My Lord Jack

by Hope Tarr

  Hands reached out from the darkness to whisk the cloth from her face. Squinting, Claudia found herself nose to nose with Luicas. She could just make out the whites of his eyes within the frame of his frightened face.

  “Luicas, did they hang you, too?”

  “Wheesht!” He clamped a clammy hand over her mouth. “D’ye want them tae hear us?”

  Dizziness waved through her as she caught a flash of steel, the terror sending her stomach somersaulting. Fighting the sensation, she managed to move her head in a shake and he took his hand away.

  The dagger’s blade sliced through the bindings at her wrists. Freed, Claudia reached up to touch the stinging flesh banding her throat. Never before had pain been so welcome, for it meant she was alive. “I am not dead?”

  He snorted. “No at the moment but ye will be, and me along wi’ ye, if we dinna get ye out o’ here and quick.” He set to work on the rope hobbling her ankles.

  Eyes adjusting to the darkness, she saw her landing place for what it was, a brick pit amply lined with straw. The noose lay in a harmless coil in her lap. Picking it up, she felt along the frayed edges.

  I’m verra precise.

  And it was then that she understood. The rope had been cut through partway. Subjected to her body’s weight and that of the sandbags strapped to her feet, it must have snapped just after she dropped.

  Luicas’s whisper, edgy with tension, sliced through her amazement. “There’s a wee door at the back for drawing out the bodies. It lets out into the basement o’ the bridewell. We’ll have tae crawl through one at a time and then make for the woods. There’s horses saddled and waiting in the stand o’ trees beyond the tollbooth gate.”

  She gave a quick nod. “Oui, but what of Jack? When it is discovered that I am missing…”

  Not meeting her gaze, he answered, “He’ll meet up wi’ us at the border. Now come along, mistress, we’ve nay time tae waste, and Master’ll have my cods on a spit if I let ye come tae harm again.”

  Three hours of hard riding brought them to the taproom of a public house not far from Lockerbie. Luicas had suggested they stop to refresh the horses and themselves, and Claudia had readily agreed. So far in the nearly two hours since they’d arrived, no pursuers had presented themselves but then neither had Jack. With luck their respite would afford him time to catch up. But knowing him to be a seasoned horseman, Claudia couldn’t help thinking he should have overtaken them ere now.

  She turned to Luicas and asked yet again, “You are certain he knows our direction?”

  He lanced her a look of weary patience. “Aye, mistress, ’twas the master himself who mapped our route and bade me halt here.” His voice was steady but his usually rosy complexion was pale beneath the windburn, and the shadows carved beneath his dulled eyes suddenly made him seem far older than his fifteen years.

  He is worried for Jack, Claudia thought, and felt the light meal she’d just taken weigh on her stomach like a stone.

  She pulled the hood of her cloak low over her brow and kept to her stool in the corner while Luicas went to bespeak her a room for, at Jack’s direction, they were to rest by day and travel by night, at least until they crossed the border into England. It was the middle of the week and late afternoon. The few patrons huddled about the hearth were too busy minding their trenchers and pints to pay the newcomers more than a passing glance. The two barmaids lounging on either side of a yet to be spiled cask showed even less interest. Watching the one yawning openly reminded Claudia of how very tired she was. It suddenly seemed a monumental task to support her heavy head and so she let it fall forward, the barmaids’ conversation filling her head like the droning of insects.

  “A hangman tae be hangit? Och, but that’s rich.”

  Claudia snapped up her head. Heedless of her hood falling back, she cocked her head to better listen.

  “Aye, I had it no an hour before from my cousin who had it from her husband’s braither’s wife’s braither—Ned’s a coachman and just down from Selkirk—that he helped a prisoner tae escape, a French lassie.”

  Claudia’s every nerve cried out to her to leap up from her bench and question them, but she kept her seat, scooting to the very edge to better hear.

  “’Tis said they were lovers. A hard price tae pay for dippin’ his cock in French cream, I’d say.”

  They shared a chuckle, then the first woman asked, “Any word on the whereabouts o’ the Frog bitch?”

  Her friend shook her greasy head. “She disappeared sure as she dropped off the face o’ the earth.”

  “Good riddance tae bad rubbish, I always say, though more’s the pity she couldna ha’ gone missin’ before she brought the puir man sae low.”

  “Aye, and ’tis said he’s a looker, too. Big strappin’ fellow with red hair. If I’d had the chance, I’d ha’ showed ’im Scotland can give as good as France any day—nay, better.”

  “Ah well, ’tis past regretting now,” said the other around a sigh that froze the blood in Claudia’s veins. “His cock and the rest o’ him will be food for worms soon as they can find another hangman tae do the job.”

  By the time Luicas returned, fear had leached through Claudia’s shock. Bolting up from her seat, heedless of who might be watching, she grabbed his thin shoulders and steered them toward the door. “He meant to take my place on the scaffold all along, is it not so? Is it not so!”

  Tears welling, he managed a nod. “Aye, but he made me swear no tae tell ye for fear ye’d turn back.”

  Shoving him away, she started outside.

  Catching up to her, he whispered, “Dinna do it, mistress. They’ll only hang the both o’ ye.”

  “Calm yourself, Luicas. We will not be returning to Selkirk.” The boy’s features relaxed into relief, which Claudia knew would be short-lived. “We will go to Linlithgow—to Aberdaire Castle.”

  They rode for two days, stopping only to trade their horses for fresh ones and to pay the tolls along the way from the dwindling stock of coins Jack had given Luicas. Filthy, saddle sore and dizzy with fatigue, Claudia stood alone on the castle steps, having left Luicas in charge of the horses, which the groom had hesitated to take.

  The two footmen posted inside the vaulted doorway she recalled from before but, judging from their blank stares, she guessed they did not recognize her, confirming that she looked at least as bad as she felt, perhaps worse.

  As she approached the entrance, the taller of the two stepped forward. “If ye’re lookin’ for work, servants’ entrance is ’round the back.”

  Lifting her chin and staring him down as though her face and clothing weren’t encrusted with grime, she said, “I am Lady Claudia, His Lordship’s daughter. And if you do not open this door at once and admit me, I will make very certain that you both live to regret it.”

  The brows beneath the powdered perukes lifted and their flat gazes sharpened in recognition. “Christ,” exclaimed the taller of the two, “it is her.”

  His companion shot out an elbow and knifed him in the side. “Shut up, idjut, and get that door.”

  Lump in her throat as the doors groaned open, Claudia couldn’t help but recall the very first time she’d stood on that threshold. Jack had been with her then and thinking of what he would say if he were here now, she paused before entering.

  “Once they have cooled down, our horses will require water and food, as will the boy. See that he is taken to the kitchen and given refreshment at once.” She swept past them.

  The earl’s butler, MacDuff, greeted her inside the great hall. Sangfroid slipping, he stared at her, mouth agape. “Lady Claudia!”

  She answered with a quick nod. “Lord Aberdaire, he is in residence?”

  He inclined his head. “Aye, milady, in the solar. As soon as you’ve bathed, I’ll—”

  “Now,” she broke in, already pushing past him.

  The earl was indeed within the solar, open shears in hand, bending over a hothouse rosebush, when MacDuff led her to the doorway.

  �
�My lord,” Claudia said, not waiting for MacDuff to announce her. She stepped inside, schooling herself not to think about the last time she had seen them, taunting her from the edge of her bed.

  Lord Aberdaire looked up from the rosebush he’d been clipping and his features froze. “So you’re back,” he said, then punctuated the statement with a sharp snap of the shears.

  The felled limb, rosebud and all, dropped onto the parquet tiles. Silver-blue gaze fixed on Claudia, Aberdaire set the shears down upon the silver tray an attendant held.

  “Leave us,” he said, a directive that for once encompassed MacDuff, too.

  By mutual consent they waited until both butler and footman had bowed themselves out and the door had closed.

  Only then did the earl say, “Why have you come back?”

  Knowing there was nothing to be gained by subterfuge, Claudia met his ice-blue gaze and answered, “Jack, Monsieur Campbell, he is to be executed.”

  “For the crime of abduction, or has he committed yet another felonious act since stealing you away?”

  Concealed in the folds of her cloak, Claudia’s hands balled into fists. “I went with him of my own free will, as you must know. I was sentenced to hang, and he arranged for my escape. Now they mean to hang him in my place.”

  “And I suppose you’ve come to beg me to intervene on his behalf?” The expression on his face reflected just how unlikely an outcome that would be.

  Claudia could almost hear Jack’s voice whisper in her ear, Have courage, lass, and all will be well. Yes, she would have courage, for Jack’s sake as well as her own, and God help them both.

  She squared her aching shoulders and lifted her chin. “It is not to beg that I have come, my lord, but to bargain.”

  Chapter Twenty

  The sliding back of his cell’s window hatch had Jack jerking his head from the pillow of his palms. Squinting at the sudden brightness, he rose from his seat on the bench to see Wallis’s broad forehead and beady eyes framed in the Judas hole.

  “Supper already, Wallis? Och, man, but you’re sure to be spoiling me. I’m still stuffed from that grand meal you served up the last time.”

  It was a standing joke between them, for all Jack’s meals consisted of one bare oatcake and a pint of watered-down ale. The food baskets that Milread and Dorcas MacGregor had brought him had been confiscated shortly after his visitors left. The saving grace was that the irons shackling his wrists to the stone wall permitted only the sparest of movements, making it impossible to work up much of an appetite. Unfortunately what the short chains also wouldn’t permit was for him to lie down comfortably. Sleep, when it came at all, did so in small, random snatches, but he coveted those escapes from reality, brief as they were, for it was in his dreams that Claudia came to him.

  Claudia, lovely face flushed, catching at his hands for him to dance with her. Claudia, black hair whipping about her shoulders as she urged the mare faster still.

  Claudia, eyes tender and smile soft, as she opened her arms for him to come to her that verra first time. That she was free and safe—nothing else mattered, he told himself. When his time came, as it must soon do, he would hold the memory of that sweet countenance in his mind’s eye and die if not a happy man than at least one with few regrets. As Master Shakespeare had writ, “’Tis better to have loved and lost then never to have loved at all.” And Jack had loved Claudia and loved her well. He loved her still.

  But in a few more days it would all be over, for surely they’d have the hangman down from Edinburgh any time now. Jack’s only remaining hope was that whomever they brought wasn’t a ham-handed bungler but someone who’d turn him off proper and clean—he deserved that much, he thought.

  Wallis’s voice called his rambling thoughts back to the present. “’Tis your lucky day, Campbell, for ye’re free tae go.”

  For the first time in five days, or was it six, Jack allowed himself to feel well and truly annoyed. “Verra funny, Wallis, but you’ll have to pardon me if I’m too tired to play your little game.”

  “It’s nay game, Jacko.”

  Jack looked up sharply. Callum’s voice had replaced Wallis’s as had his brow and narrowed eyes in the window. “What the devil—”

  “It seems ye’ve friends in high places. The bleedin’ earl of Aberdaire saw fit tae intervene on your behalf, and now the charges agin ye’ve been dropped.”

  For a long moment shock held Jack still, for Claudia’s father was the last person he’d expect to help him.

  He was still asking himself why when Callum’s voice cut in on his thoughts. “Tender braither that I am, I’ve come tae give ye a proper sendoff. Me and a few o’ the lads.”

  Before Jack could answer, the cell door groaned back and Callum and his cronies crowded inside, their lanterns held high to reveal eyes burning bright with anticipation. “His hands are hobbled a’ready. Verra convenient,” Callum remarked, holding his own lantern to shine full on Jack’s face. “Verra convenient indeed.”

  The drawing room door closed, signaling the exit of Claudia’s “chaperone,” although the earl’s housekeeper, Mistress Dunlevy, served as more of a guard than a duenna. But as much as Claudia had come to detest the woman over the past week, at the moment she was honestly sorry to see her go. For the door barely had met its frame when, wedged into the cushion next to her, Lord Haversham reached for her knee.

  Claudia shoved his hand away and scooted to the far end of the divan. “You are forward, sir.”

  The viscount favored her with a broad smile. The latter was nothing short of a mistake for it served to emphasize yet another of his unfortunate features: large uneven teeth set into puffy pink gums. But as unappealing as she found that smile, indeed all of him, to be, the very worst were his eyes. Small, squared and squinted, they reminded her of a sheep, as did his frequent bleating laugh.

  “And how, fair lady, might I be otherwise when I am confronted with such celestial beauty as to give fair Venus cause for envy were she to, ah…that is to say…”

  “Were she a living person and not a mythological deity?” Claudia suggested.

  “Ah, wit as well as loveliness. You are a rare treasure, my sweet, and how eager I am to unwrap your secrets in a sennight’s time,” he added with a wiggle of his single eyebrow.

  Despite the warmth from the fire, his thinly veiled reference to their wedding—and more to the point, wedding night—drew a shudder from Claudia. In a weeks’ time, six more days to be precise, Viscount Haversham would own her just as he did his horse or the calf pads strapped beneath his silk hose, or the silly high-heeled pumps he favored. He would exercise a husband’s right to touch her, to demand that she touch him. Claudia had yet to contemplate either eventuality without having the express urge to retch—or flee.

  Already on her feet, she said, “I am afraid I must take my leave of you, my lord, for suddenly I do not feel at all well.”

  Haversham dutifully rose to stand beside her. “My lady, I shall count the minutes until I next find myself in your sweet presence.” Taking her hand, though she hadn’t offered it, he slathered a wet kiss on the top, the little suckling noises he made putting her in mind of yet another barnyard beast—a pig.

  “Perhaps you would do better to count in hours,” she said and, snatching her hand away, rounded the teacart and made a rush for the door.

  Passing through it into the hallway, she nearly collided with Lord Aberdaire on his way inside.

  “Claudia, where are you haring off to? I specifically told Mistress Dunlevy to leave you and Lord Haversham alone.”

  “I have a headache,” she answered automatically though it was far from a lie.

  His thin lips twisted. “Practicing to be a wife already, eh? Well, go on with you, then. Only see you show a civil face to your bridegroom tonight at supper.”

  Biting back the sharp retort that a free Claudia would have given, she nodded and turned toward the staircase and the respite of her room.

  One more week and then good r
iddance! Aberdaire expelled a heavy sigh and then wheeled himself inside the drawing room where a scowling Haversham was wearing holes in the Turkey carpet, a glass of brandy in one ring-adorned hand.

  Sighting the earl, he exclaimed, “The chit is cold, cold I tell you.”

  Drawing up on him, Aberdaire shook his head. “Dinna be an ass, Haversham. She’s a bastard and half French. If she’s even half the whore her mother was, you’ll be getting the best of the bargain.” At Haversham’s raised brow he elaborated, “You’ll have to get an heir off her one way or the other. Who knows, but you may find my little Claudia so bold and buxom in bed that you send that whey-faced mistress of yours packing.”

  Looking somewhat mollified, Haversham finished off his brandy and then went to the sideboard to pour himself another. Piggy face reflected in the pier glass, he said, “Then I trust you’ve no objection to my sampling the wares?”

  Aberdaire hesitated. It was an open secret that Haversham beat his mistress and that when in London was a frequent visitor to Mother Damnable’s, a nasty Covent Garden brothel that catered to clients whose tastes ran to flagellation and defloration—not that Claudia’s maidenhead was at risk.

  He shrugged. “I suppose there’s no harm in a nibble or two of forbidden fruit. Only mind you leave no marks, Haversham, at least not where they’ll show. I’ll no stand for having the validity of this marriage called into question by accusations that she’s been coerced.”

  “Just so.” Excitement flushed Haversham’s baby cheeks; turning away from the mirror, he sent the earl a gummy grin. “I’ll want to save some surprises for the wedding night, won’t I?”

  Poor Claudia, Aberdaire thought, gaze settling on his future son-in-law’s dimpled hands, the thick fingers grasping the brandy snifter sporting long, wicked-looking pinkie nails. The chit might be a troublesome baggage with a serpent’s tongue and a will like Damascus steel, but given what her future held, Aberdaire almost felt sorry for her.