The smoke was thick and she could hear the
shouts of the dragoons. Working her way through the mounds of hay,
she found a shuttered window that she kicked open. In a moment she
was out on the sloping thatch of the roof.
Egan climbed quickly, trying not to think of
what would happen if a section of the roof gave way. The smoke was
billowing up through gaps in the thatch. She stood up and glanced
at the mayhem surrounding the stable below. Dragoons—afoot and on
horse—were running here and there, clearly in disorder because the
village was empty.
Or because Egan had eluded them…so far.
She knew it would not be long before the
soldiers made their way to the loft and then to the roof.
Somewhere below, she heard the neigh of
Queen Mab. Scurrying to the end of the roof, she peered over and
saw her horse rising on her back legs and pawing furiously at the
air and at the soldiers who were trying to capture her.
Flames appeared through the smoke, licking
the dry thatch and sending sparked crackling into the air. Egan
climbed to the peak. There was a lower slate-roofed building across
a narrow alley, but she also saw three dragoons already waiting by
that building.
“Jump, Egan! Jump!”
She recognized Patrick’s shout, and a thrill
of hope lifted her spirits. Crossing a patch of open ground at the
edge of the village, a dozen Shanavests on horseback raced toward
her.
The encroaching flames were beginning to
light up the roof like an inferno, and she realized she had no
choice but to jump across. Backing up, Egan ran a couple of steps
and leaped for the slate roof of the next building. She landed hard
on her ankle, but this was no time to be delicate. As she was
scrambling to the edge, she heard an exchange of pistol fire.
Peering over the side of the building, she saw the mounted
Shanavests swarmed the soldiers and Mab. While a dozen of them
fought fiercely with the dragoons, two of them pulled her horse
away.
She jumped again without hesitation, again
feeling her ankle when she hit the ground. The pain burned through,
nearly overwhelming her, but she limped to the horse and pulled
herself onto Mab’s back.
There were whistles and shouts. Surrounded
by the masked group, Egan and the rest withdrew as speedily as
they’d arrived, galloping across the fields away from the village.
After passing through the first line of hedges, though, they
wordlessly split into groups of two and threes and headed off in
different directions.
Egan found herself in the company of two
masked Shanavests, Patrick and another on a horse she didn’t
recognize. She frowned at the man’s back. He was a stranger, but
one adept at the use of sword…that she knew. Though he spoke in
Gaelic, his accent was unfamiliar. There was, however, something
distinctly familiar about his voice.
What perplexed her most, though, was that he
was giving orders.
“After crossing the river, Patrick, I want
you to take her east. I’ll draw anyone coming after us to the
north. You have a place to hide your horses.”
“Aye, the same places we’re always hiding
them.”
“Finn!” she whispered. She tried to get a
better look, peering through the dark. The large, tri-cornered hat
and the mask thwarted her efforts.
“Are you Finn?” she asked finally.
“Ye see, Egan, our Finn is not a ghost of
Liam’s making, after all.” Patrick answered, riding to her
right.
Before she could ask another question, they
splashed into the shallows of the river and then continued to ford
it. There was no sign of any followers. Her ankle was throbbing
badly.
She stared at him again. For several years,
she had known of Finn. Liam had used his name often in conveying
key information to their group. He appeared to have many contacts
in the English regiments as well as the volunteer militias. He had
at times even seemed to know things that had to come from someone
close to Ireland’s Lord Lieutenant himself. In spite of his
participation in the fighting tonight, she had never known him to
step out of his usual role.
Indeed, she had never met him—or seen
him—until now.
“Act as if nothing has happened,” Finn told
her as they prepared to separate on the far shore. “Resume your
other life. Pretend you know nothing of tonight. They are bent on
capturing you, and you must not allow them to succeed.”
He turned and she watched him disappear
quickly into the darkness. Patrick urged her to move, and she
proceeded. But Egan’s mind was racing with Finn’s words.
Resume your other life…Resume your other
life…
What other life? She no longer had any other
life. Just as the hard slate roof of the stable had hurt her ankle,
Clara’s words had destroyed the already unsteady footing she was
feeling at Woodfield House.
Though the pain shooting up her leg from her
ankle hurt tremendously, the ache in her heart was hurting far
worse.
Between the two wounds, Jane knew she had
nothing to stand on.
The housekeeper saw the curious glances of
the cooks and servants and grooms—some working, some taking their
breakfast—when she entered the servant’s hall with the persistent
guest on her heels. She simply had to put a stop to this. She
turned and left the room with the woman still dogging her.
In the narrow corridor, still dark in the
morning light, she whirled around. “Ye just cannot follow me about
like this, m’lady. Certainly not on a morning such as this…with so
much left to do before the rest of the house is up. I told ye once,
and I’ll tell ye a hundred times, if I must, but I cannot help ye
find Miss Jane.”
“But you
know
where she is,”
Alexandra persisted. “And by God, I am not giving up until you tell
me where she is…or at least have someone take me to her. It is
absolutely urgent that I should bring her back here for the ball
this evening.”
“But clearly, she doesn’t care to come back,
m’lady. She wouldn’t give a beggar’s boot for any of this
fanciness. I’m telling ye, mum, she doesn’t care to hear their
snickering behind her back.”
“This will be different, Fey.” Alexandra
lowered her voice and looked into the other woman’s face. “I shall
make the whole lot of them eat their words. We did not go to all
our trouble to have them laugh at her. After tonight, your gentry
will think twice before they ridicule her.”
“A fine dress is nary enough, m’lady.”
Sadness shone in the gentle woman’s eyes. “She has been hurt too
much before. I do not think she wants to face such things
again.”
“But she must! She must come out of hiding
and face them.” She placed a hand on Fey’s arm. “Do you think she
is truly happy where she is, or how she is treated by…well, by
certain people close to her? Does she not deserve better than what
she is getting?”
“What I think and what will happen are
hardly the same, m’lady.”
“But they
can
be…with our
interference,” Lady Spencer quickly interjected. “I know them. They
are like parrots…waiting for one to say something so they can all
repeat it. And that is what will work to our advantage. That is
what Jane needs. Someone to begin talking about her in a way that
points out the noble qualities in her.”
Fey stared at the floor, unconvinced.
“There is something else I am planning to
do, as well, but I need Jane’s permission to do it.”
Fey’s eyebrows arched with interest.
“Without revealing very much to Lady
Purefoy, I have received her permission to remake one of the
parlors to a theme of my choosing.” Alexandra lowered her voice. “I
wish to make it into a gallery, but I need Jane’s permission to use
her paintings.”
“Her paintings, m’lady?”
“Indeed. I wish to bring some of the
canvases down from that attic work area of hers and display them
about the room.”
“But she…Miss Jane never…never shows her
work to anyone.” Fey wrung her apron in her hands.
“But Jane has tremendous talent. Unless they
are complete boors, her paintings will impress all of them far more
than anything else we can do.” Lady Spencer nodded with conviction.
“I am speaking the absolute truth, Fey, when I tell you Jane’s work
is equal to some of the greatest masterpieces of our time.”
“But some of what…she paints…” The
housekeeper frowned and shook her head. “I am no expert, mum, but
some of it is a wee bit revealing of her private life.”
“That is exactly why I need her…why you must
help me find her. Only Jane can decide what to show and what not.”
Alexandra took hold of the servant’s hand. “If my praise of her as
a person has no weight with these people, I know her talent will
turn the tide. This is a perfect opportunity for Jane to come out
before her peers. There could never be another chance like this
anytime soon.” She gentled her tone and met the woman’s thoughtful
gaze. “If nothing else, please take me to her so I can explain
these things to her. The decision will be hers—but she has to be
told, while there is still a little time left.”
After a moment, a look of resolve replaced
the indecision in the housekeeper’s face. “No one else can be going
with ye.”
Alexandra nodded.
“And ye shall need to wait until midday,
when I can find someone to spare for a few hours.”
“Just tell me when, and I’ll be ready.”
***
With a book tucked under her arm, Clara once
again took refuge in the gardens. The entire household continued to
be in an uproar over the ordeal tonight, and the young woman had
even found the privacy of her bedroom invaded by the dressmakers
and seamstresses and servants who were ready to bathe her and do
her hair and whatever else Lady Purefoy had ordered them to do.
And she was ashamed of all of it.
Clara couldn’t forgive herself for the
lunacy—for assuming that she was capable of seducing Sir Nicholas
and getting him to change his earlier decision of asking for her
hand. The cutting remarks he had delivered to her two nights ago
had been as mortifying as they were sobering. Instead of learning
from Henry’s rejection earlier and trying to make a change in her
life, more so than ever before she was trying to be her parents’
puppet.
Clara moved deeper through the garden and
thought of the injustice she had done to her older sister. Jane had
gone away without a word to her of where she was going and how long
she was staying away. Her older sister had done just as she had
asked her to. And for what?
Henry was right. She was selfish. It was
Jane who behaved selflessly…and deserved better.
Tears were running down her face by the time
Clara neared her favorite spot by the paddock. As she approached
the hedge, the voices of two men engaged in a tense conversation on
the other side cut into her misery.
“I do not understand this at all, Captain,”
her father was saying in an angry but hushed tone. “I have been
generous enough to offer him a plan for capturing these leaders of
the Whiteboys. It is not too much, I should think, to expect
Musgrave be frank with what happened last night.”
“As I said before, sir, he sends his regards
and says he intends to give you a full report tonight.” The other
man’s voice was apologetic. “I have been ordered to say nothing
more.”
“But I am entertaining tonight.” Sir Thomas
seethed. “My wife has a blasted ball planned that I must attend to.
Come, Captain…you served me well when I was magistrate. What did he
find or whom did he arrest that requires such secrecy?”
“I fear, Sir Thomas, that the present
magistrate must make his own explanations, sir.”
“Out with it, Wallis. You were there. What
happened?”
Clara cringed at her father’s menacing tone
now. She could only imagine the man facing Sir Thomas must be even
more affected by his growing fury.
“I…”
“The devil take you. Did we succeed or not,
man?”
There was a long pause.
“This…this must remain just between us, Sir
Thomas.”
“As you wish,” the older man growled
impatiently.
“I only tell you this out of respect for our
efforts together.”
“Indeed, Captain. We made a good team, you
and I.”
“Last night, we made no arrests, but we were
able to unmask the rebel Egan. That is all I can say. Our troubles
are far from being over, but the magistrate—as he plans to explain
to you tonight—is confident that we are close to capturing the…the
rebel.”
Clara’s hand was tightly clamped over her
mouth as all she’d just heard continued to whirl in her mind.
They’d unmasked Egan
.
“I see.” Sir Thomas’s voice was far more
subdued when he spoke again. “So, other than coming here and
keeping anything of import from me, why do you want to search my
stables? Does Sir Robert think I am hiding rebels in the
hayloft?”
“The magistrate wishes to know if any horses
were missing from the stables of any of the landowners last night.
We are looking, in particular, for a large black horse…one similar
to the mare that is often ridden by your daughter, Miss Jane.”
Clara could wait not a minute longer.
Clutching her stomach in an effort to ward off the queasiness
rising into her throat, she ran frantically toward the house. She
needed to get her cloak. She needed to find Jane…to warn her of
what the dragoons already knew about her. If they had unmasked her,
that meant they already knew her identity. They would be coming
after her…here…possibly tonight!
She couldn’t let this happen to Jane. Seeing
a gardener on the path, she brushed away the tears and ordered him
to go and ask Paul to ready a
good
horse for her. She had to
find her sister…somehow.
Conor’s blood was already on her hands. She
could not bear to go through life with her sister’s blood on them,
too.