The King's Mercy

by Lori Benton

  “Sometimes slaves run away,” was all she’d said.

  “Like Jemma,” Charlotte had sighed.

  How Joanna loathed a world where such resignation must reside in the heart of a child. A kingdom constructed by the hearts of men, not the heart of the Almighty. Lord, have mercy.

  * * *

  She stayed abovestairs no more than a quarter hour. Leaving Charlotte in their room and praying she would stay, Joanna made for the study. Gloom cloaked the downstairs passage as the day waned. No one had replaced the candles guttered in their sconces.

  In the study, an open decanter of brandy sat on the desk next to the conch shell, a glass half-full beside it. Mister Reeves sat at the bedside, leaning over with his face near Papa’s.

  “What are you doing?”

  Mister Reeves straightened and faced her. “Talking to my captain. What does it look like?”

  Papa was awake, apparently unharmed. Then Joanna registered his ashen face. His eyes held a stricken horror that exceeded her own.

  “Talking of what?” she asked, voice shrill to prevent it shaking.

  Mister Reeves rose and replaced the chair at the desk. “Times and seasons, Miss Carey.”

  “I don’t know what you mean.”

  “Your stepfather understands. Don’t you, sir?”

  Papa was struggling to sit up in the bed. “Jo…ann…”

  She started toward him. Mister Reeves headed her off, grasping her bruised wrist so hard she yelped. “What are you doing?”

  His mouth curled in amusement. “Little mouse. You don’t even know you’re trapped.”

  He couldn’t be more wrong. “Release me!”

  He did, so abruptly she staggered toward the bed, catching herself before she fell.

  Papa was pushing back the coverlet. “Uh-up.”

  “Please, Papa.” The fire had nearly gone out while she was abovestairs. No wood remained in the room. “It’s too cold.”

  Mister Reeves leaned against the desk, watching them, arms crossed, in his eyes an unholy light. “Let him stand. I want to see him try. I need to know.”

  Joanna tried not to shiver. “Know what?”

  “That my former captain has strength enough to last through what’s going to happen next. I watched his eyes as I detailed my plans for this evening. I’m convinced he understood me perfectly.”

  Joanna’s heart gave a lurch so violent she thought for an instant it had failed her. But it went on beating, her lungs drawing air—in short, tight spasms. “What plans?”

  “Out…” Papa fought the bed coverings, struggling to rise. “Charl…”

  “Stop hindering him,” Mister Reeves ordered. “I want him to try.”

  “Then I’ll help him.” Joanna pulled back the coverlet. Papa wore a banyan over his nightshirt. The garment, stained like her own, was disheveled, baring his legs as he struggled to free them of the bedding.

  “If he can walk,” Mister Reeves said, “sit him at his desk. That should be a good vantage point.”

  “No,” Joanna protested as Papa grasped her arm and managed to sit, bare feet on the floor. “Let me help him to his room.”

  “Do as I said or I’ll put you out of this house and carry on without you. You’re of no consequence to me, Miss Carey.”

  She was very nearly sickened by that name alone. She forced herself to focus on her stepfather, an arm encircling him. Tears of fury and frustration leaked from his eyes. “Can you make it to your chair?”

  A groan issued from his lips, but he summoned strength to gain his feet where he swayed precariously, Joanna straining to keep him upright as he clung to her. In short, shuffling steps, she helped him cross the few paces between bed and desk, where he fell out of her arms into the chair, panting hard and drooling uncontrollably. She steadied him, arranged his garments, then snatched a quilt from the bed and wrapped it around his shoulders. With a corner she wiped his mouth. Only then did she look at Mister Reeves. “Are you satisfied?”

  His eyes flared. Her fear and anger seemed to excite him.

  “Soon. Come with me.” Moving swiftly, he took her by the arm and hauled her across the study. “Go upstairs. Get your sister. Bring her down.”

  “I don’t wish her to see—”

  “Now.”

  Joanna took a step toward the stairs, her body operating somehow without her leave. She fought desperately to think. Now was the time to end this, before Charlotte was within his reach. Could she do it? Stab him with her knife? Could she even get the knife free of her pocket before…

  She heard the click behind her and turned. Mister Reeves held a pistol, hammer drawn, aimed at her head.

  Sight of that dark barrel sent a strange sheet of calm across her roiling thoughts.

  “All right,” she said. “I’m going.”

  Could she simply lock them in their room? She had the only key, safe in her pocket alongside the knife. A locked door would hold the man at bay only so long, and Papa would be helpless on its other side. Lock Charlotte in alone?

  She ascended the stairs, steps slowing as her brain seized upon and discarded each plan.

  “Do not make me come up those stairs, Miss Carey.”

  Halfway up them Joanna halted, looking down. Mister Reeves had followed her to their foot. “You cannot leave Papa sitting up alone.”

  “If that worries you, by all means move quicker.” He held the pistol steady on her. His other hand, gripping the banister, was more telling. She could see the bones of his knuckles, pressing white against his tightened skin.

  She kept going.

  Charlotte was sitting with a book in her room, pretending to read it to her doll, unaware of peril. Joanna quailed, desperate to protect her sister from this unfolding horror.

  Charlotte looked up from her book. “Is it time for supper?”

  “Not yet.” There would be no supper tonight. “But we’re wanted below-stairs.”

  “By Papa?”

  Oh, Papa, how did I let it come to this?

  “Yes.”

  “And Phineas?”

  Joanna reached for her sister’s hand. Charlotte took it trustingly. Joanna lifted the single candle burning in the room. It shook in her grasp.

  Charlotte must have noticed. “Joanna, are you crying?”

  Her cheeks were wet. “Papa…” Her voice caught, failing her.

  “He’ll be better,” Charlotte said, patting the hand she held. “Oh wait. I want Jemma.”

  Joanna paused while her sister fetched her doll. When they reached the stairs, Mister Reeves still stood at their foot.

  “Good girl,” he said.

  Thinking the approbation for her, Charlotte slipped free of Joanna’s grasp and ran down the stairs, reaching Mister Reeves and taking his outstretched hand.

  The pistol was nowhere in sight.

  “What are we doing, Phineas? Is Papa able to talk?”

  “Oh yes,” Mister Reeves replied to Charlotte’s last question. “He wishes very much to see you. I’m certain he’ll have much to say.”

  As he turned away, leading her sister down the passage toward the study, Joanna saw the pistol tucked into the waist of his breeches. She thought of grabbing it, of shooting the man in front of Charlotte. She thought of running, screaming, into the night. Instead she followed her heart’s tethers into the study, where Papa sat hunched in the cold.

  Darkness pressed beyond the window. Joanna entered, bearing the one small light still burning.

  43

  Alex’s first glimpse of Severn was much as his last had been. No light showed in the upper rooms, all he could see of the Big House in the gloaming, with the orchard and outbuildings rising between. The air was damp, thickly clinging in a way that made him long for the pure, clean mountain air as he, Moon, Moses, and the three who’d fol
lowed them came up from the creek along the track leading past the orchard, shops, and gardens.

  With each step forward, his thoughts centered, his mind calmed, while his heart leapt at a quicker pace. His nerves felt sheered of the flesh and sinew that protected them. Every current of air, every sound, every detail of outbuilding and grounds was delineated in the falling dark and magnified to his senses—as it had been on that freezing moor near Inverness two years and more ago, when the starving remnants of Charles Stuart’s army marched into the sleety gray of a dawn that would, for most, be their last.

  It surprised him that memories of Culloden should press near. Flashes of battle. Uncle Rory, wounded. A corbie’s harsh cry. Redcoats spilling from the pines. He’d led men on that field by necessity, until every semblance of a functioning army had unraveled and it had been every man for himself.

  As it had been since. As it would be no longer, for him.

  Was he leading these men into battle now? He’d no army behind him, but he had the prayers of a God-fearing man, and the Almighty Himself. Dinna let me lead them into needless harm. Give me wisdom.

  They halted at the slave quarters. One of the men peeled away to go cabin by cabin, seeing who remained, gathering news. “He’ll warn us, if need be,” Moon said, low-voiced.

  “Aye,” Alex replied. “Let’s go canny, circle the house.”

  “And if all seems well?”

  “We’ll fall back, decide what next.” Alex looked to Moses, getting a nod of assent. No matter what they found, he couldn’t leave without seeing Joanna. He’d risk his freedom, his very life, to speak to her, to let her know she wasn’t alone. That she had him, if she wanted him.

  He led them toward the hedged walkway that curved around the house, to the break in the tall hedge where the path led from kitchen to back door. He’d barely cleared it when he caught a ribbon of light through a parting in a window curtain. The room on the corner. Carey’s study.

  He put out a hand to Moon, who signaled the others to pause.

  Alex altered his plan, sending Moses and his men on a circuit of the house. “If ye see no light in any other windows, wait near the back terrace, but dinna go inside the house.” The back door was just outside Carey’s study. There could be no entering the house that way undetected. It must be the front door.

  Moses led his men into the dark, footfalls as quiet as Alex could hope for with a litter of unraked leaves blanketing the yard.

  “Ye mean to go inside?” Moon asked.

  “Let’s get a look first.” Alex gripped Moon’s arm briefly, then felt the pistol pressed into his hand, cold and heavy.

  “Ye’ve two hands,” Moon said. “Better it’s in your keeping.”

  He took it. They crept onto the leaf-cluttered terrace outside Carey’s study. The window around the corner of the house was curtained, too, but these weren’t drawn so close as those facing the kitchen. A wider gap showed Carey seated at his desk, wrapped in a quilt, his body canted oddly sideways. Crouched, Alex edged to the side for a wider view. When he had it, it froze his blood.

  Joanna stood in the room’s center, the whitened terror of her expression lit by a dozen candles, Charlotte clutched against her side.

  Moon crowded close, trying to see as well, as another figure stepped into view: Reeves, holding a pistol, waving it as he spoke.

  Alex couldn’t make out his words.

  Gripping the weapon Moon had given him, he set off around the house, Moon at his heels. They hadn’t gone a dozen paces before he halted, sensing a figure coming at them out of the dark.

  It was Moses. “Ain’t no other lights in the place, upstairs or down,” he whispered, leaning close to speak. “Left the lads by the back door like you say. Want me with you or them?”

  Alex debated, heart hammering, the need to get inside that house making every second seem a lifetime. “Stay by the front door, let the lads guard the back. First go tell them—Reeves is armed, a pistol. I dinna want any of ye getting shot, so if he makes an escape either way, follow if ye can, keep him in your sights, but dinna try and take him down. I’ll be coming after him, if I’m still breathing.”

  * * *

  Clinging to Joanna, Charlotte clutched her doll, trust assaulted at last by Papa’s distress. From the desk chair he gazed at Joanna in mute rage and helplessness. If anyone was to stop Mister Reeves doing the vile thing he intended, it must be her. What could she do but resist for the seconds it would take the man to render her unconscious, or dead? Then he would do as he willed.

  Charlotte still didn’t comprehend the magnitude of her danger, though the darkness of the study when they entered had frightened her. She’d dropped her doll, but Joanna, too intent on seeing to Papa’s welfare, had told her to leave it.

  “No,” Charlotte had whined. “Jemma’s scared of the dark!”

  “Charlotte, please…”

  Mister Reeves had fetched another candle. He’d approached her with it, lit it calmly from the one that trembled in her grasp, then took that one and placed both on the mantel. They’d all looked at Papa, seated at the desk. Joanna started to speak, to ask if he was all right, but hesitated, not wanting to alarm Charlotte. Not one precious second sooner than need be. How many seconds were left before this final shattering of their world overcame them?

  Mister Reeves had lit more candles, poured another glass of brandy, downed it, poured another, then crossed the room and bent to pick up the doll. Kneeling before Charlotte, he’d gazed at its shorn hair, raised a brow, then put the doll into her sister’s hands.

  “You cut her hair,” he said. “Don’t you love her?”

  “Oh yes,” Charlotte said. “But she’s Jemma.”

  All trace of expression fled Mister Reeves’s face.

  Charlotte’s pale brows drew together. “Are you angry?”

  As though he’d commanded it to do so, Mister Reeves’s mouth widened in a smile. He caressed Charlotte’s cheek. “The doll is yours, sweet Charlotte, to do with as you will. And you are mine. Shall I prove it to you?”

  Hugging her doll, Charlotte brightened. “Yes, please.”

  Joanna’s stomach lurched. She couldn’t look away from the doll cradled to her sister’s heart, with its painted face and shorn hair, but she was seeing the real Jemma, and Micah, Jim, Grandpa Jo, Azuba, Mari, and Phoebe—all those souls she’d thought she’d done her best for, clothing their bodies in homespun while this monster, this man apparently devoid of conscience, was allowed to prowl among them like a wolf.

  Guilt was a snake’s coils tightening round her chest as Papa uttered a cracked and wavering, “No-o-o…”

  Startled, Charlotte peered past Mister Reeves. “Papa?”

  The figure slumped in the chair, thin hair undressed, features twisted with paralysis and dismay, barely resembled the man her sister had no doubt expected to see. Bewilderment dimmed her glow.

  Joanna’s thoughts fired like a hundred pistols, banishing the parade of accusing faces. She couldn’t help them now. Could she help her sister? Play for time. Would anyone come? Break a window. Would someone hear? Was anyone awake beyond that reflecting glass? Sybil? Say something.

  “How can you do this? Why? She’s a child—”

  Behind Mister Reeves’s back, Papa jerked his head, gazing at her, imploring her not to provoke the man.

  Wavering candlelight made shadows leap across Mister Reeves’s face, their flames a dozen bright points reflected in his eyes. “I’ve told Captain Carey my reasons. It’s enough he knows.”

  Papa lurched in his chair. Mister Reeves aimed the pistol at him. Her stepfather stared at it, then looked bleakly at Joanna. A gleam of saliva pooled at the corner of his lips. He swayed and gripped the desk one-handed, spilling a stack of ledgers to the floor.

  “Please, sir, be still. You’re making a mess.” Mister Reeves set the pistol on the de
sk out of Papa’s reach, then proceeded to remove his waistcoat, which he folded neatly and placed alongside the weapon.

  Undressed to shirtsleeves and breeches, he took a swallow of brandy and reached again for the gun, which he waved toward the bed. “Over there, both of you.”

  Joanna’s belly heaved again, but she nudged her sister toward the bed. They sat on its edge, Charlotte clinging to her.

  Papa tried again to rise from the chair, but only managed to wobble and catch himself before he fell. “Oh-ver…muh…dead…”

  “Over your dead body?” Mister Reeves interpreted. “I confess I’d planned for such an eventuality, but I’ve changed my mind. I don’t wish to kill either of you. I want you both to live with this.” He turned back to Joanna, who’d tensed with her hand at the slit of her petticoat. “But I cannot have you free to interfere, Miss Carey.”

  Her hand froze, gripping a fold of muslin, feeling the blade hidden beneath. He studied her in apparent indecision, then set down the pistol and began untying his neckcloth.

  “Hands behind you.”

  Papa made an attempt to reach the pistol across his desk, succeeding only in knocking more of its clutter to the floor. The heavy conch shell landed on the rug with a thump that snagged Mister Reeves’s attention long enough for Joanna to plunge her hand through the slit in her gown, fumble her way to the pocket, and grasp the knife. Slicing a finger as she drew it free, she bolted to her feet.

  Mister Reeves snatched up the pistol and swung it toward her. His gaze dropped to the knife, clenched in her bleeding hand. “What do you mean to do with that?”

  “Kill you, if I must.”

  “Kill me?” He made a sound that might have been a laugh; Joanna’s ears were buzzing too loudly to tell. Ready to wield the weapon in defense of her sister, huddled on the bed, she looked once more to Papa, dreading what she would see in his gaze.

  Papa wasn’t looking at her now, or at Charlotte, or at Mister Reeves, whose back was to him. He was gazing at the doorway. She saw him nod, almost imperceptibly. Then, with no effort to prevent it, he slid from his chair onto the floor. His head made a sickening thump against the wooden planks before the hearth, having missed the rug.