The Highwayman's Folly

by Daria Vernon

  Rhys whirled her away from his horrid associate, not wanting to see how Lionel might retaliate if given the chance.

  Lionel stretched his jaw in adjustment and cast a fiendish look at them both.

  “I think it time we do this proper. Sol!” Lionel hollered over his shoulder to the hallway where Solomon had been lurking. The large man slipped into the room obediently. Lionel pointed a knobby finger at Beth. “Tie her up. Really, truly this time, and throw her in the other room.”

  Rhys blocked Sol with his body.

  “That’s not going to happen,” said Rhys. Sol started to look over his shoulder at Lionel, but Rhys reached out and grabbed the man’s face. “You take your orders from me.”

  “Take your orders from him, and I doubt you will see any coin at all.”

  All the men’s heads swiveled at the sound of Beth’s voice. Lionel spoke first. “Wha’dya mean, girl?”

  Beth shifted in place. She had their attention. Now, what to do with it?

  “I was baggage that none of you wanted to deal with, except for your captain here. So why would he give any of you a cut? He doesn’t intend to.”

  She met Rhys’ eyes and couldn’t tell what she saw there. He turned to his men. “It’ll be split the way it’s always split.”

  Rhys walked away, leaving Beth in the shadow of the looming Solomon. The man smelled of burnt meat.

  Rhys stopped at a spot near the window and struck a floorboard with his boot heel. The other end lifted, and he bent to pull a packet from the little alcove. Dahlia’s will.

  Harry had been standing with his back to the wall and a hand dutifully ready on his sword. Rhys crossed over to him with the document. “Harry, would you please take these half-wits downstairs and interpret the probate inventory for them?”

  Lionel puffed up. “I just need the short version. What’s she worth?”

  “A lot,” said Rhys.

  “And how do we get it?”

  “We’ll decide that tonight. We’ll convene downstairs at ten.”

  Lionel chewed on his chapped lip, clearly mulling something over. Beth knew what was coming.

  “Sol, take her to the other room.”

  This time Sol looked to Rhys for permission first. Rhys spared a glance for her, and she felt utterly buried beneath the weight of his eyes as he drew near.

  He leaned close to her ear. “I promised safety. Not comfort.” Then he nodded to Sol, and it was done.

  Beth was left on a pallet no thicker than two fingers, in the corner of what must have once been a very elegant bedchamber. She tried to imagine the comforts of its past life—a curtained daybed against the wall, candles in each of the half dozen sconces, and most importantly of all, a fire flickering in the small hearth across from her. What a lovely scene that would be. Instead, the old wallpaper sloughed off and fell about her like dusty rose petals each time that she shifted against it.

  The place was crumbling down around her, much like her situation.

  The older man named Sol had tied her up this time, and it hadn’t gone unnoticed that he was rather more adept at it than Desmarais. Nothing was too tight, but it was firm, and her hands were now uselessly in back of her.

  To look at him, one might think him over sixty, but it was hard to say. His peppered gray hair—what was left of it—was close-cropped as if shorn for a wig, but Beth could not imagine him in one. Thin arms dangled from broad shoulders and a thick neck, but their appearance belied their sinewy strength.

  The tail of her binds had been leashed to the only remnant of the room’s past, a toppled marble statue, near as tall as she. Beth had been left with enough slack to lie down but not enough to stand. She’d watched idly as Sol had tied the final knot—elaborate, purposeful . . . ironclad. A sailor’s knot.

  Was that what they all were? Sailors? She hadn’t let go of the thought since the man departed.

  She would have plenty of time to wonder now.

  Her words had landed her here. Her lie. The suggestion that Rhys wouldn’t pay his men.

  It hadn’t taken any elaborate divination to detect the discord between Rhys and Lionel. Beth wished to believe that this was all some great strategy of hers, that she was planting a seed to capitalize on their distrust and sow chaos and distraction. But that wasn’t it, was it? That wasn’t what drove her. No. Her venom had been spat in the primitive spirit of revenge. Simple and stupid. Retaliation for some imagined way that Rhys had broken her trust. He had never made any promise but to ensure her safety. Had never forfeited his original intent. And yet, at the sound of her full name on his lips, she had felt thoroughly betrayed.

  Beth sighed. Such thoughts would be her main companion for—how long? Hours? Days? Weeks?

  “What good fortune that I should be the reflective sort.” Beth spoke to the marble woman who looked at her sideways.

  The sculpture struck Beth as depicting a maenad—an ecstatic member of Dionysus’ retinue. A pitcher of wine teetered on the reveler’s shoulder as she danced, its contents spilling out in an organic swirl of stone. Grapevines, heavy with fruit, crawled up her legs in relief and tangled with a snake around her neck. What is it about this place and the wild children of Greek myth? What sort of sensualist once lived here?

  Beth looked into the maenad’s eyes.

  “When do you think they’ll realize that I need to relieve myself sometimes?” Her hollow-eyed companion didn’t respond.

  It must have been a half an hour or so before there was a knock at the door. Why even bother knocking, you coward? But it wasn’t Rhys who entered. Young Harry timidly poked his face around the door as it opened.

  “Miss Clarke?”

  “Yes?” Clearly her name had made the rounds.

  “I came to see to your needs—afore bed.”

  “I see no bed here, Harry.”

  He smiled but seemed to be unsure if it was all right to do so. “Are you hungry?” Helpfulness and effort strained his voice. “I also, uh . . .” She’d already spotted the chamber pot that was hid demurely behind his hip in one uneasy hand. He thrust the thing forward. “If you need it. I’ll untie you and just wait around.”

  “Thank you. I think I will need it, after some food and water.”

  “Of course.” The young man set the thing down and rubbed the sleeves of his threadbare jacket. “It’s cold in here, isn’t it? Let me make you a fire.”

  Beth’s heart leapt so greatly at the idea of a fire that the stitches on her shoulder tightened. She brought a studied restraint to her response. “That would be very kind of you.” She wasn’t going to antagonize anyone until she was warm again.

  Harry hastened off in search of food and firewood, leaving her to wait.

  The young man had a lean but hale appearance. He couldn’t have been more than twenty. His face and some of the strands of his tawny hair seemed overly sun-kissed for the snowy season, but it was his sheer sincerity that most caught her attention. Feeling the loss of an ally in Rhys, perhaps she could turn to this young man instead.

  The door creaked. Speak of the devil himself. Rhys was re-bundled in his full thief’s regalia of a black hat and greatcoat. His frigid, awkward motions recalled automata she’d seen at the clockmaker’s. He made a performance of inspecting the empty fireplace.

  “You need a fire,” he said.

  “I know.”

  “I’ll see to it.” He whirled back to the door, where he almost ran over Harry and his armful of wood.

  “Your man is on it,” said Beth.

  Rhys exchanged one more look with her before absconding. A look of—concern? Anguish? She couldn’t finger it. It didn’t matter.

  Harry set himself on the floor beside her and began to work the knots at her wrists.

  “Have you met my companion?” Beth nodded toward the maenad. Harry smiled, more certain of the humor this time.
“She and I are going to get very deep in our cups tonight and have a wonderful time in this fine forest folly.”

  “Fine forest folly? You already sound deep in your cups, Miss Clarke.”

  She smiled warmly, but the warmth didn’t quite reach her insides.

  “I have to spend my time somehow. Why not with an imaginary intimate from Ancient Greece?”

  “I don’t know, Miss.” He looked at the statue. “She looks like she could be a bad influence on a good woman such as yourself.”

  “What if I were to tell you that I’m more likely to be a bad influence on her?”

  “I don’t think I’d believe you.”

  “Not believe me?” She feigned astonishment and adjusted her voice to a higher pitch, all innocence. “Pray tell, young man, how’d you get that bite mark on your hand?”

  He smiled and huffed out a small laugh. “Touché. Are all fine ladies such wits?”

  “No.”

  Harry looked uncertain again.

  He was right, she was acting a bit foxed, but her strange mood persisted. She pondered whether her next question was wise.

  “Are all former sailors highwaymen?”

  Harry dropped his hands from the knot that he worked, then tried to return to it, but the quivering hands against her back informed her that he’d been shaken. “What makes you think us sailors?”

  “You all report to Rhys as Captain.”

  “That doesn’t much mean anything. We just call him that. Like a name.”

  “It’s not just that. There is also something of Lionel that strikes me as . . . scurvy.” The word rolled off her tongue with savored contempt.

  Harry lowered his voice, hopefully because he was about to dabble in gossip. “Sailor or not, he is the worst sort. Solomon too.”

  “And what of Rhys? Is he like them?”

  “No, Miss Clarke. He’s done good by all of us—or best he can. Even Lionel knows that, whether or not his pride lets him admit it.” An apologetic veil dropped over his words. “Captain is as honorable as a man can be, given his past.”

  “What was his past?” The question came out with force. She took a deep breath and tried again, more gently. “Tell me, Harry. Was he once your captain, the captain of a ship?”

  Harry looked her in the eye. “No. Never.” There was no hesitation. His response matched the truthfulness that she’d read in him all along. So she was wrong again . . . just when she’d felt so certain.

  Rhys had been beating the ground in circles for at least a few miles. But weaving through the trees while staring at his boots wasn’t sufficient enough a tonic for his troubles. Even the bracing air couldn’t clear the stench of Lionel’s foulness from his nostrils.

  The circuitous route brought him back to the folly once more, and he set himself on a fallen log at the clearing’s edge. He craned his neck. Beth’s window glowed and flickered above. Good. At the very least, he had promised her a fire. She’d be warm and Harry would dote on her. Concern flitted through him as he remembered again what she was capable of. Would Harry be all right up there? Rhys shook off the worry. The lad was kind, not incompetent.

  He rubbed his hands together with a passing wish that he’d brought his gloves out with him. A gentle scoff escaped him. One doesn’t think of little things like gloves when they’re fleeing from something. He needed to be away. He needed to think. Yet what answers had his ruminations yielded? Nothing.

  The questions persisted. When had he let Solomon come so under Lionel’s spell? The winter had been hard, but how did he miss that Lion and Sol’s confidence in him was sloughing away? In better times, Lion had been more than pleased with his take, bleeding his ill-gotten guineas in brothels and gambling houses and coming back to the crew to do it all over again.

  Back on their ship, Lionel had been the most eager of the mutineers. It was now becoming clear that his mutinous nature extended beyond that one life-altering event.

  Rhys lifted his hands to his lips to puff warm breath into them. Then he thrust them into his greatcoat’s pockets. He brushed the leather cover of something—Beth’s little notebook. He couldn’t escape her.

  Resting his eyes, his memory lingered on how she had looked as she slept next to him on the little bed. A ratty halo of loam-colored hair. A dark navy redingote muddied and torn. Yet a look on her face of utter tranquility in the depths of slumber. His chest had tightened with a mix of awe and heartache that he couldn’t detangle then. Now he recognized it as his own gratitude—that she wasn’t lying broken at the bottom of a ravine.

  A fine way he was showing that gratitude now, by letting her be tied up in another room. Her attack on his character in front of his men was deserved retaliation, even if it was an utter falsehood. Regrettably, it was also the death knell of his broader ability to help her. She’d called into question his faithfulness to his men, and he couldn’t let it stand. Not when tensions among the crew were so precarious.

  He’d read her aunt’s last will. As contemptible as it had made him feel to look back and forth between the document and Beth sleeping at his side, he’d found what he needed in the pages. The probate inventory alone was as thick as a chapbook. She was set to inherit a manor house, land, and more wealth than he’d started his negotiations at. The only problem was that while she’d assured him she could negotiate with her own wealth, she didn’t have it yet.

  Whether she liked it or not, it would be Mr. Clarke who would have to pay. She’d protested that her father wouldn’t have money like that, yet the will hinted at a deeper family pocket. With such means, Rhys could pay his men. He could leave the roads. He could send money to the quartermaster’s widow—a fund that Lionel had stopped contributing to more than a year ago.

  Rhys withdrew the little notebook from his pocket. He flipped through its pencil-scratched pages, looking for a fragment scribbled near the back. He’d committed it to memory that afternoon, but he had to see it again. There—

  The sweetness of solitude

  Wearing thin as gauze

  His thumb brushed the page affectionately, meditatively.

  A breeze nudged at his back and carried with it a rare sound—something he’d heard only once before at the folly—the bays of what he could swear were wolves.

  But there were no wolves in England. Or at least there weren’t supposed to be, not for a century now. But he knew the sound well from his travels. These were not the howls of dogs.

  He looked over his shoulder with a wary eye on the forest. Whether he imagined things or not, perhaps it was best to take the horses inside.

  Chapter 7

  Heading downstairs to their late-night conference, Rhys once again nearly ran Harry over.

  “Sorry, Captain.”

  “Sorry of what?”

  Harry shrugged. “I was worried you might be cross that I saw to the prisoner.”

  The two fell into step together as they descended the stairs. Rhys sighed. “Harry, it’s your very initiative that I like you for.”

  Below them, one of the horses nickered from where it had been led into the nature-ravaged great room for the night. They’d all be waking up to the scent of manure tomorrow. Such a fine life it was.

  A vicious, snorting laugh rose from the dining room that they were both walking toward.

  Rhys assessed the young man at his side, seeing an ally, seeing someone he was proud of, seeing . . . the closest thing he had to family. He would trust Harry with his life, and he wanted to say as much—but it just didn’t seem fair. Not when Lionel and Solomon were coming together as a separate entity. Sides were being chosen. It felt wrong to influence Harry, even with the sincerest of sentiments.

  As they entered the room, Sol looked up from a game of cards, his chapped lips drawn tightly. “He’s skinnin’ me, Captain. Care to join and win my shillings back for me?” Before Rhys could decline, Lionel slamme
d his hands down with a hearty cackle.

  “This bore won’t join us in anything merry!” Lionel pushed a stool toward Rhys with his foot. “But we do need to talk, don’t we?”

  Solomon quietly scooped up the cards. Rhys and Harry took their seats at the crate which stood in for a table.

  “You think me devoid of mirth when I bring such good news to us all?” Rhys strained for a confident ease that he did not feel.

  “Good news?” asked Lionel. “Has the kitten given up her secrets then?”

  Harry cut in. “I explained the estate documents to you. If there’s not good news in that inventory, then you’re just being an ass.”

  Lionel shrugged—unbothered at being accused of agitation for its own sake. “A plunder’s no good without a fence, without some way to convert it into coin. So where do we take this nob’s daughter to change her for guineas?”

  “I don’t know yet,” said Rhys.

  Lionel made a familiar and disgusting noise with his tongue out—his signature scoff. It left spittle all over his dirty beard every time.

  “I’ll not linger in this lumber house ’til the thief-takers find us.” Lionel’s already red face turned a plum hue.

  Solomon nodded along with his usual dim deference.

  “Unhitch us from this useless cart, or make it turn into some gold that we can carry. Either way, get rid of it.” Lionel’s vicious snarls were disrupted by a bout of hacking before he continued. “Or have you been taken in by the rosy-gilled girl upstairs?”

  Rhys hated the perverse way Lionel raised his eyebrows when he spoke of Beth. But he couldn’t let on. He leaned forward onto the table, lacing his fingers in a collected fashion.

  “She won’t tell us where this Greenthorne is. That much is clear.”

  “’Haps you’re not tryin’ hard enough,” said Solomon. Lionel wagged his finger in enthusiastic agreement with his lackey.

  Rhys went on. “Which is why tomorrow I’m going to the nearest village to ask around discretely about her family, putting only myself at risk of suspicion.”