Et spes inanes et velut somnia quædam vigilantium.
Vain hopes are often like the dreams of those who wake.
—
QUINTILIAN DE INSTITUTIONE ORATORIA, BOOK VI, 2, 30
October 1808, Cheshire, England
Patience Rose Farnaly was rebellious, opinionated, and prone to lie.
Ah, her life would have been much simpler if she had been born a male!
Julian Phoenix’s hand connected with the underside of her jaw and sent her sprawling on the dirt floor of the barn. She choked on manure-laced dust as several vexed hens flapped their wings in agitation and scurried away from the violence.
Braced on all four limbs, she turned her face away from him and spat into the hay. Freedom had a price and she was willing to pay for it in blood if need be. Her blue eyes glittered with hatred when she tilted her face upward to meet his cool, steady gaze.
“No honeyed words to gain my obedience, Mr. Phoenix?” she mocked through gritted teeth. Patience rose and slowly sat back on her heels. She gingerly fingered the throbbing flesh on the left side of her face. The duplicitous snake had not spared his strength when he had slapped her. “You must be desperate.”
With swiftness she had not anticipated, he seized both her arms and dragged her onto her feet before she could dodge his grasp. “Not desperate, my lovely pigeon. I have grown bored indulging your high-and-mighty airs. Your tantrums no longer amuse me.”
Oh, Julian Phoenix was the devil himself. Her life lay in tatters at her feet, and now the scoundrel was demanding her very soul. How she wished she had never set eyes on him!
She shook off his bruising grip. “I was merely a girl when you beguiled me away from my family with false promises. I am six and ten. No longer am I blinded by the misguided notion of love. For some time, I have seen through your flattery and handsome face, sir.” Her upper lip curled in disgust. “A pity my
father never discovered beforehand that you intended to run off with his eldest daughter. A single ball into your black, shriveled heart and hundreds would have been spared the misery of your association.”
Phoenix took a step toward her, his face rigid with fury. “Impudent little witch! I’ll—”
Patience agilely ducked, avoiding his hand. If her disobedience was worthy of violence, then an insult to his pride was doubly so. Although she was terrified all the way down to her dainty feet of the man before her, she refused to back down. He had cost her too much. “You are getting clumsy, Phoenix. Have a care or someone is bound to tumble you onto your arrogant backside.” There was a defiant fire in her eyes as she circled him, keeping just out of his clawing reach.
Patience had made a fool of herself over Mr. Julian Phoenix from the first moment she had glimpsed him two years earlier while he spoke earnestly with her father, Sir Russell Farnaly. Mr. Phoenix and his merry band of players had been engaged for several performances by one of their neighbors. It had been a rare treat for the fourteen-year-old Patience. The family’s country house in rural Devon was far from the thrilling stages of London, and rarely were the inhabitants of her parish gifted with true talent. It was apparent to all who encountered him that Julian Phoenix at nineteen possessed talent. Two years ago,
Patience had gazed adoringly on his handsome face twisted in feigned agony while he made his small audience weep over the tragedies in his life, and hungered. Mr. Phoenix and his players were experiencing an adventurous life the daughter of a baronet should have not dared to contemplate.
Still, a young girl could dream.
They were like the traveling minstrels of old, moving from one village to another, bringing news from the towns Patience would likely never visit, and for a brief moment these wondrous players filled her mundane world with excitement. There was more to life than dance lessons, recitation from dry, uninteresting tomes, and limpid hues of watercolors she tried each afternoon to perfect. Oh, how she envied the players’ freedom, the fawning attention they had received after their performances from her family and neighbors.
She had almost fainted when her father had provided a personal introduction to Mr. Phoenix. Patience had shyly gazed up into his soulful brown eyes and sensed a kindred spirit. The subsequent meetings that took place without her family’s knowledge had sealed her fate. She wholly offered him her tender heart, and Phoenix vowed to share his beguiling world with her. Even when he had revealed his true vicious nature, she had remained at his side. Heartbroken and slightly wiser, she understood better than
Phoenix that her actions would be considered unforgivable by her parents. She had nowhere else to go.
“Come now, love,” Phoenix cajoled, realizing she was not cowed by violence. “Your skills for tragedy have been honed to a razor’s edge since our dramatic escape from your family’s lands. What I ask of you is no more than any sage miss would offer a prosperous gent who is willing to fill her greedy hands with gold.”
Panting slightly, Patience steadied herself by gripping one of the wooden structural posts of the barn. “And you knew my answer, even as you accepted Lord Grattan’s gold. I will not be your whore!” she shouted at him, feeling the tenuous control she had over her temper slipping from its tether. With a soft disgruntled sound, she squeezed her eyes shut and thumped her forehead lightly against the wooden post at her own gullibility. Slowly, Patience turned her face toward him as her eyes snapped open. She pinned him with a bitter look. “You swore this engagement with His Lordship was for theatrical performances. You assured me this was not one of your infamous swindles.” She shook her head in disbelief. “I should have sensed you were up to ugly business when you told the others to wait for us at the inn. How much was my virtue worth, Mr. Phoenix? Was the value so high, it is worth the risk of a few bruises to gain my consent?”
Phoenix lunged suddenly and caught one of her arms. Wrenching the abused limb sharply behind her back, he shoved her against the rough post. Patience would have rather bit her tongue in half than cry out.
“What virtue, little pigeon? I distinctly recall the pleasure I took on your stiff little body when I relieved you of your fragile honor,” he said cruelly. “Lord Grattan does not want a virgin. In truth, most are tiresome. What he desires is a pretty player who feigns virtue and yet is willing to pleasure him with the appetites of a Covent Garden whore.”
“Send Deidra,” Patience said, shuddering at the thought of being at the mercy of a man who viewed her only as a commodity that could be bought and sold. “She does not care who shares her bed, so long as she is compensated for the inconvenience.”
He rewarded the insolent remark by giving the arm pressed behind Patience’s back a painful twist. She squeezed her eyes tightly shut and endured. Like a translucent apparition, the young player’s face wavered in Patience’s mind. Deidra had no qualms about selling her body when the situation warranted. Although they had been discreet, Patience knew Phoenix and Deidra were lovers and had been so for years. When Deidra gazed at Phoenix, the blind devotion Patience glimpsed sickened her. Deidra was a constant reminder that love did not discriminate. It turned everyone into fools.
“Deidra is prettier, I grant you,” he said, turning his face into Patience’s hair and breathing in her scent. “And obedient, too. Regretfully, His Lordship is smitten with your fair young face, sweet Patience. Our bargain is nullified if I send another chit in your stead.”
Patience trembled against him. This was simply business to Julian Phoenix. He was anticipating the warmth of the hearth and the succulent-smelling dinner that awaited him back at the inn. “I cannot do it,” she said, shaking her head. “I cannot.” She had little left to sacrifice. If she surrendered to his demands, he would wholly break her. Patience tensed, bracing for the pain that was to come for her defiance.
Julian Phoenix surprised her. He kissed the top of her head and sighed with resignation. “Somehow, I would have thought less of you if you had simply agreed.” Abruptly he released her.
Still expecting some sort of trickery from him, Patience whirled around to confront him, but he had presented his back to her. “This is the end, then. You will refuse Lord Grattan’s offer.” As she rubbed her sore wrist, she tilted her head to the side, trying to deduce what Phoenix was doing.
“On the contrary, I have every intention of personally tucking you into His Lordship’s bed.” Although Phoenix’s back was still facing her, he
revealed a small dark glass bottle of laudanum that he must have kept in his inner pocket. “Past experience has taught me that even you can be amorous, even eagerly cooperative, with the proper inducement.” He turned his head and smiled.
The calculated cruelty in his grin forced her to recall another time when he had forced the foul tincture down her throat. He had stolen her virginity from her that night. She felt something physically snap within her, freeing her from her frozen stance.
“No!”
Patience made a stumbling charge at Julian Phoenix, her arms stiff in front of her. If she could get by him and out of the barn, she had a chance of reaching the carriage just beyond the door.
Like a trap being sprung, Phoenix lunged for her in an attempt to catch her. What he didn’t expect was that instead of dodging him, Patience collided with him in hopes of throwing him off balance. Both grunted at the bone-crunching collision, and Julian Phoenix staggered backward with Patience fiercely clutched to his chest. He fell against a wooden railing dividing the barn into sections and froze. A look of horror washed away his earlier anger and determination. Patience fell to her knees as he brought shaking hands to his side.
Something was terrible wrong.
Phoenix’s face was ashen. Even his lips had a bluish gray cast to them. His stance also seemed awkward. He had yet to move away from the railing they had collided against. Getting to her feet, she watched him warily open the left side of his coat.
“Oh my God,” she said, her voice high with fear as she brought her hand to her throat. “The blood!”
The unveiling revealed a bloodstained waistcoat. More disturbing were the evenly sharp tines puncturing his abdomen. A small helpless sound rattled in her throat as she circled around to glimpse the weapon of Julian Phoenix’s downfall.
It was a long hay fork.
The angle at which the fork had entered his back left him literally pinned to the railing. Phoenix tried to straighten, but his movements lacked his usual grace.
“Pray, halt. Your floundering only makes what I have to do worse,” she pleaded.
“I seem—I seem to be caught on something,” Phoenix confessed, glancing about the barn in confusion.
“I know,” she grimly replied. The end of the handle was buried in the strewn hay on the dirt floor. Phoenix was wiggling like bait on a hook. Patience’s stomach roiled at the thought. Tentatively she bent down to pick up the handle.
He screamed at the barest movement. “Leave it!”
Phoenix looked horrible. His black hair was damp with sweat and his entire body was trembling. Patience hated him, but she discovered that she was not as heartless as she had thought. She felt no satisfaction in watching him suffer.
“You have impaled yourself on a hay fork,” she said quietly. “I cannot remove it without assistance, and you are losing too much blood for me to summon help. Can you stand if I help you?”
“Spitted like a pig,” he said through gritted teeth. “How you must relish my predicament.”
“Immensely,” she blandly replied, hoping his anger would give him strength. Patience placed her left hand on his shoulder blade as she threaded her fingers on her right hand through the tines. “Though it was another creature that came to mind. Now, try to stand.”
He was tall, but his lean figure belied the heaviness of marble. Patience pressed her face against the hand on his back and pushed.
Phoenix chuckled faintly. “Which God’s creature do you view me akin to, my cruel pigeon? A rat? A sss-skunk?”
His entire body was straining to obey her command to rise. Patience renewed her efforts to shove him onto his feet. She fully expected him to collapse the minute she removed the tines from his back.
“No,” she panted, the irony that she was rescuing the very man who minutes earlier had planned to drug and sell her to some debauched earl not lost on her. When she had a moment to reflect on it, she could lament over her foolish actions. “More like a slimy squirming worm!”
Bracing herself for what was to come, Patience ruthlessly jerked the wooden tines out of his flesh.
Phoenix screamed and crumpled face-first into the soiled hay. Dropping the hay fork, Patience slipped through the railing and crouched down next to the unmoving man. Heaven help them both, there was so much blood. When she rolled him over, he did not even cry out. The front of him looked worse than his backside. She worried her lip as she pondered what she should do. She had no skill in the healing arts. The blood had soaked through his coat, and his breeches gleamed with the spreading wetness. Patience was so horrified by the blood, she started when he suddenly spoke.
“You’ve had your revenge on me, have you not?” he rasped, blood seeping from the corners of his mouth. Even the gaps between his teeth were tinged with blood. “You’ve killed me.”