Authors: Julia Ross
"Never heard of it, nor your fancy
lords," Alden said, choking down his rage. "And what's more, Ι
don't care." He let go of the maid's hand and stood up. "Here's what
Ι care about: I’m going away, Emmy. Remember my brother's little farm in
Devon, the one Ι told you about? He's asked me to go there and help out,
like Ι said he might. I’m off tomorrow. No more town deliveries for
me."
"Off tomorrow?" The maid's eyes swam
with tears.
He leaned down and kissed the top of her little
linen cap. "Don't fret for me, now, will you?"
Emmy pushed him away and stood up. "Fret for
the likes of you, a butcher's fellow! I’ll have you know that Harry Oldacre
asked me only yesterday to walk out with him on my afternoon off."
Alden picked up his basket and swaggered to the
door. "Then it's good-bye, isn't it? Thanks for the pie Cook. Don't work
for any more lunatics, will you?"
He dodged out of the doorway as Cook tossed a
cabbage at his head. Emmy's sad little sobs followed him all the way up the
stairs. He would make sure that the girl received a surprise message in a
couple of weeks: a distant relative, perhaps, someone she'd never heard of, who
had left her a small legacy. Emmy wanted to leave domestic service and have a
little shop of her own. Perhaps Harry Oldacre would like to be a part of that
bright new future.
"YES, MY LORD," Α MAN'S VOICE
SAID. "WE COULD INDEED, most certainly. Blackthorn Manor would be honored
to help in the case of Your Lordship's sister."
Juliet snapped awake. Every bone and muscle
ached. Sunlight poured in through the high window. She had been left strapped
to her bed the previous evening and no one had come to release her this
morning. She was desperate to use the chamber pot.
Footsteps sounded in the hallway. One set echoed
with the rap of a gentleman's heeled shoes. She recognized the heavier tread:
Mr. Upbridge, the man who ran the place. They had not exactly been introduced.
Mr. Upbridge had inspected her when she had first been carried in, gagged and
bound. He had listened to her captors' account of her behavior and studied some
documents handed him by the men Lord Edward had hired. Without asking for the
gag to be removed, Upbridge had gravely shaken his head and told the men to
take her to this room, where she was to be encouraged to become sane. Now she
heard him propounding his theories to someone else.
"Indeed a most interesting case, my lord.
Delusions are common among lunatics. You say your sister believes she is Queen
of Scots? We've had women claiming to be Joan of Arc or Cleopatra. One poor
soul thinks she's the Blessed Virgin and complains about her pangs every night,
giving birth to Our Lord."
Another male voice replied, too softly for her to
hear. The footsteps stopped. She heard the little sliding hatch in the door
being opened. She couldn't lift her head to look at the faces peering in at
her. Neither would they see much of her beyond a body lying strapped beneath
blankets.
"This one claims she's an earl's
daughter," Upbridge said. "Though in God's truth, she's an actress,
quite out of her wits. Α disorder caused by poisonous humors from the
womb, brought about by insatiable wantonness. Fortunately, a gentleman took
pity on her and had her brought here for treatment - an act of great charity. We
do not allow her to mix with our other patients, of course, the ladies of real
breeding."
The other man murmured something.
"Very simple, my lord. If she insists on her
delusions, she is corrected. Nothing cruel or pernicious, even for females who
are lewdly given. We gag our patients for wrong speech. Tie them down with
leather straps for wrong actions. It's very effective in most cases. In
addition we use purgatives and cold baths. She is to be started on a course of
physic on Monday."
The other man asked a soft question.
"Such cases are seldom tractable, sadly, but
our attendants are well trained in dealing with such difficulties as the
lunatics may present."
The sliding hatch snapped shut. Juliet closed her
eyes.
To her surprise the door opened. The men's
footsteps crossed the room. Juliet automatically flinched, though she tried not
to show her fear. She even forced herself to look up into the face that leaned
over the bed, then she relaxed. Mr. Upbridge, of course, who wouldn't dream of
touching her. She tried to smile at him.
"Doing better this morning, are we?" he
asked. "Now, tell this gentleman who you are."
Juliet knew perfectly well what she was supposed
to say:
Ι am an actress. Ι have lived like a harlot, driven by
unbridled lust.
"Ι am Lady Elizabeth Juliet Amberleigh,
the daughter of the Earl of Felton," she said. "Ι would like my
father to be told Ι am here."
"Lud!" the other man said with a trace
of Scots accent. "What's her true name?"
"Polly Brown," Upbridge replied.
Juliet barely heard him. Desperately she tried to
turn her head to look at the visitor. Shadows and sun moved over the plaster.
The newcomer leaned his palm on the wall above her head. His cuff was
embroidered, beautiful, the cut extravagant. Cascades of snowy lace with a pattern
of tiny bells and angels fell away from an elegant white hand.
"Polly Brown?" Α kind of bored
hauteur colored his voice. "Why, Ι believe you are right, sir! Ι
have seen her myself playing some Italian role."
"One of those lewd operas, no doubt?"
Mr. Upbridge asked. "Α looseness in morals often leads to
lunacy."
The guest leaned over the bed and smiled down at
her. Sunlight glowed in a halo around his white wig. Juliet smiled back through
a wash of tears as he brushed one finger over his lips to indicate silence.
Alden gazed down at her with no other change in
expression. "Perhaps your attendant - Mistress Welland? - should bring
breakfast."
"No breakfast, my lord. Food given too early
in the day-"
"Lud, sir! Ι should not like to think
that my sister would go hungry so late in the morning."
". . . of course, my lord, in our better
wing, where your sister would live . . ."
Alden leaned close enough to whisper in her ear.
"Tonight. Do or say nothing out of the ordinary. Trust me, Juliet. You are
rescued. "
Upbridge was still burbling.
"Ι am sorry," Alden said as he
walked away. "When Ι see this poor creature here, neither washed nor
fed, Ι am not sure that Blackthorn Manor is appropriate for my sister,
after all."
The door opened and closed again, but almost immediately
Mistress Welland came in to undo Juliet's straps. She looked flushed and
excited.
"A most distinguished visitor that was, from
Scotland," she said. "Perhaps you know him?" Her breathless
voice implied that Lady Elizabeth or Polly Brown might be equally intimate with
a member of the Scots aristocracy. "Lord Maze, his name is, handsome as
daylight." She grinned to herself, as if at a secret. "He's an
earl."
"An earl?" Juliet sat up and laughed.
She hoped it wasn't the mad cackle of a lunatic. "I thought he was an
angel."
THE IMPOSING CHIMNEYS OF BLACKTHORN MANOR BULKED
against shifting clouds, edged with moonlight. Alden had stalked down through
the asylum that morning in such a white hot rage he hadn't been sure he could
trust himself. His ire was not for Mr. Upbridge, who obviously did his best to
care for the inmates, but for Lord Edward Vane, who had conceived and paid for
the whole scheme.
Yet he had controlled the anger. Even knowing
that Juliet was imprisoned upstairs, he had spent three more hours that morning
at Blackthorn, laying the groundwork for tonight. He had no authority to demand
Juliet's release, no valid excuse to interfere. Mr. Upbridge was being
well-paid to keep her, so he had no motivation whatsoever to let her go. It
would have to be done with stealth.
At last Alden saw the signal he had been waiting
for: a candle in a downstairs window. Carrying a selection of bottles in one
hand, he walked rapidly across the short stretch of grass. Α door opened.
Alden stepped through into blackness. Α female hand, wiry and strong,
clasped his.
"Oh, lud! Ι wasn't sure Your Lordship
would really come-"
She opened another door into a small bedroom lit
by a single candle. The flame glimmered over hair softened to honey in the dim
light. In her nightdress and with her tight bun combed out, she looked almost
pretty. Alden smiled down into the nervous face of Mistress Nell Welland.
Without compunction he slid one arm about her thin waist to pull her into his
embrace.
"Faith, my lord!" she said, close to
breathless. "You waste no time at all!"
He kissed the corner of her dry mouth.
"Because there's no time to waste, Nell. Ι have to leave for Aberdeen
tomorrow. You won't come?"
She shook her head, as he had known she would. He
had learned that morning that she was an orphan, too afraid of the world
outside Blackthorn to venture into it. Yet Lord Maze, the imaginary Scottish
earl, had flattered and beguiled Nell Welland that morning, until she had
agreed to this assignation tonight - to taste wine, he had suggested, to taste
a little touch of wickedness.
Her small breasts thrust against his chest as he
kissed her again. He could not afford to hurry and lose her trust, so he
lingered, making the kiss as skilled as he knew how, calling on all those years
of experience to soften her, weaken her, until she would agree to anything. Her
lips trembled under his, firing his body. Thank God!
Alden was also determined that poor lonely Nell,
imprisoned here among her lunatic charges, would never know that he didn't
really want to do this. She would only remember that a Scottish earl had found
her lovely and asked to spend a few hours in her company. She might also
remember that he had brought her a present of exquisite and very strong wine -
better than she had ever tasted in her life – and insisted that, between
caresses, they share glass after glass.
For Alden didn't want her slender little body or
surprisingly comely hair, he only wanted her keys.
JULIET'S EARS STRAINED FOR ANY NOISE: Α
MOUSE SCRATCHING behind the plaster; beetles in the walls. Was this how a
lunatic listened? Darkness spread over the room, as if pressing black kisses
into the corners. There was no sound at all. Not even the muffled mumbling of
the woman next door. Perhaps, while no one noticed, she had died and now lay
stiff and cold in the night.
When the key turned in the lock, Juliet
jerked-awake perhaps? She didn't know any longer whether she slept and
dreamed, or whether she lay awake in the dark, waiting for footsteps-
The door slid open and a man's boots trod
steadily across the floor.
"Juliet?" Alden said softly.
"It's dark," she replied, choking back
panic. "Ι can't see you."
"Hush, don't move."
His quick, strong fingers snapped the padlocks
open and worked at the straps. One by one they fell away, freeing her numb
limbs. He slipped an arm about her shoulders and helped her sit up.
"Ι am afraid Ι am dreaming,"
she said with a small laugh. "It's hard to know sometimes."
"Don't talk. Put your arms about my neck.
I'm going to carry you out of here."
"Ι can walk," she whispered back.
Warm breath tickled her cheek. She turned to it
as a kitten turns to its mother: blindly, rooting for comfort. He pressed his
lips to her ear.
"No, you can't. You are barefoot. Besides,
you've been kept trussed like a package and your muscles won't work."
Without further ado, he swung her into his arms
and carried her down the stairs. Juliet could no longer help herself. Though
she did it in complete silence, she wept onto his shoulder the entire way.
THE COACH MOVED THROUGH DARK LANES, THE SOUND OF
THE horses' hooves loud in the quiet night. Or was it her own heart beating in
her chest like a drum? Alden sat opposite her. His hands lay quietly in his
lap. He had not touched her again after setting her inside his carriage. Juliet
couldn't clearly see his face, beyond the glimmer of white skin and hair. He
still wore the powdered wig. Now that her second chance was here, she was
terrified.
"Ι stink," she said. She looked
down at the shoes he had brought for her, her own shoes, a pair left behind at
Gracechurch Abbey.
"Indeed, ma'am. Α warm bath, Ι
think, is a priority."
"How did you get the keys?"
"From Nell Welland, your keeper."
She stared out at the black hedges. "Surely
she did not just hand them to you?"
"Alas, no. Ι stole them while she was
soundly asleep and contented, Ι hope."
Her head snapped around. "You mean-?"
"Yes, all those skills from Italy." His
voice was even and steady. "Useful in so many ways."