“Yet this creature of the moment is single-mindedly bent upon my icon, you informed me on the way home,” he said. “Which she has never seen. And for whose existence she relies upon the word of a village looby who heard it from someone else, who heard it from one of our servants. Yet she is convinced the thing is worth twenty thousand pounds. Which amount, she told you, was the only counteroffer you could make—and you had better make it in sovereigns, because she had no faith in paper. I should like to know who put this twenty thousand pounds into her head.”
Jessica joined him at the window. “I should, too, but we haven’t time to find out, have we?”
With a short laugh, he turned to her. “We? It isn’t ‘we’ at all, as you know perfectly well. It’s ‘Dain,’ the pitiable, henpecked fellow who must do exactly as his wife tells him, if he knows what’s good for him.”
“If you were henpecked, you would obey me blindly,” she said. “But that is not the case at all. You have sought an explanation of my motives, and you are now attempting to deduce Charity’s. You are also preparing to deal with your son. You are trying to put yourself in his shoes, so that you may quickly make sense of any troublesome reactions and respond intelligently and efficiently.”
She drew closer and patted his neckcloth. “Go ahead. Tell me that I’m ‘humoring’ you or ‘managing’ you or whatever other obnoxious wifely thing I am doing.”
“Jessica, you are a pain in the arse, do you know that?” He scowled at her. “If I were not so immensely fond of you, I should throw you out the window.”
She wrapped her arms about his waist and laid her head against his chest. “Not merely ‘fond,’ but ‘immensely fond.’ Oh, Dain, I do believe I shall swoon.”
“Not now,” he said crossly. “I haven’t time to pick you up. Get off me, Jess. I’ve got to go to bleeding Postbridge.”
She drew back abruptly. “Now?”
“Of course now.” He edged away. “I’ll lay you any odds the bitch is there already—and the sooner I get this damn nonsense over with, the better. The storm’s letting up, which means I should have something like light for a few more hours. Which means I’m less likely to ride into a ditch and break my neck.” He quickly skirted the desk and headed for the door.
“Dain, try not to explode upon them,” she called after him.
He paused and threw her an exasperated look.
“I thought I was supposed to mow her down,” he said.
“Yes, but try not to terrify the child. If he bolts, you’ll have the devil’s own time catching him.” She hurried up to him. “Maybe I should come along.”
“Jessica, I can handle this,” he said. “I am not completely incompetent.”
“But you are not accustomed to dealing with children,” she said. “Their behavior can be very puzzling at times.”
“Jessica, I am going to collect the little beast,” he said grimly. “I am not going to puzzle about anything. I shall collect him and bring him to you, and you may puzzle over him to your heart’s content.”
He moved to the door and jerked it open. “For starters, you can figure out what to do with him, because I’m hanged if I have a clue.”
Dain decided to take his coachman with him, but not the coach. Phelps knew every road, path, and cattle track in Dartmoor. Even if the storm rebuilt and headed west with them, Phelps would get them promptly to Postbridge.
Besides, if he could help his mistress make trouble for her husband, Phelps could damned well help Dain get out of it.
Dain wasn’t sure how Jessica had managed to talk his loyal coachman into betraying his trust these last weeks, but he saw soon enough that she didn’t have the man completely wrapped around her finger. When Jessica rushed out to the stables to make a last plea to accompany them, Phelps negotiated the compromise.
“Mebbe if Her Ladyship could make up a parcel for the lad, she’ll feel some’ at easier in her mind,” the coachman suggested. “She be worried he’ll be hungry, ’n mebbe cold, ’n you be in too much hurry to heed it. Mebbe she might find a toy or some’ at to keep him busy.”
Dain looked at Jessica.
“I suppose that must do,” she said. “Though it would be better if I were there.”
“You will not be there, so just put that idea out of your head,” said Dain. “I will give you a quarter hour to make up the damned parcel, and that’s all.”
Fifteen minutes later, Dain sat upon his horse, glaring at the font door of Athcourt. He waited another five minutes, then set out down the long drive, leaving Phelps to deal with parcels and Her Ladyship.
Phelps caught up with him a few yards past Athcourt’s main gateway. “‘Twere the toy what slowed her,” he explained as they rode on. “Went up to the North Tower, she did, ’n found one o’ them paper peepshows. A sea battle, ’t were, she said.”
“That must be Nelson and Parker at Copenhagen,” said Dain. “If it was one of mine, that is,” he added with a laugh. “I daresay that’s the only one I hadn’t time to destroy before I was sent to school. Got it on my eighth birthday. One needn’t wonder how she found it. My lady could find the proverbial needle in a haystack. That’s one of her special talents, Phelps.”
“Ess, I reckon it don’t work out so bad, seeing as how Your Lordship loses some’at now and again.” Phelps eyed his master’s left arm, which Dain had freed from the sling the instant he was out of sight of the house. “Lost your arm saddle, did you, me lord?”
Dain glanced down. “Good heavens, so I have. Well, no time to look for it, is there?”
They rode on for a few minutes in silence.
“Mebbe I shouldn’t’ve helped her look for the lad,” Phelps said finally. “But I been worrit ever since I heerd ol’ Annie Geach’d cocked up her toes at last.”
Phelps explained that the elderly midwife had been all the mother Dominick had known.
“When Annie passed on, there weren’t no one else wanted to look after the tyke,” said Phelps. “As I reckon, his ma made trouble in front o’ your new bride, figurin’ you’d have to do some’ at—mebbe give her money to go away or get a nuss for the lad. But you never sent nobody lookin’ for her, not even when the boy were raisin’ hell in the village—”
“I didn’t know he was raising hell,” Dain interrupted irritably. “Because no one bloody told me. Not even you.”
“‘T weren’t my place,” said Phelps. “Not to mention which, how were I to know you wouldn’t go about it all wrong? Transportin’, Her Ladyship said. That’s what you had in mind. Both on ’em—ma and boy. Well, I reckon it didn’t set right with me, me lord. I stood by once, watchin’ your pa go about it all wrong. I were young when your pa sent you off, and skeered o’ losin’ me place. And I reckoned the gentry knowed better ’n an ignorant village boy. But I be past the half-century mark now, ’n I sees things some’at different ’n before.”
“Not to mention that my wife could persuade you to see pixies in your pockets, if that suited her plans,” Dain muttered. “I should count myself lucky she didn’t talk you into secreting her in one of your saddlebags.”
“She tried,” Phelps said with a grin. “I tole her she’d do more good gettin’ ready for the lad. Like findin’ the rest o’ them wooden soldiers o’ yours. ’N pickin’ a nussmaid ’n fixin’ up the nuss’ry.”
“I said I would fetch him,” Dain coldly informed the coachman. “I did not tell her the filthy beggar could live in my house, sleep in my nursery—” He broke off, his gut churning.
Phelps made no answer. He kept his gaze upon the road ahead.
Dain waited for his insides to settle. They covered another mile before the inner knots eased to a tolerable level.
“A problem ‘of cosmic proportions,’ she called it,” Dain grumbled. “And yet I must solve it, it seems, somewhere between here and Postbridge. We’re coming to the West Webburn River, aren’t we?”
“Another quarter mile, me lord.”
“And from there, Postbridge is what—l
ess than four miles, isn’t it?”
Phelps nodded.
“Four miles,” Dain said. “Four bleeding miles to solve a problem of cosmic proportions. God help me.”
Chapter 18
An accomplished strumpet Charity Graves certainly was, Roland Vawtry thought. Clever, too, to come up with a fresh plan or the spur of the moment, with the village louts bearing down on her on one side and Lady Dain on the other.
As a mother, however, she was utterly useless.
Vawtry stood at the window overlooking the innyard, trying to ignore the revolting sounds behind him and the more revolting stench.
Immediately after the encounter with Lady Dain, Charity had hied to her tiny cottage in Grimspound, collected her belongings, and hurled them into the broken-down Dennet gig she’d bought a week ago, along with an equally broken-down pony.
The brat, however, had balked at getting into the gig, because of the thunder miles away.
Unwilling to risk his bolting from the vehicle and disappearing into the moors, Charity had pretended to sympathize. Promising they’d wait until the thunder stopped, she’d calmly set out a bit of bread and a mug of ale for him. To the ale, she’d added “the tiniest bit—not half a drop—of laudanum,” she claimed.
The “half a drop” had quieted Dominick to the point of unconsciousness. She’d stuffed him into the gig and he’d slept the whole way to the inn at Postbridge and for some time after, while Charity explained to Vawtry what had happened to destroy their original plans and what she’d contrived instead.
Vawtry trusted her. If she said Lady Dain wanted the loathsome child, then it was true.
If Charity said Her Ladyship would tell Dain nothing about it, that must be true as well, although Vawtry had rather more difficulty accepting this truth. He’d gone to the window more than once to survey the innyard for signs of Beelzebub or his minions.
“The worst that can happen is he’ll turn up tomorrow instead of her,” she’d told him. “But you only have to keep a sharp lookout. It’s not like you can’t see him coming from a mile away, is it? Then all we do is make ourselves scarce, quick-like. And if we can keep the pesky boy quiet another week, we can go back to the first plan.”
The first plan involved criminal acts.
The second plan merely required keeping a sharp lookout—and listening to common sense, meanwhile. Even if Lady Dain had tattled, even if Dain decided to hunt Charity down, the bad weather would keep him at home for the present. In another two hours, the sun would set, and he was not likely to set out in the dark, through the mud, for Postbridge, especially when he couldn’t know Charity was there already. That, anyone would agree, was too much bother for Dain.
All the same, Vawtry couldn’t help wishing that Charity’s common sense extended to child care. If she’d minded the boy properly in the first place, matters wouldn’t have reached a crisis with Athton’s populace. If she’d beaten the brat in the second place, instead of dosing him with laudanum, he wouldn’t now be vomiting up the dinner he’d just wolfed down and working on spewing up whatever he’d had for breakfast as well.
Vawtry turned away from the window.
Dominick lay on a narrow cot, clutching the edge of the thin mattress, his head hanging over the chamber pot his mother held. The retching had stopped, for the moment at least, but his dirty face was grey, his lips blue, his eyes red.
Charity met her lover’s gaze. “It weren’t—wasn’t—the laudanum,” she said defensively. “It was the mutton he ate for dinner. Spoiled, it must’ve been—or the milk. He said everything tasted bad.”
“He’s got rid of everything,” said Vawtry, “and he doesn’t look any better. He looks worse. Maybe I’d better fetch a physician. If he D-I-E-S,” he added, hoping Charity’s spelling abilities were better than her mothering ones, “Her Ladyship won’t be pleased. And someone I know might find herself closer to a gibbet than she likes.”
The mention of the gallows washed the color from Charity’s rosy cheeks. “Leave it to you to look for the worst in everything,” she said, turning back to the sick child. But she made no objection when Vawtry collected his hat and left the room.
He had just reached the top of the stairs when he heard an ominously familiar rumble…which might as well have come from the bowels of the inferno, for it was Beelzebub’s own voice.
Vawtry did not need a whiff of brimstone or a puff of smoke to inform him that during the moment he’d looked away from the window, the Golden Hart Inn had turned into the black pit of Hell and that, in a very few more moments, he would be reduced to a shriveled bit of ash.
He raced back to the room and flung open the door. “He’s here!” he cried. “Downstairs. Terrifying the landlord.”
The boy sat up abruptly, to gaze wide-eyed at Vawtry, who ran frantically about the room, snatching up belongings.
Charity rose from the boy’s side. “Never mind the things,” she said calmly. “Don’t fly into a panic, Rolly. Use your head.”
“He’ll be here in a minute! What are we to do?”
“We’re going to hustle out real quick-like,” she said, moving to the window and surveying the innyard. “You take Dominick out this window and scoot along the ledge down to that hay wagon and jump.”
Vawtry darted to the window. The hay wagon looked to be miles below—with not very much hay in it, either. “I can’t,” he said. “Not with him.”
But she’d left the window while he was assessing the risk, and she’d already opened the door. “We daren’t chance meeting up tonight. But you must take my boy—I can’t carry him, and he’s worth money, remember—and look for me in Moretonhampstead tomorrow.”
“Charity!”
The door shut behind her. Vawtry stared at it, listening in numb horror to her footsteps racing toward the back stairs.
He turned to find the boy staring at the door, too. “Mama!” he cried. He crawled off the cot, managed to stagger three steps to the door, then swayed and crumpled upon the floor. He let out a gagging sound Vawtry had heard all too often in the last hours.
Vawtry hesitated, halfway between the sick child and the window. Then he heard Dain’s voice in the hall outside.
Vawtry ran to the window, unlatched it, and climbed out. Not ten seconds later, as he was edging cautiously along the ledge, he heard the door to the room crash open. He heard the bellowed oath as well. Forgetting caution, he scuttled hastily to the spot above the hay wagon and leapt.
Roaring into the room like the juggernaut, intent upon mowing Charity Graves down, Lord Dain very nearly crushed his son under his boots. Fortunately, one angry stride away, he noted the obstacle in his path and paused. In that pause, his glance took in the chamber, strewn with various items of female attire, the remains of a meal on a tray, an empty wine bottle, an overturned cot, and some unidentifiable odds and ends, including the disgusting heap of dirt and rags at his feet.
Which appeared to be alive, for it was moving.
Dain hastily looked away and took three deep breaths to quell the bile rising within him. That was a mistake, because the air was rancid.
He heard a whimper from the animate pile of filth.
He made himself look down.
“Mama,” the thing gasped. “Mama.”
Ave Maria, gratia plena, Dominus tecum, benedicta tu in mulieribus, et benedictus fructus ventris tui, Iesus.
Dain remembered a child lost, alone and despairing, seeking comfort from the Virgin Mother, when his own was gone.
Sancta Maria, Mater Dei, ora pro nobis peccatoribus, nunc et in hora mortis nostrae.
That child had prayed, not knowing what he prayed for. He had not known what his sin was, or what his mother’s was. He had known, though, that he was alone.
Dain knew what it was to be alone, unwanted, frightened, confused, as Jessica had said of his son.
He knew what this hideous child felt. He, too, had been hideous and unwanted.
“Mama’s gone,” he said tightly. “I’m
Papa.”
The thing raised its head. Its black eyes were swollen and red-rimmed, the great beak dripping snot.
“Plague take you, you’re filthy,” Dain said. “When was the last time you had a bath?”
The brat’s narrow face twisted into a scowl that would have sent Lucifer running for cover. “Sod off,” he croaked.
Dain grabbed him by the collar and hauled him up. “I am your father, you little wretch, and when I say you’re filthy and need a bath, you say, ‘Yes, sir.’ You do not tell me—”
“Bugger yourself.” The boy choked out a sound halfway between a sob and a laugh. “Bugger you. Bugger, bugger, bugger. Sod, sod, sod.”
“This is not puzzling behavior,” Dain said. “I am not in the least puzzled. I know exactly what to do. I shall order a bath—and have one of the stablemen up to scrub you. And if you happen to take in a mouthful of soap in the process, that will be all to the good.”
At this, the wretch let out a hoarse stream of invective and began writhing like a fresh-caught fish on a hook.
Dain’s grip remained firm, but the boy’s thread-bare shirt did not. The ragged collar tore off and its wearer broke free—for exactly two seconds, before Dain caught him and swung him up off the floor and under his arm.
Almost in the same heartbeat Dain heard an ominous rattling sound.
Then the boy threw up…all over His Lordship’s boots.
Then the squirming bundle under Dain’s arm turned into a dead weight.
Alarm swept through him and surged into blind panic.
He’d killed the child. He shouldn’t have held him so tightly. He’d broken something, crushed something…murdered his own son.
Dain heard approaching footsteps. His panicked gaze went to the door.
Phelps appeared.
“Phelps, look what I’ve done,” Dain said hollowly.
“Got them fancy boots mucked up, I see,” Phelps said, approaching. He peered down at the lifeless form still wedged against Dain’s hip.
“What’d you do, skeer his dinner out o’ him?”