Destitute On His Doorstep (16 page)

Francis rested his back against a tree trunk, one knee drawn up, his eyes on Jane as he idly twiddled with a stick. The ride had done her good, he thought, looking at her sparkling eyes and glowing complexion, her cheeks as pink as the campions growing in the long grass.

Jane caught her breath. She could almost feel his warmth, could feel the vital power within him, indeed could almost feel again his lips on hers. Sensations of unexpected pleasure flickered through her at the memory, making her quiver. They remained as they were, both aware of the closeness of the other and deep in their own thoughts. The warm air blew against Francis's face, clearing his mind. A bank of cloud had arisen in the west and its shadow was advancing towards them. There was a faint chill now in the breeze.

‘Look,' Jane said, sitting up straight. ‘Someone is coming.'

They got to their feet and waited. Jane was still standing beside Francis, but she was no longer looking at the beauty of the surrounding countryside. She was gazing along the wide lane towards Avery. Francis followed her gaze. A horse and rider were coming swiftly in their direction. The wind was blowing his cloak back behind him like a pair of large black wings. The wide brim of his hat hid his face, but there was something about him that made them unable to look away. In fact, there was something threatening about him that gave Francis an odd feeling in the pit of his stomach.

The rider drew to an abrupt halt only a few yards from where they stood. He rode a fine animal, a bay stallion, suited to a wealthy man. He lifted his face in Francis's direction, and although Francis could not see his features clearly because the brim of his hat cast a dark shadow across his pale face, he felt his stare. There was a stillness about him, a silence, that was entirely menacing. The man cast a shadow as long and black as the finger of Satan.

‘Who are you?' Francis asked, stepping forwards.

Raising his head a little more, the stranger looked directly at Jane. ‘I am certain you will know me after a moment. In the meantime, ask your companion. Mistress Lucas and I are well acquainted—is that not so, Jane?'

He spoke in a low silky voice. It was not one that Francis recognised, and yet…there was something. A sudden coldness claimed him.

The cruel talons of dread clawed at Jane. Her heart pounded so hard she thought it might run out of control and stop beating. ‘Yes, we are,' she replied. She had
hoped and prayed she would never have to lay eyes on this man again, but deep inside her she'd known he would come after her. He was a man close to fifty, tall and thin but solidly built. His face was clean shaven, his features clear cut. He would have been handsome but for the unattractively sardonic grimace and the scar that lifted one corner of his thin lips.

Atkins! Francis's sense of foreboding grew. He had not heard that name in a very long time, except in his nightmares. He sensed nausea rise within him and a sudden gruelling pain in his head. It was eight years since he had been captured when he and the men under his command had been attacked when on reconnaissance a few miles from Avery and Atkins had wreaked his vengeance on him. Every cruelty and every indignity of that event was as fresh in his mind now as on the day they had been inflicted.

The spasm of fury that passed through him caused him to break the stick that he clenched in his hands. For a moment he wanted to confront Atkins and break him as completely as he had broken his stick. But it was one of his great strengths that his lifetime of hardship and learning had taught him—never to act rashly. He was a master at keeping his feelings under control until the moment was right. The man's head turned, and Francis saw that it was indeed the same Captain Jacob Atkins. The shadow his hat cast across his face found a sinister echo in the black leather patch that hid his right eye, and the long silver scar that emerged from beneath it, ending at his jutting chin.

Upon settling his yellowish single eye on Francis, Atkins lifted a brow and leaned back in the saddle. His
expression was hard to decipher. It spoke of arrogance, conceit and an underlying cruelty. Their eyes locked tight as a lover's embrace, neither man moving for a moment or relaxing their coiled tension.

It was Atkins who eventually let out a long sigh and said, ‘Well, well! Colonel Russell! I did not expect to find you back in Avery. I thought I'd dealt with you and good riddance! Your hand healed after all, did it? And now I find you with my late sister's stepdaughter. I never expected to find the two of you together. How touching. It would appear you have formed an attachment.' His expression hardened, his gaze remaining fixed on Francis. ‘So, Russell, we meet again.'

‘So it would appear, Atkins,' Francis replied, his tone level. ‘I am not the dead man you intended me to be. How galling it must have been for you to find I had escaped your henchmen, depriving you of the pleasure of shooting me.' He glanced at Jane. Her face was white with shock. ‘Jane? Are you all right? You look as if you'd seen a ghost.' And then he realised that she had seen a ghost or someone out of her past that was as frightening as one, and he sensed an underlying fear. ‘Mr Atkins and I are already acquainted, Jane,' he remarked, speaking out loud what she already knew, but this she kept to herself.

Panic was gripping her. She had a great desire to flee as fast as her legs would carry her, but they would not move. She was frozen, paralysed with fear. But she couldn't stand there, trying to make words come from her mouth. She had to speak. ‘Yes, I know,' she replied through a stricture in her throat.

The penetrating coldness of Atkins's expression
continued to convey his loathing for Francis. His expression had turned dangerous and his eye a deep muddy brown. When Francis Russell had taken out his eye with one thrust of his sword, he had learned to hate him with a deep, implacable and very personal hatred. There would be no appeasement until he was dead.

By now Jane had sufficient command of herself to speak. ‘Mr Atkins has come to see me,' she told Francis with a nervous tremor, subconsciously having moved closer to his side, her expression not at all welcoming as she looked at her stepmother's brother. ‘What are you doing here? What do you want with me?'

‘Your departure from my house was furtive, Jane. I was disappointed to find you so lacking in courtesy that you could not tell me to my face that you wanted to leave my house.'

‘Would you have allowed me to leave?'

He smiled thinly. ‘Allowed? I was not your gaoler, Jane. We could have discussed the issue together.'

‘I left you a note.'

‘A note! After I had given you the comfort and protection of my person and my home, provided for you, is that the way to repay my kindness? No, Jane, I think not. I promised my sister that I would take care of you. As my charge you had a duty to stay and obey me.'

Jane watched him and her eyes glittered with such contempt, such hatred, such loathing, that another man might have looked away in shame. But not Jacob Atkins. He was no ordinary man in his behaviour to any human being.

‘You are no blood relative of mine and I thank God for it. You have no legal claim over me and you will not
treat me in the same vile way in which you treat your own daughters.'

‘When you are underage and residing under my roof, I'm naturally responsible for you.'

‘Your roof? I no longer reside under your roof. If you demand that I return, then I shall refuse.'

Atkins's face darkened to an ugly, mottled red. ‘In which case I shall have to decide which course of action to take—which is not something I can do in a few minutes.'

‘You don't say,' Francis uttered with irony, lifting his dark brows, his eyes as cold as his terse smile. ‘What's the matter, Atkins? Invention failed you, has it?'

‘No. Far from it.' His gaze rested on Francis Russell, remembering the day he had captured him as if it were yesterday. He remembered how, when the vice had crushed his hand, he had not cried out or begged for mercy, or struggled to try to save himself. He'd just set his back hard against a post and stood there. He'd flinched when the lighted tapers had been placed between his bloodied fingers, but nothing more. Jacob doubted that he could have done that, nor anyone else. He'd been fair put out to find he'd escaped, depriving him of the pleasure of shooting him after allowing him to suffer the pain of his injured hand and to contemplate his fate.

His gaze shifted back to the prim beauty and casually caressed the soft, enticing curves that the plain gown gently moulded. Her back was straight, her head elevated, conveying an undaunted pride. ‘I would like to speak with you in private, Jane.'

‘That is not possible,' Francis said, taking it upon
himself to answer for her. ‘Do you want to go with this man, Jane?'

She shook her head, her features tense. ‘No. Never.'

‘There you are, Atkins. You have your answer. I fail to see how you can make any claim on her.'

Atkins curled his lips in an angry sneer. ‘Obviously you didn't hear me. Jane hasn't yet come of age whereby she can do as she pleases. She was a legal ward of my late sister. On her demise she became my responsibility. I am duty-bound to provide for her care.'

Francis smiled derisively. ‘Knowing you as I do, I know how you treat others in your care, Atkins. That is hardly an act of solicitude.'

Atkins scoffed in rampant distaste. ‘I'm sure the chit gave you quite a tale to win your sympathy, but that will hardly dissuade me from complying with the wishes of my sister.'

‘That is not true,' Jane retorted icily. ‘I am not your responsibility. I was there when Gwen died and she made no mention of any guardianship being transferred to you. Nor was there anything in writing.'

‘I am a man of wealth and position, and if you don't want things to go badly for you, you'd better consider complying with my wishes. In the meantime I shall have to think it over and examine the various possible solutions to this difficult problem you have presented me with in peace and quiet. I would be grateful if you would see to it that I am lodged in suitable rooms at Bilborough.'

‘I'm afraid I cannot do that. The Bilborough estate no longer belongs to me. It was sequestered by Parlia
ment in my absence and sold. It now belongs to Colonel Russell.'

Atkins went deathly still except for his racing thoughts. Keeping his voice low and calm, he said, ‘Why is it that I do not believe you?'

The muscles in Francis's lean cheeks tightened progressively until they fairly snapped. ‘Jane speaks the truth, Atkins. Bilborough is mine, but it changes nothing where she is concerned. I give her my protection, and with God's grace she will remain unharmed—so do not speak to me of what you will do to her.'

Atkins's eye surveyed the girl who had defied him at every turn, narrowing as it took in her dishevelled appearance and bright, uncovered head and wanton mouth. His face darkened as he glanced from Jane to Francis and back to Jane. His lips curled with contempt. ‘Look at you—your appearance is unseemly—you whore,' he breathed. ‘This man has taken your inheritance and yet you cavort with him freely. Where is your self-respect, girl? What else has he taken from you? Have you no shame?'

Francis took exception to the slur; taking a step forwards, he raised a clenched fist. ‘You bastard, Atkins.' His voice was low and deadly. ‘Insult her one more time and I'll drag you off that damned horse and carve you into so many pieces you won't be fit for dog meat.' He stepped closer. ‘Now take your mouldy presence from my land and my sight, you scurvy lump of dung, and keep the stench of your foul person from its gates, or I
will
set my dogs on you—although no matter how brutally you are mauled will hardly placate me as suitable recompense.'

‘I shall keep your words in mind, Russell, but you'll regret this!' Atkins warned as he backed his horse away. ‘I still have a score to settle with you, and now this. I'll make you sorry you ever laid eyes on Jane Lucas.'

‘I doubt that,' Francis scoffed. ‘Now get off my land before I throw you off myself, and if I catch you in the immediate vicinity of Jane, I will arrange for your judgement to be on a higher level than mine.'

The two of them stood and watched Atkins ride away.

Looking down at Jane, Francis captured her gaze. Plumbing the dark depths as he said, ‘You didn't tell me Atkins was your stepmother's brother, Jane.'

‘No.' Feeling awkward and absolutely terrified following their encounter with Jacob Atkins, her eyes chasing off in the direction of the horses, she mumbled, ‘I—I never thought…'

‘Of course you did. I recall telling you the name of my torturer. Why did you not say anything then?'

She shook her head dejectedly. She had deliberately not told him because in doing so she would have had to reveal that she was Tom. For some reason she could not explain even to herself, she was shy about doing so and preferred him to remain in ignorance. Perhaps it was because he was a fiercely proud man and she didn't think he would want to know how she had seen him as a captive—brought low, degraded and humiliated.

‘Knowing how you must feel towards him—that you had just cause to despise him as much as I did, I thought that if you knew of my relationship to him, through Gwen, you would have insisted that I left Bilborough.
That was why I—I didn't want you to know that I knew him—that he was Gwen's brother.'

Pain sliced through Francis that by his actions she'd had so little faith in him she truly believed he would have done that to her. ‘I would never have turned you away from Bilborough.'

‘I know that now, but I didn't then, when you told me he was the man who had inflicted your injury. How you must hate him.'

Grim-faced, Francis helped her into the saddle.

Looking into his eyes, Jane quickly averted her gaze. Something had moved in their depths, just for a moment. It was gone in a flash, but she did not want ever to see it again.