Reckless Angel (3 page)

“We could work. There is farm work, and I could be a dairymaid…But now…” Her voice faltered. “Will is killed, so…so…” The tears fell then, fast and furious. “It is not just,” she sobbed. “He was too young and I loved him so much.”

Daniel had little comfort to offer. Too many young men beloved of their maids had gone to their deaths in the last eight years of civil strife. He stroked her head, gave her his handkerchief, and waited for the storm to blow itself out.

“Now, now, what's this?” The goodwife bustled up the stairs. “Lordy, sir, she shouldn't be workin' 'erself up like this.”

Thus reprimanded, however unjustly, Daniel left Harry in the charge of the goodwife and went outside into the late afternoon. The story she had told him was hardly unusual, but no less unpleasant for that. Daughters were currency and not all parents were scrupulous in the manner in which they spent that currency. It did not alter his task, however. He had no choice but to return her to her home and deliver her up to whatever fate there awaited her, for all that he was aware a runaway daughter was unlikely to draw a light sentence even from the fondest parent.

Of course, before he could do anything, she had to recover her strength and be induced to reveal her identity. Meanwhile he must kick his heels here, a mere half day's ride from Preston, where Parliament's army was still mopping up straggling Royalists. It went against all the laws of chance to imagine that the presence in this cottage of two strangers and an injured girl would go unnoticed in the surrounding countryside—and not all who heard of them would be of Royalist sympathy.

I
t was a week later when Tom rode up to the cottage, alarm etched in every line of the leathery countenance. “'Tis said a party of Roundhead troopers and a captain are combing the area, sir,” he blurted out as he jumped from the cob. “They've already found three wounded men holed up in a barn about five miles from 'ere.” He spat disgustedly on the ground. “Bastards fired the barn, although the farmer swore 'e'd no knowledge of the men hidden there. Poor sod lost 'is winter's feed.”

Daniel glanced backward at the neat little cottage, the turning mill wheel, the harvested field, the round figure of the goodwife bent over a currant bush in the kitchen garden. After all the kindness shown them, they could not put the woman and her son at risk of losing their livelihood. It was time Harry was induced to tell the truth, so that at least they might flee in the right direction.

She had left her sickbed on wobbly legs the previous day, and was now sitting in the shade of a copper beech by the front door. He had been right about her hair. Freshly washed, it was the color of corn silk, feathering in soft tendrils around a heart-shaped face in which the brown eyes still appeared overlarge. She was wearing a borrowed gown that swamped her in shapeless folds, evidence of the goodwife's rather different bodily structure. However, there was nothing waiflike about
the smile with which she greeted Daniel as he approached.

“Are you come to amuse me, Sir Daniel? I am sadly bored just sitting here without even a book to while away the tedium.”

“Alas, child, I am come to annoy you, I fear,” he said. “We must move from here without delay, and I've a need to know in what direction our way lies.”

“Why, sir, how should I know in what direction your way lies?” she said, that mulish look upon her face again, replacing the previous smile. “'Tis no business of mine.”

“I think we had better continue this discussion in your chamber,” he said quietly. “I intend to have the truth from you.”

There was something about the quiet tone that caused Henrietta a quiver of apprehension. “I will not go home,” she said as he took her elbow and drew her to her feet.

“We will see about that.”

She pulled back against the hand that would lead her into the house, but even had she been restored to full health and strength her resistance could only have been token. “I
won't
go home,” she reiterated on a note of desperation. “I can fend for myself if you must leave. Mayhap the goodwife will let me stay with her and earn my keep.”

“You talk foolishness,” he replied shortly, pushing her ahead of him up the narrow staircase. “Now, let us be done with this Harry nonsense. I want your name.”

Released, she thumped down on the cot, drawing her knees up and hugging them fiercely. “I am called Harry.”

“Of what family?” There was an edge now to the smooth, deep voice, and the hint of humor it normally contained was quite gone. His eyes were hard; his lips thinned.

Henrietta shook her head in mute refusal.

“If you were one of my daughters,” Daniel said
softly, “I would make short work of your obstinacy. Do not try me too far.”

Her eyes widened. “How many do you have?”

“How many what?” The question threw him off balance, bearing no relation as far as he could see to the matter under discussion.

“Daughters, of course.” Interest laced her voice.

For a moment his expression softened. “Two, and a graceless pair they are.” A shadow crossed his eyes. “They want a mother's care.”

“She is dead?”

“Aye, in childbed with Ann some four years past,” he replied bleakly.

“You do not seem that old,” Henrietta remarked, regarding him in speculative fashion over her knees.

Daniel looked astonished. “I do not feel ‘that old.' A man of nine and twenty has not exactly one foot in the grave.”

“How old is your other daughter?” This was a much more appealing conversation, Henrietta decided, and might well serve to keep the other one at bay for a while longer.

“Elizabeth is eight.”

“And there are no other children?” A marriage lasting upward of five years would generally produce more than two offspring four years apart.

Daniel shrugged. “Two little ones died; one at birth, the other of milk fever when he was a week old.” And his Nan had never carried a child with any ease, had labored in long agony to deliver each one, until finally exhausted…He put away the futile train of thought and the guilt he had learned to live with.

The figure on the bed opened her mouth for another question, but Daniel, realizing how far they had drifted from the urgent matter at hand, cut her off before she could form the words. “Of what family are you?” He snapped his fingers impatiently. “This has gone on long enough.”

“I cannot go home. Surely you must understand that?” The obstinacy was replaced now with a soft
plea. “Do you know what they will do to me? Sir Reginald probably will not wish to marry me any longer—”

“In which case you will be spared a rank and drunken bedmate,” he interrupted harshly. “I had thought 'twas that fate you had fled.”

She bit her lip. “So it was. And if I had managed to wed Will, then everything would have been all right. But I am afeard to go back unwed. 'Twill be a thousand times worse if Sir Reginald says I have spoiled my maidenhead—which I have not, because Will was too honorable,” she added. Daniel inhaled sharply at the slightly aggrieved note investing the addendum and he began to feel some sympathy for the girl's parents. “But he could say it was so and refuse to marry me,” she finished with a helpless gesture that reminded him of how young and defenseless she was.

Daniel was defeated. There was no severity he could visit to extract the information from her that would not be surpassed by what she knew awaited her at home. He paced the tiny chamber while she sat on the bed, watching him anxiously over her drawn-up knees.

The sound of raised voices outside jarred the tense silence. Daniel strode to the window, his face paling beneath the tan as he recognized Tom's angrily protesting tones mingling with those of a stranger. Was it Roundheads? But below he saw just one man, no more than a youth, engaged in exclamatory conversation with Tom.

Henrietta stumbled off the bed, the strangest expression on her face. Her legs were still weak and the weakness was not aided by her painfully pounding heart. She clung to the windowsill at Daniel's side. “'Tis Will!” She looked up into her companion's astounded face. “'Tis Will! He is not killed!”

Daniel was conscious of an overpowering relief mingling with utter bewilderment as to how this salvation could so mysteriously have appeared.

“Will!” Henrietta's shriek set his ears ringing. “You are not killed!”

The young man looked up at the window, shading his eyes against the sun. “Do I look it, Harry? How the devil did you…? Oh, never mind.” He turned back to Tom, now stunned into silence. “D'ye see, man? I am no foe. I have been turning the countryside outside in looking for her, and those damned Roundheads are everywhere!”

Tom nodded. “Ye'd best go up, young sir.”

A bare half a minute later, Will Osbert entered the attic chamber. He was a big, untidy-looking young man with a shock of red hair and bright green eyes. “Y'are the most ramshackle girl, Harry,” he declared with feeling. “Where did you go? I thought ye safe in the inn.” He noticed her companion for the first time and his face flushed darkly. His hand went to his sword. “What business have you with Mistress Ashby, sir?”

“Oh, Will!” wailed Henrietta, dropping onto the bed again as her legs began to wobble anew. “You have betrayed me!”

“Betrayed you!” Completely at a loss, Will stared blankly. “What do you do here with this man?”

“Daniel Drummond,” Daniel said, extending his hand. “I am delighted to make your acquaintance, Master Will. I have heard much about you. But do pray enlighten me further. I cannot believe that Mistress Ashby truly goes by the name of Harry.”

“Oh, no, sir, 'tis but a nickname, short for Henrietta,” Will said cheerfully, quite reassured, although he was unsure why, by the manner of one who was so clearly a gentleman and seemed quite in charge of matters. “She is Henrietta Ashby of the Oxfordshire Ashbys. And I am Will Osbert, son of John Osbert, Esquire, of Wheatley in the same county.”

“Oh, you are so
stupid
,” Henrietta said in disgust.

Daniel's lips twitched. It seemed he was about to hear an exchange rather resembling a schoolroom squabble than a lovers' tiff. He was not disappointed.

“I am not at all stupid,” Will said hotly. “I told ye to stay in the inn, but when I reached there after the battle—and a deal of trouble I had getting there, I might
add—they said you had been gone since early morning and had left no message. If
that
is not stupid, I do not know what is.”

“But I saw you fall on the field,” she said.

“What!” The young man gazed in disbelief. “What field?”

“At Preston. I followed you. I was in disguise anyway, so no one thought me out of place. I looked just like a trooper.” She became inordinately interested in her fingers, plaiting them intricately in her lap. “I thought if you were going to die, then I would rather I die with ye than be forced to return home.”

“You were at the battle?” Will, in his struggle to grasp this, was aware that he sounded like a child repeating his lesson.

“I was wounded,” she announced with some pride, looking up at him. “Sore wounded, was I not, Sir Daniel?”

“A pike thrust,” he agreed solemnly. “I'd advise you to keep a closer eye on your affianced bride in the future, Master Osbert.”

“Oh, Harry, what have you been saying? You
know
we cannot be wed.” Will punched a clenched fist into the open palm of his other hand. “I have told you so more times than I care to remember. Your father will not consent and so neither will mine. You will have no dowry and I shall be disinherited. What are we to live upon?”

Daniel felt his relief evaporate. The serendipitous arrival of Master Osbert did not appear to be the salvation he had believed.

“But d'ye not love me, Will?” Henrietta spoke with painful intensity, her hands gripped tightly in her lap. “We plighted our troth. I would not have followed you else.”

Will shuffled his feet uncomfortably. “Of course I love you, Harry, but we cannot be wed without money. You had no business running away as you did.
You
must understand, sir.” He turned in appeal to the silent older man. “She dressed in men's clothes and ran
away from home without telling me she was going to. She came up with me in London and would not go home.” He ran his hands distractedly through the unruly thatch of red hair. “She never tells me what she is going to do…just like following me to the battle when I had thought her snug in the inn.”

“But I could not tell you what I intended,” Henrietta protested. “You would have become exceeding perverse and said I should not.”

Daniel Drummond closed his eyes briefly. Mistress Ashby might well fancy herself in love, but from the tone of this exchange it seemed likely that love of the reluctant Will Osbert had merely offered excuse to flee the parental hearth and the prospect of wedding and bedding the ancient and unwholesome Sir Reginald. It looked as if he was not going to shed this burden for some time.

He interrupted their wrangling. “How did you escape the field, Will? Henrietta says she saw ye fall.”

“I did not fall,” Will said. “If I did not recognize Harry, it is possible she mistook someone for me.”

Daniel nodded. In that hell's kitchen, clouded with gunsmoke, deafened by the clash of steel and the roar of cannon and the crack of musket shot, anything could have happened. “How did you light upon this place?”

Will scratched his freckled nose. “I have been scouring the countryside for days; dodging Roundhead patrols all the while. I could not see how she could just disappear, sir, so I thought if I made inquiries at every inn and in every village someone would have some news.”

“And lo and behold…” Daniel said dourly with an encompassing swing of his arm at the assembled trio. “If you heard we were here, the patrols won't be long behind.” He walked to the window. “Without passes, we shall have the devil's own time journeying south, and Henrietta is still far from strong.”

“I am not going,” Henrietta declared. “So you need not concern yourself with me. The Roundheads will not trouble me here—”

Daniel swung around from the window. “Mistress Ashby, my patience is
not
inexhaustible!”

“But I am nothing to do with you,” she protested with perfect truth.

“'Tis so, Sir Daniel,” Will put in. “We will shift for ourselves now that I have found her. You must look to your own safety.”

Daniel looked at the young man's flushed earnestness and smiled reluctantly. “I appreciate your concern, Master Osbert, but I have a feeling that I can more effectively ensure Henrietta's return to Oxfordshire than you.”

Will glanced worriedly at Henrietta, who had slumped despairingly on the bed. “She cannot return, sir. You do not know Sir Gerald, or Lady Mary, Harry's stepmother.”

Daniel frowned. “Some punishment for such an escapade is surely merited? You would not deny that. Is it the rod ye fear?”

“There's worse things than the rod,” Henrietta said, looking at Will, who returned her look in gloomy comprehension.

Daniel sighed. “Very well, we will leave the question of your ultimate destination to be decided later. But we will essay the journey south together. D'ye have a horse, Will?”

Before Will could answer, footsteps sounded on the staircase and the goodwife, white-faced, stumbled into the room. “Soldiers, sir,” she gasped, dabbing her lips with her apron. “Roundheads, some fifty yards down the road, Jake says. They're comin' 'ere, sir. What's to be done?” Her voice trembled on the edge of hysteria. “They'll burn the 'ouse over our heads, drive off the cow, they'll—”