“Squirrel again tonight, Garbie?” a gravelly voice demanded.
“Unless Croome comes back with more game.”
“This time o’ night? Not dashed likely.”
“More likely he’s lyin’ foxed in the Brown Dog, restin’ his head on Molly’s soft pillows.”
“Not Croome,” another said. “Never knew such a monkish man.”
Laughter followed.
Every instinct told Olivia to flee even as she froze where she stood. This was no family, nor any party of gentlemen. Fear slithering up her spine, she turned and stepped away from the tree.
“Wha’s that?”
A young man’s loud whisper stopped Olivia’s retreat. She stood still, afraid to make another sound.
“What’s what? I don’t hear nofin’.”
“Maybe it is Croome.”
Olivia took a tentative tiptoe step. Then another. A sticky web coated her face, startling her, and she stumbled over a log onto the ground.
Before she could right herself, the sound of footsteps surrounded her and harsh lamplight blinded her.
“Well, kiss my bonnie luck star,” a young man breathed.
Olivia struggled to her feet and pushed down her skirts. She brushed her fallen hair from her face and tried to remain calm.
“Croome’s got a mite prettier since we saw ’im last,” said a second young man.
Beside him, a bearded hulk glowered down at her. In the harsh, gravelly voice she had first heard, he demanded, “What are ya doin’ here?”
Panic shot through her veins. “Na—nothing! I saw your fire and I—”
“Looking for some company, were ya?” The big man’s leer chilled her to the marrow. “Well, ya come to the right place—hasn’t she, lads?”
“Aye,” another agreed.
The big man reached for her, but Olivia recoiled. “No, you misunderstand me,” she said. “I simply lost my way. I don’t want—”
“Oh, but we do want.” His gleaming eyes were very like those of the wild dog.
The stout stick she had been carrying was on the ground, where it had landed when she fell. She lunged for it, but the man grabbed her from behind. “Where d’ya think yer going? Nowhere soon, I’d wager.”
Olivia cried out, but did manage to get her hand around the stick as he hauled her up.
“Let go of me!”
The burly man laughed. Olivia spun in his arms and swung the stick like a club. With a thwack, it caught the side of his head. He yelled and covered the wound with his hands.
Olivia scrambled away, but two other men grabbed her arms and legs, wrestled the stick from her, and bore her back to the fire.
“You all right, Borcher?” the youngest man asked, voice high.
“I will be. Which is more’n I can say for her.”
“Please!” Olivia implored the men who held her. “Release me, I beg of you. I am a decent girl from Withington.”
“My brother lives near there,” the youngest man offered.
“Shut up, Garbie,” Borcher ordered.
“Perhaps I have met your brother,” she said desperately. “What is his na—?”
“Shut yer trap!” Borcher charged forward, hand raised.
“Borcher, don’t,” young Garbie urged. “Let her go.”
“After the hoyden hit me? Not likely.” Borcher grabbed her roughly, pinning both arms to her sides with one long, heavy arm and pressing her back against a tree.
She tried in vain to stomp on his foot, but her kid slippers were futile against his boots. “No!” she shouted. “Someone help me. Please!”
His free hand flashed up and clasped her jaw, steely fingers clamping her cheeks in a vise that stilled her shouts. She wrenched her head to the side and bit down on his thumb as hard as she could.
Borcher yelled, yanked his hand away, and raised it in a menacing fist.
Olivia winced her eyes shut, bracing herself for the inevitable blow.
Fwwt. Smack. Something whizzed by her captor’s ear and shuddered into the tree above her. She opened her eyes as Borcher whirled his head around. Across the clearing, at the edge of the firelight, a man stood atop a tree stump, bow and arrow poised.
“Let her go, Phineas,” the man drawled in an irritated voice.
“Mind yer own affairs, Croome.” Borcher raised his fist again.
Another arrow whooshed by, slicing into the tree bark with a crack.
“Croome!” Borcher swore.
“Next time, I shall aim,” the man called Croome said dryly. Though he appeared a slight, older man, cool authority steeled his words.
Borcher released Olivia with a hard shove. The back of her head hit the tree, where long arrows still quivered above her. Even the jarring pain in her skull did not diminish the relief washing over her. In the flickering firelight, she looked again at her rescuer, still perched on the stump. He was a gaunt man of some sixty years in a worn hat and hunting coat. Ash grey hair hung down to his shoulders. A game bag was slung over one of them. The bow he held seemed a natural extension of his arm.
“Thank you, sir,” she said.
He nodded.
Glimpsing the stout stick by the light of the forgotten lamp, Olivia bent to retrieve it. Then turned to make her escape.
“Wait.” Croome’s voice was rough but not threatening. He stepped down from the stump, and she waited as he approached.
His height—tall for a man of his years—and limping gait surprised her. “Take the provisions I brought for these undeserving curs.”
She accepted a quarter loaf of bread and a sack of apples. Her stomach rumbled on cue. But when he extended a limp hare from his game bag, she shook her head.
“Thank you, no. This is more than enough.”
One wiry eyebrow rose. “To make up for what they did to you—and would have done?”
Olivia stiffened. She shook her head and said with quiet dignity, “No, sir. I am afraid not.” She handed back the bread and apples, turned, and strode smartly from the clearing.
His raspy chuckle followed her. “Fool . . .”
And she was not certain if he spoke of her or of himself.
Olivia walked quickly away by the moonlight filtering through the autumn-bare branches, the stick outstretched before her like a blindman’s cane. She stayed alert for any hint of being followed but heard nothing save the occasional to-wooo of a tawny owl or the feathery scurrying of small nocturnal creatures. Eventually her fear faded into exhaustion and hunger. Perhaps I should not have been so proud, she thought, her stomach chastising her with a persistent ache.
Finally, unable to trudge along any further, she curled into a ball beside a tree. She searched her cape pockets for her gloves, but only one remained—the other lost in the wood, no doubt. She again felt the firm bundle in her pocket but did not bother to examine it in the dark. Shivering, she drew her hooded cape close around herself and covered her thin slippers with handfuls of leaves and pine needles for warmth. Images of her mother’s terrified eyes and of a man’s body lying facedown on the dark floor tried to reassert themselves, but she pushed them away, escaping into the sweet forgetfulness of sleep.
Chapter 2
Send her to a boarding-school,
in order to learn a little ingenuity and artifice.
Then, Sir, she should have a supercilious knowledge in accounts . . .
—R. B. SHERIDAN, THE RIVALS, 1775
Olivia awoke to birdsong and mist, her hand still grasping the heavy stick. It reminded her once more of the fire iron, and she was tempted to hurl it away. But was it not her only protection from wild dogs if not wicked men?
The sunrise glimmered through the canopy of branches, beribboned with sparse, tenacious leaves. Her limbs were stiff, her toes numb from sleeping on cold, rooted ground. She rubbed warmth into her hands, then her feet, before replacing her shoes. If she had known what would happen yesterday, she would have taken time to lace on half boots instead of wearing her flimsy kid slippers.
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The dreadful scene replayed in her mind.
She’d come home late from her post at Miss Cresswell’s school. Found her father’s coat on an overturned chair. Her slippers crunched on broken glass. What had he thrown this time? A drinking glass? A bottle? A shrill cry pulled her into the bedchamber, dark, but light enough to see a chilling sight—the back of a man with his hands around her mother’s throat. Her mother’s eyes wide, gasping for air . . .
Olivia had not thought, only reacted, and suddenly the fire iron was in her hand. She raised it high and slammed it down with a sickening clang, and he fell facedown on the floor. The force of the blow reverberated up her arm and into her shoulder. Numbing shock followed like an icy wave. She stared, unmoving, as her mother sucked in haggard draws of air.
Then her mother was beside her, pulling the fire iron from her stiff fingers, and drawing her from the room, through the kitchen to the front door, both of them trembling.
“Did I kill him?” Olivia had whispered, glancing back at the darkened bedchamber door. “I did not mean to do it. I only—”
“Hush. He breathes still, and may revive any moment. You must leave before he sees you. Before he learns who struck him.”
By the light of the kitchen fire, Olivia glimpsed the welts already rising on her mother’s neck. “Then you must come with me. He might have killed you!”
Dorothea Keene nodded, pressing shaky fingers to her temples, trying to concentrate. “But first I will go to Muriel’s. She will know what to do. But he must never know you were here. You . . . you have left the village . . . for a post. Yes.”
“But where? I don’t know of any—”
“Far from here.” Her mother squeezed her eyes shut, thinking. “Go to my . . . go to St. Aldwyns. East of Barnsley. I know one of the sisters who manage the school there. They may have a post, or at least take you in.”
Her mother turned and hurried across the kitchen. Reaching up, she winced as she pulled a small bundle from behind a portrait frame.
“I cannot leave you, Mamma—you are hurt!”
Returning, her mother gripped her arm. “If he should die, it will be the noose for you. And that would kill me more surely than he ever could.”
She shoved the bundle into Olivia’s cape pocket. “Take this and go. And promise me you will not return. I will come to you when I can. When it is safe.”
A low moan rumbled from the other room, and panic seized them both. “Go now. Run!”
And Olivia ran.
The scene faded from her mind, and Olivia shuddered. She drew forth the small bundle, studying it by morning’s light. At first glance, it looked like an old, folded handkerchief, but on closer inspection, she saw that it had seams and a small beaded clasp.
Why had her mother made this? Had she foreseen last night’s events and Olivia’s need to flee? Or had she been prepared to make her own escape, from a husband whose violent temper had been escalating for months?
Olivia opened the concealed purse and examined its contents. Four guinea coins were tacked in with thread, to keep them from jingling and giving away their hiding place, she supposed. There was also a letter. She picked it up, but saw it was firmly sealed with wax. She turned it over and read the tiny script in her mother’s fine hand: To be opened only upon my death. Olivia’s heart started. What in the world? She thought once more of her father’s jealous rages—the overturned chairs, the broken glass, the holes punched in the wall. Still, Olivia had never believed he would actually harm his own wife. Had her mother feared that very thing? Curiosity gnawed at her, but she quickly returned the letter to its place.
As she did, she felt a thin disk within the folds of fabric, apparently a fifth, smaller, coin. A small tear in the lining revealed its would-be escape route. Curious, she worked the coin with stiff fingers back to the hole. As she extracted the shilling, a scrap of paper came with it. It was an inch-by-three-inch rectangle, torn from a newspaper, yellowed with age. It appeared to be a brief portion of a marriage announcement.
. . . the Earl of Brightwell of his son,
Lord Bradley to Miss Marian Estcourt
of Cirencester, daughter of . . .
Brightwell . . . Estcourt . . . the names echoed dully in Olivia’s mind. She could not recall her mother mentioning either name before. Why had she kept the clipping?
Her stomach growled and Olivia tucked away the paper—and her questions—for another time. Gingerly she rose and began pulling leaves and needles from her hair. Brushing off her cape and dress, she grimaced at a long tear in her bodice. Her shift and one strap of her stays showed. Thinking of her peril of the previous night, she shuddered, realizing the damage could have been far worse. She pulled up the hanging flap of bodice and tied it crudely to the strip of torn cloth at her shoulder. She hoped she didn’t look as dreadful as she felt.
She tried to run her fingers through her hair and discovered it was a knotted mess, her neat coil long-since fallen. She longed for a bath and a comb. No use in fretting about it now, she told herself. If I don’t get moving, no one but the trees shall see me anyway.
Olivia once more wove her way through the trees and underbrush, wondering if the schoolmistress her mother knew would really take in a stranger, and what Olivia would do if not. She bit the inside of her cheek to hold back self-pity and tears. She breathed a quick prayer for her mother and kept walking, her breath rising on the cold morning air.
The trees thinned as the sun rose higher in the sky, lifting her spirits with it. She saw a ribbon of road ahead and decided to follow it, knowing she could return to the shelter of the wood if necessary.
She walked along the road for several minutes, then accepted a ride in the back of a farmer’s wagon. His wife looked askance at the stick in her hand but did not comment.
After many jostling, jerking miles, the farmer called a welcome “whoa” to his old nag and smiled back at Olivia. “That’s our farm up the lane there, so this is as far as we can take you.”
Thanking the couple, Olivia climbed stiffly from the wagon and asked the way to St. Aldwyns.
“Follow the river there,” the farmer said, pointing. “It’ll be quicker than the road, though you’ll not meet another wagon.”
Olivia followed the river as it passed through a rolling vale, skirted a tiny hamlet, then another. Soon after that, the river disappeared within a copse of trees. Not another wood . . . Olivia lamented. She did not wish to lose her way, so she took a deep breath and entered the copse.
The trees were not dense, and through them she saw an open field beyond. Having had her fill of trees the previous night, she walked faster.
A sound startled Olivia, and she stopped abruptly. Listening over her pounding heart, she heard it once more. Barking. Her stomach lurched. More wild dogs? Coming fast! She was running before she consciously chose to, stick banging against her leg. With her free hand, she hiked up her skirts and darted onto the field. Ignoring the cinder burning in her side, she ran on, not daring to pause to look behind her. Another sound joined the first—a low rumble, growing louder. Thunder? A search party?
The dogs drew closer—she could hear the barking distinctly now—they were nearly upon her. Panic gripped her. Something nipped at her skirts, and she spun around, swinging the stick and yelling at the top of her voice.
“Be gone! Go!” The barking dogs skidded and jumped. She grazed one on its rump, and it yelped and ran away.
Slowly the blur of mottled fur came into focus and she realized these were not wild dogs at all. Horse hooves thundered around her. She looked up in a daze as a small army of scarlet coats and black hats—men in hunting attire—charged up on all sides.
“Stand clear!” one of the riders shouted, his roan galloping dangerously close.
She leapt out of his way. Then she screamed and lifted her arms over her head—for she had jumped right into the path of an oncoming horse. Its rider pulled up sharply and the black horse skittered and reared up. Dirt flew, splattering
Olivia’s face. The horse’s hooves flashed inches from her chin and then exploded onto the ground before her.
“What on earth do you think you are doing?” The rider of the black yelled down. “Are you mad?”
Other riders—whippers-in and gentlemen on field hunters of white, grey, and chestnut—circled around her, their voices raised and angry.
“You have spoilt an excellent hunt!” This from the elderly master of the hunt, silver side-whiskers showing beneath his telltale velvet hat. His lined, aristocratic face was nearly as red as his coat.
“She tried to kill the hounds!” another accused. “The lead dog is limping.”
“I thought they were wild dogs!” Olivia sputtered in lame defense.
“Wild dogs!” the huntsman echoed, copper horn hanging from his neck. “I don’t believe it. Are you daft?”
She wiped her sleeve across her eyes to clear the mud and her mind. “No. I . . . I—”
“I believe her, gentlemen.” The rider of the black horse dismounted and grabbed the stick from her hand. “She is obviously armed to ward off wild dogs.”
“From the looks of the chit,” the stout rider of the roan called down, “I’d say she battled a mud puddle—and lost.”
The other men laughed. Ignoring the jeers, Olivia kept her eyes on the tall young man before her. Though not the master of the hunt, and by all appearances no older than she was, he was clearly a leader of men and cut an imposing figure in his hunting kit and Hessian boots.
Forcing her voice into cool civility, she said, “I am sorry about the dog. Now kindly return my stick, sir.”
His eyes were glittering blue glass in a face that would have been handsome were it not imperious and angry. “I believe not. You are far too dangerous.”
Olivia could feel her anger mounting as the men continued their laughter and taunts. But it was the disdainful smirk of the young man before her that threatened her self-control, already worn thin by recent stress and lack of sound sleep. She thrust out her hand. “Return it to me at once.”