Len had been absent from the cottage for several nights. It was not often she was away for so many days at a time, since Lucia’s allowance removed the absolute necessity of her prowling the roads at night. However, she knew Len did not like to depend entirely upon her and her inherited wealth. She was certain it sat uneasily with her principles and her pride. Lucia believed also, more significantly, the unfettered freedom of Len’s life on the road called her still. Julian, of course—who now led his own band of men, with William at his side—would welcome Len whenever she sought him out. She told Lucia she only watched him at work, but somehow Lucia doubted it. The papers reported the notorious band of highwaymen, their leader atop a fine black stallion, was still an occasional but ever-present threat to travellers in those parts. Lucia would wait for Len’s return with bated breath, agonies of anxiety for her twisting her insides. But she always returned, dusty and tired, her eyes alight. Lucia trusted Len’s skill, her instincts, and her ability to move in the shadows to preserve her.
She knew Len also returned to the copse of trees above her father’s workshop. Whether she did so to remember the joy she’d felt in the destruction of his property, to remind herself of how close she came to death, or out of an unbreakable fascination with the life she once had and chose to escape from, Lucia was not sure. One day, when the time was right, she would ask and Len would, she was sure, tell her. Their life was one discovery after another, some small steps, some large, but always together.
*
As she approached the cottage, Len pulled Oberon back into a gentle walk. Though the temptation was—always—to hasten back and into Lucia’s welcoming arms, she always slowed at this point. Just as she turned the corner in the road, passed the last hedgerow marking the bounds of civilisation, and the cottage came into view. Home. Home, she knew now, was a feeling far more than it was a place. It was a feeling Lucia created.
She removed her tricorn and released her hair from its ribbon, enjoying the way the evening breeze played in her locks. The sun was setting behind the little cottage with its crooked roof, bathing everything in a restful golden glow. Len was glad to be back.
True, Julian had been right. She did sometimes miss her old life, galloping through woodlands, breathing in the night air, gambling with the Reaper, cheating the gallows. She even missed robbing pompous aristocrats of their wealth. She missed Julian and William. That was why she visited them often, rode with them by night. But she did not miss holding a pistol to the chest of a frightened young man, nor watching Julian terrify a lady into parting with her necklace.
She knew Lucia did not believe her assurances, but Len did not thieve any longer. Julian told her love had made her soft, but he respected her decision. And knowing she had the strength to give up her outlaw life, a life her father had forced upon her, and to still be able to hold onto her liberty, was all she needed. It was a revelation. She did not have to live beyond the law to be free. Freedom was not about the rules she adhered to or the source of her daily bread. The freedom she had sought for so long was essentially for her heart, her spirit. For that she had only needed love a woman like Lucia.
And the Lord knew, Lucia had made sacrifices enough herself in order to embrace this life. Len knew very well how difficult it was to go from servants and wealth to a life with neither. From being known among one’s acquaintance to being invisible. For the first weeks they had spent in the cottage she had barely dared leave Lucia alone, terrified Lucia would one day declare she could not manage this life after all and would sooner go back to the rules and constraints of her safer, more comfortable life. And yet Lucia had seemed to grow ever happier as she embraced this new present, allowing her past to slip away. Len was nervous what would happen when Lucia had to see her brother or Isabella again—as undoubtedly and rightly she would want to—but she had faith that every bridge could be crossed. If she ever thought anything was impossible, she would hold Lucia in her arms and know that anything they wanted could be achieved.
Now, the urge to see Lucia’s smile, feel the warmth of her body, was too much to resist any longer. She trotted Oberon along the lane leading to the cottage. She wasted no time in seeing he was stripped of saddle and bridle, provided with oats and water, and secure in his small stable, before heading towards the back door of the cottage and letting herself in.
When she opened the door, Lucia was seated at the table in the central room of the cottage. It was already quite dark inside, and she had lit a lantern, which illuminated her in a golden halo. She had clearly been writing, a sheet of paper covered in her neat hand on the table in front of her, but as Len entered, she put down her pen and rose to her feet.
“You look like an angel,” Len said, reaching for Lucia’s hands. It was an unfair comparison. In her eyes no angel could ever compete with Lucia for beauty or goodness.
“Thank you. You look like…like…a highwayman,” Lucia said. She smiled, her eyes dancing.
“Interesting.”
“It is a good thing I have a weakness for highwaymen.” Lucia laughed lightly and pulled Len closer.
“Not all highwaymen, I hope.” Len said. She leaned in for a kiss. Lucia’s lips were soft and warm, tender against her own. “I missed you, my love.”
“And I you.”
Len kissed her again, then opened her eyes and looked over Lucia’s shoulder, her gaze falling on the table. Curiosity drew her attention away from the perfect kisses for a moment. “What were you writing?”
“Oh, nothing of great significance…” Lucia said. She flushed slightly.
“Do not be coy with me, my love. I will drag the information from you somehow.”
“It is tempting to hold you to that threat.” Lucia’s smile was mischievous. “However, I find I want to tell you. I am writing a journal.”
Len was puzzled but intrigued. “A journal? Of day-to-day events?”
“Yes. Well, of some days. I am writing the story of how we first met.”
Len glanced at the papers. Lucia had been busy. “Is that wise, do you think?”
“I appreciate that our lives hang in the balance still, my love.” Lucia looked slightly indignant. Len found it endlessly appealing when Lucia had that spark in her eye. She half smiled and waited for Lucia to continue. “And I promise, I will keep the account as close to my heart as you are. If it is ever under threat of discovery, I will burn it in an instant.”
She sounded so passionate, Len could not help but kiss her again. This time it was a lingering kiss which set fire to her blood and only increased the hunger for Lucia which had built over the days she had been away. To feel Lucia, warm and solid in her arms, to see the real love in her eyes, was everything.
Lucia kissed Len back and allowed her hands to roam under Len’s dusty clothes. Len shrugged her way out of her cloak and coat, and Lucia’s hands caressed her through the thin cotton of her shirt. To feel Len close to her, her living breath on her skin, filled Lucia with a heady mixture of satisfaction and a biting need for more. From the moment Len had opened the door and strode into the cottage, her presence had filled every dark space, erased every slight fear. Lucia pressed closer to her and kissed her harder.
Eventually, Len drew back a little, another question in her expression. “Tell me, why do you want to write an account of how we met?”
Lucia knew the answer instinctively. When she had attended Isabella’s marriage in the crowded church, she had lamented that she was forced to keep her feelings locked inside her chest. She could not cry with the grief or sing with the joy of knowing Len, losing Len, loving Len. Even now, the only ones to whom she could make her sentiments known were Len, who knew them well already; Julian, occasionally and modestly; and the birds who danced every morning in the apple tree outside the cottage. Len and she still existed in secrets and shadows, even when Len was not prowling the roads. She had her answer to Len’s question very clear in her mind.
“I am writing in solid black letters of ink, marking our story onto tha
t creamy, smooth paper. I am letting it be known. Not that our story has a reader, and nor, I hope, will it find one while we two live. But these letters are testament to everything we have done. It is an extraordinary story, and yet here we are. It is our tale.” She paused and examined Len’s expression. Len’s eyes were soft and her cheeks pink. Lucia knew she understood.
“The letters will always exist. They are inscribed on that paper forever. Even if I do have to burn it one day, the ashes will tell the tale to the wind.” She smiled at the thought, and Len smiled back. Lucia knew that the writing released them both from the secrets. Her own heart felt freed from the burden of keeping everything hidden inside. It was at liberty to expand with the revelation of a love she had not known possible.
“It is a beautiful thought Lucia. Perhaps one day, we will not be a secret any longer.” Len’s voice was deep with emotion. “Where does your tale begin?”
“On a dark December night. With a highway robber on a black stallion, a flintlock at her waist, and a gentlewoman in a carriage, with a very great attachment to her mother’s locket.”
“It sounds like a tale I would like to read.” Len’s hands encircled Lucia’s waist and Lucia caught her breath, her temperature beginning to soar. “Although I fear there will be passages which could quite shock me.”
“Oh yes,” Lucia said breathlessly, hands finding their way beneath Len’s shirt to feel her soft, warm skin. To touch Len was a comfort and a provocation to her sharp desire all at once.
“But most importantly, can you tell me, does the tale have a happy ending?”
Lucia smiled, knowing her gaze told Len more than her words would. “Yes,” she whispered. “The happiest. But it has not ended yet.”
Historical Note
The Locket and the Flintlock is entirely a work of fiction, and none of my characters are based on real people. Similarly, although the places borrow their names from real Nottinghamshire villages and towns, the geography is far from accurate.
There was no Len Hawkins prowling the roads by night. But highway robbers were real. The legends of Dick Turpin, Sixteen String Jack, and John “Swift Nick” Nevison—among others—are all based in fact. Travellers crossing the vast unpopulated areas of Britain, especially taking the main roads from London to the north, were always at risk. The phrase “stand and deliver” has supposedly been around from the seventeenth century.
And a female “highwayman” is not a far-fetched creation. The infamous Moll Cutpurse (born Mary Frith) spent some of her extraordinary criminal career dressed as a man and robbing coaches. A rebellious beauty by the name of Joan Phillips adopted a masculine disguise and robbed travellers at the point of a flintlock. Phillips was captured in Nottinghamshire and executed for her crimes in 1685.
By the time of Len and Lucia’s story in 1812, highwaymen were dying out. The advent of the turnpike roads, more enclosed land, and urban sprawl all contributed to this change, along with better policing. It is said that the last horseback highway robbery was in 1831. Highway robbers—via poetry, story, art, and song—became the stuff of romantic legend.
Equally legendary, but less understood, are the Luddites. The frame-breakers were certainly real. The first Luddite attack took place just north of Nottingham, in 1811. The first Luddites did not oppose new technology. Luddism arose in a time of great hardship, when the skilled stocking makers in the outlying villages found their once highly respected trade no longer brought them a living wage, mostly due to a range of new practices on the part of the masters. In protest, they broke the machines, in night-time raids. The government, terrified they were seeing the beginnings of revolution, deployed the militia in huge numbers, and frame-breaking was made a capital offence. Lord Byron really did speak against the bill that made it so, in the House of Lords in 1812. Historians will argue forever whether or not the Luddites were organised revolutionaries or desperate starving men—or maybe both. Letters were certainly sent from a mysterious General Ludd, but there is no evidence he existed. The actions of my band of frame-breakers are based on my interpretation of the known facts.
Could Luddites and highway robbers have worked together in Nottinghamshire in 1812? Both were lurking in the shadows as they moved around the county on the wrong side of the law. Both were relics of a bygone age, their way of life dying out. Both were likely driven to crime by the difficulty of eking out a living within the law. It is not such a very great leap to imagine they could have come together. And there were gentlewomen aplenty in the county. History would not record the story of a foolhardy woman who chased after the thief of her locket in the night-time. But such a tale is not, to me at least, entirely improbable.
About the Author
Rebecca S. Buck was born and bred in Nottingham, England, and has a degree in English Studies from The University of Nottingham. For a few years in her twenties she spent most of her time in Slovenia, in the former Yugoslavia, working as a private tutor and trying to renovate two houses.
Though Slovenia was beautiful, she wasn’t made to live in the countryside and was very happy to return to her hometown, around the same time as her first published novel, Truths, was released. Rebecca had always dreamed of being a writer, experimenting with words from an early age, and the realization of that dream was incredibly exciting.
After a brief spell in retail, Rebecca found her perfect day job, working as a costumed guide and education facilitator at The Galleries of Justice museum in the old Shire Hall and County Gaol of Nottingham, where she can indulge her creativity and love of history.
Outside of writing, Rebecca loves music and reading in all genres. She’s fond of academic books and always ready to learn. She has travelled a lot and especially enjoys the cities of Europe. Her favourite way to spend time is sharing coffee and cake with friends.
To find out more about Rebecca and her publications, visit www.rebeccasbuck.com
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