by Jo Ann Wendt
For Lady Marguerite's French maid sailed past, carrying Marguerite's silver breakfast tray in her arms. Jericho instantly averted her face. But it was too late. The maid's shrewd eyes had seen her. Heart drumming, worried, Jericho hurried to her work in the kitchens.
Chapter Sixteen
The king's party left at noon, loud and merry. Mounted on horseback, the de Mont men and Lady de Mont rode out with the king, courteously escorting him to the next great house on the royal itinerary. When the last coach had rumbled away, Arleigh Castle sighed in relief. Servants kicked off their shoes and gathered around the kitchen ale barrel for well-deserved rest and some merrymaking of their own.
Jericho didn't join them. For she'd been the target of sidelong, "knowing" glances all morning. And how could she answer them—I did not sleep with the king, I was asleep with Lord Dove?
Impossible. Dove would strangle her. So she and Black Bartimaeus took Pax and went for a walk. Not ten minutes away from the castle, she was summoned back. She was wanted in Lady Marguerite's apartment immediately. She went with apprehension. How much had the French maid seen? Had Marguerite guessed she'd spent the night in Dove's chamber? It had been so innocent. They'd kissed, yes. But nothing else.
Lady Marguerite lay lounging on a silk-cushioned daybed in her lavish withdrawing chamber. Wearing a chamber robe of forest green silk, she was reading. When Jericho entered, Marguerite glanced up and slammed her book shut. Jericho's chest tightened. She knows. Marguerite drew an ill-tempered breath.
"So. The king's latest whore."
Jericho's lips trembled in anger. "I am not a whore, my lady."
"You contradict me?"
"If you call me whore, yes. I contradict you."
They looked at each other with mutual dislike. Temper tics, two short vertical lines, appeared between Marguerite's perfectly plucked brows.
"Such cheek. I could have you flogged."
"Then flog me. But I am not a whore, and I will not be called so. Not by you, nor by anyone."
Marguerite's exotic eyes flashed with anger, and anxiety washed through Jericho. She'd not meant to enrage Marguerite, only to defend herself. Dove would be furious if she angered his betrothed.
"Bah!" In a small burst of temper, Marguerite distractedly picked up her discarded book, then banged it down again. "I care not if you are whore to every king in Europe. I did not summon you here to find out if the king gave you the pox last night. I called you here for a different purpose."
"Yes, my lady." Jericho took care to curb her own temper for Dove's sake.
"Lord Dove has asked me to free you."
"Yes." She already knew that.
"Because I love Lord Dove," Marguerite underscored the words sharply, "and more to the point, because Lord Dove loves me, I have seen fit to honor his request. Therefore you are free. I have freed you. Your indenture, your disgusting, dirty document, is over there. I have signed it, releasing you from service as of today. Take it and be gone." Marguerite wagged an irritable, jeweled finger at her writing table.
Jericho drew a stunned breath, then quickly collected her wits and went to Marguerite's lovely rosewood writing table. Her indenture lay upon it, face up. She picked it up with trembling hands. It was true! Marguerite's bold signature lay slashed across the document. She was no longer bound, but free. She was free! She'd wanted freedom all of her life, ever since she'd grown old enough to discern the difference between bondslave and free woman.
"You will leave Arleigh Castle at once."
Still stunned, she could scarcely find her voice.
"Yes, my lady. I-I will leave within the week."
"You misheard me," Marguerite corrected sharply. "I said you will leave at once. Not within the week, not tomorrow, not even tonight, but now. This very hour."
Jericho's eyes flew from the indenture to Marguerite in shock. She felt a surge of panic. Leave immediately? Not say goodbye to Dove? Leave without talking to him, without hugging him, without thanking him for his many years of goodness to her? Leave, perhaps never to see him again? Panic filled her.
"My lady! I would bid Lord Dove farewell. He was my master for half my life. I was but a child when he took me in. He was good to me, h-he was kind to me. I would thank him."
"That, particularly, you will not do. You will leave Arleigh Castle at once and you will take care never to set foot here again. For if you do, I will see you punished as a trespasser." Marguerite rose to her feet, her silk rustling angrily. "There is a horse and cart leaving for London this very hour. The bondslave wages due you are in it. Now, begone. Do not keep the carter waiting. You are boring me."
Jericho was stunned. Not say farewell to Dove? Not even farewell? "My lady, I beg!"
"Go."
"My lady—"
"Go! If you are not gone within the hour, I shall have you put in chains and hauled to Newgate jail for the thief you are! It is only because I love Lord Dove that I do not press charges. He would be upset to discover his precious bondslave is a thief. He is too tenderhearted by far."
"Thief?" The fantastic accusation cut through her dazed mind.
"I am missing a ring."
Jericho's thoughts whirled. "I-I-I know. You have been missing the ring for weeks. We—all of us—every servant in the castle has been searching for it. I do not have your ring."
"Oh, of that I am quite sure," Marguerite agreed caust- ically. "You do not have it because you have already sold it."
"S-sold it!" Jericho could scarcely get breath. Her mind reeled. "I am no thief."
"No?" Silk hissing, lacquered heels ringing, Marguerite went to the fireplace, seized something from the mantle and whirled. "Then what is this?" She dangled a tiny brown velvet pouch by its drawstring, as she might dangle a disgusting dead rat by its tail. It was the money pouch the countess of Blackpool had given her.
"You searched my things!"
"Indeed, I did. I sent my steward to search your belongings this morning." Marguerite tossed her glossy head and uttered a harsh laugh. "God love me, you don't think I am so obtuse as to dismiss a servant without having her box searched for pilfered goods, do you?"
Jericho couldn't get air. "It's mine! I am not a thief."
"Indeed. Then where would a bondslave get five gold coins? Whoring for the king?"
"No!"
"Payment from Lord Dove? For bed service?"
"No! No!" Her breast surged. "The coins were a gift. I was given them by the duch—" She choked the words back and painfully swallowed them. She'd promised not to tell. "I-I am not at liberty to say," she finished lamely.
Marguerite's lip curled in scorn.
"As I thought. You stole my ring and sold it."
"No. My lady—"
"Marguerite tossed her head in disgust. "Get out of here. Go. Leave Arleigh Castle at once. If you are not gone within the hour, I shall tell everyone that you are a thief. Everyone! Then try to get your precious dame-school license."
Shocked at the jealousy in Marguerite, Jericho backed away. She would do it. She meant it. Labeled thief, Jericho would never again teach dame school. With a scared, pounding heart, she turned and hurried out of the apartment.
One hour! She sprang into action. She ran for Black Bartimaeus, told him to pack their things. Then she ran to Mrs. Phipps's rooms, awakened the befuddled woman out of an afternoon nap and kissed her, not lingering to explain. She ran back down to the kitchens, swiftly hugged Janie and Hany and others she'd grown fond of. While the children wept and tearfully helped Black Bartimaeus carry their belongings to the cart, Jericho rushed up the rear staircase, down the corridor and into Dove's apartment.
She flew into his work closet, sat in his chair, and grabbed paper, quill, ink pot. The clock ticked. One hour, one hour. She stabbed quill into ink pot and prepared to write. But the words would not come. Tears of frustration rolled down her cheeks. She batted them away, glanced at the racing clock and wrote.
My dear beloved Dove,
Pray, forgive
this jumbled letter. My heart is so full at this moment, I cannot think straight. Lady Marguerite has freed me, and I leave at once for London. I am taking Black Bartimaeus with me. Please do not worry, we will be fine.
Dove, you may hear 1 am a thief. I beg you not to believe it. As for the gold coins your lady will surely show you, 1 beg you to believe I did nothing dishonest or dishonorable to get them. The coins were given to me. I am not at liberty to say by whom.
Dove? Jake good care of Mrs. Phipps. She is not so well as she pretends. Take care of Janie and Harry too. They are, after all, only children. Give Mr. d'Orias my love. If your uncle, the duke of Nordham, should ever ask after me, please tell him I shall always remember him with the utmost respect and admiration.
Lastly, Dove, what can I say to you? Only that you have been the kindest, most wonderful master a bondslave ever had. Only that my heart breaks to leave you. Only that I shall miss you to the end of my days, to my last breath on earth.
I am no longer bound in indenture, but be assured that in my heart I am and shall forever be,
Your Devoted Bondslave Jericho Jones
The castle clocks began to bong, striking the hour. Alarmed, Jericho jumped up, shook blotting sand on the ink to dry it, and with quick, trembling hands, folded it. Distrusting Marguerite, she didn't leave the letter on Dove's writing table. Instead, she went into his bedchamber and hurriedly tucked the letter under his pillow, where he would surely find it when he returned. For one aching moment, she rested her cheek on his pillow, remembering the sweet kisses they'd shared there. Then, as the clocks of Arleigh Castle chimed and bonged, she ran.
Marguerite stood in her apartment window and gazed down at the castleyard, watching the cart as it rattled away, carrying the girl, the tall elderly Negro and an ugly one-eyed dog.
Good riddance.
When the cart was out of sight, she hurried briskly to Dove's apartment. She searched all of the logical places a lover might leave a letter and found it in the most telling place of all—bed.
She read it, then tore it into a hundred minute pieces. Going to the open window, she leaned out and tossed them to the wind. She watched with satisfaction as they drifted down into the castleyard like snow, lost forever.
Chapter Seventeen
Jericho's first month in London was nearly the disaster Dove had predicted. Country bumpkins? She and Black Bartimaeus were worse than bumpkins. They were dunces. She hated London. It was crowded and noisy and rude and thieving; it stank of privies, and there was dirt everywhere—soot that belched from its ten thousand ugly chimneys. They'd not been in the rude, bustling city ten minutes when Black Bartimaeus had his pocket cleanly picked.
Resisting the impulse to run to John, she comforted Black Bartimaeus as best she could, then set her jaw in determination. This wicked city would not best her.
They slept the first night in a poulterer's kitchen on Poultry Lane and struck out on foot the next morning to find lodging. After a discouraging day's hunt, they finally found two rooms they could afford, above a cookshop on Wattling Street.
Wattling Street was little more than a crowded alley, the second stories of the houses and shops overhanging the street, almost meeting, shutting out sunlight, leaving the street in perpetual shadow. But it had redeeming features. St. Paul's Cathedral stood at the top of Wattling Street, on Ludgate Hill. They'd thought the street respectable and themselves lucky to find cheap lodging there, for richly dressed ladies and gentlemen promenaded on Wattling Street all day long, going up and down to St. Paul's.
They quickly discovered their mistake. The "ladies" were countesses-of-the-trade. The "gentlemen"? Coney catchers and highwaymen. As for St. Paul's, it was a great disappointment. Prostitutes used the nave for trysts, and the enormous cathedral lay in disrepair and neglect, its outer facing covered with wooden scaffolding. Only its five acres of solid lead roof were awesome.
Despite the setbacks, the two rooms above the cookshop gradually became home. Jericho and Black Bartimaeus worked hard to make them so. They scrubbed the grimy walls. They scoured the few sparse pieces of furniture. They attacked the blackened floor on hands and knees, scouring until years of grime lifted and the silky, lovely English oak reappeared. A week after they'd moved in, Jericho patted the sweat from her brow, looked about her little home, and smiled. It was Dutch clean. Better yet, it was all hers. Hers and Black Bartimaeus's.
The next week, she went to the city hall to prove her competence and to purchase her dame-school license. It was the proudest moment of her life when Black Bartimaeus nailed the license to a painted board and displayed it in their second story window.
She got her first pupil that day, the cookshop owner's daughter, a little girl who had a harelip and impaired speech. Remembering the agony of her own childhood stutter, Jericho gladly accepted the child. She made a vow to herself. She would never reject a defective child.
Other children followed. Within a week she had a full dame school, twelve little children from Wattling Street.
While Jericho taught upstairs, Black Bartimaeus sat downstairs in their street door, guarding her school. Wattling Street was wary of him at first. He was so tall, and black as ebony. But soon Wattling Street warmed to his presence. Their children were safe. Wattling Street was safe. No street ruffian dared try his tricks with this black giant on guard.
As she'd guessed he might, John found them before two weeks had elapsed. Mrs. Phipps had written him, and he'd traced them through the city hall, through her license. He came stomping up to their rooms in a temper, enraged that they had not come to him at once and angry about the trouble Marguerite had caused. But mostly he was furious to find them living on Wattling Street.
In heated anger, he tried to talk her into leaving, moving into his house. He chronicled all of the perils that could befall a girl and an elderly sick man living alone in London. Jericho heard him out and then firmly told him they were staying. John was vexed but she didn't budge. He didn't give in gracefully, but at least he gave in.
A worry wart, he dropped in to check on them daily, his expression half-amused, half-vexed. Often, when she'd finished teaching for the day, he treated them to watercoach rides and lobster dinners across the river in Southwark.
Proud of his hat shops, John took them there often. They loved it. It was fascinating to watch the process by which a beaver pelt that had been trapped by a Mohawk in the wilds of New Amsterdam became a fine felt hat, handsome enough to grace a lord's head.
On one such visit, John insisted they choose a hat, any hat in the shop. His gift. Shyly, Black Bartimaeus chose a tall- crowned hat of bright scarlet. When it was her turn to choose, Jericho selected a less flamboyant hat. Low-crowned, it was a lovely, wide-brimmed felt hat of periwinkle blue.
"It matches your eyes," John said softly as she turned from the looking glass in excitement. She had never owned a hat before. Not a real hat. Bondslaves wore coifs.
Her heart fluttered. She gazed into his warm brown eyes for a moment. If it weren't for loving Dove, it would be perfectly possible to fall in love with this warm, kind man. Addled by the thought, she turned away in uncertain confusion.
John felt his heart beat a little faster. What he'd seen in ' Jericho's eyes—that flash of surprise—had given him more hope than he'd had all summer. He had a chance with her. Despite Dove, he had a chance!
Teaching one afternoon, sitting on a stool amidst her pupils, she heard a step on the stair and glanced at the door with a smile, thinking it John.
It wasn't John. Fox Hazlitt, steward to the duke of Blackpool, stepped into her schoolroom. Her smile fled in bewilderment. Lying at her feet, Pax lifted his head and growled. She shushed him. Giving the children sums to do on their slates, she rose and hurried to the door, uneasy, disturbed.
"What do you want?" She didn't like him. There was no point in pretending she did.
"I bring a message from His Grace, the duke of Blackpool. Suppose you get rid of them brats—" He gave the children an un
interested, contemptuous glance. "—and we go to a lobster house and dine and drink a bit, and then I'll deliver His Grace's message." His oily smile suggested more.
Dine and drink with him? She'd sooner dine and drink with a weasel.
"No. Tell me here and now. Then go. I'm busy."
He didn't like that. His eyes narrowed to slits. He delivered his message by rote. "His Grace would be kindly disposed if you would reconsider his offer of employment. Her Grace, Lady Angelina, has fallen gravely ill, and His Grace believes that if you were to companion her, you would restore Her Grace to good health."
Jericho felt a pang. Lady Angelina, desperately ill? She'd liked the lovely duchess. More than that, she'd felt drawn to her. Picturing the duchess suffering on her sickbed, Jericho winced. She felt a tug. Go to the lady? Serve her until she grew well again? Take care of her?
She glanced at her restless pupils. Jemimah with her harelip. Blind Elizabeth, petting and fondling Pax. Caleb with his club foot. These children needed her, too.
She shook her head. "I'm sorry," she said firmly. "I am very, very sorry the duchess is ill, but I cannot help. I have my work here."
"His Grace will be deeply disappointed." Jericho's temper flashed, for he'd delivered these words like a threat, as if she were still a bondslave, subject to other people's orders.
"I gave you my answer. Now go."
His eyes narrowed even more. He looked angry, as if she'd upset his applecart, upset some well-planned scheme. But the look passed, and he smiled smoothly.
"The offer stands open. Any time you desire it."
"No."
"Very well. Then I bid you good day, Mistress Jones. Until we . . . meet again." An amenity? Or a threat? He smilingly doffed his hat and left.
When he'd gone down the stairs and into the street, she glanced down at her arms. Goose bumps. She rubbed them away. It bewildered her that the duke of Blackpool had kept track of her. It disturbed her that he'd known where to find her in London.