regarded Harry with affection. To his vast displeasure, he was a slightly built young man with a face almost feminine in its beauty. The other boys in their small Northumberland village had tormented him unceasingly. She suspected he’d endured worse bullying at St. Simon’s School, where he was dispatched after their mother died.
At the time, she’d been immersed in her own troubles. A pair of charitable ladies agreed to take in the nine-year-old girl, and they endured her high spirits for as long as they could. But their conviction she was possessed of a devil, often voiced, only inspired her to greater mischief. Finally, they begged the vicar to place her in another home until her father returned.
But as the war continued, there was not so much as a letter from John Shea, let alone money to support his children. Within a year Glenys had been passed to nearly every household in the parish, without ever taking root.
At wit’s end, and over her protests, Reverend Hensworthy applied to her mother’s family for assistance. She had told him it was no use, and was unsurprised when they refused to have her. They did send money for her schooling, however—on the condition she never contact them again. It was an easy promise to make, and one she fully intended to keep.
Lord and Lady Haversham had disowned their daughter when she ran off to marry the charming, feckless Jack Shea. Glenys longed to thumb her nose at her grandparents, but longed even more for a good education. She consoled herself with the assurance they resented giving her the funds even more than she loathed accepting their charity.
While she was at Miss Pipcock’s School, word came that Harry had run away from St. Simon’s. After several years without news, she figured her brother must be dead. And Papa too, until they both appeared from nowhere one afternoon. Suddenly, she had a family again.
Papa insisted she remain at the school, safe and decently fed, but when they left, she packed her few belongings and set out after them.
Two weeks on the road, with no money nor any idea where they’d gone, convinced her she could accomplish just about anything if she set her mind to it. Sure enough, she found them in an abandoned crofter’s cottage, and her father was too weak from his illness to escort her back to Miss Pipcock’s.
Now Papa was gone, and all she had was the irrepressible, impossible Harry—“slickest pickpocket in Liverpool.” She hoped he had not confessed as much to the Earl of Ravensby.
“Will you stop eating so we can talk?” she demanded, unable to bear the suspense a moment longer.
Harry waved a bare chicken bone in her direction. “Got a wolf in m’stomach. You should eat some before I finish it all. Too skinny by half, sister mine.”
She glanced down, past her flat chest to the narrow waist where Harry’s pants hung loose. She was sitting cross-legged on the bed, and her bony knees might have belonged to the same chicken Harry was devouring. “Later. I want to hear every word you said to him, and everything he said to you. We have to get our stories straight.”
With a sigh, Harry wiped his hands on his shirt and leaned back in the chair. “You won’t like it, but I gave him the truth. Could tell right off he wouldn’t settle for anything else.”
“Oh, blast!”
“He’s a downy one, his lordship. Got eyes that look right into a fellow.”
Glenys nodded. She knew all about those eyes.
“’Sides, I’m pretty sure he already knew. Said he did, and just wanted me to back up what you told him.”
“Which was precisely nothing! And I warned you to keep your mouth shut.”
“Couldn’t see the point. He’s got us dead to rights, but we’re small fish for an earl. I figure our best chance is to throw ourselves on his mercy.”
“Mercy?” She sprang off the bed. “There is not one sliver of human feeling in that man. He played you for a fish, yes indeed, and reeled you in without a struggle.”
“Says you!” Harry made a face at her. “Fact is, the guv promised he’d let us go if I told him everything. So I did, and chances are we’ll be outta here tomorrow.”
“Bacon-brain!”
“Wigeon!”
Glenys took a long, calming breath. It wasn’t Harry’s fault. He was streetwise and clever in ways that astonished her, but no match for the Earl of Ravensby. “What’s done is done,” she said between her teeth. “But tell me what that is, best you remember, so I can make a plan. He’ll not let us go, Harry. I’m sure of it.”
Frowning, he crossed his arms. “Didn’t mean to let you down. Thing is, I kinda trusted him. And he sent a tray of food up here. Nice room, too, even without any curtains. He coulda stored us in the cellars, Glennie.”
“Did you consider he might be softening us up?”
“Nah, but I always figured earls and the like was honorable men. They can afford to be. Don’t have to steal to stay alive.”
No, she thought. From what she’d seen of this house, Ravensby was a wealthy man. But he imagined someone was out to kill him. Even earls had problems.
“Anyway,” Harry said, “I’ll tell you what happened downstairs if you’ll shut your jaw box so’s I can concentrate.” Leaning back in his chair, he closed his eyes and began to recite like one of her students delivering a poem the class was ordered to memorize.
He’s got a retentive mind, Glenys thought while lost in some business about a pig man. Maybe things weren’t so bad after all. Even the earl must have had trouble making sense of Harry’s story, not to mention his language. She concentrated on Ravensby’s questions, trying to figure out exactly what he was after.
Something about an assassin, but she already knew that. He thought someone had hired them, and she had been willing to go along as a delaying tactic. Now, Harry’s ingenuous tale made mincemeat of her strategy.
For all his skill at thievery, Harry couldn’t lie his way out of a potato sack. Ravensby didn’t know that, however. Not yet. From now on, she’d do all the talking.
When he was done, Harry looked at her expectantly. “Did I drop us in the soup?”
She had no idea. Now that Harry had confessed to attempted robbery, Ravensby could see them both hung. “You should have pleaded ignorance,” she said. “The earl would have no reason to hold an innocent child.”
Harry erupted from his chair. “I’m eighteen years old. A man, Glennie. A man, and don’t you forget it!”
“I will not,” she assured him. Harry bridled at any insult to his masculinity. For her own part, she longed for the day when a man looked at her and saw a desirable woman instead of a plain, gawky girl. Without pleasure she gazed down at her skeletal body. That would not happen soon, if ever.
Suddenly, grief flooded through her in hot waves.
The Sheas, Harry and Glenys, were fodder for the hangman. Papa was dead. Until Charlie bent to close them, his eyes had stared up at her blankly. There was no chance to say anything, not even goodbye.
Had she ever told her father that she loved him? She couldn’t remember.
Harry caught her as her knees buckled. With surprisingly strong arms he led her to the bed and sat her down, holding her as she wept. Distantly, she was aware of his own sobs and his tears stinging the side of her neck.
“He was a good man, Papa,” he said in a halting whisper.
“Y-Yes.”
“Most of the time,” Harry added after a beat. “He drank too much.”
“Yes.”
“Took the easy way out when he could.”
“Did he?”
“Always. ’Cept when it came to his children.” Harry’s arms tightened around her back. “It couldn’t have been easy, finding me. When I heard a cove was asking my whereabouts, I took care to make m’self scarce. Figured it was the law comin’ after me. Papa didn’t give up, though. Musta been a year he looked for me in Liverpool. God knows how long before he tracked me that far. He loved us, Glennie, in his way.”
She cried all the harder then, clinging to her brother, needing the release of pain she had buried inside for most of her life.
“Not good at words, y’know. But I … I-love you, too, Glennie,” Harry mumbled when her tears had subsided.
“Oh, Harry.” She pulled away and gazed at his sweet face. At his eyes, so like hers she might have been looking in a mirror. “Thank you for saying that. Since Mama, no one has. Did he ever speak of her?”
“Oh, yes. Mostly about how he ought never have married Lady Melanie. Said he wasn’t good enough. He was born to be a soldier, and because of the war, they had barely enough time to make a son and daughter. But she’d have run off with the devil, Papa told me, to escape her family. He took her away because even the life he could give her was better than the one she had.”
Glenys wiped her face with a corner of the bedspread. “What a sorry lot we are, Harry. But think of it. Mama was the daughter of a marquess, and so miserable she ran off with a soldier born of a butcher and a housemaid.”
“Papa said she loved him, though.”
“She told me the same thing, many times. Is this what love leads to, do you suppose? They cannot have spent more than a few months together, whenever Papa was given leave. I’ve no recollection of seeing him before the pair of you showed up at the school.”
“Me neither, until he found me in Liverpool. But at the end, he came for us both. That’s what we gotta remember.”
She managed a smile. “Harry my lad, you may in fact have a brain somewhere inside that thick skull of yours. And you certainly have a heart. But now we must put our heads together and find some way to outwit the Earl of Ravensby. At the very least, we had better plot our escape.”
“You’ve been here longer than me. Any ideas?”
She looked at the window. “Not at the moment. A chance may arise, but what we need is a way to communicate without anyone else knowing what we say. Do you speak French?”
“Be serious.”
“A code, then. Do you know one?”
He grinned. “As it happens, a good’un. Finger signs. Want me to teach you?”
They spent the next hour practicing an intricate code, with Glenys concentrating on the signs for shut up and run like hell. Harry knew a whole language with his fingers. He taught her signals that said watch out for that man, she’s lying, someone is coming, and a series of finger words for directions and where to meet.
When her eyelids began to droop, Harry brushed a kiss on her cheek. “That’s enough for now, sis. We’ll practice again when we get the chance.”
“Will we, do you s’pose?” Exhaustion muddied her words. “Get another chance?”
He went to the writing table and began wrapping sandwiches and biscuits in a napkin. “I ’spect Ravensby will turn us loose tomorrow morning. Why not?”
“Because I nearly killed him,” she said in a gloomy voice.
“Oh, right.” Harry gazed at her with awe. “I’d forgot. Didn’t know you could shoot, Glennie.”
“I can’t. But I had lots of time to aim while he was standing there with his hands up. Then all of a sudden, guns went off and mine did too.” She closed her eyes. “I don’t know if I meant to pull the trigger. I wish I could say it was an accident, but I’m not sure. Maybe I really wanted to kill him when he shot Papa.”
Harry studied the remnants of their dinner and returned several sandwiches from his napkin to the tray. “I’d have fired too, y’know. Instinct. Trust me, sis—it don’t help second-guessing yourself. Forget what happened. Wasn’t your fault. Well, you were bloody chuckleheaded to be there at all—”
She made the finger sign for shut up.
Laughing, Harry went to the door and knocked. “Eat somethin’, Glennie. I’ve left a bit and it oughtn’t go to waste. You got to be strong.”
A footman opened the door, Big Charlie by his side. Glenys waved at him and watched his round cheeks go red.
Harry noticed, making the sign for he’s a friend behind his back. “See you tomorrow,” he said aloud.
As the door was locked, Glenys sank back against the pillows. She couldn’t muster the strength to undress, or eat, or even slip under the covers.
But she had wept for Papa, and thought she might be able to let him go now. His body was in an icehouse, though. Next time she saw Ravensby, she would demand a decent burial. And beg him to let Harry go free.
She was the one who tried to kill him, after all. And despite what she told her brother, she was rather sure she’d meant it at the time.
6
“THERE IT IS!”
At Harry’s shout, Ash reined to a halt on the high ridge overlooking the turnpike road. Big Charlie and John Fletcher took up positions on either side of him.
Through the morning haze, he could barely make out a coach-and-four pulling away from the square, three-storied building. He glanced over his shoulder at Harry, who bounced excitedly in his saddle.
“See, I told you! The Snake Inn.”
Ash drew out his spyglass and focused on the sign hanging over the entrance. From this angle, the inscription was unreadable. He beckoned Harry forward. “Tell me about the place. Why is it called the Snake Inn?”
“How the devil should I know? There’s a crest on that sign over the name, and it’s got a snake coiled up at the top.”
“Ah.” Pieces of the puzzle started coming together. The Devonshire crest must have suggested the name of the inn.
The Duke of Devonshire was a major investor in the new road stretching from Manchester to Sheffield. Ash had been shown a prospectus, but declined to join the board. There was too much traffic through the High Peaks as it was, with mills springing up along formerly quiet rivers.
