by Eve Silver
“Father, please.” She moved forward and pulled on his brawny arm.
He rounded on her, fist raised, eyes bleary.
Mr. Warrick gave a sharp hiss, and she felt his coiled tension close beside her, as though he would step in should her father try to strike her.
A ridiculous thought. Why would he protect her?
She tugged again on her father’s arm and he resisted but a moment, then gave in. Narrowing his eyes, he tried to focus on her face. She was only grateful that he was not so far gone as to ignore her altogether.
She knew how her father was. He relished nothing more than stepping in to break up a drunken brawl before it got out of hand, or grabbing an unruly patron by the scruff and hauling him out the door. But this situation was different. Tension snaked through the air, and she sensed that Mr. Warrick wanted her father to come at him again, wanted him to lose control. She shuddered, confusion and dismay spinning her thoughts into a tangled knot.
“What on earth has come over you?” she whispered, though she already knew the answer. Desperation and drink made for ugly bedfellows.
Gideon scrubbed his free hand over his face, and then turned a mournful eye on his daughter. “Nothing on earth’s come over me, Janie. Rather, something from the fires of hell”—he jutted his chin toward Mr. Warrick—”the devil’s own spawn.”
A clap of thunder rumbled beyond the walls of the inn, and a sharp flare erupted as lightning touched the earth, flickering through the window. For an instant, Mr. Warrick did indeed look as though he had stepped through fire, a nimbus of bright light at his back.
“Nay, not spawned by the devil,” he said, and then he smiled, a dark, forbidding curving of his lips that spoke of harsh lessons and bitter recollection. “But, aye, tempered by hell’s fires.”
Jane looked at him, his features cast in shadow as the blaze of lightning died, and a fearsome certainty swelled in her heart: Here was threat and menace and danger. Here was the force that would rip the last vestiges of her safe world to shreds.
“Go to hell,” Gideon raged.
“I know much of hell,” Mr. Warrick rasped, his eyes glittering. “And I would gladly send you on a trip to those parts, or at the very least share my knowledge with you, Gideon Heatherington, in all its cursed detail.”
Chapter 3
Lightning flashed once more, illuminating Mr. Warrick’s face for an instant, revealing both his splendor and his cruelty. He was frightening to Jane now.
She turned to her father, convinced that whatever progress this day would make, it could herald no happy outcome for her. The solid weight of her dread bore down upon her. “Father, please, tell me what this is about.”
The corners of Gideon’s mouth drew taut, and his words were laced with hopelessness. “‘Tis to him I owe the money.”
“Yes,” she said slowly, her thoughts spinning back to the previous night when, sodden with ale and three full bottles of wine, her father had divulged his terrible folly, his words slurred, his posture slumped.
How much money?
Five hundred pounds.
In her naiveté, she had held out a single shimmering ray of hope. “This can be fixed,” she had whispered, clutching at her father’s hands as she struggled with her shock and dismay. “We have a good sum of notes issued on the West Cornwall Bank.” Their entire savings, money she had put aside so carefully over the span of nearly a decade, mindful of her mother’s long-ago teachings in finance and frugality. “Surely that will satisfy until we can get more?”
She would never forget the strangled sound of her father’s denial.
“No, it will not.” Her father had shaken his head, and pulled free of her hold, taking up the bottle before him to toss back yet another long swig. “The West Cornwall Bank has gone bust,” he had said savagely. “The notes are worthless.”
“No. That is not possible.” Yet, even as she had uttered the denial, she had known that it was possible. The same thing had happened to the Dorseys only last winter, but they had made a quick run across the channel and exchanged their notes for smuggled brandy before that bank’s situation became widely known, and in doing so they had reclaimed their lost monies with a bit of less-than-legal trade. Of course, the Dorseys could never return to that particular brandy merchant again, for he was more likely to skin them than welcome them. But at least they had not found themselves in the predicament that now faced Jane and her father who were saddled with worthless notes.
They had no way to pay their debt.
That terrible knowledge had left Jane tossing and turning the night through, and sent her out with the dawn to walk and think and wish for answers.
Instead she had found only more horror: a dead woman pulled from the surf, whispered snatches of conversation that hinted at vile happenings and wrecks and murder.
And then she had invited her father’s nemesis into their home.
Jane glared at Mr. Warrick, hopeless fury surging through her. Such uncharacteristic emotion: Anger at her father for knotting them up in the weave of this predicament, at herself for having so long failed to see it, and, yes, at Mr. Warrick for... for...
For what?
That question was one she dared not answer.
Unsettled by the churning mass of her emotions, Jane took an uneven step toward him. She tilted her head back and held his gaze, aware of her unusually bold behavior, yet driven to it nonetheless.
Before she could speak, could even conjure her thoughts into some worthy rhetoric, her father waved her away. “Go back to the kitchen. This is men’s business,” he said, brusque. “‘Tis no concern of yours.”
“Ah, but it does concern her,” Mr. Warrick corrected, his attention fixed on her. Beautiful, mesmerizing eyes. They should be ugly, small and mean. “She seems a sensible girl,” he continued. “Perhaps we should offer her the choice.”
“No—” Gideon interjected, even as Mr. Warrick said, “Yes.”
“Yes,” he said again, low and confident. She thought he had no doubts as to the outcome of this scene. He merely walked through his part in the play.
His lips curled in a cynic’s smile as, catching the edge of his greatcoat, he tugged it aside to reveal a large pistol in his belt. Jane drew a shuddering breath and rubbed her damp palms on the worn fabric of her apron. With one blunt, strong hand, Mr. Warrick smoothed the butt of the firearm, his gaze locked on her father.
His meaning was clear. He felt no sorrow, no regret. He would do whatever he deemed necessary to collect the debt her father owed.
Jane wrapped her arms about herself, distress roiling like a pot on full boil. Dolly’s words skittered through her thoughts. And it’s him, his coming, what’s brought the evil down upon us... He is in league with the devil.
She glanced up to find Mr. Warrick watching her. For fleeting moments at the graveyard and on the walk to the village, she had thought him extraordinary.
She had been horribly mistaken.
How had she thought him anything other than a cruel monster, despite his handsome shell? Her earlier girlish fascination had turned to cold, gray ash in her heart.
“By all means—” Prodded by desperation, she held up one hand to still her father when he made to interject, calling upon vestiges of valor she had never dreamed she possessed. “I overheard enough to know that there is something in this discussion that involves me”—she slanted a derisive glance at her tormentor—”and my chastity, was it not, Mr. Warrick?” She was amazed at her own temerity, but quite unable to hide her bitter resentment.
With a strangled growl that made Jane turn, Gideon strode to the bar and reached over for a bottle. He cast a baleful glance at Mr. Warrick, and then he took a great gulp and another. Wine dribbled down his chin, droplets falling to stain his shirt. Narrowing his eyes, he slammed the bottle down on the bar, then pointed his index finger at Jane.
‘“Your fault, girl. The whole of it can be laid at your door. I sent all that blunt to London, for the opinion of that Dr
. Barker on what to do with your damned leg. For nothing. All for nothing. I spent the money, and still was saddled with a crippled gel.” He gave an ugly laugh. “A crippled gel that killed her mother.”
“No,” Jane gasped, old wounds ripped open. She stumbled back a step, feeling the accusation as though it were a physical blow. To her horror, she fell against the hard wall of Mr. Warrick’s chest. He closed his hands around her arms, steadying her. Mortified, she jerked away, the echo of her father’s words flaying her, all the worse because she knew they were true.
Her insides twisted like a wrung out cloth. There was not a day that she did not revisit the guilt of her poor choice, and the tragic results. But here was something new. Her father had told her often enough that he had paid good coin for Dr. Barker’s worthless opinion, but she had not known that he had sunk them into debt on her behalf.
Remorse heaped upon remorse, for she had been the one to hear of Dr. Barker, the one to plead with her father that he make inquiries of the man.
“I took a mortgage on the inn that year,” Gideon bit out, the muscles of his jaw tight. “A Mr. Aidan Warrick of London bought up my chit. I made my payments, regular as rain. Then I missed an installment when I... er...” He spread his hands in a gesture of supplication, and his tone grew cajoling. “I ran afoul of an investment or two, Janie. Gave funds to my brother. It was a sure thing with a fine return. He promised me. Then he lost his money, and mine right along with it.” He sighed. “When I heard nothing from Mr. Warrick here for months and months after I stopped paying, I thought he’d forgotten about me. I never sent another payment.”
Gideon slammed his fist on the bar. “Your own damned fault, Warrick,” he snarled, his face twisting with rancor and bitterness. “If you wanted your money, you should have asked sooner. Not my problem that you let it get out of hand.”
Her father had known, Jane realized as she heard his words. For weeks and months, he had known that ruin was upon them. He had said nothing, done nothing, and now he blamed everyone but himself. Fear and hopelessness tugged at her, a great, sucking bog. What would happen to them now?
She fisted her hands at her sides, forcing a calm demeanor she was far from feeling. “Maybe there is some way—”
“There is a simple solution,” Mr. Warrick interjected.
“No!” Gideon slammed his fist on the bar once more, making Jane jump. “I need her here. In the kitchen. In the pub. Who’ll make up the rooms if she’s gone? Tend the chickens and the garden?” He grunted, narrowing his eyes as he studied Mr. Warrick. “It is almost as though you knew exactly how much I was worth, and waited until I owed you everything. So, now, you’ll get nothing, my handsome, because there’s nothing to get.”
My handsome. A common Cornish term her father applied to any who visited the pub, but in this case it was painfully apt. Mr. Warrick was without doubt fine looking of face and form, but beneath the facade he was anything but handsome.
Jane took a deep breath. Her thoughts were in turmoil, her world unraveling at its poorly darned seams, with Aidan Warrick pulling deliberately at the threads. Realization dawned, and with it came utter mortification. “You knew who I was at the cemetery,” she said.
“Yes.”
“You went there to seek me out.” The words almost choked her, catching thick and rough in her throat.
“I did.” A curt nod accentuated his reply.
His agreement sent hot tendrils of humiliation coiling through her. She had thought him a prince.
He had made her a fool.
“And this morning?” she whispered. “Was it you upon the cliff this morning?” Had he watched her then, on the beach? Watched Jem and Robert pull the corpse from the waves?
Dolly’s earlier assertions clawed to the forefront of her thoughts, and Jane was struck by the coincidence of Mr. Warrick’s arrival in Pentreath, in perfect conjunction with the rumors of wreckers, and the body of the dead woman.
“I was at the beach this morn,” he said, and again the hint of a cynic’s smile twisted his mouth. “I had business that I needed to see to its conclusion.”
At his admission, Jane’s breath caught in dawning horror. She could not dismiss the suspicion that there was some gruesome link between Mr. Warrick’s presence and the woman’s death. She wondered if he had come to gloat over the proof of his evil handiwork.
She had heard that Squire Craddick and his men were determined to find the company of wreckers, to see their leader hung by the neck. She stared at Mr. Warrick, her blood thrumming wildly, her breath coming fast as wretched uncertainty lashed her with knotted cords.
Was the business he referred to that of wrecks and murder?
Gideon made a sound low in his throat, drawing Jane’s gaze. She studied her father in the dim light. He suddenly appeared so old and worn, his face marked by lines she had not noted until this moment, his eyes pouchy and his skin sallow. Sadness sluiced through her. Her father was no bulwark of strength and stability, no safe harbor. How had she ever convinced herself that he was?
Her expectations and assumptions were built on a rickety foundation indeed. She had learned a partial truth the day her mother had died, learned that the world was not kind, not fair, not safe, and she had spent the years since pretending that her father was her protection. She had nurtured a lovely fantasy, she acknowledged now, one that did not stand well under the harsh light of reality. ’Twas as if Mr. Warrick had ripped the blinders from her eyes, robbed her of the rosy brush she had used to paint her world.
Gideon Heatherington was no paragon, and he could not keep her safe. She had never been safe. It was all an illusion. Somewhere deep inside, she had known it, but, oh, she had not wanted to see it, had preferred to hide behind a wall of delusion.
Evil, wretched man, Aidan Warrick, to have stolen this from her.
She found the barren truth an awful thing to face.
“Why?” she asked, turning her head toward him, her heart shrinking from the fact that earlier she had imagined a special connection to this inscrutable man whose brooding elegance seemed painfully out of place in the familiar and homey surroundings of the pub. “Why did you seek me out?”
“To offer your father a solution.”
“I do not understand—” Jane began.
“No,” Gideon grunted. “I’ve no coin to pay a girl to see to her responsibilities. She has no part in this.”
“But she does,” came Mr. Warrick’s gruff reply.
“What is my part in this?” Jane asked.
“Your father has not the means to pay his debt, which leaves him few choices.” Mr. Warrick lowered his voice. “I can demand that he sell the Crown Inn...”
“Can’t take a man’s home to pay his debt,” Gideon snarled.
But Mr. Warrick could do exactly that. That was the point. “It would leave us without a home, without a livelihood.” And without a penny to our names, she added silently.
“It would.” Mr. Warrick’s tone was cold as a frozen pond, laced with neither sympathy nor glee.
She closed her eyes, battling to keep her rising desperation under control. When she opened them, it was to find Mr. Warrick’s assessing gaze fixed upon her. There was no mercy there, only harsh resolve.
The room seemed to shrink and narrow until there was only the two of them, the only sound the frantic beating of her heart. “Go on,” she whispered.
“I could have your father thrown in debtor’s prison.”
The thought of her father lying in a cold dank cell was too horrible to consider. Away from the Crown Inn, from his friends, from his ale and his tales and the roar of the ocean, he would wither and die. Her fault. All her fault. Her poor choices those many years ago had paved the path for his poor choices now. A circle with a sharp and jagged edge, to be sure. Her only hope of salvation was to heed her mother’s words: Watch out for your father. How was Jane to watch out for him, care for him, if he was far, far away in a dank cell?
“You have another option?�
� she whispered.
“He’s come with an option I’ve no liking for,” Gideon said, his voice crackling with anger.
“I have offered your father the option of indentured servitude.” The words fell, harsh and stark, like the clang of metal on metal.
“I don’t understand. You wish my father to sell himself into bondage, to work in the colonies?” The thought was absurd. She could not imagine that such an arrangement would garner adequate monies to satisfy the debt.
A bark of laughter rent the air, if indeed the discordant sound that tumbled from Mr. Warrick’s lips could be named as such.
“No. I have not asked that of your father,” he said. “Instead, I have suggested another option, a slightly modified agreement, one that would allow him to remain exactly where he is. A debt indenture.”
At his words, Jane’s heart lightened and hope sparked. There. He was offering a kindness. The situation was salvageable. She glanced at her father, the spark growing to a glowing ember, but Gideon’s expression was dark and there was an ominous throbbing at his temple. He shook his head like a great shaggy dog trying to clear a buzzing from its ears.
“What does this option entail?” Jane asked.
“You will become my bondservant.” The unemotional pronouncement fell from Mr. Warrick’s perfectly formed lips, the elocution flawless, so that there could be no misunderstanding. “You will commit to a debt indenture for a period of seven years.”
Jane felt as though the callously uttered declaration tumbled down a very long tunnel before reaching her ears. Foolish girl, to have thought he meant to offer a kindness.
His words chased head after tail through her thoughts. You will become my bondservant. Her hands felt cold, her fingers numb, and she could almost feel the chains heavy about her wrists and ankles.
Sinking her teeth into her lower lip, she stared at Mr. Warrick, recalling their brief conversation about the wild ponies of the moors. He had known all along that he meant to chain her in bondage. She would never run free, fettered as she was by her weak leg. And now, this stranger, this coldly unfeeling man, hewn of granite, hard to his core, would shackle her so that her life would no longer be her own.