Darkwitch Rising (30 page)

Noah hesitated a moment longer, then nodded. Thornton aided her to her horse, lifted Catling to his own, and then himself mounted, leading the way back to the road and the way south.

From the fields of St Albans it was but a two-hour ride at a sedate walk to where the Thanets lived in their large red brick house. Thornton told Noah and Catling that Thomas’ great-grandfather had been a successful merchant during Queen Elizabeth’s later years. With the riches he’d made from his business he’d purchased an estate just to the north of Bushey Park, and built
Langley House in the showy Elizabethan style. There the Thanets settled, selling their business and engaging, over the next two or three generations, in a gradual process of gentrification.

“Thomas’ father represented the county in the House of Commons,” Thornton said as they turned their mounts down the long drive towards the house. “Now Thomas hopes to do the same in Charles II’s new Parliament.”

“It shall be a grand new age,” Noah said, but something in her voice made Thornton look at her sharply.

“You don’t think so,” he said.

She gave a slight shrug. “So much can always go wrong.”

Thornton grunted. “You are a pessimist, indeed.”

“Indeed,” she said, and Thornton would have challenged her on that had not the front doors of the house opened that instant to reveal a well-dressed man and woman, presumably the Thanets, hurrying to meet the man, woman and child approaching the house.

“John!” Thomas Thanet exclaimed, catching at the reins of Thornton’s horse as Thornton dismounted. They shook hands enthusiastically, then Thornton stepped forward and kissed Leila Thanet’s hand. “I am so happy to see you well,” he said, glancing at her rounded six-month belly.

Flustered, Leila stepped back from Thornton and looked to Noah, as well as to the little girl still sitting on Thornton’s horse.

“John,” she said, her smile broadening, “you did not tell us you were bringing your new wife with you! What a wonderful surprise.” She looked over to Noah, who was staring at Leila with a shocked expression. “Welcome, my dear! You cannot know how happy we are to know that John has found his soul mate at last!”

Before Noah could open her mouth to protest, Thornton said, “She is my life, Leila. I cannot imagine existing without her.”

Noah was furious. She stood in the centre of the large and well appointed bedchamber to which Leila had led them (Catling, who Thornton had explained was Noah’s child from a previous marriage, had been taken to meet the Thanets’ children), her face flushed and her posture stiff.

“You did not tell me you had married your Sarah!”

“I thought you would be pleased for me.”

“I am! I am! But I would not have stayed with you in the manner I did if I had known you had married…and now the Thanets think I am your wife, and—”

“And if you tell them not, after having allowed Leila to show us to this private chamber, what shall she think? That I am disporting myself with some strumpet from Watford? Or a whore I picked up along the roadway?”

“
This
,” Noah waved her hand at the bed which took up almost half of the entire space of the chamber, “is a lie!”

Thornton sighed. “How can we now explain that—”

“Explaining
now
will take a greater skill at diplomacy than either you or I possess, I think. What should have happened, the moment Leila mistook me for your wife, was to set her to rights,
not
to stand there like a lovelorn donkey and say, ‘She is my life. I cannot imagine existing without her’.”

“And that
was
the truth, Noah,” Thornton said quietly. “To have said anything else would have been a lie.”

Noah’s shoulders slumped, her anger draining away. “Gods,” she said, “how I have mismanaged this.”

She turned away, walking to the bed and stroking the beautifully embroidered coverlet. “Here we are, arguing as if we are, truly, a married couple.”

He said nothing, and she looked back to him.

“John, what will you say when one day Thomas and Leila meet your true wife? And what shall
Sarah
say when she knows you have stayed here a night with a strange woman in your bed who you passed off as her?”

Thornton shrugged. “I shall think of some explanation.” In truth, Thornton did not like to think what would happen once his new wife heard of this. He hadn’t meant to say what he had when Leila called Noah his wife…but the words somehow had slipped out and, as he had just said to Noah, they
were
the truth.

Noah rubbed a hand over her forehead, as if her head ached. “Well, at least we shall be gone in the morning.” She studied the bed once more. “And thank the gods the bed is wide enough that we may keep fully half an acre between us during the night.”

Thornton had noted not only Noah’s hand rubbing at her forehead, but her slight wince as she had turned to the bed. “Your back, Noah? Does it pain you.”

“A little.”

“I shall ask Leila for some soothing water and—”

“For sweet Christ’s sake, John, you cannot let her see the welts. She will think you one who prefers to take his pleasures through pain rather than gentle caresses!”

“I shall wash your back myself,” Thornton said, “and how could I manage this, if Leila did not think me your husband? You can afford no one else to see those wounds if you do not want them calling the sheriff so that your attacker might be taken into custody.”

“Catling—” Noah stopped short, and Thornton wondered why she could not rely on Catling to wash her back for her.

“Catling is a wondrous child,” said Thornton, “but those wounds need more care than she can give.”

Noah sighed, and sat down on the bed. “I have no concern for myself with these lies in which we have enmeshed ourselves, John, but for you. When the Thanets—when your
wife
—discover the deception you have played—”

“Then I shall live with the consequences,” said Thornton. “Now, rest, for I am going to ask Leila for the water with which to soothe your back.”

T
hornton knew almost as soon as he rose the next morning that they would not be riding anywhere that day. Selfishly, he was glad. Once he’d stepped from the bed, Thornton had opened one of the shuttered windows, expecting to see bright sunlight.

Instead all he saw was the unrelieved gloom of rain lashing against the panes of glass. He recalled the strength of the westerly wind of yesterday. A late spring gale had blown in from the Atlantic and, if his experience was any judge, would take all day to blow itself out.

No one but a fool would try to ride in this.

“John?” Noah was sitting on her side of the bed, shivering in her thin linen nightgown. She reached for a shawl and wrapped it about her shoulders as she stood and walked over to join Thornton.

He nodded to the storm outside. “We’ll be staying here this day.”

“I have to keep moving, John.”

There was a terrible tightness in her voice, as if she were frightened, and Thornton put an arm about her shoulders and drew her in close.

Noah’s eyes were fixed on the rain pelting against the window, and she didn’t object to his touch.

“Noah,” he said, “no one should ride in this rain and wind. If you don’t kill yourself then you’ll kill your horse…and, by God Himself, you couldn’t want to take
Catling
out in this?”

She shivered again, and Thornton pulled her a little closer. “What are you frightened of?” he said.

To that Noah gave a small shake of her head. “I
have
to keep moving.”

“Why? Will your friend Jane Orr pout and sulk if you be delayed a day?”

“Not her,” Noah whispered, and before Thornton could ask her
Who, then
? there came a knock at the door, and it opened before either Thornton or Noah could respond.

It was Thomas Thanet, wearing a thin, loose coat over his own nightgown. He grinned at the sight of Thornton and Noah standing so intimately close at the window.

“You’ll be staying a while, then,” he said. “Poor weather in which to be travelling.”

Thornton’s arm tightened about Noah as he felt her start to move away. “Aye,” he said, smiling easily. “Shall we stretch your hospitality to breaking point?”

“We’ll be glad of the chance to keep you a while longer,” said Thomas. “Leila was saying to me last night that she regretted not having the chance to know Noah better. Why, my dear,” he said, his eyes now on Noah, “before dinner she’ll have pried from you every secret you harbour, I swear.”

Noah smiled wanly, and Thornton felt her shiver once more.

It was, all in all, a dismal day.

Despite Thomas Thanet’s initial cheerfulness, by the time everyone had breakfasted the grey, frigid rain had affected the mood of the entire household. Catling
retreated into a sullen silence, Noah responded only grudgingly to every question Leila asked, and Thomas Thanet himself descended into a fug not unlike the outside weather.

“Your wife is
most
reticent,” Leila Thanet confided to Thornton in the mid-afternoon. Noah had just taken Catling to the bed in the chamber she shared with one of the Thanet girls.

“She has had ill news regarding a friend,” Thornton said, now regretful that he’d put Noah in this position. He hadn’t realised how greatly Leila would pester her with questions, and over the course of the day had noticed Noah’s posture becoming stiffer and stiffer. He thought it might partly be due to annoyance at Leila’s probing, but knew too well that her back was most likely paining her. The welts had gone down from when he first saw them, but they were obviously still extremely painful. Noah wore the bare minimum of clothing needed for modesty—her figure was good enough for her to manage without the corsets that most gentlewomen wore under their tightlylaced bodices—but even the soft linens of her chemise and light material of her bodice must cause constant chafing against her back.

Not for the first time this day, Thornton thanked God that at least Noah was being removed into the relative safety of London from whoever it was at Woburn who had caused her injuries.

Weyland paced back and forth in the kitchen of his house in Idol Lane.

“She’s not moving,” he said.

“Dear God,” Jane said, and lifted a hand from where she rolled out pastry on the table to wave it at the window, “look at the weather. This storm has enveloped half of England…
no one
is moving!”

“But I
require
her to move,” Weyland said. His face was working, as if he battled something within himself. “She
can’t
think she can get away with this. She
can’t
!”

He lifted a hand—

“No!” Jane cried, starting away from the table to where Weyland stood. “Don’t—”

She stopped, then dropped to the floor, clutching her belly, her face screwed up in agony, a single whimper escaping her opened mouth.

“
Don’t
speak so sharp to me,” Weyland hissed at her, then his eyes lost his focus, and he spoke a single word.

“
Noah
.”

And that single word was followed in Weyland’s mind by a single, simple, telling phrase.

I’m sorry
…

Thornton saw her go rigid, saw her face go bloodless, saw the panic and terror in her eyes, and, while he did not know the specifics of what was happening, knew he had to get her to their chamber as fast as he could.

Noah gave a terrible groan, then went rigid, her head straining backwards, her back arched.

Both Leila and Thomas lurched to their feet, each exclaiming, but Thornton almost threw himself across the space separating Noah’s chair from his, and grabbed her to him.

“Her head,” he said. “She has the most profound attacks of brain ague.”

It was the best he could think of on the spur of the moment, but it seemed to satisfy the Thanets’ immediate question.

“No wonder she could not bear my questioning,” Leila said. “Her head must have been aching all morning.”

Neither she nor her husband seemed to notice that it was Noah’s back that was the cause of her distress.

“John,” Noah managed to gasp out. “John, please, our chamber…”

Thornton needed no other encouragement. He lifted Noah in his arms, trying his best not to touch her back, although she cried out harshly as one of his arms scraped across just below her shoulders, and made for the great staircase as fast as his legs could carry him.

“Not…not…” Noah said, and Thornton thought he knew what she was trying to say.

“She just needs some quiet,” he said to the Thanets. “I’ll let you know once the worst has passed.”

And with that he was gone, Noah groaning desperately in his arms, and the Thanets were left to stand in the centre of their hall, mouths agape.

Jane writhed uncaring on the floor as her head, arms and body hit the table legs. All she knew was the agony, all she knew was the suffering, all she knew was…

Something intruded into her blinding morass of pain. It was nothing recognisable, merely a presence, but Jane grabbed on to it without thinking or reasoning as to what it may have been.

It was a companion in pain.

Someone else who suffered and who, somehow, had forged a connection to her.

Thornton kicked open the door to their bedchamber. Noah was now writhing in his arms, and biting her lips to keep from screaming out loud.

Catling had appeared at the head of the stairs, and now she shut the door as Thornton lowered Noah to the bed.

She rolled away from him instantly, and a terrible groan ripped out of her throat.

For an instant Thornton stood helplessly, not sure of what he should do. He glanced at Catling—she was standing at the foot of the bed, watching her mother with unreadable eyes—then Noah had rolled back towards Thornton, was reaching out to him with one hand, and was moaning and sobbing: “
Sweet gods in heaven, please, please, please
…”