The Landlord's Black-Eyed Daughter

by Mary Ellen Dennis

  Grosley! The unexpected visitor had been Walter’s servant. Bundled against the cold, atop a horse, he had looked much smaller. No wonder she hadn’t recognized him.

  “When Grosley entered the yard,” Walter continued, “your ostler was babbling. Grosley could scarce understand him. Something about a ghost riding through the night—a ghost come to claim you. When Grosley related the tale, I understood.”

  Elizabeth felt as if all the blood had drained from her face and body, but she managed to hold herself steady. “Tim saw two ghosts, my lord,” she said. “They haunt the inn. I saw them myself. Yesterday. Don’t you remember?”

  “Yes. But you asked me if I had seen a lady, not a man.”

  “I swear! There was a man at the window, right next to the lady. He… he looked nothing like… the highwayman.”

  Up until now Elizabeth had told the truth, but for the first time she faltered. Because Ranulf had looked very much like Rand. Ranulf’s hair was curlier, his beard coarser, his smile more evil, yet the resemblance existed. Ranulf, however, wasn’t the least bit soft. He’d have killed Walter without pause.

  She didn’t know whether to feel relieved or dismayed that Rand had not played the cold-blooded killer.

  Relieved, she decided.

  Until Walter said, “You conniving bitch, do you honestly think I’d believe one word you say?” He nodded sharply toward the lieutenant. “You’ve been given your orders. Proceed.”

  The soldiers all looked from Walter to Elizabeth. The lieutenant appeared uncomfortable. “Are you certain about this, sir?” he asked.

  “I’ve never been more certain of anything in my life.”

  ***

  The hours crawled by, toward midnight. Clothed in a pure white gown, Elizabeth knelt at the foot of her bed, facing her casement window. On the floor, in front of her knees, two heavy marble bookends secured a flintlock musket whose barrel was bound beneath her breasts. Her wrists were roped together. She had repeatedly tried to twist her hands free, but the knots held.

  Ironically, the musket was called a Brown Bess.

  Her room was dim, lit by a small fire and the moon, so that Rand would not detect the soldiers underneath her casement. Flat on their bellies, they cradled their long-barreled muskets.

  Other soldiers were positioned behind the inn’s second-story windows.

  Walter sprawled at her writing desk, drinking from a bottle of wine. He had read the first chapter of her book-in-progress. Then, in a snarling fit of fury, he had used the pages to fan the fire, watching their edges slowly blacken and burn.

  It didn’t matter. The words were indelibly printed on her brain. Rand was indelibly printed on her brain.

  “If you should try and warn your lover, I’ll pull the trigger,” Walter said with a sneer. “I’m gambling you’ll keep silent and let him ride into a trap. After all, you preferred to let your lover hang rather than admit to Robert Whitney’s murder. When the moment comes, you’ll choose your life over his.”

  Elizabeth’s rump pressed against her bed. If only she could dissolve into its frame, into the wall.

  You’re wrong, my lord, she thought, working the ropes. Now that I know what it’s like to live without Rand, without hope, I would rather be dead than experience such pain again.

  “He won’t come,” she said. “He’s far too smart for you. All you’ll get is a sleepless night.”

  The lieutenant, situated halfway between Stafford and the window, stared intently outside. Walter continued drinking. Elizabeth continued working the ropes. Her hands and fingers were raw from the struggle. At the point where the musket barrel rubbed her chest, her gown was soaked.

  Her entire being concentrated on two things: Rand’s arrival and the musket. Despite her defiant words, she knew Rand would come. Which meant that, unless a miracle occurred, she would have to choose.

  Death for Rand, or death for herself?

  Walter rose and walked unsteadily toward her. Bending, he breathed wine fumes into her face. “I curse the day I first laid eyes on you,” he said. “Why don’t we end it now?”

  Terrified, she could only stare at his face.

  “If I pull the trigger, I’ll be a free man,” he said.

  “Nay, my lord. If you pull the trigger, you’ll be gaoled with the very felons you’ve captured. Robbers. Murderers. Pickpockets,” she recited, remembering his words inside Newgate. “Underworld scum, all coming and going precisely as they please.”

  Walter’s expression altered and she caught a hint of fear in his eyes. He squeezed her chin rather than the trigger. Spinning on his heels, he returned to the table and groped for his chair.

  Elizabeth worked diligently at the knots. Her hands were slick with perspiration, or blood, she couldn’t tell which. Sometimes it seemed the ropes might be looser, other times they felt even tighter.

  Stafford took a long pull from the wine bottle, wiped his mouth with the back of his hand, then jerked his head toward the window. “Are you keeping good watch, dearest?”

  She didn’t answer. The barrel brutalized her rib cage. Her legs ached. Her arms and hands felt numb. She looked beyond the soldiers to the ribbon of road, visible in the moonlight. The night was as still as the inn, as if it too watched and waited.

  Had she heard something? The trot of a horse’s hooves? Sound would carry far on such a quiet night. She thought she glimpsed a shadow on the road. But it was far away, of no more substance than a bat flitting across the mouth of a cave.

  “Let me go,” she pleaded. “If you do not and something happens to me, you’ll hang for murder.”

  Walter laughed, a harsh sound. “You don’t have the courage to warn your lover. You forget, Elizabeth, I’ve been obsessed with you. I know you better than you know yourself. You’ll keep silent.”

  Abruptly, the lieutenant turned toward the desk. “He’s coming, my lord!”

  Walter lurched from his chair. “Are you certain? I don’t see anything.”

  “Out there on the road.” Turning, the lieutenant pointed.

  Elizabeth heard the clock chime midnight. At that very moment, her ropes loosened. Her finger reached between the bookends until she found the musket’s trigger.

  It curved so smoothly and fit so easily. This was the moment of decision. If Rand’s stallion’s hoofbeats were distinct, the sound of a gunshot would surely shatter the night’s eerie silence. Unlike Janey, Elizabeth had a second chance, a chance to set things right. One squeeze. The falling hammer would strike the frizzen, the priming powder would flash through a touchhole, and the resultant shot would alert Rand.

  Is that why we were allowed to remember our previous lives? So that I might make the final choice?

  She saw Janey framed in the White Hart’s window, staring down at the yard. She heard Janey’s voice inside her head: Don’t you remember? Don’t you know?

  Yes, Elizabeth knew. She realized full well what Janey had been trying to tell her all these months. That life without Ranulf had been a living hell, a living death.

  What Elizabeth didn’t understand was why she had been chosen to redeem Janey. Perhaps it had something to do with Dorothea’s words: “Respectable women do not rut with highwaymen, nor do they write books. You’ve never wanted to be what you should be and therein lies your folly.”

  It had all started with Castles of Doom, with her written account of Simon de Montfort’s rebellion. Nay, it had started long before that. As a child, hadn’t she oft dreamed of broadsword and chain mail? Hadn’t she been discovered at Fountains Abbey when she was a mere ten years old? “We found you screaming among the ruins,” her father had said outside Wyndham Manor. “I thought we’d never calm you down.” And the peel tower! Had she not dreamt of shadowy knights on horseback, engaged in some sort of battle?

  Ranulf and Janey had always been on hand, orchestrating her every move.
r />   Why should I atone for Janey’s mistakes? Why?

  Elizabeth knew why. Because life without Rand would be a living hell, a living death.

  “Come on, you bastard,” Walter urged, gazing avidly at the window.

  Elizabeth heard the ringing of hooves against cobblestones. All at once, she knew what she must do, how she’d save Rand and destroy Walter at the same time.

  Even as she destroyed herself.

  ***

  The soldiers looked to their priming.

  Elizabeth stared at Walter, holding his gaze, praying he wouldn’t see her finger on the trigger.

  The lieutenant had turned his attention to the window. If Elizabeth managed to get Walter close enough she could shout “Don’t shoot me, my lord!” and pull the trigger.

  Walter would be arrested, gaoled, possibly hanged. In the eyes of the law she had done nothing wrong—nothing to provoke his vengeful wrath. Even if Walter managed to convince a judge and jury that she had played the highwayman’s accomplice, there were witnesses—the Crown’s own soldiers, no less—to testify that she could not have escaped. Wasn’t she tightly bound to a musket?

  “Come here, my lord,” she said.

  Walter’s face glistened with sweat. “Soon he’ll be dead, Elizabeth. Just a few more minutes and—”

  “Come to me.”

  Walter hesitated. Then, as if compelled, he obeyed.

  “Closer, my lord.” Her gaze was steady. “I have something I want to say, something I don’t want the others to hear.”

  “What lies will you tell me now, bitch?”

  Walter bent forward until the sleeve of his coat touched the musket barrel, until he and Elizabeth were cheek by jowl. She saw the gash of white upon his head. “What do you have to say?” he asked harshly. “Why can’t the others hear your words?”

  “You will hang,” she whispered. “At the very least you will be gaoled with carrion crows. How I wish I could witness their feast.”

  “Carrion crows?”

  “Prisoners. They will feed on every inch of your body.” With a tight, triumphant smile, Elizabeth shouted, “Don’t shoot me, my lord!”

  Walter recoiled, a look of horror on his face. His gaze darted toward her finger on the trigger, but he had already grasped her meaning.

  Elizabeth drew a calming breath. Her serene expression never faltered as she squeezed the trigger.

  Walter’s scream of rage and fear pierced the room. Just before the haze of smoke completely blinded her, Elizabeth saw him pull his pistol from his pocket and turn it on himself.

  Epilogue

  Rhiannon whinnied her displeasure. She didn’t particularly care for the scent of sheep, and she was surrounded by the bothersome “woolbirds.”

  The day had dawned cold and bright. No clouds scuttled the sky. Death had feasted on Walter Stafford. Full to bursting, Death had apparently decided that Rand would be superfluous.

  Tom and Billy Turnbull stood beneath a grove of distant trees.

  In the sunlight, Elizabeth could clearly see the welt on Rand’s neck, especially since he was once again clean-shaven.

  “I should have come for you directly, after my attack on Stafford,” he said. “But my leg… my endurance… was all used up.”

  “It takes a wee bit out of a man, returning from the dead,” Elizabeth teased. “Rand, I’ve been meaning to ask you about your attack on Walter. Why did you not shoot?”

  “Stafford saw me, believed me a ghost, and fell from his horse. I couldn’t shoot, Bess. ’Twas too easy. I wasn’t threatened. Then, when I hesitated, he jolted my hand.”

  “Walter said your gun might have misfired. Thank the Lord his musket did.” She shuddered. “I guess you could say I came back from the dead, too.”

  “I didn’t know about the musket.” Momentarily, Rand’s blue eyes looked bleak, haunted. “If I had—”

  “Hush, my love. There was no way you could discern Walter’s black-hearted scheme.”

  Glancing toward the fleecy sheep, the woolbirds that now populated Wyndham Manor, Elizabeth remembered last night. Nay, this morning. Had the clock not struck twelve? She remembered squeezing the musket’s trigger and the subsequent flash of the pan.

  Once, when she was only seven years old, she had wondered how it would feel to sleep evermore. Now I shall find out, she had thought.

  But God had other plans for her. Perhaps the musket’s priming had been wet or its flint had dulled. Whatever the reason, the gun had misfired, belching smoke rather than its deadly ball.

  Ironically, it was Walter who had warned Rand away from the inn.

  Believing Elizabeth dead, believing he would be gaoled with the felons he had captured, Walter had swiftly retrieved his pistol and placed the barrel between his terrified eyes. His pride had won out in the end, for he had preferred death to indignity; death to the thought of human carrion crows feasting on his flesh.

  Or had he finally realized that Elizabeth was irrevocably lost to him?

  Now, Rand lifted her hand toward his lips. Then he stopped short. “Your wrist, Bess! ’Tis every bit as swollen as my neck.”

  “It will heal, just like your neck.”

  Rand’s misery was clearly visible. “Such a brave, foolish, bonny Bess. I’m not worth it.”

  “Yes, you are. You once told the Duchess of Newcastle you didn’t want to be valued cheaply. I think you’re worth much more than two thousand guineas.”

  “I can’t even put a value on you, my love. The Crown Jewels? No. They pale compared to your radiance.” He kissed the back of her hand, above her bruise, then sighed. “Stafford oft said he knew me better than I knew myself, and he was right. Had I not heard his pistol, I would have ridden straight into his trap. I love you so much, I wasn’t even thinking. Fortunately, Stafford miscalculated.”

  “He never believed I would pull the trigger.”

  “True. And there’s something else. Had I known you were trussed up inside your room, a musket at your breast, I would have continued my ride regardless.”

  “Perhaps that’s what I was supposed to learn from Janey.”

  “What, sweetheart?”

  “Sacrifice. The ultimate sacrifice, dictated by love. Despite his neglect, Janey loved Ranulf more than life itself. Yet she saved her own life by conspiring against him, which she regretted to her dying day. I love you so much, Rand. I would never betray you.”

  “I know. I’ve always known. I think I learned from Ranulf that I must never take you for granted. That life is precious and I must protect what we have, perhaps even settle down.”

  “You’ll never settle down, but I don’t care. So long as we are law-abiding, you can tempt danger whenever you choose. Of course, I must go along for the ride.” Hugging him hard, she felt a slight resistance, a tightening of his muscles. “What is it, Rand? What aren’t you telling me?”

  “While imprisoned, I learned that Stafford was responsible for your mother’s death. My uncle, Tom and Billy’s father, visited the Dales and—”

  “But why?” Elizabeth swallowed her anguish. “Why would Walter want my mother dead?”

  “Having gambled recklessly, your father owed vast sums. Upon Barbara’s death, he would inherit the White Hart. ’Tis as simple as that. Walter was hired to murder Barbara by the same man who accepted your father’s wagers. Stafford, in turn, hired my uncle.”

  “No wonder Billy looked familiar, that day on the bridge. I must have seen your uncle prowling the grounds the night before the murder. God’s teeth! Now I know why Walter gave my father the funds to restore Wyndham Manor. With age, he had begun to develop a conscience. Unfortunately, he was so blinded by his obsession with me and his hate for you that his purgation was short-lived.”

  Rand gently tucked an errant curl behind her ear. “Do you want to visit America, my love? At least until m
y evil deeds are forgotten?”

  Before she could reply, Tom and Billy joined them.

  “Did I hear ye say America, cousin?” Billy waved his hands exuberantly. “Could I go with ye? I’d fight me way t’ a fortune there, and I’ll get the passage money somehow.”

  “Not by robbing some unsuspecting lord, I trust,” Elizabeth chided.

  “How’d ye guess?”

  “I’ll pay your passage,” said Tom.

  “Will ye join us?” Billy asked his brother.

  “No. I’ve just begun to amass my own fortune.”

  Elizabeth hesitated, then held out her hand. “I misjudged you, Tom. When Walter told me Rand had been tarred and chained, I thought you had betrayed us again.”

  “I must confess. ’Twas your words that brought me round.”

  “What words?”

  “You said Rand would never achieve success at the expense of others, especially his own family. You said Rand would have changed.” Tom’s austere neck turned beet-red. “I would change my ways for a woman like you,” he blurted, clasping her extended hand.

  “I see I shall have to find American brides for both Turnbulls.” Elizabeth extracted her hand. Tempted to count her fingers and see if she still possessed five, she added, “You’ll join us one day, Tom, for I expect America has need of gambling establishments even more than London does.”

  Rand grasped her shoulders and stared into her eyes. “The thought of leaving England does not repel you, Bess?”

  “On the contrary, it intrigues me. At the sentencing you told the judge you wanted to be shed of England, and I couldn’t agree more. I can pen my novels once we reach America. In fact, I began a new book at Middlethorpe. When I bid Aunt Lilith good-bye, I shall fetch the pages.”

  “What is your book about, my love? Mad monks? Lusty half brothers? Debauched kings?”

  “No.” Elizabeth flashed him a grin. “’Tis about a female land pirate whose lover keeps telling her to reform and give up her wicked ways.”