A Bouquet of Thorns

by Tania Crosse

  He stopped as if an electric charge had shot through his arm as his eyes focused on a minor headline. Royal Pardon for Escaped Prisoner at Dartmoor. The tiny print blurred as he forced his brain to concentrate on the short article below, and his heart jerked in his chest. He could not believe it. Yes. The very same. That damned bloody convict Rose had hidden in his own stable, under his very nose, had proved his innocence and had been released – over four months ago. Where was he? And who had helped him? Must have been someone on the outside, since a royal pardon was a bloody difficult thing to achieve.

  There could only be one answer.

  The strangling anger, the hate, grappled in Charles’s throat and he had to tear open his necktie and collar as blood suffused into his face. Good God Almighty! That lying, cheating, whoring little harlot! He’d kill her! He could feel his fingers closing around her neck, throttling the life from her.

  But that would be too good. He’d make her suffer first. Bloody well make her tell him who had helped her, since there was no way she could have done it alone! He’d deal with whoever it was later, but first of all, he’d deal with her! And he’d make her wish she had never been born!

  ‘I’m going into Exeter tomorrow,’ he told Rose casually later that evening, when he had taken his fill of her raw, tender flesh. ‘A new business my agent has got wind of. I’ll ride Tansy there. It’s too far to go and come back in one day, so I’ll probably stay overnight. I’ve told Ned he can take the day off if you don’t need him. He can spend some time with that tart of his.’

  Rose didn’t reply. She was stinging and swollen from Charles’s onslaught, for the mild consideration he had shown her just that once had long since been forgotten. She was so tired of it, and lay there in submission, as complaining only made things worse. How many more times would she have to suffer his attentions? Not too many, she prayed. Somehow, the notion that one day soon she might escape his clutches for good made it even worse. But she didn’t feel the resentment, the fury, any more, just the humiliation and shame. Her head was full only of the plan to escape. Would it work? Was it the right decision? All she knew was that she could not possibly go on living – existing – the way she was.

  So Charles and Ned wouldn’t be there tomorrow. Her spirit should have soared, but it didn’t. Charles had driven out the courage, the valour, that had once been Rose Maddiford. She waited half an hour after they had both departed, and then brought Honey in from the field, saddled her, and set off for Rosebank Hall. She went a different way now. The farm was a mile or so out of Peter Tavy up on the moor, and Richard had pointed out to her a more direct route following an old track now used by those men from Peter Tavy who had taken work at the new quarry at Merrivale.

  Honey cantered along at a steady pace, and Rose sat astride her, devoid of all thought, her heart saddened. How many more times would she ride over her beloved Dartmoor again? Was it worth the sacrifice? Her vision misted with tears that spangled on her lashes in the early autumn sunshine, forlorn and despondent. But she would be free from Charles. She had to do it, but she would do it in great pain. And as time healed her, as she was sure it would, she would have Seth. Good, kind, gentle Seth, who wanted nothing from her. Who had kissed her just that one time, and fleetingly. But whose love had flowed into her in that precious moment and given her faith.

  She hadn’t wanted it to be this way. She had wanted, expected her marriage to Charles to be whole and fulfilling. If it had been, this appalling situation would not have arisen. If Charles had been the man she had once thought he was, a man like Adam or Richard, he would have helped Seth as they had done, and there simply would not have been room in her heart to entertain the idea of loving someone else. But now she knew her salvation lay only in Seth’s embrace.

  She could see him now, with Richard and the two dogs, driving some sheep down from the moor, ones Richard had selected for market, she supposed. She stopped and waited, not wanting Honey’s presence to scatter the animals if she went too close. The two men saw her, exchanged a brief word, and then Seth came towards her, leaving Richard to carry on down to the farm.

  She slid to her feet and was in Seth’s arms. And the doubt fled as they turned towards the tiny cottage.

  It wasn’t easy following her over the open, barren moorland, as much of the time you could see for miles and she only had to look back once . . . Charles had to use the contours of the land, the long sweeps of the road, keeping well behind her, sometimes losing sight of her for five or ten minutes, before reaching the crest that would bring her into view in the far distance. She was easy to spot, a horse and rider moving at speed when most of the traffic consisted of lumbering farm wagons or perhaps a cart from the powder mills carrying carefully sealed kegs to the quarries or outlying storage magazines. Oh, yes. Charles knew all about the business now. It was one of these carts turning into Merrivale’s Tor Quarry that helped him to spy Rose when she seemed to have vanished into thin air. He had reached the brow of the hill a little past the quarry, and the road ahead was deserted. He drew Tansy to a halt and, turning round in the saddle, his eye followed the cart he had recently overtaken on the road, and there was Rose, skirting the quarry and heading steeply up hill over the moor. His emotions turned from fuming acrimony to fear and disappointment, as there was nowhere for him to hide and if she glanced around and saw him, his ruse would have failed. But she didn’t. And as soon as she disappeared, he cautiously urged Tansy up the hill, cutting off a corner, towards an outbreak of rock of whose name he was ignorant. He dismounted, leaving Tansy to crop the short, springing grass and, scaling the boulders, he used them as cover to spy on his unfaithful, adulterous wife.

  She was heading almost straight across a long dip in the land between two further tors, greater and on higher ground, he judged, than the one where he was hiding now. A natural pool somewhere between them had attracted a small herd of cattle to drink, but Rose did not deviate. Where was she heading?

  It was an area Charles was unfamiliar with, but it appeared an empty, infertile wilderness inhabited only by lonely sheep and cattle and the occasional Dartmoor pony. Could it be that he was mistaken? That she really was doing nothing more than enjoying a long ride out on the savage moor? He climbed back down to where Tansy was patiently waiting, and swung himself into the saddle. Should he ride to wherever it was he would decide to spend the night in order to disguise his own trick, satisfied that Rose was telling the truth? She didn’t love him. She had told him so. But she insisted upon her fidelity, and heaven knew he wanted it to be true. He loved her. Worshipped her. Wanted to possess her as he had the right to do. Just grant him the son he wanted, and it would bind her to him.

  But . . . the thought of her in another man’s arms. Another man’s bed! Those long, slender legs, the curve of her tiny waist, the roundness of her breasts and that hair . . . The image brought the saliva to his mouth and he drew the back of his hand across his lips. She was his. His! The law said so.

  She had suddenly dropped out of sight and he set Tansy at a gallop to catch up with her. He must be sure!

  He passed enclosures, fields, a brook in a narrow gully. Signs of cultivation. Habitation. He slid from Tansy’s back again, using the stone walls and tall boulders for cover. He peered out. And his heart froze into a lump of ice. Two men, two dogs and some bloody sheep. Both men were tall, but the slightly shorter of them came towards Rose. She dismounted and – damn and hell and bloody damn again – she melted into his arms.

  The breath left Charles’s body. He turned round, leaning back against the wall, half slithering to the ground, choking and spluttering as he battled to make his lungs draw in some life-giving air. His heart catapulted forward in his chest, ramming frenziedly against his ribs as the blood pounded in his skull and he had to tear open his collar. The bloody lying, conniving, deceitful, wanton, whoring bitch!

  He had so nearly believed her! She had almost got away with it! And after all he had done for her, buying the house on this God-forsaken m
oor and abandoning his luxurious life in London! His hands tore at his hair, his eyes wide and brutal as the perspiration oozed from every pore. He was gasping, struggling to stay conscious as the realization seeped through his shocked brain. Surely he was mistaken. He turned back, hoping . . . But there she was, arm in arm with the blackguard, Honey ambling behind them as they headed – dear God above – to a small, isolated cottage and disappeared round the back.

  His instinct was to fly down the hill and barge his way inside, drag the hussy out of bed, naked if need be, and trail her, screaming, by the hair all the way home where, by God, he’d flay her until she begged for mercy. But that would be too good for her. And besides, she had the bastard to protect her. They hadn’t been so far away that he couldn’t recognize him. It was that bloody convict! He’d kill him! He’d take a meat knife as he stormed through the kitchen and ram it into the cur’s belly as he lay in bed with Rose, and she could watch her lover die in agony. Charles wouldn’t care about the consequences, he wouldn’t bloody care! He wouldn’t be cuckolded! But . . . there was the other chap. Tall, broad-shouldered and athletic, one of those strong farming types. Might he come to the rescue? And if Charles didn’t manage to disable the – oh, he couldn’t believe it – the convict with his initial blow, he certainly wouldn’t want to grapple with two strong men!

  Charles’s face was puce as the doubt wormed its way into his deranged fury. Take a hold. Think. Perhaps . . . He waited. But half an hour later, they were still inside. Satisfying their lust. No doubt she didn’t lie like a wet fish in his bed. She deserved to die. The trollop deserved to die. But he’d take his fill of her first! Take her by force every night until . . .

  The thought set him panting harder, his lips drawn back from his closed teeth in an ugly snarl. And as the idea came to him, the irony struck him clean between the eyes, and he threw back his head in a mindless, diabolic laugh.

  Twenty-Three

  Charles was going to London. So . . .

  This was her chance to get away. To escape. To slip from Charles’s bed and the ever more brutal way he was treating her in it, as if he were deliberately trying to hurt her. She should be light-headed with joy, tingling with anticipation. But how could she be when it meant she would be leaving Dartmoor and everything she held dear and sacred, never to return? The savage realms of the infinite, windswept wastes where hardly a stunted tree would grow, the spongy grass topped only by strange and chiselled outcrops of massive, barren rocks; the swathes of purple heathers and the dazzling banks of prickly yellow gorse; the lush green fields enclosed by old stone walls, or the merry chatter of clear, spangling water as it tripped and swirled over ancient boulders in a gravel river bed, carving its way through a mystic, wooded valley. The magnificent, craggy landscape that was at the very core of her being, the moods and impassioned seasons of the moor that pulsed in every beat of her heart. But the days of gilded contentment were vanished, destroyed by her husband’s vicious jealousy.

  Everything was in place. She and Seth had sat at the rustic table in the tiny cottage for more than an hour that day, sipping tea as they made their plans. Richard and Elizabeth, and Adam and Rebecca shared their secret, of course, but not a word was to be whispered to another soul. A glistening teardrop had slipped from Rose’s liquid eyes at what felt like betrayal of her lifelong friends, but there was nothing else for it, and Seth had squeezed her hand with infinite compassion. No more than that. Just a gentle, trusting kiss when they had parted.

  She had gone to visit Molly and the baby the previous day. Saying goodbye, that she would see her next week, when she knew it to be a blatant lie, fragmented her strung nerves, and yet she must not give herself away, for Molly, she knew, would find it hard to contain her emotions and might let it slip out, and if it reached Charles’s ears . . . Should she tell Joe? Her tormented soul asked when she saw him at a distance and he waved cheerily. Better not. Her vision blurred with moisture as Honey trotted away along the familiar track, and she drew the mare to a halt outside the manager’s house that had been her happy home for so long. She turned in the saddle to take one last look at the powder mills, the three sturdy fortresses of the incorporating mills strung out on the far hillside, the various buildings along this side of the river, the tall stone chimneys drawing the smoke and fumes safely away from the danger areas. Grief clawed at her throat like barbed wire, and she felt if she stared at the place an instant longer, she would drown in the rip tide of her misery. And so she dug her heels into Honey’s flank and they shot forward, turning their backs on Cherrybrook for ever.

  She watched as Ned turned the Brougham out of the driveway, knowing that inside it, Charles was unaware that he was heading out of her life. But there was no relief in her breast. She had gone too far for that. Her mind had been long overtaken by the numb indifference of fatigue and despair, of suffering and abuse. Of regret that instead of bringing her a lifetime of peace, the man she had once thought she loved was now driving her away from the place that gave her life. She would be with Seth, of course, and he would be the cornerstone of her existence from now on. Kind, thoughtful, sensitive Seth, who knew what it was to suffer physical and mental torture, and so understood her pain. He had asked nothing of her but to accept his help. If the physical aspect of their love ever blossomed, she would welcome it without fear, since she knew that he would treat her with gentleness and respect, but as yet a natural, comforting embrace and a fleeting touch of their lips was all that had passed between them.

  She must time it perfectly. On Honey’s back, she could move so much more swiftly than the Brougham, and cutting across country to avoid Princetown so that no one would see her, she didn’t want to catch Charles up as she crossed over the road at Merrivale. But, by the same token, she mustn’t meet up with Ned on his return journey from Tavistock station.

  She took nothing with her but the personal allowance Charles gave her weekly – like a child, she always thought grimly – and of which, thankfully, she had spent very little over the past year since Alice’s death, so that it amounted to a substantial sum. To take anything else might arouse Florrie’s suspicions, and though Florrie had been like a mother to her, she wore her heart on her sleeve and could easily give them away if she knew of their plans. She would be demented with worry when Rose did not return that evening, and would doubtless send Ned out to look for her. But Peter Tavy was not far short of ten miles away, and there would be no reason for him to search there. Besides, they had planned to leave on foot under cover of darkness, arriving at the river port of Morwellham at dawn. From there, they would cadge a lift on the first vessel heading downstream to Plymouth – on Adam’s barge if it happened to be in port – and there they would await one of Adam’s sailing ships to take them to wherever it was headed, and hence on to a new life on some distant shore.

  ‘I’m just going out for a ride,’ she had announced with a forced smile. ‘Quite a long one, I expect. I think I’ll head out towards Dartmeet for a change. So I won’t be back till later this afternoon.’

  ‘Well, you be careful, young miss!’

  ‘Of course, I will!’ Rose assured her.

  She saw Florrie’s face, as familiar as a favourite old slipper, relax into its usual, comforting lines, and the pain seared into her throat. She swept across the room as tears stung at the back of her eyes, and she enveloped the older woman in her long, slender arms. For a split second, she was lost, her resolve all but dissipated. ‘I do love you, you know, Florrie,’ she mumbled into Florrie’s grey hair, and had to grit her teeth to tamp down the torment.

  It was Florrie who pushed her away. ‘Get away with you, cheel! And take care. ’Tis coming on for a mist, I reckons.’

  Rose battled to disguise her deep swallow. ‘Possibly. But I’ll keep to the road, so I’ll not get lost.’

  ‘That’s my little maid.’

  Rose nodded, her pulse flying, and steeled herself to walk calmly out of the room, pausing for a moment as she closed the door behind her
, her head hung low, before heading for the stables. She moved mechanically, as if in a dream, fetching Honey’s tack and saddling her up. For the very last time. Her limbs, her fingers, worked as if of their own accord as they slipped the bit into Honey’s mouth, fastened the buckles, the girth-strap of the saddle. Honey was a beautiful, faithful animal and Rose would miss her dreadfully. But she wasn’t Gospel, and that emptiness would never be filled any more than her grief over her father and her daughter ever would.

  She opened the loose box door, and her eyes gave a final sweep of the dark corner where Seth had lain hidden for all those weeks. And now she was going to him. But she felt nothing. There was no excitement in her, nor even relief or fear of discovery. Just a pall of sorrow, her eyes dulled to the colour of slate. Eager to be off, Honey gently nudged her shoulder, but no smile of amusement tugged at Rose’s lips as she led her out into the yard and her hooves clacked on the cobbles. The dogs had pattered outside, Amber and Scraggles and the runt – the one puppy Charles had grudgingly allowed her to keep and that was now a playful young adult. Rose tried to catch it, but it pranced away, thinking this a merry game. So with a heart-wrenching sigh, Rose ruffled instead the comical mongrel head of its sire, and then, squatting on her haunches, buried her face in Amber’s thick, golden coat. The tears came then, unstoppable, a deluge of misery, and she knew the only path open to her was to swing herself on to Honey’s back and set her at a blind gallop across the moor in the opposite direction from the one she had indicated to Florrie.

  The barren uplands of Walkhampton Common were cloaked in low, swirling cloud, a desert of springy grass and endless, unidentifiable contours to anyone but the likes of Rose Maddiford. She slowed Honey to a walk, using the customary trick of staring directly ahead, focusing on a blade of grass, a clump of heather, and making straight for it, thus following a line as rigid as a mine-rod through the shroud of disorientating vapour. She crossed the main highway leading down to Yelverton, and sure enough, shortly came across the distinct route of the horse-drawn tramway, just as she knew she would. She glanced to her right. Somewhere out there, a mile or two away, her father and her daughter lay together beneath the cold, damp earth.