Lord Monroe's Dark Tower: The Albright Sisters: Book 2 (21 page)

The innkeeper approached. A tall man with a curved spine and a head that hung before him like a too heavy flower, said, “We’ve porter and ale, a nice mutton … ”

Claire held her hands up to stop his litany. “When is the next coach for Bournemouth?”

“There’s one in ten minutes. They’re changing the horses now.”

“Can you tell me if it’s full?”

He stepped behind a counter and examined the waybill. “Aye, she’s full all right.”

“We must have two seats.” Claire fumbled through her reticule, finally producing a ten pound note.

“For you and … ?”

“My chaperone.” She indicated Mrs. Gower.

The man swayed his large head doubtfully.

“Ask the coachman, please.”

She followed the innkeeper to the door and peered through the glass as he crossed the courtyard. Abella’s dulcet voice grew in intensity as she built toward the climax of her song. A dense crowd had gathered around the players. Claire prayed she and Mrs. Gower could sneak out unnoticed.

To the left of the strollers, the driver of the Bournemouth coach — a squat man with red cheeks — loaded a trunk into the compartment under his seat. The innkeeper, hands in pockets, spoke as the driver continued working. With abrupt and angry gestures, the driver waved his arms. Clearly, a
no
.

Reluctantly, the innkeeper produced the ten-pound note, but the driver pushed it away. He picked up another trunk and brought it around to the far side of the coach where Claire lost sight of him. The innkeeper followed. What seemed like hours ticked by. “Please, please,” she begged in a soft whisper, all the while keeping an eye on the throng surrounding Abella.

Finally, the innkeeper emerged from behind the coach, just as the audience burst into applause. The man looked grim.

Claire ducked around the corner as the innkeeper opened the door and stepped through. She summoned him to the side where Abella would be unlikely to spot her. “He’ll take you, but not the other, and only because you’re slim.”

“You can’t leave me here with her,” Mrs. Gower said, appearing from the far side of a grandfather clock where she’d been hiding.

“Please, Mrs. Gower. Book a room for the night. I’ll be back with Flavian, possibly in a few hours if I can find him.” Before the chaperone could answer, Claire hobbled out the door, and holding the crutches in one hand, hopped down the porch stairs, across the courtyard, and into the opened door of the coach. Still mercifully gathered around Abella, the audience shouted for another song. Claire breathed a sigh of relief.

“Which one’s your trunk?” said the driver, poking his red face in the window.

“It doesn’t matter. I’m not taking it.”

His little eyes went hard. “Unseemly, a lady traveling without a chaperone or somat to wear. I want nothing to do wit the business.”

Claire sneaked a look past him out the window. Abella started another tune. Reproaching herself for losing her calm, she said, “It’s on the London-bound coach — a slatted oak with a dome top. I believe it appears a bit finer than the others.”

The driver pulled his head from the window, and at that moment, Abella danced onto the inn’s porch still singing to the rapt crowd. Claire sank into the seat.

“Take the fine trunk down,” the driver shouted, “I’ll be carrying the lady back to Bournemouth.”

Abella’s song faltered. Claire wrung her hands, hoping against hope that the failed notes had nothing to do with her. She inched over on the squabs and peered out the window. Like daggers, Abella’s dark eyes found her and pierced to the hilt. It took every ounce of reasoning and a badly sprained ankle to keep Claire from bolting from the vehicle and running desperately away. Abella knew Flavian would stop her trek to London, but would she try to halt Claire’s attempt to reach him?

• • •

An hour later, Flavian closed the door and stepped down the threshold of the Mayor’s Parlour in Christchurch. The man was an imbecile. Instead of simply answering his question about the troupe of stollers, the fool kept showing off tricks with his little spotted dog. “Roll over, Biddy. See how she does that nice as you please.”

“The dog is a miracle. But what I have to ask is exceedingly important. Lives may be at stake. The King’s Players, they’re called, do you know where they travel after Christchurch? Will they go east along the coast or inland?”

The canine chose that moment to leap into his master’s arms. “Uh oh, she’s going to lick my nose! Wait and see.” Flavian chose not to wait. A sense of foreboding gripped him, and the longer each delay took, the more powerful his anxiety grew. Something dreadful might have already happened to Abella. Perhaps she harmed a fellow actress out of jealousy for a part in a play, or maybe a young man was seducing her at this minute. With her wild spirit, Abella might put herself in danger with a band of roving soldiers who would rape her. Hadn’t he heard of such a thing attempted on an actress at Drury Lane?

Across Castle Street a pocked young man in a filthy apron swept sawdust from a butcher’s shop. “Pardon me,” said Flavian, “did strollers perform in Christchurch recently?”

The boy’s dull eyes lit up, but instead of answering, he retreated into the shop and shut the door. Dumbfounded, Flavian kicked the sawdust, “Are they all mad in this city?”

As he crossed the square toward a candle maker’s, around the corner rumbled a dung cart. A haggard wench, skirts tucked high above naked feet, pushed the heavy load. If anyone would notice a moment of free entertainment, it would be she, Flavian thought. “Madam,” he said.

The woman set down her wheelbarrow and dropped into a deep and crooked curtsey. “My lord.”

“Get on now, Betty Dunghill,” cried a voice from behind. The butcher, a fat man with hands bloody from raw meat, appeared in the shop door. “You don’t know yr’ own father’s name. If there’s a question, I’ll be the one answering.”

Eyes flashing with resentment, the woman hoisted the handles of her cart and scuttled away.

“The King’s Players, did they visit?”

“They might’ve. What’s a fine gentleman such as yourself asking for?”

“That’s none of your concern. Were they here or not?”

“Aye, I understand ya’.” A wily expression came to the butcher’s face. “You’re seekin’ the Spanish Lark. Not a cull in Christchurch’ll forget her performance.”

Before he could think, Flavian had the butcher by the collar, and though the man weighed half again as much, lifted him nose to nose. “You’ll wipe all such thoughts from your mind. Now, tell me where they went.”

The man’s cocky demeanor melted. “Apologies, my lord. I’d no notion of your feelings.” Before the butcher could paw Flavian’s lapels, he tossed the man aside.

Adjusting his apron, resentment narrowing the butcher’s lids, he said, “They’re on to New Milton.”

“You’re certain? Because that’s the shoreline route, and I suspect they might be on their way to London.”

“Aye, my lord, it’s for New Milton they’re headed.”

Flavian tossed the butcher a shilling, ran across the square, leaped into the saddle, and urged Killen into a fast trot.

• • •

When the last soaring note ended, the audience in front of the inn burst into wild applause, clamoring for another. The bearded actor’s voice thundered above the commotion. “Tonight, come see our Spanish Lark perform Shakespeare’s Cleopatra.”

Claire didn’t dare look out the window again. Laid flat on the coach seat, she trembled listening to the beating of the drum as the strollers left the courtyard. Then all was quiet.

The scraping of her trunk as it was loaded on the roof startled her. Heat dampened her palms and forehead.
Oh, could they never get this coach moving
.

After what felt like an interminable wait, the other passengers loaded into the vehicle — three families, chatting familiarly with one another, with a herd of children too large to count. Boys and fathers clambered on the roof, girls and mothers squeezed into the compartment. Claire, already jammed against the window, volunteered to take a toddler onto her lap. There was nowhere else for the child to sit.

The company finally settled, and then — at last — the driver cracked his whip and slowly the carriage pulled away from the inn. Claire’s hands, clenched around the little girl’s waist, finally relaxed.

• • •

As they approached Burley, Claire heard shouts from the roof of the coach. Unable to tell what was being said, she craned her head out the window. A horse came thundering after them — a flash of white aboard. So quickly did the rider approach, Claire didn’t realize it was Abella, still dressed in her makeshift Cleopatra costume, until the horse’s nose came abreast of the rear wheel. “You!” Abella screamed, pointing at her. “You no tell him.”

Pinned in her seat by the child and the close-packed company, Claire clawed uselessly at the stage’s rolled-up window curtain. In a flash, Abella’s arm snaked through the opening and tore Claire’s bonnet back on her head. The hat’s pink ribbon pulled tight around her throat.

Claire raked her neck, desperate to loosen the strip of grosgrain, which she’d tied in a double knot high near the ear. The child on her lap screamed and kicked as it scrambled to its mother. As the horse pulled ahead, Abella yanked the ribbon deeper into Claire’s larynx. One of the mothers wrenched back on the bonnet, bellowing, “You’re killing her. Let go!” while the men on the roof yelled to the driver to brake. The carriage horses, frightened by the commotion, panicked and surged into a gallop.

Air ceased flowing into Claire’s lungs. Her mind screamed in terror as black spots crowded her sight. Again and again, her head slammed against the window frame as stars of agony danced in her vision. It wasn’t enough to strangle her; Abella wanted to break her neck.

I will not die by your hands!
thought Claire, who was so angry she threw the only thing she had in hand — her reticule — out the window. For a fraction of a second, Abella’s grip wavered just enough for Claire to take half a gasping breath. The spots cleared and she felt the hard edge of a crutch against her knee. Not seeing or caring where she aimed, she jabbed the crutch through the window frame, but it did no good. The frame was too narrow to angle the crutch backward. The stick of wood fell from her hand as blackness roared into her brain.

• • •

Just as Flavian turned his horse down Highcliffe Road, Betty Dunghill raced into the center of the street. Out of breath and flapping her muddied skirt, she dashed in front of Killen. Startled, Flavian drew back on the horse’s reins. “Nay, my lord,” Betty said, abandoning the skirt to waive dirt-encrusted arms in the air, “Them strollers gone the Lyndhurst Road.”

Who to believe — the wild-eyed woman before him or the surly butcher? “But I was told … ”

“He gone and lied to ye,’ the treacherous cur. I knew he’d do it. Feeds his customers ’orse meat as beef, and squirrels as — ”

“You’re a good woman, Betty. Thank you,” said Flavian, digging in his pocket for a coin.

She shook her head frantically. “Me name’s not Betty. It’s Lucy.”

“What’s that?”

“Lucy, my lord.”

Flavian selected a gold sovereign from his purse.

“I ain’t got change for such as that.”

He leaned down from the saddle and placed the money in her palm. “Then I thank you, Lucy.”

She rubbed her face with a filthy arm. “Oh, my lord, the blessings be on you and your family.”

A blessing on my family
, Flavian thought,
I could certainly use that about now
. He steered Killen onto the Lyndhurst Road and pushed the horse into a smooth, sustainable canter. Curse the delay; he should have known not to trust the meanness in that butcher’s eyes. Time and again his mind strayed back to the man’s words: “Not a cull in Christchurch’ll forget her performance.” Abella might find herself in the worst kind of trouble if he didn’t get to her soon.

Just north of Burley, a large flock of birds took to the sky. Flavian could hear their squawks of alarm though they must have been more than a quarter of a mile away. Their flight appeared panicked, and an ominous fear made him spur Killen to a hand gallop as the birds swooped toward him — a black cloud against a graying sky.

Around a bend and up a steep hill, he was startled by the sight of a coach and four headed straight for him at full gallop. So taken aback was he, that at first he didn’t notice the fifth horse racing by its side. The rider, who appeared half dressed in a white sheet, tugged at an object hanging from the window. “Abella,” he screamed, “No!”

Though the road was hemmed in by New Forest trees and scarcely wide enough for the coach and Abella’s mare, he spurred Killen toward the oncoming vehicle. The coachman bellowed and hauled back on the break, but to no avail. Nothing could slow the panicked horses as they thundered blindly down the narrow road.

As the distance closed, Flavian caught a look on Abella’s face that made him gasp. Distorted, maniacal hatred gleamed in her eyes. Even in pitched hand-to-hand combat, he had never witnessed a being so bent on destruction. Every trace of the pretty young girl he loved was consumed by this demented being. Black hair streaming in the wind, Abella rode bare breasted and indecent — like a wild animal — and at the end of a ribbon clenched in her hand, was Claire, her flesh blue from lack of oxygen. “Abella, let go!” he commanded, “For pity’s sake, let go!”

He slapped Killen’s sides with his whip, sending his steed faster toward the onrushing coach.

Consumed with her deadly mission, Abella appeared heedless of his presence. Seconds before they would have crashed, the girl’s mare swerved closer to the coach, nearly tangling its legs in the spinning wheels.

Wind scudded past Flavian as the mare passed within inches of his knee. The din of the stagecoach was deafening. Drawing back on the reins, he pulled Killen to a sliding halt and had the horse turned around and bolting after the coach a second later. The passengers screamed, dust blinded, but nothing could blot the image of Claire’s stricken face. “Unhand her!” he yelled, but Abella held her murderous trance. She twisted the ribbon away as hands from inside the compartment struggled to untie the bow.