The Raven's Lady

The
Raven’s Lady

Jude Knight

Copyright 2015 Judith
Anne Knighton writing as Jude Knight

All rights reserved. No
part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any means
without the prior written consent of the author. 

Dedication

To Crystal Cox, for
whom I wrote this story. Thank you for inspiring these characters
and this story line

Crystal won the
story at the launch party for my novel Farewell to Kindness. She
was promised a made-to-order story of 2000 to 5000 words, written
for her, and printed at CreateSpace.

Made-to-order
stories work like this. The winner gives me three characters or
objects, and a trope. I write the story any way I like, but it
needs to include the three choices and be an interpretation of the
trope. I retain copyright (and may use the story later either as it
is or amended), but the winner gets a printed copy despatched from
CreateSpace within three weeks of the party and sole use of the
story for one month after delivery. (Delivery speed depends where
in the world the winner happens to be.)

Here’s the
specification I worked to:

A lady smuggler
, an investigating hero,and a loud pet raven . The trope would be
her helping the people in her neglected village. I even thought the
villain could be the main smuggler .

She is only
doing it because her cousin does not care about the tiny estate and
the people who live there.

Cover image: The
Smugglers, 1792, George Morland

In the past eight
years, Felix Maddox had spent more hours staking out suspects than
he ever wished to remember. He couldn’t count the number of nights
he’d spent awake, knowing he’d go into battle the next morning. He
had even been imprisoned for six months.

This evening as
a guest in what should be his own home was probably not the most
interminable he had ever suffered through. At this moment, though,
it certainly felt like it.

The lady he was
supposedly here to consider as a wife was pretty enough, he
supposed, if one liked milk-and-water misses who never looked up
from their plates, and who answered every conversational sally with
a monosyllable or a giggle.

She had sadly
changed from the lively child he remembered. But that was long ago,
almost another life. She was nine, and he was fourteen, the last
time they parted.

The only
interesting thing about her now, as far as he could see, was the
raven she kept as a pet. He remembered the raven, too. He’d been
the one to rescue the half-fledged bird from a cat, but Joselyn
Bellingham was the one who tended it, fed it, and captured its
affection.

He’d been
startled when the raven flew in the library window that afternoon,
fixed him with a knowing eye, then marched out the door and along
the hall, to tap at the door of Miss Bellingham’s sitting room
until she opened and let it in.

Now, though, at
dinner, any sign of originality was absent. And as for his cousin,
the fat oaf who had inherited the viscountcy when Felix was
reported dead, the man’s conversation was all on-dits about people
Felix didn’t know and off-colour jokes that were inappropriate in
front of a lady, and not even funny.

Miss Bellingham
rose to leave the gentlemen to their port, and Felix forced his
face into a pleasant smile as he prepared to get fat Cyril even
drunker and pump him for any knowledge he had of the Black Fox, the
smuggler Felix had been sent to investigate.

A waste of
time, in his opinion. Cyril couldn’t organise a bunfight in a
baker’s shop. The condition of the lands and buildings on the
estates of Maddox Grange showed the man was a total
incompetent.

Felix couldn’t
blame Cyril for thinking he was the viscount. Felix had decided to
stay dead to more easily find the traitors who had given him up to
the French. The released prisoner, Frederick Matthews, was no
threat to them until all of a sudden they were behind bars. Then
Colonel Webster, one of Castlereagh’s men, had approached him and
said the identity he had painstakingly created could be used to
help England win the war.

He’d stayed in
that identity even after Napoleon was exiled to Elba, sure the
emperor would not accept his defeat. The right decision, as it
turned out—but Waterloo had finished Napoleon’s ambitions forever,
and he was now home to claim his own; just this one last job for
Webster to complete.

Felix had
nothing against smugglers who simply sought to make a living, but
he hated with a passion the type Webster was after; those who had
smuggled French spies onto English soil. And the Black Fox—the
smuggler leader on the patch of coast that belonged to Maddox
Grange—was, by all accounts, the worst of the worst.

“So what did
you think of her? Nice tits, eh?” Cyril made cupping movements
under his own not inconsiderable dugs.

Felix resisted
the urge to punch the fool. “She’s very quiet,” he said.

“Yes, that’s an
advantage, don’t you think,” Cyril agreed. “Who wants a chattering
woman? And she’s a good housekeeper, don’t you know? And used to
living in the country, so you could just leave her at your
estate—you did say you had an estate, Matthews?”

“Yes, I have an
estate.” After the meeting with Webster, he’d been sitting at his
club considering his options when Cyril Maddox came in with a group
of cronies. That wasn’t so surprising. The Maddoxes had been
members of Brookes since it opened. He hadn’t recognised Cyril; he
hadn’t seen him since they were boys. But the group sat right
behind him, and he’d soon realised that the supposed viscount was
talking about raising money by selling Felix’s childhood
friend.

“Does Miss
Bellingham have a fortune, Maddox?” one of the others asked. “I’m
not interested in a chit without a fortune.”

“A competence,
rather. In trust till she turns 25 or marries,” Cyril said. “If she
had a fortune, Peckridge, I’d be marrying her myself! But 2,000
pounds, gents! That’s worth an investment of 500, surely? And
she’ll have control of it herself in less than three years. A sin
against nature, that is.”

“22? That’s
pretty old! What’s wrong with her? Secondhand, is she?” The others
all sniggered.

Cyril was
indignant, more on behalf of his sale than in defence of Miss
Bellingham. Felix was indignant enough on that cause for both of
them. He remembered Jocelyn Bellingham; remembered her well. She
was Cyril’s cousin, not his; the daughter of Cyril’s mother’s
sister, left to her aunt’s care after the death of her parents,
“and as shy and modest a lady as you could wish to find,” Cyril
proclaimed.

Even if he
hadn’t had his mission, Felix might have spoken up at that point,
for the sake of the child he remembered. As it was, he introduced
himself (as Frederick Matthews), apologised for overhearing, and
announced that he was interested in 2000 pounds and would be
willing to consider taking a wife. It worked, and here he was,
drinking his own port, in his own house, and listening to cousin
Cyril describing a lady in terms that made him see red.

Suddenly, he
could stand it no longer. His investigation into the Black Fox
would have to wait for tomorrow. “I’m tired, Maddox,” he said. “I
think I’ll turn in.”

But when Felix
got to the room assigned to him—one of the guest rooms on the west
frontage of the house—he couldn’t sleep. Perhaps a stroll in the
woods: scene of many a childhood game when he and his widowed
mother lived here with his grandfather. And a slightly older Felix
often stole out on a night such as this, when the moon was nearly
full, to trap game in the woods, or just to watch animals living
their secret lives while the world slept.

No sooner
thought than done; he let himself down from the window and was soon
slipping into the shadows under the trees. As he had so many times
before, he chose a trunk to lean against, stilled his movements,
and slowed his breathing to wait for what the night had to show
him.

There was a
fox, trotting purposefully along the path. An owl swept by on
silent wings. Two deer stepped daintily out of the undergrowth,
then startled as they caught the fox scent and leapt backward
again, crashing away into the deeper shadows.

No. Not the
fox. Someone was coming from the house. Without moving a muscle, he
prepared for action. A figure. But not large enough to be Cyril.
The hope that he could clear this whole matter up this first night
died, but his curiosity remained. Where was the lad going? For the
person hurrying along the path was no more than a boy, surely;
short and slender, with a youthful gait.

On an impulse,
Felix followed, using all his woodcraft to stay silent and
undetected, but still keep within sight of the boy.

They took the
fork leading down to the cliffs. Below on the beach, clear in the
moonlight, people milled around several rowboats in the surf. He’d
found the smugglers after all! No legitimate cargo would be
unloaded on a remote beach in the middle of the night.

The boy took
the path down the cliff face, but Felix would be seen if he
followed. He concealed himself in a rocky outcrop, where he could
watch both the beach and the path from the village. If the
smugglers planned to take the cargo inland tonight, that was the
most likely direction for whatever transport they had arranged.

As time wore
on, however, it became clear that the cargo was being stored in the
old cave complex Felix used to explore as a child, before his
mother married again and took him away. Good. He could bring a
troop to watch until the smugglers came to retrieve the goods, and
catch them all.

Oddly, the boy
Felix had followed seemed to be directing the whole enterprise,
people appeared to be coming to him for orders, and several times
Felix saw him run into the surf to catch someone by the arm and
redirect them.

The rowing
boats went back for another load, and the night was beginning to
lighten in the east before the last of them had its cargo removed
and put back out into the waves.

Below, the
smugglers began to slip away singly and in small groups.

Something odd
struck Felix about the faces that looked up at the cliff before
beginning to climb the path. No beards or mustaches. Not even the
shadows one would expect on at least some of them after a day’s
growth. His mind took a while to interpret what his eyes were
telling him. Women. Every smuggler he could see was a woman.

He looked again
at the boy, shaking his head to dislodge the wild thought. No. Not
Miss Bellingham. That milk-and-water miss could not possibly be a
smuggler. The boy—or the woman, in fact—could be anyone in the
house, or could easily have come from one of the farms beyond the
house. But he was definitely a she. As the light strengthened, the
way she moved, and the curves inside the breeches she wore, became
more and more obvious.