by Rebecca King
“Simon and Wally will both be fine. They are with my colleagues,” he assured her. “Right now, I rather suspect that they are safer than we are. It is imperative that we get to Afferley as quickly as we can.”
“I know. Let’s just hope it will be sooner rather than later.” She shivered when a particularly cool blast of air swept over her already chilled flash. “This has been the longest day of my life.”
“I know,” Charlie whispered fervently. “For now, get some rest while we can. Dawn will be upon us soon, and we need to be on our way by first light.”
He smiled when she groaned. “I am sorry that we didn’t find somewhere more comfortable to stay, but we just cannot take the risk that someone will recognise me.”
Hetty nodded. Although his large brimmed hat covered most of his face, she knew that nothing could hide his mesmerizingly handsome features, or the stubborn tilt of his chiselled jaw. Any woman who saw him would never forget him. She knew she certainly wouldn’t.
“I don’t mind. I would much prefer to be out here than in Derby jail.”
“Thank you,” he suddenly said. He turned to study at her in the darkness. “For everything you did to save me yesterday. You took an incredible risk with your life. You could have been behind bars right now.”
“It was a risk worth taking,” she whispered gently. “Regardless of what anybody thinks, I know you and Simon are completely innocent.”
Charlie thought about their marriage, and eyed the gold band on her finger. It made him immensely proud to have her by his side. He knew, without hesitation, that he would move heaven and earth to keep her there for the rest of their lives.
“Come here,” he growled gently.
He lifted an arm and drew her toward him until she was tucked against his side.
“It will be alright, Hetty,” he said quietly.
“Can I ask you something?” Hetty asked. She tipped her head back so she could look up at him.
“Go on.”
“If your colleagues just arrived, how did they know about Afferley? I mean, what is it?” Hetty struggled to battle the rising tide of frustration that made her voice sharper than she meant it to be, but Charlie seemed to know and understand.
“Afferley is a fairly small, nondescript village; a hamlet really, several miles away from Derby. It is owned by someone Sir Hugo knows, apparently.” He smiled down at her. “Sometimes it is best not to ask too many questions.”
Hetty studied him for a moment, aware of the intimate atmosphere that settled over them. It was difficult to ignore, especially when they were both bathed in moonlight. The silvery shadows gave him an air of mystery that made him more than a little intriguing. Her fingers itched to touch the side of his face, just to assure herself that he was real, but she knew that any kind of contact would bring forward the emotions she was already struggling to contain.
“Try and get some sleep,” he murmured gently, aware of her eyes touring the contours of his face.
His body began to respond, and he shifted to try to ease the discomfort. In an attempt to focus on something other than the wayward demands of his flesh, he leaned away from her so he could remove his jacket. Unfortunately, when he tried to drape it over her shoulders, she pushed it back at him with a shake of her head.
“I am fine. You keep it, or you are going to get cold. I have my cloak,” she eyed the broad expanse of white shirt. “You only have your shirt on. You will be frozen.”
“I am fine.” He assured her with a grin, but clenched his teeth to stop them from chattering. “I come from a hardy breed.”
Hetty sighed. “I know, but that white shirt glows in the dark. You stand out like a beacon,” she told him wryly. She watched him consider that for a moment before he carefully put his jacket back on.
“Do you think they are going to be alright?” Hetty asked with a frown. “I hope to God they got out of town alright.”
“My friends know what they are doing. Look at what they arranged yesterday. If it wasn’t for all of you, Simon and I would be swinging from the gallows by now.” He stopped when he heard her gasp, and saw the fear in her eyes; even through the darkness. “I am sorry. I didn’t mean to remind you of a time we would both be better off trying to forget. I am sure that they got out; really. I am not just saying that to pacify you – it’s the truth. One thing I do know about your brother is that he is very capable.” He gave her a nudge. “We were the ones who had most of Derby jail after us, not them. It was the chance they needed to get Mabel out of danger.”
Hetty nodded. She wished that she could see him a bit more clearly through the gloom because she was certain that she had heard a hint of doubt in his voice. She frowned into the darkness. She was cold, fiercely hungry, and worried sick, but it all seemed inconsequential given the ordeal he had so recently endured.
A gentle breeze teased her cloak. She felt, rather than saw, him shiver. She leaned up enough to remove the cloak before she shuffled closer to him. He hugged her tighter while she drew the cloak over both of them and snuggled down against his chest.
It felt incredibly wanton to lie against him. As soon as she was nestled against his side, he draped one long arm around her shoulders and drew her closer still. There was nothing else she could do, so she rested her head on his shoulder. Immediately, warmth encased her and she started to relax for the first time in several very long and worrying days. More importantly, he had stopped shivering as well.
“Can I ask you something?” She whispered when silence settled around them. He shifted to find a more comfortable position.
“You can ask me whatever you want to, darling,” he murmured softly.
“What did you do that drew Meldrew’s attention to you? I mean, if you were Reverend Pott’s friend, and just came to his church in remembrance of him, there is nothing untoward about you that Meldrew could be worried about.”
Charlie sighed and stared blankly into the darkness. “My friend, Arthur, was a good friend of mine whom I had known for years. He was the third son of Lord Upton of Keddlesham. As the third son, he was given the choice of going into the army or joining the Church.”
“He chose the Church?” she prompted when he lapsed into melancholy silence, and didn’t seem inclined to expand on his explanation.
“Yes. A couple of months ago, I received a letter from him that was full of worry. He said that he was being pressured to pay someone a lot of money to keep the church safe and, when he had refused to pay the demand, the church had been ransacked. Bibles had been burned, and valuable items smashed. He felt that he was being pressured into handing over a huge amount of the funds to pay thugs to stop wrecking the church.”
“Didn’t he tell the authorities; the Bishop, or anything?” Hetty suspected that she knew what was coming even before he spoke.
“The church Arthur worked at is in Hemsley, sweetheart. Meldrew is the authority.” Charlie’s words echoed around the stone walls. “I don’t know if he wrote to the Bishop, or told his father. Nobody knew that he was the third son of Lord Upton, as far as I can tell, so I doubt it. He kept that a secret because he wasn’t very close to his father. Now that I think about it, I doubt that he would have written to Lord Upton to tell him.”
“He could have written to the Bishop though.”
Charlie nodded, but doubted that she could see him in the gloom. “Yes, he could have. I was on my way to visit the Bishop next. I had intended to find out whether Meldrew was likely to have been involved when Simon and I got arrested.”
“Reverend Potts was found in the church with a head wound. Everyone just thought that he had fallen over, and hit his head on one of the gravestones,” Hetty explained.
“I know, darling. I wouldn’t have thought it anything about it either.”
“If it hadn’t been for your friend’s letter,” Hetty finished for him.
Charlie sighed and hugged her closer. “There is no proof that it was anything other than a trip which resulted in Arthur hitting
his head on a gravestone, and dying before anyone found him.”
“You think it is linked to Meldrew’s demands for money,” she sighed.
He shrugged. “The verger, Snetterton, showed me the spot where Arthur died. There was nothing around it that he could have hit his head on. Given that letter, I just had to start to ask questions. I spent some time in the village tavern, and overheard enough conversations to know that Meldrew was a despised bully who was extorting money out of anyone and everyone he could. If his victims didn’t comply, they had their goods stolen or smashed beyond repair, just like Arthur. They were hounded at all hours of the day and night until they gave in and handed over the money.”
“Why would they kill Arthur though, if they wanted money from him? Wouldn’t it have been better to keep him alive and get the money?” Hetty scowled, and wondered what it was that she wasn’t seeing.
“You would have thought so, wouldn’t you?” Charlie replied obliquely.
“You asked questions of the wrong people,” Hetty stated bluntly. It wasn’t a question.
“I met your brother in the tavern. He told me that Meldrew was pressuring him to pay him to keep his business ‘safe’. Your brothers refused to pay up, and rightly so,” Charlie sighed and looked down at her.
“I know you had several drinks with him,” she smiled and felt his soft snort.
“Several? There were times that we rolled out of that tavern like two of the innkeeper’s barrels. I could barely remember my name, let alone where my lodgings were,” he snorted in good-humoured disgust.
“I know,” she replied dryly. “I scraped you off the doorstep when we met, if you remember.”
Charlie coughed uncomfortably, but grinned down at her as the memory of their first meeting came flooding back.
Hetty laughed. “He does like his ale.”
“I can’t keep up with him, I will confess,” Charlie replied without rancour. “He can drink me under the table, that’s for sure.”
“Oh, I don’t know,” she teased. “You don’t do too badly yourself.”
“I was supposed to be there to ask questions about Meldrew’s activities,” Charlie said, once the humour had faded.
“That’s why you were always talking to Simon about Meldrew,” she sighed, and felt him nod.
“It’s why I was in the village, sweetheart,” Charlie admitted. “I had to come and investigate Arthur’s letter. I didn’t know he had died until I got here, to be honest with you. It was a bit of a shock. I asked Snetterton as much as I could, but he started to ask me questions about who I was, and where I came from. Given what I do for a job, and my connections to the War Office, I couldn’t exactly tell him, so told him that I was just ‘passing through’ as it were. I told him I had decided to drop in on my good friend, Arthur.” He shook his head in disgust. “I had planned to go back to London, and talk to Sir Hugo about what I had found. He would have spoken to the people in authority, and made sure that Meldrew was relieved of his duties while an investigation took place into his activities. I just didn’t get that far. I had no idea at the time that I was in the worst place I could be.”
“Right under Meldrew’s nose.”
“He has someone in the village working for him,” Charlie growled. “I just don’t know who yet.”
“Meldrew had been trying to get the tradesmen in the village to pay him ‘protection’ money for several weeks now, but none of them would agree. Some of them have nearly had their businesses destroyed, I don’t mind admitting. This is our village though. Our livelihoods are there. We all work and live together. We help each other out in times of crisis. That is something that someone like Meldrew wouldn’t understand. Whenever he sent his men in to destroy something, everyone in the village helped the tradesmen put everything back together again. It was sort of like a combined show of defiance to Meldrew. Unfortunately, it only seemed to anger him more because his threats have become increasingly sinister of late, and it has unnerved us all.”
“One of the tradesmen he targeted was your brother.”
Hetty nodded. “They wouldn’t give him anything. Meldrew’s thugs smashed a couple of carts up as a warning that they could damage our trade if they wanted to, but we ignored them. Then, one day, when we were supposed to accept delivery of two carts of grain, nobody arrived. Simon couldn’t understand it because the farmers were regulars, and weren’t the kind to let him down. When he went to try to see them, he couldn’t get out of the lane because Meldrew’s thugs were there. They effectively told him to pay up or starve. Simon said he would starve. Thankfully, the farmers brought the carts across the fields, but it was a warning that Meldrew wasn’t going to give up and go away.”
“Thank heavens for the farmer’s determination to trade with your family anyway,” Charlie sighed, and mentally applauded Simon’s determination not to cave in to Meldrew’s pressure.
“That mill has been in our family for generations. Wally and Simon have kept it going since my father passed away. I do my bit with the bakery, of course. Its home to all of us. We don’t know anything else. I don’t know why Meldrew started to target Simon, and not me. I am the weakest of the family, after all. It just doesn’t make sense.”
“You don’t make the business decisions though, sweetheart. Your brothers run the business,” Charlie sighed. “Both of your brothers would stand firm against the likes of Meldrew for as long as they needed to. Meldrew undoubtedly knew, once those farmers brought those carts across the fields, that he couldn’t stop the trade by blocking roads. He had to do something a bit more drastic. He has men working for him, but even he wouldn’t get away to laying siege to someone’s property by nailing the doors up. He could have targeted you, but, thank God, he didn’t. I think – and I am only surmising, you understand – but, I think that Meldrew started to target Simon because he knew that Simon drank at the tavern more than Wally, and was easier to set up. It was most probably nothing more complicated than that. Once Simon was out of the way, and put to death, it would be enough of a warning to Wally to comply and pay up. Meldrew could pressure him to pay anything Meldrew demanded of him, especially if he threatened you.”
As she listened to Charlie speak she knew, deep inside, that he was right.
“I have been in this business too long, sweetheart,” Charlie sighed. “I am not saying for definite that is what Meldrew had planned, but I think it is more of a plausible explanation. The night that we were arrested, we had been in the tavern, and had talked about ways that we could bring Meldrew down. I didn’t mention my connection to the Star Elite, but I did say that I knew of a way to make sure that Meldrew’s crimes were brought to the attention of powers higher than him. It was enough to seal my fate, apparently. Someone in that tavern had overheard me, and took it straight to Meldrew while we were finishing our drinks.”
Now that he came to think about it, although he had kept his voice low so that they weren’t overheard, talking about it in the tavern was a ridiculous thing to do. At the time though, he had been surrounded by people who, for the majority, had been victims of Meldrew’s crimes themselves at the time. He had assumed that he was in like-minded company.
Clearly, someone in that tavern hadn’t been as much of a victim as they claimed, and had double-crossed their neighbours.
“The Star Elite?” Hetty frowned.
Charlie stared down at her for a moment, and sighed. Given everything she had done for him, he felt driven to assure her just how safe she really was, and could see no reason for her not to know as much about him as he could tell her.
“The Star Elite were formed when we were at war with Napoleon. Several men; soldiers who were fresh from the battlefields, all with a variety of skills, were seconded to the War Office to help protect England shore’s from smugglers, who were bringing in more spies than rum.”
“Spies?” Hetty gasped.
Charlie nodded. “Anyway, now that the war is over, the Star Elite have turned their attention to more domestic matt
ers. They now work to investigate cases of pick-pocketing gangs, murders, and thefts. Usually, our work takes us into the seedier side of life, requires many hours of painstaking investigation, mainly undercover and, for the most part, is carried out in the dark. I think it is why Arthur wrote to me about his suspicions. He knew that I had connections to the War Office, and may have thought that I would be the person to help him – or know of a man who could.”
“So that’s who you work for now? The Star Elite?”
“Yes, we are run by the War Office. There are more and more men joining us. We now have smaller groups, at various locations around the country. They work on local issues alongside magistrates. However, we just haven’t had one set up in Derby before now.” He looked down at her a little ruefully. “I think we should have done.”
“So that is who your friends are? The Star Elite?”
“Yes. When Sir Hugo received your letter, he sent a rider to find them. They were the closest, and got here just in time to help you,” Charlie sighed.
“Do you think that a branch of the Star Elite will be set up once Meldrew is arrested?”
Charlie wasn’t entirely sure that Meldrew would be arrested. Men who had broken the law to his extent usually took their lives to evade the ‘justice’ they so eagerly imposed on their victims, but he didn’t say as much to Hetty.
“I think that Sir Hugo will insist on it. Especially given that neither Leicester, nor Derby will have proper magistrates.”
Hetty sighed. She wanted to ask him if he would be one of them, and intended to stay in the area so that they could be together but, for some reason, she wasn’t entirely sure she wanted to hear him if he said no.
“As soon as we can get to safety, we will make sure that Meldrew doesn’t have the opportunity to do anything like this to anyone else,” he assured her, completely unaware of the expectant way she was looking at him.
The steely tone of his voice made her shiver, in spite of the wonderful warmth beneath the cloak.