by Jude Knight
Now the women had identical looks of alarm.
“It is not what you think,” Miss Bellingham said. “I am not the Black Fox. And the women; they were just following my orders. I am the leader. Arrest me. Let them go.”
“No, Miss,” Betsy objected. “We all agreed. We’re all in this.”
“None of you are in this,” Felix said. “I’m not after you. I want the Black Fox. In any case, Miss Bellingham, I don’t wish to arrest an old friend, and I certainly don’t intend to arrest the wives and daughters of my tenants.”
Betsy was bewildered, but Miss Bellingham was examining him with narrowed eyes. “You are dead,” she told him.
“No,” he said.
She was shaking her head. “We were told you were dead.”
Joselyn still got a white pinched look around her lips when she was angry, Felix noted, and two bright spots of colour on her cheeks.
“I’m sorry,” he said, not sure what he was apologising for.
“You should be. I cried. I wore black for a year. Why are you not dead, Felix?” And then she was in his arms, punching his shoulder and fighting back tears. “I am so glad you are not dead.”
He tightened his arms around her, but Betsy cleared her throat, and Miss Bellingham pushed away.
“You be Viscount Maddox, seemingly?” Betsy asked. “Come to take yer own, is it?”
“After we catch the Black Fox and Cousin Cyril, yes,” Felix said. He was finding it hard to focus on the job ahead of them, given how wonderfully Miss Bellingham filled his arms and how empty they felt without her. The idea of redeeming his boyhood promise was growing more and more appealing.
“Where have you been? Why have you waited so long to come home?” That was his Jocelyn; pestering him with questions.
“I will answer every question you have,” he told her. “But we don’t have time today. Today, we have to decide what to do with your enemies.”
Quickly, he told the two women what he’d overheard. Then he had to repeat it for most of the rest of the household. Not the valet or the butler who, Joselyn said, were from London, and Cyril’s men through and through. The local people, she said, could be trusted.
When Felix had finished his story, the servants were of a single mind.
“You can’t go, then, Miss,” said Betsy. “We’ll have to let the Black Fox have the cargo.”
“We can’t risk you, Miss,” one of the other servants said, and the others murmured their approval.
Joselyn turned to Felix. “I suppose they are right. But I hate letting Cyril and the Black Fox win.”
“I might be able to help there,” Felix said. “What if we went ahead with the move, as planned, but set an ambush for the Black Fox and our delightful cousin?”
They couldn’t settle their plans immediately. Joselyn would need to bring in the farmer’s wives who, with Betsy the housekeeper, were her chief lieutenants. And Felix needed the officers of the troops who awaited his orders in the nearby town.
“I’ll send messengers,” Jocelyn said.
“We can’t risk Cyril finding out,” Felix warned. “Is there somewhere else we can meet?”
Joselyn and her supporters fixed him with identical looks of exasperation. “We have a place,” Joselyn said patiently. “I’ll give your officers the direction.”
The servants went to carry out Joselyn’s orders, but Felix lingered, and so did Joselyn. Betsy, the last to leave, looked at her mistress uncertainly.
“Go, Betsy,” Joselyn told her. “I’ll just have a word with Lord Maddox and be along shortly.”
But when they were alone, she was silent. Was she shy, all of a sudden, his brave Joselyn?
On the cliff-top, she had referred to the last time they’d seen one another; that long-ago morning when his mother had carried him off to the other end of England. Should he start there?
“Joselyn,” he said. “I came back to redeem my promise.”
Joselyn laughed, her mouth turned up in a smile, but something unreadable in her eyes. “No, you did not, Felix. You came back to catch the Black Fox.” And then, suddenly sober, “After eight years of silence, Felix. Eight years!”
All his excellent reasons for staying away turned to dust in his mind in face of the angry tears pouring down her cheeks. In a moment, he had her in his arms, and was kissing the tears away, murmuring apologies and endearments.
Finally, they drew a little apart. “I have made your shoulder damp,” Joselyn said, brushing at it ineffectually.
“We had better join the others, my love,” Felix said. “We have a busy day ahead of us.”
“Your love, Felix? You hardly know me. And I am still angry with you,” she continued sternly. “Do not think to butter me up with a few kisses.”
“After the ambush, I will tell you my whole story, and make whatever penance you assign. But, yes, you are my love. Now and forever, Joselyn. Show me the way to this meeting place. We can argue later.”
The planning session devolved into an argument over a different topic; first Felix against Joselyn, and then—when Joselyn convinced the others of the sense of what she said—Felix against the officers and part-time smugglers alike.
Felix did not want Joselyn taking her usual place down on the beach at the head of her women. Indeed, if Felix had his way, all of the women would be replaced with his trained soldiers.
Joselyn and her helpers agreed that the soldiers would form the main part of the workforce on the beach, disguised in skirts and with concealing shawls to keep their masculine features from giving away the ambush. But, Joselyn insisted, she needed to be there, head uncovered and face seen, so that the villains would believe they had her trapped. And her supporters insisted on joining her.
She was right. Felix knew she was right. He hated placing her in danger, but she was essential to the success of the plan.
Reluctantly, he had to agree.
By the time Cyril returned from his errand, all was prepared. Tonight, they would trap the Black Fox.
Cyril clearly expected an outcome much more to his liking. He could hardly contain his glee when both Joselyn and Felix claimed tiredness early in the evening and retired to bed. And they had to hastily conceal themselves behind trees when he came crashing noisily down the path towards the clifftops, muttering to himself about tonight being the last night.
Reaching the clifftops themselves, they watched him hurry away down the path towards the village.
“I don’t want you going down there, Josalyn,” Felix told her. He wasn’t going to stop her. She had as much at stake as he—more, given her love for these people. But he wanted her to know he was reluctant.
Had she been this frightened for him, knowing he had gone to war? If so, he’d have to spend the next fifty years making up for his unthinking cruelty in staying away so long. He smiled at the thought of that, and she smiled back.
“I will be careful. And if the smugglers come this way, you will be in more danger than I.”
In the event, the Black Fox split his forces, and attacked from the sea as well as the cliff top. For a few minutes, Felix was too busy to worry about Joselyn, but once the thugs on the cliff top were subdued, Cyril among them, he hurried down the path to the beach, where clumps of people wrestled in the moonlight.
As he reached the sand, a sudden loud shout stopped him in his tracks. “I have the woman, and I’ll kill her if you try to stop me.”
It was the Black Fox, his arm around Joselyn’s neck, brandishing a pistol in his other hand. He was backing towards the rowboat he had arrived in, two of his henchmen flanking him on either side.
“Not another step!” the Fox shrieked at the soldiers following him. The rest of his crew were gone, subdued by the soldiers or Joselyn’s women. But no one dared approach these three!
Felix’s heart was in his throat, blocking his breath and pounding like the French cannon at Waterloo. He couldn’t attack without risking Joselyn, but if he didn’t attack, they’d take her with them
to who knew what horrid fate.
At that moment, there was a loud caw. Immediately, and so fast that Felix couldn’t afterward untangle the order, a large black feathery missile hurled itself into the Black Fox’s face, Joselyn gave a twist and vicious upward punch into a portion of the Fox’s anatomy that made Felix wince, two shots rang out, and the two henchmen fell.
Within moments, it was all over, the smugglers captured and the raven marching up and down the beach cackling his satisfaction at his timely intervention.
Felix, with difficulty. restrained himself from wrapping Joselyn in his arms in front of half his tenants and all his soldiers. He’d never been so frightened in all his life. Thank God she was safe!
The Black Fox was hauled off in custody, along with his surviving men and Cyril, his co-conspirator. They would face the magistrate on the morrow.
Joselyn and Felix walked home together through the dawn. The raven had flown off about his own affairs, and the housekeeper had gone on ahead, arm in arm with the farmer’s wife.
“Joselyn,” Felix said, “I have explanations to make, and excuses. I let everyone think I was dead because that was the best way I could serve in the war against Napoleon, but I didn’t think about how it would affect you. Dare I hope that you will forgive me? I will spend a lifetime making amends if you will permit.”
Joselyn was silent for a long time. He was wrong then. He had hoped she was beginning to like the adult him, at least a little. Eventually, she spoke.
“You seem very certain that we would suit,” she stated.
“I know we would suit,” he said. “Certainly you suit me. I did not think there was a woman in the world who so combined courage, intelligence and spirit with beauty and kindness. I wish for a chance to convince you I can make you happy. May I court you, Joselyn?”
She was silent again, but a quality in the silence gave him hope, and he waited patiently.
“I did not know there was a man in the world who valued spirit and intelligence in a woman. Certainly I have not before met a man who would allow me to lead my troops into battle, even though he wished to protect me.”
“I didn’t want you to go,” Felix admitted.
“But you respected me enough to agree,” she said.
She was silent again.
“I daresay, now that my last surviving relative is dead, my trustees will find me somewhere else to live,” she said after a while. “I cannot, of course, stay here as a unmarried woman in the house of a bachelor.”
That was true, Felix supposed, his heart sinking. He hadn’t thought of that. Would she leave him, then?
“I never knew... Felix, you really do want me, don’t you? Not just my money?”
“Joselyn, I’ve not taken my officer’s pay in eight years, and it has all been soundly invested along with my prizes. Believe me, you are the treasure I want, not your money.” He moved to take her back into his arms, but Joselyn stopped him with her hand.
“Then I wonder,” she looked down shyly, “if you would consider marrying me first, Felix, and courting me after?”
So it was that Joselyn Bellingham and Felix Maddox were wed as soon as the bans could be called. And if there were some who questioned the sudden change in Viscounts, and wondered at the reappearance of one who had been thought dead these six years the older servants and villagers soon put them right. And if some said the bride should not have lived in the groom’s house that last fortnight, Viscountess Maddox’s supporters told them to hush their mouths. And if some raised their eyebrows when the bride was escorted down the aisle by a large raven, Viscount Maddox didn’t care a jot. After all, he said, the raven had found him his bride and saved him his bride, and that was all there was to that.
Acknowledgements
Thank you to Amy Rose Bennett and Mari Christie, two of my wonderful cohort of Bluestocking Belles. Amy and Mari read the rough first draft and told me to strengthen the middle with more showing, and less telling.
They also said the ending was unconvincing if Joselyn and Felix didn’t already know one another, and suggested that they might have been children together.
All great ideas, and all now part of the story.
Thank you, as always, to my dear personal romantic hero, who kept me fed and watered while I wrote this story over two fevered days.
And thank you Crystal for the characters and the trope. I particularly enjoyed the raven. I hope you like what I did with your ideas.
Connect with Jude Knight
Jude Knight is the pen name of Judy Knighton. After a career in commercial writing, editing and publishing, I am returning to my first love, fiction. My first novel is Farewell to Kindness, Book 1 in The Golden Redepennings. I have several novels in progress, and plot outlines for 40+, all set in the early 19th century. The plans include seven series, several stand-alone novels, novellas and short stories, and a number of characters who intersect across series.
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