“I suspect we should have let them sort things out,” Jacob remarked as Tom rejoined him, shaking out his fist with a certain grim satisfaction.
“It would not have been half so much fun, Your Grace,” Tom said with a cheerful grin. He pointed at one particular figure who was bringing a load of manure out of the stable, muscles straining to move the heavily overloaded cart across the cobblestones. “Unless I miss my guess, yonder is your man.”
Elias Moore turned out to be a short stocky man in a leather apron, with a face screwed up from the effort of moving the barrow of manure. He did not seem a man accustomed to heavy work, having a visible paunch straining his leather apron. He moved with slow heavy movements, making no haste in his particular task even when the stable master called him to task for his lack of progress.
“An impressive specimen,” Tom said with a sly look at Jacob.
Jacob gave his friend a sour look and went to meet the man, seething with each step, wondering if it was those ham-sized fists that had dared to bruise Alicia’s face. The closer he got, the less he was thinking. So by the time their paths crossed, Jacob was quite beyond words, but with the image of a struck Alicia in his eyes he coldcocked the man, laying him out on the pavement.
“You chided me for the same thing,” Tom remarked laconically, as the stable master shouted angrily before he realized just to whom he was shouting, and absented himself posthaste with a sudden need to visit the privy.
Now it was Jacob who needed to shake out his hand, noting almost idly that his knuckles had lost some skin and that blood stained the sleeve of his shirt.
“’Tis also harder to get an answer from a man stretched out on the cobblestones like this,” Tom said, going to the water trough and fetching a bucket of water which he poured out over the hapless victim.
Elias Moore came up gasping and choking, fists bunching until he saw the Duke, at which point he tried to scramble to his feet and bolt, much in the manner of the stable master.
Tom brought him back in line with the simple act of tripping the man and then sitting down on him to prevent him from going anywhere.
“Are you Elias Moore?” Jacob asked, kneeling and taking a bunch of the man’s shirt in his fist, mostly because he wasn’t altogether sure how long Tom could hold him down, for the stable hand fought valiantly to get up. He wasn’t making much progress with it for Tom had the other man’s arm bent up behind his back, a position that looked incredibly painful to Jacob’s mind.
“What of it if I am?” the other man answered and spit at his feet.
Tom knew enough to know when to let go. He bounced to his feet in the same instant that Jacob dragged the man up with every intent of hitting him again, only he was knocked off his feet by an explosion.
Elias Moore stumbled backwards, dragging Jacob with him, a bright spot of blood growing quickly over his heart. They went down hard, Jacob sensing more than seeing Tom behind him, taking the defensive position automatically from long training.
“Your Grace!”
“I am well enough, Tom,” Jacob replied, staring grimly at the man sprawled beneath him. “I wish I could say the same for our friend.”
Chapter 27
It might have been funny if she hadn’t been sprawled in the middle of things. This was a farce worthy of the playwrights who put on cheap entertainment in the city. She had seen such a play once, and laughed with the rest at all the right places, never realizing just how awful it was to be one of the players in that particular drama, being mistaken for something else entirely.
As it was, the three of them looked at one another for a long moment, hearing the aftermath outside, the shouts from the courtyard below.
“What was it?” Meghan asked, seeming to forget that a moment ago she had been furious. Now she stared from lover to sometime friend, her face pale with fright.
“A shot.” Owen was already halfway out the door, hopping frantically to get his boots back on as he ran.
“A musket?” Alicia asked, trying to scramble up, but still caught in the blanket. Meghan darted forward, lending her a hand, which said a lot for enemies found together under dire circumstances. In moments, they had Alicia extricated and were flying down the hall, nearly falling on the stairs when they realized that Owen had stopped near an open window at the landing.
“A musket,” Owen said, lifting the weapon and showing it to them both. Together, they turned toward the window.
Meghan stepped forward to look. “Someone fired out the window?”
Owen and Alicia both reached forward to grab her back in the same instant. “Stay down. There might be return fire.”
“Nonsense!” Meghan protested, but Alicia could only think of one thing. A single shot fired, the shouts, the confusion below that they could clearly hear, the clatter of wagons, of horses…people seeking cover, she realized, and the Duke somewhere below.
Without a word she turned and ran. Her hands flew to her mouth to contain the scream that lodged there unvoiced.
Alicia’s feet flew down the stairs at a dizzying pace. She heard Owen coming behind her, but though she was small, she was decidedly faster. So it was that she made it through the kitchens and burst out into the courtyard ahead of him.
Jacob was standing over the body of a man.
She must have made some sound, called to him, something, for he turned in that moment. She saw the terrible recognition in his eyes, the anger, the pain.
“Are you satisfied?” he shouted, and for a moment she thought he was talking to her. But he moved past her as though she wasn’t there, wrenching the musket from the grasp of his brother with one swift movement and casting it aside. The musket slid with a clatter across the cobblestones, coming to rest against the horse trough. A stable boy huddled there leapt up as though the musket itself could bite him, and nearly fell in the water in his haste to get away.
“Satisfied?” Owen just barely ducked the first punch, and landed one of his own as the Duke went in for the next. What followed was a flurry of blows, the thud of flesh hitting flesh, muffled grunts and invectives, all while Alicia stood, pale and trembling, unable to tear her eyes away from the sight.
“Why?” She wailed the single word, but there was no one to answer her, for the courtyard had filled with servant and guest alike, who cheered their favorites with all the enthusiasm of the Irish, proving that the English were not so different after all, at least in some things.
But Alicia had seen fights before, and had a good idea of how to stop them, though it was said that sometimes a good drubbing was required to truly clear the air.
On the other hand, sometimes a fight was just plain foolishness.
So it was that Alicia threw herself into the fray. The Duke’s friend Tom moved to intercept her but she dodged aside in a flurry of skirts, reaching in where no one else dared to grab a sleeve, an arm, anything to get their attention. “Stop!” she screamed, but she was pushed aside, landing on the cobblestones with a jolt hard enough to make her teeth rattle in her head.
She came up against the water trough, and as she cast about to push off to get herself to her feet again, she saw what no one else had. The musket forgotten, lying there next to her. It was a fancy piece of weaponry with a single barrel, already spent.
Alicia took one look at the combatants rolling in the dirt, the rough men ranged about shouting on their favorites, and never felt so disgusted in her entire life. Were all men just boys waiting to scrap in the dirt over their toys?
Across the way, she saw Meghan watching her, wide-eyed, with a hand pressed to her mouth. Either she was sick or about to die laughing. Alicia gave her a long, steady look, made near impossible by the single eye that was swelling shut, courtesy of her father. With all the strength she could muster, she lifted the musket and checked it over. Sure enough, it had been fired, so she could not fire it again to distract the warring brothers. Desperate, she brought it down hard on a nearby pail. She struck it over and over again, the din exploding through
the air, prompting even the Duke and his brother to slow in their assault of one another.
Horses screamed inside their stalls, kicking wildly in a clamor easily heard over the sudden silence. Every man on the estate had their eyes on her as Alicia dropped the musket to the cobbles and walked over to where the Duke stood, fist poised, about to land a punch somewhere in the vicinity of his brother’s nose. She grabbed the outstretched fist in one hand, and looked him dead in the eye.
“It might interest ye to know, that it wasnae yer brother who fired at you, ye great ninny!” she said, her brogue becoming thicker when furious. “I tell you true, he was in me own bed at the time.”
And with that she spun on her heel and made for the gate. It was as good a way to quit as any. She’d see herself out.
Chapter 28
It was a long walk home.
As the afternoon slipped away, Alicia’s steps slowed. She had little desire to go home, honestly. Her cheek still bore the handprint her father had placed there, and from the swelling of her eye she knew she had a beauty of a bruise forming that had the added effect of giving her a glorious headache.
That she was allowed to leave said more than a dozen speeches would have. They had not been so stunned that they couldn’t have brought her back. That meant the Lord of the Manor, the Duke himself, had obviously given orders regarding her person. For the time being she was safe enough, she supposed.
Such things could change, though. So she was wary of sounds on the road behind her, though none traveled past save a single rider, a boy who never spared her so much as a glance as he went past.
She was nearly back to the village when she realized what an unnatural stillness lay over the day. The road itself lay quiet and still. Where was the bustle of life within the town? There was a subdued air to the place, with nary a man, woman, or child upon the road. She was near to her own home when she saw the horse tied to the rail in front of the Moore house.
Here were the villagers. She saw them gathered in silence, as from the house there came a long drawn-out sobbing wail, followed by another.
It was Erin Moore who spotted her first, a lean rail of a woman with cheeks scoured by the wind that came over the fields. Erin worked the land along with her husband, Ian, the brother of Elias.
“You!” Erin planted herself in front of Alicia, hands upon her hips, eyes flashing fire. “That ye would dare be showin’ yer face here is an audacious thing, Alicia Price. Ye might as well ha’ killed him yerself.”
Alicia stumbled to a halt, eyeing the crowd uncertainly, people she had known her whole life, who turned from her now as though they could not bear to lay eyes upon her. Her own father stood at the gate, his hat in his hands, head bowed.
Alicia broke away from the crowd, going to him despite the repulsion that churned inside her, to be within his proximity. She had not forgotten the pain he had caused her, nor would she. But it seemed clear that nobody else would tell her what was going on. Her father might, if only to give himself the satisfaction of bringing her low in such a public forum. He could rarely resist that.
“Father, tell me. What happened?” she said, coming to stand near, keeping control over her temper. It would not serve her well here, if she wanted to understand why folks were looking at her so.
Her father’s gaze was unfriendly and cold. “You were there, were you not, when our Elias was killed by the British Lord?”
Killed? Alicia stumbled backwards, seeing in her mind’s eye what she had forgotten. Someone had been lying there upon the cobblestones. She’d barely spared them more than a glance, seeing those gathered around him, assuming someone had fallen. That it should have been Elias…dead…had not been something that had even occurred to her. Death had seemed so remote, so utterly impossible.
“No…” Alicia pressed a hand to her mouth, feeling the sob building in her chest, the tears that must not come, not here in the midst of eyes filled with hatred for her. “No, it canna be,” she said, knowing full well it had not been either Owen or the Duke himself that could have fired the musket. Neither of them had so much as touched it.
“Are ye sure you dinna do it yerself?” Erin asked, biting off each word angrily. “We all well know how ye felt about our Elias. Always too good for him, ye were.”
“I did not…!” Alicia exclaimed, whirling back to her father, grabbing at his lapel. “You know I did not!”
“There is much I no longer know about you,” he said, and his eyes glittered cruelly as he pushed himself off the fence, shoving past her to walk into his own home, shutting the door behind him.
She stared a long time at that door, but could not make herself go near it. The fact that he’d closed it the way that he had, left her imagining the latch in place, and the sure humiliation of begging to be let in. He wanted that, she realized, for her to grovel to come back home. The errant child who could not obey a simple command. Resentment bubbled away inside her, like a pot ready to spill over.
You’ll not get the satisfaction! She was no child, and she was tired of being trodden beneath his boots. Compensating for his destitution and the lack of sway he held over his peers, he sought power and control in the only place he could find it with any consistency—in beating his weakly daughter. But no longer… you will kick me to the ground no more. You will not leave another bruise on this face; you mark my words!
Alicia looked around at those she had called friends, the neighbors she had known her entire life, and felt surrounded by strangers. There was not a person here that would give her a bed for the night unless she begged for it. Alicia stared at them, hearing the sobs from inside the Moore house, knowing that while his death had not been her fault, she would carry the blame for it regardless.
She had nowhere to go. Alicia bit back her own sob, for she knew her tears had no place here. To give in to them now would be to show her selfishness to the world. What right did she have to cry over her own lack of a bed, when Elias would know only a final resting place in the churchyard?
Chin up, Alicia turned and walked back the way she had come. With nowhere else to go, her only thought now was to find shelter for the night. The evenings were still chill. And she would rather have frozen out here than gone a-pleading at her father’s door.
In the pocket of her apron, Alicia had a single coin. She had not even worked long enough to earn her first week’s pay. Thankful that she had at least this much, she found her feet carrying her to the Inn. She had a right to a drink, same as anyone else, did she not? Head high, she crossed back over to the other side of the street, her feet taking her down the familiar path she had trod many times before.
The crowd had been dispersing for a while and a somber group gathered around the tables nearest the fire. Still, the room had a cozy aspect to it that came of long familiarity. Alicia sank gratefully down on a stool in the corner and ordered a bowl of well-watered down stew to warm her.
The innkeeper himself served her. “We dinna want no trouble here,” he said to her, not unkindly. “I would suggest you eat and go.”
That he would take her aside in such a manner was truly the last straw. Alicia stared at the stew, suddenly not hungry. She made herself eat it all the same, every bite, knowing she would need the nourishment if she was to figure out what she was doing next. By the time she finished, the room was filled with the eerie quiet that came from a dozen pairs of eyes watching her as though she were the one who was the enemy.
She would have to go home after all. Even if it was only to stay in the wood-store beside the cottage until the sun rose, and she could find the will to leave this place for good.
Sad, defeated, Alicia left the inn to travel home. A wind had come up, cold and blustery. Thankfully, it and the late hour had driven the villagers indoors. The sun was setting as she reached her own gate.
Alicia stood a long moment staring at the cottage, seeing it for the first time as others must, with the worn, tumbledown aspect to the place. Her father had quit keeping the place up whe
n Adam died.
With a sigh, she pushed the gate open, only to find a boy seated on the ground just inside, playing with the old cat who her father kept to chase off the mice.
The boy scrambled to his feet, his hand slipping inside his jerkin to present her with a folded paper. “From the Duke,” he said, and with a jaunty tip of his cap, he slipped out through the gate and over to the Moore house where his horse still waited. She watched him ride out, in a sort of a daze, before unfolding the paper, tilting it to better read the words in the dim light.
Come tonight.
There was no signature, or even further instruction. But the Duke didn’t need one. The impression of his ring in the wax at the bottom was identification enough, and if she were right, she knew where.
The Remarkable Myth of a Nameless Lady: A Historical Regency Romance Novel Page 15