Loving Tales of Lords and Ladies

by Abigail Agar

  A burning sensation between his ribs seared through him, and Jules howled in pain. His voice sounded like that of a wounded animal, and he scarcely knew what had happened until he stumbled back off the blade that caught just a glint of the light from the overhead window before the curtain was pulled hurriedly shut. A blow landed against his head, and something wet dripped into his eyes.

  Oh, if only that shaft of light had hit his attacker. Jules fought against the injustice of it all. Truth should lead to redemption, not death. Was this folly or plot? Jules’ mind raced as he sought to unravel all the clues before he met what now seemed his inevitable demise. He just wanted to know the truth.

  The world was off-balance and rolling beneath Jules’ feet, much like a rowboat when he was a child. He had fallen out of that boat, learning his lesson well. How he had hated being on the water.

  Jules spat out the warm, bitter liquid that filled his mouth. He reached out a hand but did not know what he was reaching for. Was that blood? Or some other internal juice that Jules could not identify? Jules imagined himself choking on it and gasped to suck in more air.

  The more afraid he became, the more his blood pumped, and Jules could feel it draining away out the wound in his side. No matter how he sought to calm himself, his body thought better of it and sent the energy through his limbs to keep him moving. There was a noise near him, dull because of the blood rushing in his ears, but it was there.

  Another blow against his head sent Jules down to his knees and finally over onto the stones. He lay there gasping. Whoever had assaulted him ran past his head. Jules blinked at the sight of the feet. Wooden shoes? A lowly sort then, Jules thought just before his eyelids flitted shut.

  Was he dead? Jules pondered and judged himself alive. Surely death would not be so painful as this. What was it the poets all said about death’s respite and peaceful dreaming?

  Jules coughed against the dirt of the stones, groaning as the sensation sent pain racing through his muscles and bones. There, he was alive. Jules thought for a brief moment what a horrible fate it was to be alive. Why had death not shown him the courtesy of his parents? Why was he forced to stay here and endure this?

  Truth whispered in Jules’ mind. Jules put his palms flat on the stones and pushed upward. His arms shook with the effort, but his knees held against the stones, and Jules slowly pushed himself up to a kneeling position. The window overhead ignored him, and Jules closed his eyes for a moment. He breathed in the rank air and allowed his body a rest.

  His attacker could return and find him still breathing. The man would most likely finish the job if he did, but Jules was not as concerned about that as he was about whether he could stand. The idea of it seemed absurd, but Jules remembered how the stones had rolled under his feet earlier.

  There was a soft noise, a subtle noise. Jules tried to hear it over the drumbeat of his blood. He strained. What was that noise? He thought he heard a woman’s voice. What was she saying? Was it his mother?

  No, Jules did not suppose his mother would deem to be caught in such a place as this. Jules frowned. Why had he come to this place? Why had he not just stayed in the country and withered away? His mind whispered all the more insistent the word truth to him.

  Jules nodded as if to let his mind know that he was aware. Pushing himself upward, his muscles shaking and complaining of the abuse, Jules slowly stood.

  Upon gaining his feet, he lost them almost immediately to an errant step. Jules stumbled sideways, fought to get his feet untangled, and fell into a wooden crate.

  “Thank you,” Jules whispered to the wooden crate. “Fine catch, old man,” he whispered as he laid his head against the crate’s rough surface. It felt brittle, but it had held.

  Jules used the crate to balance himself. For a long moment, he stood there unsure if he could move, unaware of time passing. Had it been a century that he stood? The buildings still stood unchanged.

  Slowly Jules put his feet forward, one after the other. The safety of his old wooden friend left behind. He held his hands out like he had done on the frozen pond that was on his family’s country estate. The fog slid along the tops of his boots, lapping at his trousers.

  Jules put his feet down cautiously. There were noises, but Jules shut them out. He could not concentrate on them. He had to walk forward. There was light ahead, and the light was safety. Truth needed the light.

  If his attacker chose to come back and finish his handiwork, then Jules had no control over that. All he had control over was keeping his balance, even as the ground fought to shake him off.

  It seemed to tilt and turn at random, and Jules marvelled that the buildings were not crumbling with how the earth was buckling under him. How did the stones at his feet not break asunder?

  Just a few more feet and all would be well. He would see his parents and everything would be fine. Jules shook his head to clear the thoughts, but they crowded back in. Half of them screaming for him to rest, the other half shouting noisily for him to push on.

  There comes a point where reason becomes a distant memory. Perhaps Jules had left reason behind a long time ago, but he certainly could not find it now. Was there any logic to the world?

  There was movement, and Jules’ blood gushed and sloshed. It poured over his fingers, and it blinded his right eye. He knew that more of it would lie on the ground than in his veins. Yet, it was fine. Before him, an angel appeared, and Jules fell into her. He was safe at last.

  Chapter 3

  “Penelope!” her mother screamed after her. There were other sounds too, but Penelope was not concerned with the sounds of her mother’s feet behind her. Or the shouts of people from the house to find out what was going on.

  Penelope ignored it all and ran. Someone needed help. This was no time to dawdle and her mother would weeble-wobble as to what to do until someone told her the proper thing. By the time that happened, the person in need might very well be dead.

  At the corner of the building, Penelope stopped and drew in a quick breath. The alley was dark and looked just the sort that featured in one of her mother’s stories of horrible things that could happen to young ladies in London. Penelope drew herself up and rushed forward a few steps.

  “Hello?” Penelope called both hoping to hear some sound and also hoping not to hear anything. Perhaps it was all just some scuffle, and the participants had scattered when they realised that they might have been overheard.

  There was a loud clatter, and Penelope screamed as a man lurched out of the shadows. He looked hurt, and Penelope reached out to him. He gave her an odd look as he stumbled forward. “An angel,” he said softly. “I guess this is Heaven then.”

  Penelope’s mouth opened to inform the man he was very much alive, but his eyes rolled back into his head, and he fell forward onto her. Penelope tried to catch the man but found him much larger than her. “Oh no,” Penelope whispered as she found herself stumbling backward.

  Just then her mother rounded the corner. Penelope saw her mother’s mouth open up in a scream. Penelope said, “Help me get him off.” Penelope was slowly being crushed beneath the large man as he sank to the ground, taking a startled Penelope with him.

  “Get off of her you scoundrel,” Lady Winchester scolded as she hit the unconscious man.

  Penelope sighed. “Mother, he is injured. Do not call the guard down on him,” she said as she wriggled out from under the man. He slumped down onto the ground unceremoniously. Penelope explained, “Look at his clothes.”

  Penelope knelt back down by the man’s form. With much effort, she turned him over so they could see his face. Though it was covered in blood, Penelope felt her heart leap in its chest.

  His dark hair had come out of whatever tie had held it and spread out on the stones behind him and over his face. Penelope pushed the man’s hair to the side gently, revealing more of his face, and she was entranced, forgetting her mother’s presence until the woman spoke.

  “It’s Lord Daventry, the Duke of Richmond,” Lady
Winchester said in horror. “Someone has murdered him.”

  “No, he’s still alive,” Penelope said as the man’s chest rose and fell. “Mother, calm yourself,” she said as Lady Winchester began to breathe faster and faster.

  Lady Winchester nodded. “What shall we do?”

  “It is our duty as women of England and members of society to make sure that the Duke is cared for and safe,” Penelope said as she touted some of her mother’s repetitive lessons on the obligations of society back to the woman.

  Lady Winchester gasped. “What can we do? We are not doctors.” Lady Winchester waved her hand at the man’s injures. “He is in need of a clinic.”

  “The closest clinic is an hour further than our home. We can send for a doctor while the Duke is looked after. Or would you prefer that we let him lie here on the cold stones and bleed to death?” Penelope shook her head at her mother. “Go tell the coachman to pull the carriage to the entrance of the alley.”

  Lady Winchester said, “Your father will heartily not approve of this. The Duke of Richmond is rumoured to have killed his parents. The scandal of that alone—”

  “As if we are above reproach,” Penelope chided her mother. “Father’s ineptitude with business and his eagerness for the bottle has put us in poor regard. Should we act accordingly and just leave a man to die?”

  Penelope could see the pain in her mother’s face at the words. “Your father does his best,” Lady Winchester said.

  “And we can talk about Father’s best later,” Penelope said. “Kindness and mercy were what you always told me were the most important things in this world. Shall we now give up on them as well?”

  Lady Winchester looked down at the man and sighed. “What you say is reasonable, and we should do our duty to society.”

  “Thank you,” Penelope said. She looked up at her mother and smiled at the woman.

  Lady Winchester’s eyes were on the man lying on the stones. She drew herself up, her eyes lingering on the fallen Duke before she looked at Penelope. “I shall have the carriage brought here,” Lady Winchester said.

  “I shall stay here with him in case he wakes again,” Penelope said as she straightened the man’s coat much like a mother fretting with a child’s clothing.

  Lady Winchester looked reluctant to leave, but she held her shoulders back and walked away from Penelope all the same. Penelope watched her mother leave and then looked back down at the nobleman lying on the cobblestones. She slipped her hand under his head. “It must be cold,” Penelope whispered. She looked down the alley on hearing a sound but could see nothing moving. Penelope shivered. “I hope whoever attacked you is gone.”

  The man laid still and quiet. If not for the rise and fall of his chest, Penelope might have thought him already dead. As it was, he looked like he was in a very deep sleep. Penelope hoped that he would wake from his slumber. This was not some childhood fairy tale, and Penelope could see the blood dimly in the light that spilled over into the mouth of the alleyway from the street lamps.

  A sound of wheels brought Penelope’s eyes up as the carriage came into view behind her. “There you are,” Penelope said with visible relief to the coachman as he calmed the horses.

  “Aye,” Reginald said as he hopped down off the carriage. Reginald had come to work for Penelope’s family when Penelope was just a slip of a girl. Penelope gave the man a smile as he came to relieve her of her duty and take over with the Duke’s still form.

  “Oy, Stuart, come give me a hand,” Reginald called. Stuart was their footman, and a man younger than Penelope leapt off the footboard at the back of the carriage at Reginald’s call and rushed to help Reginald pick up the fallen Duke and load him into the carriage.

  Penelope watched them move the man as she clutched her hands anxiously in her shawl. “Watch his head,” Penelope said as they manoeuvred the man up onto one of the carriage seats.

  Reginald assured her, “We have him, Ma’am.” Penelope still kept her vigil until they had him lying on the seat.

  “Where to, Ma’am?” Reginald asked Penelope’s mother as they finished getting the Duke into the carriage.

  Lady Winchester frowned and replied, “Home. We shall need you to fetch the doctor as soon as we are there safely, Reginald.”

  “Of course, Ma’am,” Reginald said with a crisp nod and a curious glance at the still form of the Duke. The footman offered Penelope a hand up into the carriage before he went back to his station at the back of the carriage.

  As the carriage moved over the cobblestone streets, Penelope was never more aware of every bump and turn the contraption made. The Duke groaned once or twice but was for the most part silent. It was the silence from the man that bothered Penelope more than any moans or cries would have.

  The light from street lamps as they made their way towards the Mayfair district illuminated the carriage in passing frames of light. Although their address was a far throw from Grosvenor Street, it was still a very fashionable place to reside during the season.

  Penelope would have preferred a quieter section of London, perhaps one of the growing outlying areas, but her father was desperate to hold onto some sort of standing even as their reputation slipped more each year. Her father’s title was all that ensured that Penelope received invitations to any of the balls and parties that adorned the season.

  Penelope’s eyes went to the still form in the seat across from her mother and herself. Here she was thinking of invitations when that man was fighting for his life. Penelope felt guilty about her wayward thoughts and made herself keep vigil on the man. She would not waver this time, she promised silently.

  The carriage creaked as it twisted and turned up a narrow street. Penelope noted the fog outside the carriage window. “The fog seems to be thicker on the closer we get to home,” Penelope said.

  Her mother’s eyes went to the window. “I despise the fog,” she commented.

  “You told me that before, but you never did explain why,” Penelope said with a frown as she looked at the blanket of fog hiding all but the closest objects from them.

  Lady Winchester drew in a breath. She seemed to hesitate before she said, “It is neither the time nor the place.”

  “I can think of scarcely a better time or place,” Penelope remarked. She took a handkerchief out of her purse more to have something to do than out of a need for the cloth. She folded it in her lap as she waited for her mother’s reply.

  Lady Winchester sighed. It was not a frustrated sigh; it held a tremor that Penelope took as fear. When her mother did speak, her voice was low as if she did not want to be overheard. “My mother and I were travelling to meet a friend of hers for luncheon. It had been raining. The air was so cool and the ground so warm that the mist rose up as if in defence of the ground itself. Mother said that the wee ones were about.” Lady Winchester looked over at Penelope and smiled a sad, hollow smile. “We have Irish blood in us, and she had learned from her mother of the wee folk. She was always saying things like that.”

  “And were they? About I mean?” Penelope asked as her mother’s eyes grew distant.

  Lady Winchester looked at Penelope and nodded. “I suppose they must have been. The carriage lost its way, and we went off the side of the road.”

  “That sounds horrible,” Penelope whispered.

  Lady Winchester nodded and agreed, “It was. We screamed. We learned later that the fog was so thick that the coachman had lost the road in a bend and had simply carried on forward when the road turned.”

  “But you were okay? You and Grandmother?” Penelope asked. She wondered how she had never heard this story before. Her mother seemed to cloister so many unnecessary secrets. Secrets that Penelope had only in recent months begun to discover when she had found the woman’s diary amid a collection of journals written by her mother and grandmother tucked away in the attic. But even that journal of words had not contained any whisper of this tale.