Earl's Well That Ends Well

by Jane Ashford

  “I won’t let you go—” began Lord Macklin.

  “It is not your decision,” she interrupted.

  “Alone,” he added. “I won’t let you go alone.”

  This silenced Teresa. She stared at him.

  “I will take you there,” he continued.

  “Take me?”

  “As Lord Simon did Jeanne. I will drive up to the gate with you at my side…”

  “And simply demand admission?” Teresa asked.

  “I will assume a right to it,” said the earl. “The thought that I could be refused will not enter my mind. Or anyone else’s. I can play the arrogant ass if I have to.”

  “Oh, really?”

  The earl gave her a slight smile. “I can also slip the guard a hefty bribe if necessary. Between the two things, I will get in.”

  “We will,” she answered. His expression showed how little he liked that idea. “You might be recognized,” she added.

  “Not by the sort of ruffian hired to man a gate.”

  “Inside though.”

  “We will deal with that if we must. But if you try to go alone, I will prevent you.”

  “How? Shut me away yourself?” She knew he wouldn’t, but his insistence was rousing more bad memories.

  “I will camp on your doorstep and follow you everywhere you go. Like a faithful dog.”

  The picture was so silly she had to smile. “You have other things to do with your days.”

  “Nothing more important.”

  In her secret heart, Teresa had to admit that having him at her side would make all the difference.

  Tom, who had been looking back and forth like an observer of a tennis match, said, “You ain…aren’t leaving me out of this.”

  “On the contrary,” said Lord Macklin. “But since it seems this is not the sort of place you can enter, despite your skills, you will remain outside watching. We will need someone who knows where we are and can bring aid if necessary.”

  “I don’t want to stand about doing nothing!”

  “This is far from nothing. If things…go wrong, all our reliance will be on you.”

  “You will rescue us,” said Teresa.

  This seemed to mollify the lad. “So I’ll be waiting for a signal, like?”

  “Precisely,” replied the earl.

  Tom considered, frowning. “There’s a clump of trees not too far from one of the side walls. Room for me and my friends to lurk.”

  “That is what you will do then. Lurk.”

  “What’ll the signal be?”

  “You will know it when you see it,” declared Lord Macklin.

  “Meaning you have no idea?” Tom replied. “I don’t like that.”

  “I don’t know what we will find inside that place. Or how we might reach you.”

  This silenced them all for some moments. Then they gathered their resolve and carried on.

  The rest of that day was spent making plans. Teresa’s eagerness to move vied with a sick dread. She wondered if she would actually have done this without the earl’s aid. In truth, she didn’t see how.

  With all their arrangements put in place, they set off the following morning in Lord Macklin’s curricle with no groom up behind them. Ironically, it was a lovely warm day, with the country on either side of the road full of flowers and birdsong.

  Teresa fingered the gun in a deep pocket of her gown. She had created the hiding place with needle and thread overnight. “I still think it was a mistake not to bring your pistols,” she said to the earl.

  “I don’t have to reload a sword stick,” he replied.

  They followed the route Teresa had taken before. Her unease grew the closer they came to the place. Just before they reached the wall around the isolated house, they passed a small copse off to the right. She knew that Tom and some of his apprentice friends had sneaked into those trees in the darkness last night. She saw no sign of them, which was good. She turned to look at Lord Macklin’s handsome profile. “Are you sorry to be doing this mad thing?” she asked him.

  “I have done very few mad things in my life.” He paused. “Aside from the recent matter of the conde, none at all, I think.”

  She had brought this disruption to him. Teresa didn’t like the notion. “A life without mad things to do sounds very peaceful.”

  “I suppose it has been mostly that. But a thing that is not mad is also not necessarily pleasant. Perhaps it was time for something different.”

  They began to drive along the wall around the house. Teresa’s discomfort rose.

  And then they were at the entrance, and the curricle was slowing. The gate was a little open, and a different guard lounged beside it, she was glad to see. She was fairly certain the previous one had not glimpsed her, but she was glad not to take that chance.

  The earl turned the carriage and drew to a stop. “Open up,” he said to the rough-looking man.

  “No one’s allowed in,” was the reply.

  “Nonsense. Lord Simon was here just a few days ago.”

  “Ye’re a friend of his lordship?”

  “Would I be here otherwise?”

  His tone was careless, arrogant, cold, everything Teresa hated about powerful men.

  The guard peered up at him. “His lordship’s to send word beforehand. Them’s the rules.”

  Lord Macklin’s whip stirred as if he might strike the guard with it. “Rules,” he answered, as if the word was completely unfamiliar to him. “You forget yourself. If you have made some mistake, it is not my problem.”

  He sounded so like her old patron, as if he might actually be a man who always got his way and crushed anyone who opposed it. Teresa swayed a little in her seat.

  “Rules is rules,” said the guard. “That’s what I was told, and I ain’t going to lose a place pays as good this one.”

  “You will certainly do so when I complain of your behavior,” replied Lord Macklin, his voice icy with contempt. “And worse than that.”

  This was the way of the world, Teresa thought. The men at the top cut down those who dared challenge them. There was no recourse.

  “Yer honor’s got to understand…”

  “I understand that you are in my way. And that Lord Simon will be very angry when he hears I’ve been stopped.” The whip twitched. At the same time gold flashed in the air between them. It was a sovereign, Teresa thought, a treasure for such a man. The guard snatched the coin out of the air. He hesitated for one more moment, then went to the gate. “Ye’ll tell ’em, up at the house that Lord Simon sent you.”

  “Certainly.”

  The gate swung open. Looking back, Teresa saw the man biting the coin to make sure it was real gold. “I suppose he’ll get into trouble,” she said.

  “If we are successful, there will be little trouble left over for him. I expect he’ll take to his heels at the first sign.”

  He sounded tense. Teresa didn’t blame him. She was even more so.

  The gate closed behind them. Four large dogs appeared, two on either side of the gravel drive they drove along. The animals didn’t bark or offer to attack. They simply flanked the curricle in silent menace. They had black coats and sharp, gleaming teeth.

  The drive passed through a band of trees. They couldn’t see anything until they rounded a curve and came upon a sizable house built of stone. It looked deceptively normal under the sunny sky. There were flowers in ornamental beds.

  “The upper windows are barred,” said Lord Macklin.

  Teresa’s blood chilled.

  He drove on. A tall wrought-iron fence surrounded the house, its gate closed. Inside it, a graveled area surrounded the building.

  The dogs stopped along the spiked fence, sitting on their haunches and watching them, but not moving closer. Arthur pointed this out to the señora. “We can hope they don
’t venture in there.”

  “Yes,” she said. She looked very pale.

  He handed her the reins. “Just hold them steady. They will not bolt.”

  “Where are you going?” Her voice rose near a wail.

  “To open the gate. As we are not expected.”

  “But the dogs!”

  “I trust they know their territory. Or the rules, as the guard put it.” Hiding his own unease, Arthur climbed down from the curricle. The dogs stood up, their eyes following his every move, but they did not run at him. He unlatched the gate and pushed it open. There was no lock. Grasping the bridles of his leaders, he led them through the fence. With measured steps he went back to close the gate.

  “Gracias a Dios,” said the señora.

  “Indeed.” Arthur returned to his seat and took the reins again. He pulled up before the front door. No groom appeared to take the carriage. It seemed they had not yet been noticed.

  “Should I go and knock?” asked Señora Alvarez.

  Her voice did not tremble, but Arthur could see the effort she was making to control it. “Let us wait a moment,” he answered.

  They waited several, and then the door opened and a woman emerged. She was finely dressed, but her square face showed the bitter lines of a hard life. Her hair was gray, her frame stocky. Arthur guessed she was around sixty. “What the devil do you mean by keeping me waiting?” he said before she could speak.

  “We had no word…”

  “Have you no one to care for my horses?” The key was to keep these people off-balance, goaded to obey by the voice of command. Arthur had heard such arrogance from others. “I do not see why Lord Simon spoke well of this place,” he added.

  “His lordship never said anyone was…”

  “What has that to say to anything?”

  “Everything’s to be by appointment.”

  “And I have one.”

  “I never heard…”

  “I could not be less interested in what you have or have not heard.” Arthur debated whether to climb down from the curricle. His team was well trained and would stand. No, better to loom over this woman from above. He twitched his whip. “Do you intend to keep me waiting here?” He thought he managed threatening incredulity rather well.

  After a brief inner debate, visible on her seamed face, the woman bobbed a perfunctory curtsy. She turned to the open door. “Fetch Joe,” she called to someone unseen.

  A groom appeared a few minutes later and took charge of the vehicle. Arthur watched where it was taken, hoping that he would soon be retrieving it and leaving this place. Then he put a hand on the señora’s back to guide her. Though it wasn’t noticeable at any distance, she was shaking.

  They walked together into a spacious entry hall. A curving staircase rose at the back. Their—Arthur supposed she must be seen as—hostess looked Señora Alvarez up and down like a stockman evaluating cattle. Her attitude confirmed Arthur’s opinion of her, and of the nature of this house. She’d certainly been a procuress of some sort. “She’s a bit old,” the creature said. “We have fresher meat than her in here.”

  “I brought her for my own reasons,” Arthur replied. “No one else is to touch her.”

  The woman’s answering grin was mocking.

  “We require privacy.”

  The grin became a leer. “Oh yes, sir, we can give you all the privacy in the world. That’s our spec-ee-ality, it is. Always supposing you’ve brought the fee.”

  “Naturally.”

  She held out her hand like a confident beggar.

  “How much?”

  Her eyes hardened with suspicion. “Lord Simon would’ve told you that.”

  “He was drunk. As he so often is. And he mumbles when he’s drunk. And I am not accustomed to being kept standing.”

  Muttering something disparaging about toffs, the woman named a number that startled Arthur. Knowing it was probably inflated, and not caring, he opened his purse and paid her. He’d made sure to bring plenty of cash. She closed her hand over the bills and gestured. “Upstairs,” she said.

  They followed her to an upper hall. She threw open a door and waved them into a large luxurious bedchamber with a canopied bed.

  “I was assured we would not be disturbed,” said Arthur. “For any reason.”

  “Not until you ring,” the woman replied. “That’s what we do here. Nobody hears nothing. Nobody says nothing. And we can take care of things, after.”

  Arthur was more and more appalled with each thing he learned about this place. “I require the key to this room.”

  “I told you, nobody’ll be botherin’…”

  He silenced her with a look borrowed from his patrician grandfather in his later years and held out his hand.

  Grumbling, the woman turned away. They stood in silence until she returned with the key. Then Arthur closed the door in her face and locked it. “I didn’t want to discover later that they’d locked us in,” he said quietly to Señora Alvarez.

  “This is a bawdy house, isn’t it?” she replied.

  He nodded. “A very private one, apparently.”

  “Because here men can do whatever they like to women, and no one comes to inquire. Or cares.”

  “Seemingly.”

  She spat out a word Arthur had never heard from a lady. Her dark eyes glittered with fury, and he thought that she had a hand on the pistol in her pocket. He couldn’t blame her. “We will wait a few minutes to let that creature go about her business and then search for the dancers,” he said.

  “I fear what we will find.”

  He could only agree with her.

  They waited in silence. There was nothing to say; they were here to act. “That should be sufficient,” Arthur said. “Will you stay here and lock the door behind me?”

  “No!” Señora Alvarez gave him an impatient look. “The girls know me. They will be afraid of any man in this place. Why would they come with you?”

  “Ah.” He had been thinking of keeping her safe. Which was not possible. “Of course.” He unlocked the door and looked into the corridor. It was empty.

  They stepped out. Arthur relocked the door. “You don’t think she has another key?” asked the señora.

  “She may. We can only trust that she meant what she said about not returning until summoned.”

  “You would trust such a person?”

  He shrugged. “We had best hurry.”

  There were several other bedchambers like the one they had been given along the hall that ran through the center of the house. They were all empty, for which Arthur gave silent thanks. The place was eerily quiet. He was used to a household where people bustled about completing various tasks at this time of day.

  They took the stairs up to the next floor. The corridor was narrower here, and the rooms smaller. Servants’ quarters, Arthur thought. A glance into the first two chambers confirmed this. They were much more plainly furnished than those below.

  The next door was locked, as were the five following. They heard weeping from behind the last, which stopped abruptly when Arthur tried the doorknob. He pictured a girl cowering behind the panels, praying that they did not open. He couldn’t remember when he’d been so angry.

  Señora Alvarez knelt and put her lips to the keyhole of the last door. “Odile?” she murmured. “Sonia? Maria? Jeanne? Êtes-vous là?”

  “Qui est-ce?” came the reply.

  “Shh. Parlez trés doucement.”

  There was a stir beyond the door. Someone inside came closer. The señora conversed with her very quietly in French.

  As she did, Arthur tried the key he had in one of the locks. It didn’t work. He hadn’t really thought it would.

  After a bit, the señora came to stand beside him. “All of the dancers are here,” she murmured. “As well as two other girls. They have had lit
tle chance to speak to each other. These…monsters keep them alone and afraid. Some of them are hurt as well.”

  Arthur’s fury was mirrored in her dark eyes. “Breaking down the doors would bring them down on us,” he said. “We must find the keys.”

  “They bring food two times each day,” she replied. “We could wait and take the keys from that person.”

  “That could be hours. I don’t want to spend so much time here. And it could be more than one person.”

  “We must do something!”

  “I have an idea,” Arthur said.

  “What?”

  “It is an unpleasant one,” he added.

  “Nothing could be worse than this!” She gestured at their surroundings.

  “I could ring, from the room we were given, and ask for another girl. To…join us. I could insist upon choosing her myself.”

  The señora grimaced. “I suppose they would do that.”

  “Particularly if I offer more money.”

  “And then we overpower the woman and take her keys.”

  He nodded.

  “Very well.” Before they left, she whispered at all the locked doorways, addressing each dancer in her native language. The two strangers were English, wary but wild for escape.

  When Arthur unlocked the door on the floor below, they found the bedchamber as they had left it. “We must set the scene,” he said.

  “And be certain of our plan,” she replied.

  A few minutes later, Arthur pulled the bell rope. When the “hostess” arrived in response he made his request, with another payment ready to tempt her. There was no difficulty. She left briefly and returned with a ring of keys to lead Lord Macklin upstairs.

  Teresa waited until the sound of their footsteps had died away before slipping from the room and following. The corridor was empty. The stairway was empty. She lingered behind the door at the top, cradling the heavy vase she carried. The flowers it had held lay on the washstand in the room below. She could hear the woman speaking to the earl, but not what she said. “That one might do,” said Lord Macklin in a loud voice.

  This was the signal they had agreed on. Teresa surged forward. The earl stood beside an open door. He had maneuvered his companion so that her back was to the stairwell. Teresa ran forward and hit the woman on the head with the vase as hard as she could.