“Thank you. Your Gra—Your Majesty,” he said. “As soon as I see to my lady. I’ll be back.”
“See that you are!” The carefree gallantry that had endeared the Stuarts to so many rang in that voice. “See that you are!”
The horses were but a short distance away. With Pamela in his arms and leading Angel, Tom was off toward Axeleigh, riding into the trees.
In his arms Pamela stirred. Her long lashes fluttered and suddenly her crystal blue eyes were fixed on him accusingly. “You struck me!”
Tom looked down into that indignant face. Along her jawline there was an ugly red mark. It hurt him to see it there. “I saved you, Pam,” he whispered huskily. “Those men back there would have killed you had they known you fired the shot. ’Twas the Duke himself gave me leave to go,” he added caressingly. “I think he guessed ’twas you who fired the shot but the Stuarts have ever an eye for beauty.”
Pamela felt her jaw gingerly. “I suppose I’m glad I didn’t kill him,” she sighed. “It all came over me—how he’s leading all of you to your death. And I lost my head.”
Tom brought his horse to a halt and pressed a kiss on that wistful upturned face. “You’ll be safe riding to Axeleigh alone from here,” he said. “At least I hope so. Keep a sharp watch out for trouble.”
“But you don’t have your pistol, Tom—they’ll know!”
He kissed her again. Lingeringly. “I’ll tell them I gave it to you—to keep you safe on the road home.”
She sighed, a long-drawn-out, fatalistic sigh. For she had known clear down to her boots that this moment of parting would come at last, no matter how desperately she tried to postpone it.
“Tom,” she whispered, still clinging to him as he transferred her gently to Angel’s back, handed the reins to her. “Tom—oh, Tom, don’t get yourself killed!”
He grinned down at her, but there was a constriction in his throat as he answered. “I won’t,” he promised softly. “Wait for me at Axeleigh.”
She nodded, her heart too full to speak. Bright tears spilled from her lashes and blurred her vision of him as he rode away—back toward the Duke’s men, back toward the battle that was shaping up—the battle for England.
She waited until he was out of sight. Then she turned and rode home.
Pamela had reached Axeleigh—and far away Dev had reached Lincoln—before the first shot was fired in the mists at Sedgemoor.
At Axeleigh disastrous news had been filtering in all day. In a desperate move to surprise the army arrayed against him, Monmouth had decided to attack by night. Stealthily, at eleven o’clock, he had begun the dangerous trek across the marshes of Sedgemoor, honeycombed by shallow ditches called rhines. Thick fog covered their movements as the long thin columns wavered raggedly over the rough stones of a slippery causeway across the Black Ditch. Confused by the thick fog, the guide turned the wrong way, somebody stumbled, a pistol snapped—and Feversham’s troops were alerted. Monmouth’s cavalry blundered into the Horse Guards at a ditch known as the Bussex Rhine—and were cut down. At their backs Monmouth and his pikemen from the shires brought up against the ditch. For three hours the battle had raged—untrained shiremen gallantly standing up to the best cavalry in Europe: the Grenadier Guards, the Dumbarton Regiment of Scots, the Life Guards and the Oxford Blues from Zoyland. By dawn it was all over and cannon had triumphed over pikes and scythes.
Constance almost had to hold Pamela back bodily from dashing off to the battleground. “Wait here,” she told the younger girl sternly. “There’s a messenger should be by soon who will bring us tidings. His tidings are always correct.”
Pamela turned a startled face toward Constance. There had been something in her voice, a ring of authority.... “You were with them all the time?” she murmured.
“All the time.” After all, what could it matter now to admit it?
“And you never told me.” Pamela sounded aggrieved.
“They didn’t want me to, Pam.”
“And why not? Oh, surely, they didn’t think I’d betray them?” For Tom to have thought that of her would have broken her heart.
“No, of course not, Pam. They just thought you talked too much. That was the reason I dragged you to Hawley Grange that day. A meeting was being held there—you noticed the horses as we left.”
“A meeting? Tom and all of them?”
“All but Captain Warburton.” Constance sighed.
“Then the Hawley girls knew!” cried Pamela.
“Yes, they were part of it.”
“And Margie Hamilton?”
“No, she wasn’t part of it. Not so far as I know.”
Pamela subsided. So much intrigue winging around her ears and she hadn’t even been aware of it.
Constance guessed what Pamela was thinking. “Your mind was on Tom,” she comforted. “It was all you could think about. But now you can serve him best by being here when he comes back—to hide him.”
Pamela’s crystal blue eyes widened at that. She had been thinking only of the outcome of the battle, of death and injury. It had entirely escaped her that the survivors would be hunted men!
They were standing by the gates of Axeleigh as they talked, asking news of anyone who passed.
“Garn!” cried Pamela suddenly, for she recognized the man trudging down the road toward them as being one of Warwood’s tenants. He was one of Ned’s men who had gone into battle armed with an old battle axe hastily snatched from the wall of Warwood’s armory. Now he had no weapon at all, only a bandaged head—and he was walking heavily, leaning upon a stout stick. “Oh, Garn, what news?”
“All’s lost,” he told her hollowly. “And the Duke run away. ’Twas a foggy night and them marshes is treacherous. Whoever was leading us missed his way and led us into a ditch. And then they was all over us, the King’s men. So much cannon and shot, no man could stand before it.” He shook his head, remembering.
“Oh, God,” she whispered. “But what of Tom? Tom Thornton? And Captain Warburton, was he there? And Ned and the others?”
“Master Ned’s dead. Captain Warburton saw a horseman coming at Ned and he leaped forward with his sword. But a cannon ball got Ned—he went down, all bloody.” Garn shivered. “And the Captain did impale the horseman with his sword, but the horseman had a pistol and it went off in the Captain’s face and I heard him say ‘I’m blinded’ as he fell. And Master Tom was hurt—I don’t know how bad—and he leaped forward and bore the Captain away, out of the trampling hooves—and someone struck me down just then and when I come to, I crawled away and someone sitting on the ground with a hurt leg bound up my head and I’ve been walkin’ ever since. All the lads from hereabouts is dead, I think. And the main roads is lined with those as got away and was hanged by the King’s men. Grinnin’ down from the trees they are, just danglin’ there.” He shuddered.
Tom was hurt!
Pamela felt her senses swaying. Constance clutched at her arm and she recovered herself. Garn needed help. “Come in,” she said. “We’ll give you a hot meal and some fresh bandages for your wound, and we’ll hide you in case the King’s men come looking.”
“When the King’s men come lookin’—and they will, never doubt it—I want to be at Warwood,” said Garn gloomily. “Cook there will swear as to how I got my head wound when I tripped over the cat and fell onto the fire tongs.” He was shuffling off down the road even as he spoke.
“Well, at least let me give you a horse,” she cried.
“No horse—I’d have to explain how I come by it.” He was moving on, still looking watchfully to right and left.
“Pam,” said Constance sharply. “Pam, hold on to yourself.” Blinded, she thought. Those keen eyes gone forever. ... And poor Ned, dead in his blood. But Pamela was looking as if she might faint.
Pamela leant against a tree trunk, pressing her hot face against the rough bark. Oh, God, let him not be hanging from a tree! she prayed. Let him still be alive. Let him come back to me!
The King’s men cam
e next day and it was Constance who faced them, not Pamela. For Constance knew Pamela was fully apt to charge at them, brandishing a pistol. Pushing Pamela firmly aside, she answered the door herself.
Her soft voice and gentle demeanor somewhat took the starch out of the major who confronted her. She made him a deep curtsy that rustled her violet silk skirts. “You have come at last!” she sighed. “We were so worried here with the Squire in bed with a bad back these past weeks and only women and servants about! We half expected the rebels to seize the house!”
The major eyed her doubtfully. He was from Surrey himself and he’d been told that all these West Country gentry were in this rebellion up to their ears. He swept her the low bow her beauty and gentility merited. “ ’Tis our mission to search out rebels and we’ve been ordered to search the houses hereabout,” he told her on a note of apology.
“Oh, then come in, come in,” cried Constance, peering about her fearfully. “For if there are rebels hiding about, we do want you to find them. And we’ll count on you to take them away!”
“Oh, we’ll do that, mistress,” the major promised her grimly.
Pamela hovered in the background behind Constance as they searched the house. Her white face gave added credence to the picture Constance had painted of a household of fearful women and their servants. And the Squire’s groan and his unsuccessful attempt to rise as they reached his bedchamber all contributed to the major’s impression.
“A wound?” he inquired of the Squire, frowning.
“God knows, I wish it were!” gasped the Squire, writhing painfully in his bed.
“He wishes it were a wound taken in King James’s service,” Constance supplied instantly. “For ’twas all we could do to keep him in bed when he heard there was rebellion afoot, and as you can see, he’s in no shape to fight.”
The major offered his condolences and went on to Huntlands, where he arrested everybody who had not had the sense to flee.
It was the same at Warwood.
And if their owners were convicted of treason, both properties would be forfeit to the Crown.
Every day brought new horrors, new names added to the death list, new faces that had been spied hanging from roadside trees in the summary vengeance the King’s troops had exacted upon the fleeing remnants of Monmouth’s shattered army.
“I suppose we should count ourselves lucky that Tom and Captain Warburton are in jail in Taunton instead of hanged on some tree,” sighed Pamela, for by now they had learned where both men were and that Tom’s wounds were minor. She thought of how she had planned to ride to Lyme and confront Chesney Pell’s mother in Constance’s behalf. It seemed eons ago and unimportant.
And then word reached them that Chesney Pell was dead, hanged along some unnamed roadside in Somerset along with half a dozen others.
Pamela would have no need now to go to Lyme.
Death had annulled the marriage.
Weeks had passed. Three times the two girls had ridden into Taunton, hoping to see the prisoners. Three times they had been denied. But the fourth time, shuddering past the rotting bodies of West Countrymen strung up on the trees by the King’s victorious troops, they were allowed at last to see them.
So dark were the crowded little cells that Tom—leading a blinded and hesitant Captain Warburton—blinked at the sunlight shining through the window as he was brought into the tiny room where the girls waited. “I’m not used to the light,” he quipped as he entered. “For ’tis a devil’s hole in there!”
Pamela would have thrown herself into Tom’s arms but that the jailer held her back. “Stand back, mistress,” he warned. “Stand well apart, all of you. For I’ll not have any knives or pistols passed to these prisoners!”
Pamela gave Tom a wan smile. “We’ll have you out soon,” she told him with a cheerfulness she did not feel.
“The trial is day after tomorrow,” he reminded her wistfully.
“What news?” asked Captain Warburton.
“A thousand dead, fifteen hundred taken prisoner,” said Constance steadily. It tormented her that he could not see.
“And the Duke? We receive no news here.”
“Taken. On the eighth, as he fled over the Mendips.” Her wonderful voice reminded him of Margaret’s. “I suppose he was trying to reach the New Forest and the coast.”
“Where was he taken?”
“Near Ringwood in Hampshire—sheltering beneath an ash tree.” She hesitated, but he would want to know. “ ’Tis said his hair turned gray as he fled. And after he was taken he went on his knees to King James. He even offered to turn Catholic to save his life—but the priests declared he cared only for his life—not for his soul!”
Captain Warburton shook his dark head. So the handsome lad had broken beneath the strain.
“He was hanged on the fifteenth,” finished Pamela expressionlessly.
“Then the Cause is truly lost,” mused Tom.
“It was lost long ago,” declared Pamela with asperity. “When the fool sailed from Holland with only eighty-two men at his back!”
Tom smiled down fondly upon his warlike lady. “Ye should have been a man, Pam—but I’m glad you’re not!”
“I should have been a better shot,” she said cryptically, and gave him a bright smile that said. Have courage! All is not lost!
Mindful of the presence of the jailer, the two couples sought opposite sides of the room. And Constance asked in a low voice, “What do the doctors say about your eyes, Tony?”
He shrugged. “They can find nothing wrong with them—save that I cannot see. ’Tis thought the bullet passing so near did it.” He groped for her hand. “Lean toward me, for I’ve a request to make of you.”
“What is it, Tony? I’ll do anything.”
“I ask that ye marry me, Constance.”
“You can ask me that?” she cried in disbelief. “When I don’t know how you can forgive me, how you can even speak to me?”
The Captain’s dark brows lifted. Even though he could not see her, she could see that the pain in her voice had struck through to him. “Forgive you for what?” he asked slowly.
“For Ned. I—drove him to his death,” Constance faltered. “He would not have been in this thing save for me.”
“You are wrong, Constance.” Captain Warburton voice had a sad ring of truth to it. “Ned was in it from the start. He told me all about it the night before the battle.” He hesitated. “They never quite trusted you, Constance—Stafford and the others.”
“They thought I might be a spy for the King?” whispered Constance incredulously.
“Very possibly,” Captain Warburton said wearily. “After all, you had appeared very suddenly and mysteriously, you seemed to have no past. And there was a lovely lady who appeared with you and vanished—a lady selected carefully, I think, to make me believe...” He did not finish that sentence. Instead he cleared his throat and went on in a crisp low tone. “A lady who was, by a ruse, to worm secrets out of me, I think. For I was a King’s agent for years, and it was thought at Whitehall that I’d gone over to the other side.”
So he had thought the lady in bronze silks at the Midsummer Masque an imposter, cleverly impersonating his lost Margaret, a woman brought in to woo and win from him the secrets of the Cause!
His voice dropped a shade lower. “So I ask you to marry me, Constance. As soon as it can be arranged—tomorrow, I hope. But in the meantime. I’ll bribe the jailer—he’s susceptible to that—and I want you to plan to spend tomorrow night with me. Here in the jail. We’ll have some privacy.”
He could feel her recoil. “Here in the jail—oh, Tony!”
“The object,” he said grimly, “is to get you pregnant. You’re married to Chesney Pell—”
“He was caught and hanged. I’m a widow.”
“Wife or widow, it makes no difference.” His broad shoulders shrugged. “But if you’re pregnant when you’re taken—and you will be taken for there are too many who know of your complicity in the reb
ellion—you’ll be condemned but you can plead your belly.”
As condemned women do at Newgate, she thought, shocked. “It will save your life, Constance. And after I am gone—”
“Gone? Oh, Tony, you won’t be gone!”
A faint bitter smile curved his strong mouth. “They’re sending George Jeffreys to try us and he’s a hanging judge, sent here to wreak the King’s vengeance on the West Country. He’ll bathe this land in blood and I’ll hang with the rest.”
“Oh, Tony, no.” She was sobbing now.
“And after I’m gone,” he repeated steadily, “you’ll have months before the baby is born for Clifford to buy your way out of prison or plan your escape. Tempers will cool. Kings always need money. A pardon can be bought. Or an escape can be contrived. Clifford Archer wasn’t in the rebellion but he’s a good man in a fight and a cool one—he’ll find a way out for you.” He reached toward her and, regardless of the jailer’s warning, she took his hand, conveyed it to her wet cheeks where he traced a pattern lovingly with his fingers. “If we cannot arrange the wedding, you’ll still be all right. None will know the child is mine save you and me. The world will think it is Chesney’s. And it will be something for me to remember and think on as they lead me to the gibbet,” he said huskily. “A night spent with you and the knowledge that I’ve saved you by it.”
She clung to his hand with her heart full to bursting. So much she could not tell him, so much...
“Will ye do it, Constance?” he asked softly.
“Yes,” she choked. “I will.”
And why not? she asked herself wildly. Dev, who had pretended to love her, had deserted her. Ned, who had truly loved her, was dead on the field at Sedgemoor. Chesney, who had loved her in his fashion, was hanging from a tree somewhere. Who was left but Tony Warburton to fill her empty world? And Margaret—wherever she was—would never know what had happened in a jail cell the night before the trial. For a wedding could never be arranged this quickly—not here in the Taunton jail!
“But they won’t hang you, Tony—they won’t,” she heard herself babble.
Lovely Lying Lips Page 48