Raven's Shadow (Book 2, the Ravenstone Chronicles)

by Louise Franklin

  If they were too close, Georgiana galloped above the dark cliffs to a far off point where she dismounted and set light to a fire, which she hoped the Dragoons would see. She waited, hiding a small distance away, to see if they were drawn, and once they arrived, she slipped away into the woods again.

  With the new route established, money began to flow again, and Georgiana paid all the bills outstanding. The staff received their pay in advance, just in case Edward came to visit again. She also made sure to hide half the money in the bottom of a chest in her room. She would not allow her husband the power of money over her again.

  She insisted on giving Peter half of her share, which he more than deserved. Mr. Gordon was often absent for the night’s work and left it to Peter to continue in his stead. The new boys fit in well, and in time, Peter felt they were ready to embark on their own across the Channel.

  Georgiana gave Neville instructions on what to buy, and how much their purchases should cost, knowing that initially they would probably not get their money’s worth. She handed over a significant sum of money, wondering if she would ever see it or the boys again. They could choose to abscond with the cash for it was more than any of them had seen in a lifetime.

  She spent four sleepless nights before they returned with tubs of liquor and bales of tobacco. With the lookouts in place in the hills and information that the Dragoons were in the north, they landed the boat in the bay, and then carried the contraband to the cave. Their first trip was a success.

  They had been swindled by the French merchants, but still made a profit. Before the next trip, she would have to give Neville a few lessons in counting, she decided. The following night, Peter moved the contraband to The Black Horse Inn, twenty miles inland and closer to London, and the three horsemen allowed them to pass unhindered.

  She returned that night to her bedroom, climbing in through the window to find Nicholas, watching her from the bed, his foot twitching like an angry cat’s tail.

  “Where have you been?” he asked.

  “I went for a walk,” she said, far too defensively, and she regretted the words.

  “For three hours?”

  “I don’t get much exercise during the day.” She moved across the room and took her jacket off, placing it in the bag that lay at the foot of the bed. After their last argument however long ago, she had not thought she would ever see him again.

  “Why are you lying to me?”

  “Because you asked me a question I didn’t want to answer,” she replied.

  He smiled and she moved to sit on the bed next to him. She removed her boots, all too conscious of his presence next to her. A part of her was happy to see him, but another part of her dreaded his return. The days after his visits were the worst for her. She longed for him terribly, and it always took all her will to pull herself out of the darkness that seemed to surround her.

  “Where do you go?” he asked softly.

  She shrugged, not wanting to lie to him.

  “Do you go to him?”

  “Who?” she asked, at a loss.

  “You cannot be so naive as to think your long absences go unnoticed by your staff. The countryside is ablaze as to the identity of your lover. There are equal bets on both Price and Gordon. So which is it?”

  She turned to look at Nicholas. He questioned her so evenly, so without emotion. He seemed completely unaffected by the question except for the look in his eyes.

  “Don’t.”

  “I am not your first lover, Georgiana, nor will I be your last. You were no virgin, and you know how to tantalize my body in ways that only come with a certain amount of experience.”

  He was trying to hurt her.

  “I am married,” she reminded him.

  “Edward hasn’t touched you.”

  “How do you know that?”

  “He has other tastes.”

  He had waited for her for three hours. It was a long time, time enough to imagine all sorts of debauchery, and time enough to become infuriated.

  “It bothers you that I am not a virgin, does it not?” she asked softly.

  He remained silent.

  “Imagine if I had agreed to marry you. You would have felt betrayed. You are just like most men, who would feel cheated at finding their bride less than pure. It is in fact quite unacceptable, is it not, and you think less of me now. I am not the pure maiden you thought you loved.”

  “How can you think me so lacking in character?” he said angrily. “I may not be entirely content with the fact, but it’s you I wanted, not your damnable virginity.”

  “I only know what society tells me is important,” she snapped. “Most men not only adhere to what society deems important, but they have for the most part created those rules. You must marry a virgin, but are not required to be one yourself. Quite the contrary, you are not only allowed to take your own pleasure, it is required of you.”

  “Do you hate all men equally?”

  She returned to the bed, sitting down with her legs drawn up under her. “I don’t hate men,” she sighed. “I hate that they have all the power and independence, and I have none. I hate the hypocrisy of their rules that I am forced to live by.”

  He sat down next to her, his back leaning against the post of her bed, his leg drawn up on the bed so he faced her.

  “Who was he?”

  “It does not matter anymore,” she said frustrated and angry.

  “It matters to me.”

  “Why?”

  “He dishonored you.”

  She sighed. “Is honor so important to you?”

  “It is everything.”

  “So you will fight another duel to regain my honor?” she sighed. “I am afraid it’s far too late for my honor or my virginity. Neither one is to be regained, for I assure you, the man is quite dead already.”

  “He died in the war?”

  “I do not wish to speak of this,” she begged.

  “But you would marry Edward.”

  “I could give Edward the one thing he required of me.”

  “Your fortune.”

  “Yes, and in return, I have my independence or as much of it as a woman is allowed.”

  Her answer was not the complete truth, but it was all she could give him.

  “Did I require so much?”

  “You require everything, Nicholas: loyalty, faith, trust, and hope, none of which I have in me to give you. My loyalty lies elsewhere, and I have no faith in this world. I trust no one, and as a woman, I dare not hope for anything.”

  “You forgot love.”

  “And if I say I love you, will it be enough? Will you leave here with me? Will you forget Caroline, and your duty to your family? Will you give up your honor to live with a married woman?”

  “You know I will,” he said. “Tell me you love me.”

  She had wanted him to reject her offer, but he was not going to make it that easy on her. She wanted to tell him she loved him, because she did, she realized. She loved him deeply and without a doubt. She loved this man and she knew that did she tell him, he would leave everything behind for her, his career, his family, and his honor.

  Only he did not know the truth about her life, about Jane and Margaret. If she left with him, she would never see them again. She was responsible for so many more people now as well, and she could not leave them so easily. Rupert needed her, and the boys depended on her. Her love for them all was as real and strong as the love she felt for this man. Telling him she loved him would serve only herself.

  She could not leave Ravenstone, and he would not understand that because she could not tell him the truth. And the truth might just change his feelings for her. She was caught in trap so perfectly tight, it was beginning to squeeze the breath from her.

  He reached out to touch her face, wiping the tears from her cheek.

  “Then tell me you don’t love me,” he said softly.

  “I don’t love you,” she said, looking away from him, not wanting to see the effect her w
ords had on him.

  He left then without another word to her, and she let him go, waiting a few minutes before moving to close the sash. She stood at the window watching him as he rode away from the house, keeping to the forest. Would she see him again? she wondered. She began to turn away from the window, but caught the movement of a shadow under a tree. She watched Peter’s shadowy figure move toward the stables, and disappear. Why was he watching her? She undressed quickly and lay in the dark, thinking about Nicholas as she did every night before she fell asleep.

  ***

  Peter paused outside her bedroom, and looked up at the windows as he had done so often in his confusion. She was the source of his befuddlement, and had been since the day he had been convinced by Harry that coming to this place had been a good idea. He had been confused from that first day when they had stood in that warm kitchen, filled with the smells of food that had made him ache to his bones with hunger.

  He had never minded hunger until that day. In the streets, it had pushed him on, kept him from curling up to die in a cold dark corner of St. Giles. Hunger had been his companion since he was old enough to remember the stink of the streets where he grew up.

  Harry was the first person to give him food without asking for anything in return. He remembered the day as clearly as he remembered the feeling of hunger.

  Harry lived with his parents then, in a modest house, a boy of nine. Peter had not known his name then. He was just a boy when Peter used to sit across the street watching the warm glow of the light from inside the house. The boy’s mother would cook dinner and the family would sit at the table talking and eating while he watched from across the street in the dark, hidden by the grime he carried on him amongst the filth of his surroundings.

  He imagined what it must feel like to be that boy in the house, to live in the warm glow of its light, and to eat every night a meal that would fill his stomach. It was a neat house, orderly and well kept, with fresh paint and flowers growing outside the front door. The small wooden gate was the boundary between his world and the world the boy inhabited with its warmth and good smells.

  One day the boy walked out of the house and opened the gate, and stopped in front of Peter with a bundle in his arms that he placed in his hands. Then he turned back and closed the gate behind him again. Peter had opened the cloth to see bread and some cheese, and he had eaten with the family that night and a few other nights that followed. The mother smiled often at the boy and the father taught him to play a flute. Then one day, the father did not come home from his work. The little house lost some of its shine and glow as the mother grieved for a lost husband, and the dinner became less filling. Still Peter sat and watched as his world slowly absorbed that of the boy’s.

  The mother grew desperate and married again but this time a man from his world, cruel and greedy. She was soon with child and the husband came home drunk and angry every night to beat her and the boy. The house lost its shine as the white paint grew dirty and the flowers died. The gate hung askew on its hinges from being opened too many times in anger, and one day it fell off completely, letting his world walk in unhindered.

  A baby girl was born and the boy tried to protect her from his stepfather but she was hungry and cried and would not be stilled. One night the boy screamed at his stepfather to stop beating his mother for she was nearly dead. It drove the man to madness and he grabbed the boy in anger and held him down, cutting out his tongue, then the stepfather left the house never to return. The boy survived with Peter’s help and it was his turn to feed him.

  The mother died soon thereafter, and the boy with his little sister became part of Peter’s world. They worked the streets together in the day, and returned to the little house at night. They rescued Eye from a street fight, and James turned up sleeping in the little house like a lost puppy. The mouths to feed multiplied, but they were the only family Peter had ever had, and he kept them inside that little house. He fixed the gate, and he planted flowers, thinking it would keep his world at bay like some magic talisman. He grew vegetables and painted the walls and soon the house looked almost like a home again. That had been their mistake.

  The house became something worth having, so they took it from them, and turned them out into the street, and there was nothing Peter could do about it. They found shelter in an alley, using old crates to build a room, and there they stayed until one day Harry returned with a paper in his hand. She would help them, he said in his sign language, his hands flying, his face convinced. She was their hope.

  Peter turned away from Georgiana’s window and walked slowly back to the stables. He walked up the stairs and opened his door softly so as not to wake Harry or his sister. She was no longer a baby, but a toddler of almost two now. She slept on her back next to Harry, her small hand curled in a fist. He moved the book he had been reading, and lay down on his bed with his hands behind his head, staring at the ceiling and thinking about the night’s events.

  He had known about her lover before, had seen him climb in her window and had even followed him the first time to make sure she was safe. From outside her window, he had watched her kiss Markham, had seen the look in her eyes as she spoke to him softly.

  Her lover was of her world, a gentleman, clean and well spoken, and so Peter had left them. He could not let anything happen to her. Without her, their entrance into this world of warmth and food might close again, and he could not let that happen. She was his new gate, and he would do whatever he could to ensure it did not close on them again.

  5

  Charles arrived the next day for a visit with Jane and Margaret. “I thought it best for the girls and you,” he told Georgiana. “They were upset the last time they left you and were almost inconsolable the entire journey home.”

  The girls clung to Georgiana and chattered of their journey. Lady Wyndham took that moment to enter the drawing room and said, “Georgiana, I forbid you to go about in society without a thought to my good name.”

  “You brought Mother,” Georgiana said accusingly to Charles, and wondered what her mother was taking about.

  “She insisted,” he shrugged.

  “Do not speak of me as if I do not occupy this room,” she said and sat down opposite Georgiana. “Have you requested that tea be brought yet? I am parched.”

  “It’s being made.”

  “Your servants need to know without being asked when tea is required. I can see you have been lax with them, and it is a good thing I have come. Now, as I was saying earlier, I think you must agree with me that society does not agree with you.”

  “Mother, you know I have no need to call on my neighbors.”

  “There, you see,” Charles said triumphantly. “She is not seeking invitations.”

  Her mother gave him a look of reproach that spoke of disappointment and the need for deference.

  “What is rude is to speak of politics at a dinner,” Lady Wyndham scolded. “You may as well have spoken of money. Then later, you refused a second invitation.”

  “Mother, that dinner was months ago. Why must we speak of it now?”

  “Because I must live with the consequences of your bad manners long after you have forgotten any such indiscretion. The Duchess did not invite me to her soirée because she is good friends with Lady Chesterfield, who is well acquainted with Lady Kingston whose last invitation you refused after your horrendous behavior at her previous one.”

  “And what of it?”

  “What of it?” she exclaimed. “Did you hear that, Charles? What of it?”

  “I don’t understand why she insists on inviting me,” Georgiana continued. “ Did you yourself not just reprimand me for going into society?”

  “Indeed, yes.”

  “And now you berate me for not accepting an invitation?” Georgiana asked.

  “What I mean when I say you should not be in society is that you must not throw yourself at them to be invited, but when a person of Lady Kingston’s standing in society honors you with an invitation, yo
u must not decline. It is the highest insult.”

  “You confuse me. If I attend, I am ridiculed for my opinions, and if I don’t attend, I am equally insulting.”

  “You are not to have opinions at the dinner table. I myself had letters from numerous people with details of how you insulted that good family. They are of the peerage, Georgiana, and not to be trifled with. Lord Kingston is a baron and you must treat him with the respect due a superior.”

  “Lord Kingston is a fool, and Lady Kingston only invites me so she can throw Dorothea at Charles when he is here. The mother is deathly afraid her daughter will settle for the vicar. I am merrily a victim in all of this, I assure you.”

  “I have come to see if I may not put to rights the real damage you have done us.”

  “Mother, it is of no consequence,” Georgiana argued. “They will come to Ravenstone because Charles is here. You need not even smile at them, and they will already have forgiven us.”

  “I will send a note right now,” she said and moved toward the direction of the study. “Send for me when the tea arrives.”

  The girls stood at the window looking into the garden, and giggled at the faces Rupert and James were making at them.

  “Can we go outside?” Jane asked.

  “Of course,” Georgiana said.

  “Absolutely not,” Charles said at the same time.

  The girls looked at them in confusion.

  “It is too cold outside,” he said.

  “They can wear coats,” she replied.

  He sighed and the girls ran to fetch their coats.

  “You are too hard on her,” Charles said after the girls had left.

  “On who?” she asked, confused now.

  “On Mama,” he said. “She means to have a dinner here, and you should try for just one night to make her proud.”

  “Why?” she asked, astonished.

  “Because she is your mother, and you could try being her daughter.”

  She studied her brother, confused by this new side to him she had not known before.

  “She never wanted to be my mother,” she said angrily. “Do not expect me to play the loving daughter now.”