Flowers From The Storm (38 page)

“
Miss Timms
! Instantly!” It was Durham at the bottom, shouting for her as cold air rushed up from below. “They’re just behind me! We must go instantly!”

Jervaulx was already down, haphazardly dressed in a farmer’s overcoat Brunhilda had got from the ready-made clothes shop at the market town. The maid stood in her cloak and apron as if she’d just arrived, looking as confused as Maddy felt. Durham came up the stairs two at a time and caught her hand, pulling her with him. Maddy had to put all her thought for the moment into keeping her balance; when they reached the foot she saw Colonel Fane, encloaked in blue over his scarlet uniform, standing in the entranceway as dry snow blew in the open door.

Durham propelled her right out into it in her nightgown and shoes with no stockings. The wind hit her, stinging cold, but she had no time to think of it as Colonel Fane grabbed her round the shoulders and forced her to a run with him, half-lifting her from the ground to keep her apace.

“What is it?” she cried, trying to turn behind and look. “Have they come for the duke?”

“Hot pursuit,” he shouted, pulling her along, then suddenly sweeping her up bodily as if she were no heavier than a bag of goosedown. “Got to make the church.”

The steeplehouse stood black against the cold dawn, little lacings of snow clinging to the stones and sills.

Colonel Fane reached the porch and set her down just as Jervaulx and Durham arrived, Brunhilda in tow, a confusion of people and dogs in the entryway until Durham shoved open the heavy arched door and they all stumbled inside in a sweep of wind and snow.

He rammed the massive wooden bar into place, sending booming echoes through the vaulted space. The thin light of dawn was all color and darkness inside, the stained glass bright slits that marched to a glorious round window of rose and gold and blue above a cross and a barren table, leaving everything else in shadow. From somewhere, chickens muttered sleepy cackles, and a white hen fluttered up and balanced on the rail at the front of the church, eyeing them blandly. Devil stared at it, his body quivering with interest.

“Miss Timms,” Durham said, breathing hard, “they’re not a quarter hour behind us. I met Fane on the road—there’s no time to explain, but we only have one hope. One. Ma’am— you’ve got to marry him.

Now. Instantly. I can do it.”

Maddy stood in her gown and cloak, speechless.

“I know it’s sudden. I’d hoped to avoid it, to find some other way, but they’ve run us to ground far sooner than I’d expected. Miss Timms—they can take him. I can’t stop it, nor Fane—we’re nothing to him under the law. They can take him back.”

“But—canst thou not hide him? Take him farther away?”

“No time. No time, Miss Timms! Do you hear that? Fane, check the doors—bolt ”em all! That’s them—their horses!“

Indeed, over the moan of the wind, Maddy heard what might have been the clatter of hooves on the little bridge below, but a moment later it was gone. Brunhilda was all eyes. “I hear it!” she whispered.

“Please!” Durham said to Maddy. “For the love of God, Miss Timms—you’re the only one we can count on. Five minutes it’ll take—and you’ll be his nearest relation under the law. They can’t touch him if you say them nay.”

“But—it’s impossible! I’m a Friend!”

“I don’t care if you’re a bloody Hindu. It’s our only hope. A madhouse, ma’am! It was you who brought him out of it. You know it as no else does.”

“Thou dost not understand! I can’t be married by a priest—in a steeplehouse! Only to satisfy a law! I
can’t
! We must try to hide him!”

Durham abruptly walked away. Maddy clutched her freezing hands under her arms. She glanced at the duke. He was watching his friends as they checked the other entrances. When he looked at her slantwise, their eyes met— instant raw sensibility—she hadn’t known if he understood what Durham wanted, but in that glance, she knew that he did. He was stiff and proud; he said nothing, no petition, no plea for help—as distant as he had been since she had left him on the hill.

The sound that had been faraway and unreal a few moments before took a sudden shape—the sharp clatter of iron shoes on stone outside the door, and men shouting. The hens flapped. Devil barked, and Brunhilda yelped, “Who is it?” as the great latch rattled, but the wood muffled the voices outside beyond understanding anything more than excitement and anger.

Durham strode back. “Too late!” he snapped. “God damn it!”

The pursuers abandoned the main door. A side entrance shook under their assault, and the obscured voices outside grew bellicose. The dog Cass ran toward it, growling. There seemed to be a multitude of them; the other side door rattled at the same time. The chickens panicked, running about the floor, ducking in and out of the railings. Devil lost his composure and began to chase them, barking frantically.

Brunhilda gasped. Maddy turned to see Colonel Fane come down the aisle, drawing his sword. Durham unsheathed another from his walking stick, then pulled a pistol from inside his coat and delivered it to Jervaulx.

“
No
!” Maddy couldn’t get beyond that one word in her horror. She tried to catch Jervaulx and Durham both at once. The duke was already beyond her, but she clung to Durham’s sleeve. “Ye
must
not!
No
!”

He jerked away. “What do you suggest instead, Miss?” He could barely be heard over the sound of the assault on the doors and the barking dogs. He took up a station at the front, where the wood shook as if it were alive. Maddy turned around, saw Colonel Fane defending the left entry and Jervaulx kneeling down behind a box pew, his arm braced on the side, taking aim at the last door. Devil’s yelping barks resounded amid poultry squawks.

She strode to the front of the church, scattering hens as she mounted the step and turned. “
No
!” she shouted, as loud as she could shout it. “Ye will not do violence—none of ye!”

They all turned to look at her. Even Devil scrabbled out from beneath a pew, silenced, a chicken feather hanging from his nose.

“Leave those—weapons—where ye are. And come!”

Durham was the first to do it. He dropped his sword to the floor. Colonel Fane sheathed his; he followed Durham to the raised place at the railing where Maddy had stopped. She glared over them at Jervaulx, who finally, with haughty leisure, rose and laid the pistol down on the wide box rail in front of him.

The pounding on the doors had stopped. Even the voices outside grew dimmer, as if they had drawn off to a consultation.

“Jervaulx,” Maddy barked, “I have received from the Lord a charge to love thee. Thou art my husband, and I am thy wife, helpsmeet, with no rule but love between us.”

The three men looked up at her as if she had gone mad. Brunhilda stood behind them, shivering, pressing her apron over her mouth, only a red nose and huge eyes visible.

“That is all that I am led to say at present.” Maddy glared back.

Durham seemed to come to sudden awareness. He fumbled in his coat and pulled out a little book, stepped up beside her, leafed through it to a marked page, and began to read the priests’ marriage ceremony. Someone outside started to pound on the front door again, this time far louder, with an implement more solid than a human hand. Devil crouched, staring toward the door, growling. As Durham came to the part in the vows where the man was to repeat, Jervaulx looked up at Maddy with a wild and bitter arrogance—and for a moment she did not think he would even try.

“
Will
!” he sneered. “
…Christian Richard
Nicholas
Francis
Langland… take thee…

Maddygirl—Maddy… ah… Arc…
ma… Maddygirl… Timm
… to
have
… to
hold
… from
this
day ..

.forward
… for
better
… for
worse
… for
rich
… for
poor
… in
sickness
… in
health
… to
love
… to
cherish
… till
death
us… do
pan
… according to God’s…
holy
. Thereto… I plight
thee
… my…
troth

!”

Durham shuffled in the book. “Ah—um—that’s right, Shev old man.” He raised his voice above the rhythmic boom on the wooden door. “Precisely right. Forgot to take her by the hand, but that don’t matter. And now—Miss Timms, would you prefer to repeat after me?”

“I have said what I am led to say.”

He frowned a little, and then shrugged. “Good enough. All right. The ring part comes next. Fane?”

Colonel Fane had been standing complacently, hand on his sword hilt. When Durham looked at him, an absurd expression of dismay spread across the soldier’s face.

“Oh Good God, Fane. You forgot.”

“No! Just now… I
give
.” Jervaulx scowled at him fiercely. “You
think
!”

The colonel looked bewildered, and then brightened. “Got the papers,” he said, pulling them out and offering them to Durham.

His friend snatched them. “You hopeless block. We’ll have to use Shev’s signet.” Durham consulted the book, then glanced expectantly at the duke. “You’re supposed to hand it to her. She gives it to me, and I bless it.”

Jervaulx looked down at his hand, where the gold signet made a dull spot of richness against his dark clothes. There was a pause in the onslaught at the door, and then one sudden strike, crashing sound around the little church. Devil barked once and ran toward it. The chickens clucked excitedly, cowering under pews.

Jervaulx shoved his ring hand out to Maddy, palm up.

The cold made her fingers clumsy. As she worked the signet free, his skin seemed warm against hers, his hand large and steady. The ring fell into her palm. She would have handed it to Durham, but Jervaulx caught it up from her hand and pushed it onto her finger, where it hung so loose that he had to hold it there.

“
Ring
… I… thee
wed
.” He looked up into her eyes as if daring her to dispute it.

A single yelp came from somewhere at the back of the church, and a chicken flapped up into a candle stand, leaving Devil standing on his hinds legs in frustration.

“I will wear it,” Maddy said, “as God charges me to do.”

“I was supposed to bless it first,” Durham protested.

“None but our Lord may do that,” Maddy said.

“Well, all right. But it’s in the book. Let’s keep the thing a little straight here.” The pounding began again, this time at a side door. Durham raised his voice. “Is it quite acceptable to you if I lead us in a prayer, Miss Timms? I am ordained, if it helps.”

The wood of the side door began to give with a piercing crack. Both dogs rushed to it, raging and bristling. “Hurry!” Maddy snapped.

“Oh, hurry!” Brunhilda echoed.

“Eternal God… everlasting life… Never mind the prayer.” He ran his finger down the book. “Hmm…

hmm… ah.” He reached down and awkwardly joined Maddy’s hand with the duke’s, having trouble juggling the book at the same time. “What God hath joined together, let no man put asunder.” He had to find his place again. The side door suffered another strike and cracking rift. “Forasmuch as Christian—Damn, Shev, what’s the rest of your bloody name? Christian Richard, et cetera, et cetera, the Duke of Jervaulx and Archimedea Timms have consented together in holy wedlock, and have witnessed the same before God and this company—” The door gave again, and he began to speak faster. “—and thereto have given and pledged their troth—” Another crack of breaking wood.

“—each-to-the-other-and-have-declared-the-same-by-giving-and-receiving-a-ring-and-by-joining-hand s—” The door shuddered, splitting.

“—Ipronouncethattheyaremanandwife-inthenameofthe-Father-andoftheson-andoftheHolyGhost. Amen!”

Just as if it had been a stage play in a street fair, the door gave way. Brunhilda screamed. Their pursuers burst into the church.

“La! Oh, Mistress!” Brunhilda made her way through the pack of men in the rectory hall to Maddy, curtsying at each step. “Oh, m’lady—ought I to call ”ee lady? Oh, Mistress! I didn’t know! I swear I didn’t!“

Maddy held her cloak tight about herself, terrified that it would be discovered she was in her nightgown.

She was feeling odd and unreal, the full impact of what she’d done slowly creeping through her bones. In the church it had seemed a logical action; the need to prevent an outbreak of violence had overridden any other concern. The picture of Jervaulx, his pistol aimed at the door, his face cold and still—Maddy knew he would die before he’d return to Blythedale; in one electrified instant she’d seen what would happen when the men broke through that door—and surely… surely… she had done the only thing she could do to prevent it.

And now it must be carried through. She couldn’t stand up and announce that it was all a farce, performed in a moment of terror. She must be the Duchess of Jervaulx, and calmly stand by him, and speak for him, and maintain that she would not allow his family—his real family—to overrule his wishes and hers.