Fool's Paradise: A Lady Priscilla Flanders Mystery

by Jo Ann Ferguson

  Neville followed Miss Parker’s directions, though he doubted Pris was still waiting there. He hoped she had left when she realized he was not there.

  The icehouse was not hard to find. He yanked the door open and winced at the chill and dampness that clung to the interior brick walls. Walking in, he looked around the small space. Pris must have left already. He hoped the whole day would not be spent with him trailing behind her as she went from place to place.

  As he turned to leave, something on the floor caught his eye. He went over and saw a strip of fabric sticking out of the door. He tugged on it, but it held fast. Why was soft wool caught in the icehouse door?

  He started to lift the latch then halted when he saw a bar had been set into place. He understood the caution because some icehouses had deep wells within them. Shouldering the thick bar out of the way, he yanked the door open. The fabric fell to the ground, drawing his gaze with it to a crumpled form.

  Pris!

  She did not move. When he dropped to his knees and touched her icy cheek, he bent his ear toward her lips. He held his breath as he listened for hers. For too long, he heard nothing, and then a faint warmth brushed his cheek.

  She was still alive!

  But barely.

  He pulled off his cloak and spread it on the floor, taking care not to step into the inner room. He would not give the beast who had shut her in there the opportunity to do the same to both of them. Wrapping her in the cloak, he lifted her into his arms. She was stiff and cold against his chest, her hair frozen into rigid lines that crackled with ice as he drew the cloak up over her head.

  Someone had tried to kill his wife and their child. And he had to get her warmed up before that person succeeded.

  PAIN GNAWED ON Priscilla’s limbs. Bizarre sounds came from the darkness surrounding her. Moans. Her moans.

  “Neville, where are you? Help me!” she tried to whisper but his name became another moan as agony shot up her right leg. “No,” she tried to cry, but no sound emerged.

  Broad fingers settled on her cheek. Warm fingers. Only when they touched her did she realize how terribly cold she was. Had someone left a window open? Didn’t they know it was as cold as a January morn?

  But it was spring.

  Wasn’t it?

  She was unsure of anything except how much she hurt.

  Everywhere.

  “Wake up, Cordelia.” Why was Neville talking to her aunt? “Show us you are alive, sweetheart.” No, he would never address Aunt Cordelia as sweetheart.

  Of course, I’m alive!

  Neville repeated, “Wake up, Cordelia.” His voice became more urgent.

  Why had he not heard her answer? She had shouted it, hadn’t she? Or had the words only sounded in her frozen brain? Why did he keep saying the same things over and over to her aunt? She needed his help.

  Too many questions. No answers.

  Just cold.

  She craved heat. She was cold. Desperately cold. Then she found a bit of warmth. It was her vexation with Neville. Let it warm her up. She needed to be warm.

  “Go ahead,” came another voice. A man’s voice. Though familiar, she could not put a face with the name.

  “I cannot,” Neville replied. “I have never struck a woman in my life. To hurt her more now is—”

  “This is no time to act like a gentlemen! Bah!”

  Fire burst across her cheek as someone slapped it. Hard.

  Stop! she tried to cry out. All she heard was a dull croak.

  She was hit again. She recoiled, turning her face away.

  “Enough!” Neville snarled. “Do not strike her again!”

  Fingertips tilted her face back toward his voice. She wanted to speak his name, but her lips refused to move.

  “Open your eyes. For the love of God, open your eyes.” She heard anguish in his request.

  She tried. In shock, she discovered her lashes were held down with stones as big as the ones in the wall around Novum Arce. That was where she was! Sir Thomas’s distorted utopia. No wonder Neville was using her aunt’s name.

  But why had stones been attached to her eyelashes?

  Help me!

  Sharp pain erupted along her leg again. “No!” she screamed. She tried to bat away the person hurting her, but her arms were as unresponsive as her eyes.

  When her hair was brushed back gently, she was able to open her eyes at last. Light struck them, blinding her. A shadow moved between her and the glare. She tried to speak, but her lips quivered with the ice eating at her bones.

  “Thank God! You’re awake.”

  She wanted to ask Neville what was wrong with her, but she could not speak. No part of her worked as it should. Neville was there, so she had to be safe.

  From what? What had happened to her?

  Her thoughts were swallowed by a maw of pain. When she shrieked, she heard Neville ask, “Must you do that?”

  “Her feet are nearly frozen,” the man said. “If we don’t massage feeling back into them, she will lose them.”

  Asher Snow, she realized. Roxanne’s beau.

  “But she is in such pain!”

  The footman snapped, “Would you prefer her to suffer the agony of amputation? If we don’t get real feeling back into her limbs, we may lose her.”

  She blinked, then looked up to Neville’s face which was shadowed in what must be lantern light. He looked as if he were suffering as much as she was. She wanted to comfort him, but she could not speak. She tried, but excruciating waves smothered her again.

  Neville cursed as Pris’s face contorted with torment. He lightly stroked her face and discovered how cold it still felt. Yet her skin had lost the clammy feeling it had when he found her unconscious in the icehouse.

  Snow straightened and pulled the covers over Pris’s feet. “Warmth is returning to her toes, so she probably will not lose them. Her fingers are already regaining their color. She is a fortunate woman.”

  Like Pris’s, the footman’s face was bleached to the shade of the muslin sheets. Snow had been shocked when Neville had brought an unconscious Pris into the granary. The three men had jumped to follow orders, bringing what meager supplies they had and arranging the blankets on the floor.

  “Thank you,” Neville said to the footman then looked at the others. “Thanks, all of you. She is going to have to stay here until I can come up with a way to get us out of Novum Arce.”

  “She needs to be well enough to travel,” Harrison the coachman said, rubbing his hands together anxiously. “That might take some time.”

  “Right now, as long as nobody discovers she is alive or that your prison has been found, we have enough time to let her heal. Gathering what we will need to escape will take some time, especially now that we don’t have her to steal supplies from the storerooms.”

  While the men went to finish their interrupted meal, Neville sat by Pris’s makeshift bed. Questions plagued him, boiling through his mind along with schemes to obtain his vengeance against the one who had left her to die in the icehouse.

  “Who would do this to her?” asked Davis as the lad brought Neville a boiled egg and some bread.

  “I intend to find out.” He suspected Miss Beamish and her lapdog, Livius, had been involved. He could not forget the soldier’s smile when he had told her the task she had given him was “all done.”

  “What about Miss Redding? Is she safe?”

  “As long as she stays in the room behind the office.” He would check with the old woman later, reminding her how important it was for her to remain unseen. He knew better than to accuse Beamish’s daughter because Miss Redding continued to believe that Miss Beamish would have kept them safe if she had known they were in Novum Arce.

  A groan came from the bed. He leaned forward to see Pris’s eyes
were half opened slits.

  “Nev—?”

  He halted her by saying, “Yes, it is I. Leonard Williams.” He hoped Davis had not heard her breathless whisper. “I am right here.”

  “Good.”

  He smiled for the first time since he found her. “Yes, it is very good. You are safe now.”

  “Safe with you . . .”

  As she faded into sleep again, he sighed. He sat on the stone floor and did not move while he waited for her to wake again. He stayed there when Miss Parker knocked their code on the door. She had brought their supper after not being able to locate Neville. When she had found the door unlocked, she had hurried inside and closed it again behind her.

  The abigail was horrified to discover what had happened to her friend and offered to help however she could, even though the magistra seemed to be keeping a close eye on her. She left quickly, and the men turned down the lantern to leave them in deep shadow.

  Not even when the first glow of dawn slid slender fingers around the door and across the floor did Neville surrender to sleep.

  PRISCILLA WOKE slowly. Her whole body ached, except for the bottoms of her feet which itched. She tried to ignore the tingling, but it was impossible. As she shifted her leg, she moaned.

  “Awake?”

  She turned her head to see Neville stretching and yawning broadly. “What are you doing here?”

  “Waiting for you to come back to life,” he whispered. He glanced to his right, and she saw Asher, Harrison, and Davis asleep on the floor so she understood why he was keeping his voice low. “Why did you go there?”“There? Where?” She struggled to sit. His arm around her waist helped. She bit her lip to silence her groan.

  “Don’t you remember? I found you in the icehouse.”

  “Oh, my!” Memory flooded her head, flinging her back into the terror of the moment she feared she would freeze to death. When his arms surrounded her, offering comfort, she turned her head into his shoulder and sobbed.

  He held her until she regained control of herself. He did not chide her to be strong. He did not act embarrassed by the display of raw emotion. He held her, which was what she needed.

  When her weeping eased, he whispered, “What happened? Why were you in the icehouse?”

  “I came looking for you.”

  “Me?”

  “I was told you were waiting there for me, and I could not wait to tell you what I witnessed on the fell when I chased after . . .” She looked at the others then wiped her wet eyes. “After her.”

  “That can wait. Tell me what happened in the icehouse.”

  She did, haltingly, as shivers raced up and down her spine. He tucked the blanket more tightly around her. then got another to cover her as she finished with, “When I went to leave, the door slammed, and I could not get it open.”

  “Because it was barred.”

  Priscilla stared at him in disbelief. “You are jesting!”

  “I would never jest over such a matter.”

  “But how? Why?”

  “That is something I intend to find out while you stay here and get better.”

  “Here?”

  His voice became bleaker. “Whoever did this thinks you are dead. It is better we let them think that than to have them try again and be successful next time.”

  Chapter Eighteen

  IT TOOK ALMOST a week before Priscilla could walk without feeling as if a thousand heated needles stabbed her feet. She was grateful to her fellow prisoners in the granary for their help with massaging her feet and hands two or three times a day. They offered her what privacy they could and always gave her and Neville a chance to talk alone when he brought food. That was less often than Priscilla would have liked. Often when the knocked signal came on the door, Roxanne was on the other side. After finding the right key on her second try, the abigail visited as often as she dared. She shared news from outside, including that the search for Cordelia Kenton had been halted when no sign of the missing actuarius was found. Before the office had been searched, Roxanne had helped Miss Redding sneak into an unused room in Bellona’s house where she could keep a close eye on her. It had been a daring move, but sometimes the best place to hide something or someone was right beneath everyone’s nose.

  Neville was able to come to the granary only every couple of days, and he could not linger long. The century’s training schedule had been increased, though the longer hours did not seem to be making much difference to most of the soldiers who were pretty much ignored by their leaders.

  She and Neville got enough time by themselves in one corner of the granary, so she could place his hand over her abdomen and let him feel the stirrings of their child. The glow of joy on his face filled her heart.

  But only for a moment because both of them knew the time was growing short before the fuse was lit in Novum Arce. The French spies might already be among them, arranging for an invasion of England. Their joking words about Sir Thomas’s plans to build a bridge across the Channel and give Napoleon’s troops easy access to English shores did not seem so amusing now.

  As Priscilla healed, being kept imprisoned became intolerable. She listened to the men discuss how they would offer their resignations to Lord Beamish, a topic they seemed to find endlessly fascinating. Perhaps because otherwise they would have to face another day of being locked in the granary with no idea when they would be free. Her admiration for them rose with the passing of each hour. They had been incarcerated in the dark for longer than she had, but they continued to believe they would escape and return to Lord Beamish’s estate soon enough to tell the baron they no longer wished for a position there.

  The signal sounded on the door, and Asher opened the lantern slightly to give Priscilla enough light to answer it without tripping on the uneven stones. Roxanne had already stopped by with their daily food, so it must be Neville! The pain in her feet vanished as her heart soared in anticipation of his touch, his kiss, his loving voice reminding her that soon they would be reunited away from Novum Arce.

  Her breath burst out of her in a gasp when she saw who stood in the thick twilight beyond the door. A battered and bloody Roxanne, whose clothing was ripped, was held by men in legionary uniforms. There must have been more than twenty by the door. The only one she recognized was Livius, who regarded her with an arrogantly vicious grin.

  Behind her, she heard the three men jump to their feet, but they wisely stayed where they were when Livius barked an order as he entered the granary. He yanked the key out of the lock, tossed it into the air, and caught it with a cruel laugh.

  Priscilla wanted to back away, but she rushed forward to catch Roxanne when the abigail was shoved roughly into the granary. They both dropped to the floor.

  “I am sorry,” Roxanne said with a sob. “They said they would come and kill all of you if I did not own up to my part in feeding you.” She pressed her face into Priscilla’s hair and whispered, “They asked me no questions about him, so I think he is safe. For now.”

  A pulse of hope bounced through Priscilla but was muted when Livius seized her arm and jerked her to her feet.

  “You are hard to kill. I thought you were dead when I left you in the icehouse, but somehow you escaped death.” He laughed. “Not this time.”

  She did not retort, though he waited and waited. Finally, his patience ran out, and he snapped an order for them to be brought out of the granary. He gave the men cloaks like those his men wore. When they hesitated, he warned if they did not don them, he would have Priscilla and Roxanne slain right there.

  Priscilla put her arm around Roxanne as they and the other servants were herded into the center of the legionaries. Livius’s simple plan became clear. Nobody would be able to see them in the thickening darkness if the tall soldiers surrounded them. She guessed if someone chanced to catch sight of them, no one would admit
it.

  They were marched to the gate and through it without stopping. Priscilla needed Asher and Harrison’s help to climb the fell. Her sandals caught in the small stones, and she would have fallen if the two men had not held onto her arms and gently guided her up the hillside.

  She was not surprised when the soldiers marched them to the stone circle. It was empty when the soldiers pushed them inside, then lined up to contain them in a wall of flesh and stone. Not even Livius stepped within the circle, and she wondered if some superstitious fear halted them. The captives were handed a lantern and told to put it on the center stone.

  As time passed and the moon rose to wash out the low light from the lantern, Priscilla and Roxanne sat on the damp grass in the center of the circle while Asher, Harrison, and Davis paced. Priscilla drew up her knees and wrapped her arms around her legs. The sensation of waiting for something or someone was palpable.

  Water cascaded loudly from somewhere higher on the fell where the gorse could not gain hold on the raw stone. A lamb called for its mother. Faint noises rose from Novum Arce, none of them identifiable.

  What did the men have planned? If they had planned to simply kill them, she and the others would be dead by now. She suspected the fake legionaries’ scheme had something to do with the stone circle. She pressed her fingers to her lips to silence her moan of despair as she looked at the center stone. The ancient Celts were said to have sacrificed humans to their gods. Did Mithras, the god the legionaries revered, demand human blood as well? She had no idea. Even if he had not when Rome ruled Britannia, the twisted ways of Novum Arce may have altered Mithras into a god who expected such slaughter.

  Her hand settled over her abdomen. Somehow, she had to find a way to protect her darling child. Looking down the fell toward the faint lights of Novum Arce, she wondered where Neville was. How could she call to him for help? If she shouted, she would be beaten and perhaps murdered immediately. Hoping he could sense her heart reaching out to him, she prayed that he would soon reach her and rescue them.