by RITA GERLACH
Darden turned on his heels and stalked out. Seth caught Juleah's eyes. She nodded knowingly to him. She had seen what he had. Turning her gaze away, she followed Darden outside. Seth had to trust whatever she had in her mind to do.
He realized he should not gloat, but he was glad Darden had seen him alone with Juleah, glad he had seen Caroline and her son alive. He observed each gesture, each twinge of expression. The trap had been set. Darden was moving toward it more than anyone else in the room.
Now, Seth thought, they must wait for it to spring.
17
Cool evening dew brushed Juleah's face. Evergreens stood pale as granite carvings in the garden. It was what her eyes first beheld, that and the veils of soft moonlight that filtered through the airy pine needles.
She saw Edward Darden stride across the green and call for the stableboy. Darden's fists were tightly closed, his body stiff.
“Bring my horse now.” Darden's firm demand caused the boy to cower. Off he ran in the direction of the stable. Darden turned toward her. His countenance changed in an instant, from anger to forlorn hope.
When he reached the place where she stood, he bent to kiss her. She turned her head, and her lips refused to meet his.
A corner of Darden's mouth turned downward. “When a woman is accustomed to the ways of a man, she welcomes his kisses. Obviously you have not reached that point.”
“I do not wish to be kissed,” she said.
He sneered. “Not by me, anyway. Why should you, when Braxton is here to make eyes at you? You seem fond of him, and not a’tall apprehensive to be alone with him. It is unseemly of you.”
“It is no different from what I am doing now. We’re alone, are we not?”
“Yes, but for a different reason. Tell me what it is.”
Juleah moved away from under his dark shadow. “I need to dispel any idea you have had about having me.”
“We had an understanding.”
She plucked a leaf from the vine on the wall and tore it. “Yes, but I was barely fifteen then, and the years have changed us both.”
He took a step toward her. His eyes blazed with infuriated emotion. “My affections for you have deepened.”
Her body jerked, then she forced it still. “Your behavior speaks otherwise.”
Darden took her by the arms. “You have left me disappointed.”
“You expected me to keep a promise I made when I was too young to know any better?”
“I will never stop wanting you.”
Juleah winced and shrank from his grip. She had not forgotten his cruel temper, how he’d strike back like a coiled snake if pushed. “I do not want you. I do not love you.”
Darden dropped his hands, smarting under a bewildered sense of failure that showed on his face. “There was a time when you gave me hope.”
She answered with sharp-tongued clarity. “I tried to protect Caroline. I thought you would throw her out with her son if you inherited Ten Width. Do you think I’d injure her by accepting you? You ignored her when she grieved for Jeremy. You sent her no word when Benjamin died. You have shown no compassion.”
His eyes narrowed and he set his teeth. “I have done nothing wrong. You will regret your accusations.”
“There is no regret when there is honesty.”
“But not enough to admit to my face you love another man. You treat him as if he were born and bred in England. You should have nothing to do with him. None of us should.”
“The war is over. Why can you not put it behind you?”
“Because it was in my rights to have Ten Width more than his.”
She narrowed her eyes and stared back at him. The more he spoke, the more Juleah grew disgusted. “If Seth had refused, Nathaniel would have inherited, not you.”
“It was mine before the will was changed.”
“It was never yours. It belongs to Seth and is Nathaniel's legacy.”
“That child has enough being Sir Charles's heir. Why should he have more?”
Juleah paused to compose her rage. “I saw your reaction when Caroline came into the room with Nathaniel. Your face paled, as if you had seen a pair of ghosts.”
Darden pressed his lips together hard. “I was shocked, like the rest.”
“Shocked, yes, but you did not rejoice like the rest of us.”
“What are you accusing me of?”
“I think you know something. Who was it that planned this evil to have the child murdered?”
Darden guffawed. “You believe I had something to do with it? It is a mystery to me as much as it is to anyone.”
She believed he was lying. “The truth will bring darkness to light.”
“What kind of man do you take me for?” He grabbed her shoulders and shook her. When she raised her palm to strike his face, he cuffed her wrist with his hand. Juleah yanked free, but he secured both her wrists in an instant.
“You will be sorry one day. I can promise you that. And that Yankee of yours, he’ll regret it in the deepest degree.”
He released her, flung her back, turned, and walked down the stairs. The lad had brought the horse and stopped short. Darden mounted. He slipped the reins through his gloved hands and swung his horse around. She watched him dig his heels into the horse's ribs and gallop off.
Juleah went back inside the manor and heard laughter in the other rooms. She found Seth leaning against a wall.
“I had not the pleasure of a single dance with you,” he said.
“I am sorry.” She forced a smile.
“It's just as well. I lack the grace of the English when it comes to dancing. But I’m good at Virginia reels.”
“Darden has left, and our understanding is over.” She wove her fingers through his. “I fear he might try to harm you. He made threats.”
A furrow formed between Seth's brows. He put his hands on her arms and moved them down to her wrists. He ran his palms up along her skin, beneath the lace that fell over it, to her elbows.
“He can do nothing to me.”
18
Two days later at Ten Width, Seth opened his eyes to the gloom, sat up, and rubbed his face with his hands. He tried to shake the languor of the night from his body as he walked over to the washbowl and splashed cold water over his face and neck. The subtle patter of rain streamed on his window and he moaned. The roads will be muddy.
He pulled on his clothes and boots and left for downstairs. After he grabbed a hunk of bread slathered with butter and a mug of black coffee, he set off. When he climbed into the saddle the rain had lessened to a misty drizzle.
At the gates of Ten Width, a rider hailed him. It was Michael Bray.
“You’re a godsend. I need a witness,” Seth told him once they met out on the road. “I’m on my way to see Mave Proctor.”
Bray squashed his hat down tighter against the drizzle that assaulted him. “A witness I shall be, yet a quiet one. I’m not good at getting answers out of old women.”
Six miles later Seth stepped up to the door of a thatched house and knocked. The door creaked open and Mave peeked out. Her face appeared like an old man's, the beauty of womanhood robbed by age. Deep lines and brown spots covered her sunken cheeks and broad forehead. Her nose was crooked and scarred, and her eyes were gray with a lackluster stare.
“Are you Mave Proctor?” He stepped closer, with his boot near the door in case she wished to clap it shut on him.
Mave blinked up at Seth. “Aye, sir, I’m Mave. What's your business?”
“I’ve a few things to ask, if you’d be so kind as to open the door and let me and my friend inside.”
She looked him up and down. “Business is it? You’ve a lady in need of a nursemaid?”
“Neither. But it is business just the same.”
“I only speak to people if it pays well.”
“How much?”
“Whatever you can spare from your pocket will do.”
“I’ll give you ten pence. Nothing more.”
Mav
e wrinkled her nose and cocked her head to one side. She opened the door to let him in. “By your suit of clothes, I would say you are a wealthier man and can afford more. But I’m not one to take more than I should.”
Seth removed his hat and glanced around. The place was neat, but poor nonetheless.
Mave led Seth and Michael to a parlor. Two chairs, a table beneath the window, and a rag rug furnished most of the room. An old brass candlestick with a tallow candle stood upon the table. A knitting basket sat on the floor. A desk hugged the wall near the window, its finish scratched as if a litter of kittens had handled it.
Mave sat down. A gray cat leapt onto her lap. She pulled it close and stroked its ears.
“This gentleman is Captain Bray,” Seth told her.
Michael Bray nodded while he held his hat. Seth put his down and sat across from the old woman. “I’m Seth Braxton. Do you recognize the name?”
“Braxton is an old name in these parts. I knew your grandfather and his wife, Elizabeth. He worshiped her.”
“Others have told me the same,” Seth replied.
“I took the banns forty years ago. Thirty years my husband's been gone, and not once has the ring he gave me left my finger.”
Seth caught the glint of gold on her left hand. She held it up, the ring on a gnarled finger crooked like the others, the skin thin and translucent, the blue veins raised and twisted.
Seth leaned slightly forward. “I was informed you had come to Ten Width to deliver distressful news to my sister. What would you say if I told you young Nathaniel Kenley is alive and that my sister is soon to marry this gentleman?”
Mave's eyes lit up and widened. “Why would you come here and tell me such a falsehood?”
“I assure you, madam, what I’ve told you is the truth. Now, tell me about the night you came to Ten Width.”
Mave shifted in her chair, and with a raspy voice said, “It was Hetty Shanks that came here, to my house, and said I had to be the one to tell Miss Caroline.”
“Why would she insist on that?”
“Since I was the one that found Hetty to care for the child. You see I find nursemaids and governesses for the upper class.”
“How did Hetty appear? Was there anything out of the ordinary with her?”
Mave tapped her knobby chin. “Well, let me see. She twisted her hands in and out and looked frightened. It's a hard thing when a child dies while in a nurse's care. So, naturally I assumed she was upset.”
“The child was taken to Sir Charles Kenley at Wrenhurst.”
Mave's brows shot up. “Wrenhurst, Mr. Braxton?”
“Sir Charles was told my sister had died and he was to care for the boy, since he is his grandfather. Hetty lied about my sister, but I believe she meant to save my nephew's life. We must find her. Can you tell us where she is?”
Mave squinted her eyes. “What do you mean to do?”
“I intend to find out who paid her to carry out the unthinkable.”
A gasp slipped through Mave's lips and she shook her head. “She’d never harm a child, sir, and Hetty might be too frightened to talk.”
“I realize that. Nevertheless, you must tell me where she lives.”
Mave twisted her mouth, stroked her cat harder. “She lives in a cottage outside Clovelly. It's the one with the brown thatched roof and red door.”
“With her man?”
Mave paused. “I know nothing about any man of hers.”
Seth thanked her and stood. Mave touched him by the coat sleeve. “I’m not a bad woman, sir. I didn’t know Hetty lied. Please assure me that I’ll not be held accountable for Hetty's actions.”
He could not give her the assurance she asked for. He believed there would come a time when the sheriff would want to question her. “I’ll do what I can.”
When he reached the door, he turned back. “I understand Miss Fallowes paid you with something precious to her. I’ll buy it back.”
She nodded approval and once she fetched the trinket, she held it out to him. “Sixpence, sir? That's fair, don’t you think, for all I’ve been through?”
Seth dropped the silver coin in her palm, took the choker, and shoved it into his waistcoat pocket. He and Michael put their hats on and left Mave Proctor's humble dwelling for the house with the red door.
The drizzle lifted. The sky turned milky white and the breeze sighed through wet leaf and bracken. Seth walked his horse down the lane beside Michael Bray's. Drawing near a dwelling, a flock of rooks rose overhead from a crop of elms. Their unearthly screech filled the air. Hetty Shanks's cottage sat off a tree-lined road that led toward the sea and the cliffs above it.
They dismounted and looped their horses’ reins over a rickety picket fence. Seth scanned the place. It was ordinary, like other cottages he had seen along the country roads. The thatched roof and red door was as Mave had described. An herb garden grew beneath a window and to the right sat a rain barrel, a crude wooden bench, and a butter churn.
The door sat open. Seth called, but no one answered. He moved the door in with the tip of his boot. It opened up to a single room, dark and homey, sparsely furnished yet clean. From an open window, the breeze blew back a pair of muslin curtains, the air laden with the heady scent of sea and rain.
Seth stood with his hand against the doorjamb. A cast-iron pot hung inside the fireplace on a hook. The coals beneath it were gray and powdery. He moved his hand over them and felt warmth emanate from the ashes. Careful to touch the side of the pot, he discovered it was still warm.
“She has not been long from home,” he told Bray.
“Perhaps she's gone into the village.” Bray picked up a tattered shawl and tossed it back on a chair.
“We would have passed her on the road if she had.” He walked outside and looked up at the gray and forlorn sky, how the clouds whirled, how they oppressed earth, cliffs, and sea.
“What woman would leave a pot of stew over the fire unattended? Why would she leave when it looks as if the sky is about to burst?”
Bray came up beside him. “A sure sign she left in a hurry. These tracks show she had a visitor.”
Seth looked down at the ground. Boot prints were beginning to dry in the wind. The outlines of horseshoes were pressed into the soggy earth. He lifted his eyes to study the road ahead. It was quiet except for the birds fluttering in the trees.
“Perhaps she is close by.”
“She did not answer when you called her name,” said Bray.
“I may have frightened her off.” Seth glanced back at the red door. “No woman would leave her door unlatched.”
“She may have been called away. Whoever was here before us gave her a lift into the village.”
“Or harmed her.”
Bray frowned. “I pray that not be so. We need her to answer some important questions, don’t we?”
“I have a feeling she has either fled or fallen victim to this rider.” Seth crouched down and ran his finger along the outline of a print.
Seth stalked away. Bray made a quick turn and followed. Mounting their horses, they moved them down the road. Seth leaned to the side of his saddle to observe the tracks left in the mud. In front of them were more footprints, scattered and confused, as if the person who made them had stumbled along drunk.
“These are the footprints of a woman.” He straightened up and looked over at Bray.
“They lead off,” said Bray. “Without a trace they are gone.”
When they reached the bend, Seth reined in his horse and looked hard into the woods and then ahead. “You’re right. There is no telling where they went.” He paused, breathed deeply to calm the anxiety within.
“Do not be discouraged,” Bray told him. “We’ll find her, if not today then soon.”
Seth believed him, yet replied in a grave tone. “What a mess of confusion this is. I fear it is the beginning of something more dangerous than either of us realizes.”
19
The following Thursday, Caroline and Michae
l Bray were wed in the stone church outside of Ten Width. They had long awaited the arrival of a minister, and it was none too soon for the couple. They held a quiet ceremony, with only those closest to them in attendance, with no reception, and no delay to keep them from settling in London.
The Fallowes troop was noisy the moment they stepped out of the church door into the glorious sun-drenched day. Just as Juleah walked outside, she spied the carriage spiriting off the happy couple. Sir Charles and his lady's coach took the opposite direction homeward. She looked for Seth. He was nowhere to be seen. If he wants me, he shall find me.
Her mother gathered her younger children to the carriage door.
“I shall walk home,” Juleah told her. “It is a fine day.”
Anna Fallowes huffed. “Dear me, Juleah. It is another mile to home. And you have no companion.”
Juleah brought her wide-brimmed hat down closer to shade her eyes from the brilliant sunlight and strolled down the tree-lined lane. When she turned at the bend leading home, she paused and glanced up at the streams of sunlight that poured through the trees.
Continuing on, the breeze caressed her face. It was good to be alive, to feel the sun on her skin, smell the scent of wild-flowers growing in the fields, hear the songs of birds. But with no warning, a horse galloped round the bend behind her. The rider reined in several yards from her and steadied his mount. He relaxed and put one hand on his thigh, while he held the reins with the other.
“Juleah.” Seth spoke out of breath. “Do you always walk in the middle of the road?” Dark blue, his brave eyes met hers, and her heart leapt.
“Usually. I must take care from riders who ride so fiercely.” She smiled and it caused his eyes to warm.
He dismounted and came to her. “I do ride recklessly. I’d never forgive myself if I hurt you. I would deserve to be hung from the highest tree and left for the birds to pick clean.”
Juleah grimaced. “Ah, that is an awful thing to say.”
“Yes, you’re right. Tell me where you’re going. I thought you had left with your family.”