by Sandra Byrd
“I know how to drive a carriage, Annabel.”
But why was he driving? The only answer could be that he wanted no one save himself and me to know where we were going.
CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR
We started down the drive. Edward drove, but unsteadily. The horses must have sensed his insecurities because they kept looking left and right, and the reins were too slack to control them confidently. Even I could see that.
It was now dark.
Instead of turning left, as we would if we were going to town and which would be natural if he were bringing me to another madhouse, he turned right.
“Where are we going?” I asked. I looked off the side of the cart. I could jump, but where would I go if I could even escape a moving carriage without hurting myself?
“You’re going home,” he said. “And then I’m going home, too, to set things right.”
He made no sense. Perhaps he was mad after all.
The clouds clotted into a dark and pregnant gray. About a half mile along the road he stopped the carriage and secured it. He helped me down and then kept a firm hand on my arm. We walked around the back of the carriage and he took my trunk; it was too heavy for him to manage with one arm, wobbling this way and that like a drunk in an alleyway, so he let go of me.
“Follow me or things will go much worse for you,” Edward said, and I did, all the time looking for a possible escape. My cloak stiffened as shards of ice, which the sky had begun to spit, burrowed their way into its fabric, like worms.
I knew just where I was, and it did not bode well for me. In the far distance was the stone cottage where Emmeline and Oliver’s family lived, halfway between our estate and Pennington Park. Just ahead was the Edge of the World. To the left were the trails leading down to the Keyhole, where smaller boats and skiffs could slip in, take on contraband, and slip out into the dark waters, unseen, like sprats. Why had Edward brought me here now? If he was going to push me off, over into the abyss, why bring my trunk?
We stood there for a moment. Nothing happened, and he did not move, but the water crashed into the hillside just below us, making it nearly impossible to hear what Edward was saying. I drew a little nearer so I could hear, though his close presence repelled me. He smelt of the sour odor a body exudes when it’s anxious.
“There is no insane asylum here, Edward,” I spoke loudly. “Why are we here?”
He scanned the water. “I have a better plan, Annabel. You’ll be put away, but it will be somewhere much more pleasant. Somewhere you’ll be treasured as well as kept. And kept well. I’ve ensured that. He knows he’s to answer to me.”
I looked just over the edge of the slope, where the trails began to ribbon up the hillside. A boat skimmed the water, coming ever closer to us.
I thought I recognized, even at this distance, the skiff and the beard of the man piloting it by lamplight. I could not be sure because the man on board was dressed for the wet and cold, but it seemed he held himself in a certain way that I recognized.
“Nigel Morgan!”
Edward grinned. “I could not take a chance that you would find some overly sympathetic nurse at the next lunatic asylum. This is the best for everyone. Morgan will treat you well. He loves you.”
“I do not love him! He frightens me.”
The wind picked up and blew my hair round me. Edward shifted my trunk to his other shoulder. It had not been well tied and locked; the top burst open, and the lid gaped like the mouth of a ghost’s jaw, freed in the afterlife from its rag support.
“Even if I am forced to marry, I will continue looking for documentation of my parents’ marriage from Morgan’s home in London.”
“He plans to keep you in Ireland. Way beyond the pale. It’s an arrangement we came upon. There will be no escape from Ireland, Annabel. His estate is back in the bogs where few Englishmen venture, and the Irish are all in his family’s employ.”
My rib cage hurt. “If we have children, they will become heir to the Ashton legacy.”
He grinned and licked his lips, his tongue darting as he did so, and he looked as if he were about to enjoy a particularly favored pudding. “No, Annabel. Do you remember I told you I’d learned some men have ‘wives’ in every port? I’ve come across documents showing that Morgan has ‘married’ women in Sicily and perhaps the West Indies. Surely you understand that women and trade have gone together like wind and sail since the beginning of time? I’ve shown the documents to him. If ever a claim is made on behalf of a child of yours, or any child he begets, I will be able to prove he is a bigamist and your child illegitimate.”
Had “Mrs. Wemberly” been a false wife? Or simply someone he’d used and then set aside? In either case, he was not to be trusted. The ice turned to snow, which drifted down upon me like bleached wood ash. Edward lifted his lamp toward the Keyhole, where the skiff waited. A signal of some sort.
“Morgan will want my money if I prove myself legitimate.”
“There will be little left after Highcliffe is sold and my debts paid. He is uninterested in your money, but you, my dear, will be partial payment for those debts. I’ll build it back up over time, and he’s better off than I. He simply wants a beautiful woman for pride of place. He wants you. I shall give you to him—he will treat you well, he’s assured me—and I will keep his many secrets.”
I was trapped. There was no way out of this. I prayed silently for any divine intervention that might save me from this cruel and bleak fate. I blinked away snowflakes from my eyelashes; they melted and coursed down my cheeks.
“Come along.” Edward tried to take my hand but could not reach it while still carrying my trunk. He pushed me in front of him and then nudged me onward, down the winding sheep’s path that led to the water.
I stopped and turned and tried to make my way up the path again, but it was narrow, and I could not edge past Edward. One side led to a fairly steep drop-off toward the water: a few scrubby trees anchored the land, but lightly.
The other led to the green where the sheep grazed. I should try to dart around him on that side.
He blocked me. We were perhaps one hundred feet from the sea, the rolling tide of which echoed back and forth in my ears. I saw the bobbing boat waiting for us. “There is no escaping fate, Annabel,” Edward said. “Your mother sealed yours when she decided to become the doxy of some Maltese.”
“Doxy?” I shouted, though none should hear me but Edward over the pounding surf to one side and the echo of the walls around the Keyhole to the other. “You mean wife. And even if she’d been a doxy . . . and she had not . . . that’s a far better thing than being a murderess. Your mother was a murderess, Edward. And you’re following right along behind her, as is your murdering wife. Judith Everedge killed my mother by sending her to her death. Julianna Ashton was not mad. She died of consumption, and a broken heart, so your mother could plunder her estate like the cold-blooded thief that she was!”
Edward’s face, also red with the cold, detonated with fury. His eyes widened, his jaw clenched, and then his mouth opened. “You will not slander my mother!” He did not defend his wife. In his anger, he shifted on the wet trail, and as he did he lost the balance of the trunk. He quickly moved his weight to try to accommodate and regain his balance, but the trunk shifted mightily to the left, the water side, pulling him down with it. His feet went out from under him, and he slipped, his trousers hitting the hard ground as he groaned and shouted in pain.
The trunk disgorged its contents all along the side of the scrubby slope, and the lid narrowly missed hitting Edward in the head. My fine dresses, my silk slippers, my precious book of saints and angels were all launched into the air like the ivory rods thrown into the air in a game of pick-up-sticks. Strangely enough, when everything had landed, I spied my mother’s lace wedding cap hooked upon a shrub.
Who had stolen and kept that? Who had placed it in my trunk, and why? When?
A slice of the ground fell away at Edward’s feet, and his expression changed
from one of anger to one of panic. He grabbed hold of a relatively thin tree trunk, a sapling, which had grown to tilt landward away from the wicked sea winds.
He caught himself, just, from falling over the side of the cliff and into the sticky quicksand a hundred or more feet below. I jumped back so I should not slide, too.
I well understood the horror on his face. We’d always known that the land at the bottom of the Edge of the World would swallow whatever was dumped into it, whole. It was one reason I’d heard that smugglers wouldn’t bury anything seaside hereabouts like the Moonrakers famously had by their lake. Not only would their booty be fully ingested, but the smugglers foolish enough to walk out upon the land to bury it would soon find themselves firmly trapped mid-stride, like the frog in Mr. Morgan’s amber.
“Annabel. Help me!” Edward clutched the small tree. The slope was such that he could not pull himself up onto the path again without risking losing his balance altogether. “Even I was not willing that you should die, and you are a much more religious person than I am. Can you live with my death on your soul?”
“I cannot help you!” I shouted. If I were to step near him, I could slip myself. The effort required to pull him up could unbalance us both and send us hurtling over the cliff.
Or he might push me to save himself.
The skiff loitered. Surely the man on board could see that we were in need of assistance. Why didn’t he come?
And . . . perhaps this was my chance. Maybe I could simply leave Edward to his fate—why not? Scripture promises, Whoso diggeth a pit shall fall therein, and he that rolleth a stone, it will return upon him. Would this not be justice? It would not be on my soul in spite of Edward’s ludicrous and desperate accusations.
I started to walk up the hill. “I shall not help you help me to a life of misery!”
“Annabel! I would not have left you to die. Clementine would have.”
Ah! An admission!
“Pleeeease!” The effort required for him to scream above the surf caused the ground to slip a little, and he looked at me, silently pleading.
Albert, he mouthed. For Albert.
I turned my back and ran up the hill, and once at the top I stopped.
Did I want my freedom? Certainly. Did I want to leave Edward to his death?
I could not leave him to his death; it would make me complicit. I admitted that. But I would not risk myself and my own life.
“I’ll go for help!” I ran as fast as I could, slipping twice on the path that muddied my gown, to the stone cottage, perhaps ten minutes away. The home of Oliver and Emmeline.
I banged on the door, and after a moment or two it was opened by an older man.
“Hello, I am Miss Ashton of Highcliffe,” I said.
“Do come in.” The man opened the door wider.
“I cannot! I cannot. There has been an accident. My cousin, Mr. Everedge, has tumbled over the side of the sheep’s trails, and I wondered if there was some way you could assist me in rescuing him.”
The man’s children gathered behind him, including Emmeline and Oliver.
“Certainly. Let me get my boots.” The man pulled his boots on and called for Oliver and another of his sons to come along with him. Emmeline pulled her boots on, too. Her father shook his head no.
She nodded and somehow made him understand she should come with us.
“She best knows the trails, Father,” Oliver interpreted for her.
At that, her father nodded, and we started back toward the Edge of the World.
It took us perhaps another ten minutes walking quickly in the lightly falling snow on wet ground to return to the spot I’d shown them.
When we arrived, Edward was gone.
“It’s clear he was here, miss.” Oliver pointed to my trunk with its widely scattered contents. “But Mr. Everedge is not.”
It was true. Edward had disappeared completely, and there were no footsteps leading from where he’d slipped to the path we now stood upon. We walked down the trail just a little farther until Emmeline made a warning wave with both hands, and we stopped. According to her counsel, Edward and I had not been wise to be even as far down this trail as we had gone.
I looked down at the water, toward the Keyhole. The skiff was no longer present. Morgan had either made a hasty retreat with his rower or had hidden in one of the coves along the shore.
None of us were willing to venture down the path any farther and check for footprints, but we shouted, all of us, for Edward.
“Do you hear anything?” Oliver’s father asked.
We shook our heads. No call for help, just the crash of the surf, the shudder of the land it punished, the sigh of the winter wind. That was all.
“We’ll return to the house, and I’ll send someone to fetch the constable,” their father said. “Quickly, in case Mr. Everedge is to be found alive at the foot of the hill.”
We each agreed in turn, but I knew, and so did they by the somber looks they passed between them, that Edward was unlikely to be found alive after such a fall.
“I’d prefer to return to Pennington,” I said.
“There’s no one there, miss,” Oliver said. “They’ve all gone north and the house is shut. Even the priest went with them this time.”
The air was fogged with our exhaled breaths and snowflakes so small they were nearly dust. The children’s father looked at me as he drew his shivering daughter near. “There is no choice, miss. It’s back to Highcliffe.”
I shivered, too. Would that someone could protect me as he did little Emmeline.
Oliver and Emmeline’s father drove our carriage, still roped by the wayside when we returned to it, back to Highcliffe. I was cold and tired and shaken, and in spite of it all wished for Edward to get his just desserts but not be dead.
We pulled in front of the house. “Would you like me to go in with ye?” the older man asked.
I shook my head, though I truly did not wish to face Clementine on my own. “No, you’d best fetch some men to search the beach for Mr. Everedge.” He clearly thought this was wise, nodded, and then clucked to the horses. He did not need to ask permission to take them; no one would deny that looking for Edward was the most important task before us.
I quickly walked up the front steps, and Watts opened the door. As I headed inside, he looked behind me, for Edward, I presumed.
“Mr. Everedge is not with me,” I said. “There has been an accident. Please call Mrs. Watts and Maud and Mrs. Everedge to the drawing room. I would like you to stay while I explain the situation to Mrs. Everedge.”
“Maud is no longer in service,” he said. “But I will ask Mrs. Watts to bring Mrs. Everedge.”
When Mrs. Watts returned with Clementine she had a blanket and gave it to me to wrap myself in, which I was thankful for. Watts stoked the evening fire, and we sat near it. Clementine could no longer contain herself. She was frightened, I thought, to see me returned to Highcliffe.
“Where is Edward?” She gripped my arm, and I recoiled. My heart coursed between sympathy for her situation—she was most probably a widow, now—and utter revulsion that she had wished me poisoned, mad, and perhaps married to Mr. Morgan.
“There has been an accident,” I said. “Edward was taking me to be escorted somewhere.”
“The asylum,” she put in. I held her gaze, which was intense and upset but gave no indication that she had any idea I had been on my way to Morgan. Perhaps she hadn’t known, but then she had been able to hide her true intentions regarding the honey and her false friendship for months. So she was more capable of deceit than I had first thought.
“No,” I said. “He was sending me to Ireland to be married.”
Mrs. Watts gasped.
“To Mr. Morgan.”
“I never,” Mrs. Watts said. “He said you were unwell like your mother, and that he needed to find you a more secure institution.”
“Gabrielle,” Mr. Watts warned. His face looked tired and concerned. Surely, he knew what kind of
man he had served. I could not hold that against him, though, if he did not know what had been undertaken against me. And I’d appeared somewhat mad, due to the influence of the honey.
“Edward!” Clementine cried. “Annabel! Where is he?”
The clock in the corner marked five ticks.
“He was taking me via the Keyhole,” I said, “and he slipped on the trail. There is some indication he fell, and I ran to get help.”
“You abandoned him!” Clementine stood and shrieked. “Or pushed him!”
Mrs. Watts stepped protectively in front of me.
“I barely had the strength to walk the trail,” I shouted in return, “after having just escaped from Medstone whilst medicated for a mania I do not have, because I am not insane in any manner!”
“To Medstone you shall return,” Clementine promised. “We must summon help!”
“The constable and men have already been sent for,” I said. “We must wait patiently as they conclude their findings.”
She grew nearly hysterical, wringing her hand and clutching a chair cushion until her fingertips were white. How long had it been since Maud left . . . Had she, too, been dismissed? I thought it unlikely she’d left Clementine, to whom she’d seemed devoted, voluntarily.
Mr. Watts brought a small, steadying port to Clementine. I changed into something Mrs. Watts found for me and brought to the nearby study, and two hours later the constable and his men arrived.
They were shown into the drawing room; Emmeline and Oliver’s father followed them, and the children, who had arrived about thirty minutes earlier to wait for their father in spite of the late hour, sat in the hallway, listening. Oliver had, I reminded myself, spent much later nights than this when he slept on a hall bed waiting to be summoned to service.
“I’m sorry,” the constable said to Clementine. “Mr. Everedge has passed away. Died from the fall, you’ll want to know, and I hope you’ll take comfort that we were able to extract him from the sand in time. He’s been cleaned up, and we’ve laid him to rest in the coffin in the coach house.”