The Barefoot Princess (11 page)

He hit the floor on his rear.

She scrambled over him and fled toward the stairway and up the steps.

Leaping to his feet, blasted by passion, he followed. His foot hit the bottom step before he realized the truth.

He halted. He stared at his feet.

The manacle around his ankle had broken.

He was free.

Chapter 12

F
ree! Savage satisfaction coursed through Jermyn’s veins. Free!

And he would have her. He could still catch her. He would capture Amy.

Primitive instinct sent him upward, his stockinged feet thumping on the boards.

It was that sound that brought him to his senses.

What he mad? He shouldn’t be chasing after an aggravating, infuriating, galling, exasperating, vexing female. He could escape!

And the fact that he wavered showed how deeply this imprisonment had affected his mind.

He was free, and no one knew except him. He could go to the mainland and order the constable to take Miss Victorine and Lady Disdain into custody…no. No, he found no satisfaction in that idea.

He could put on his boots, stomp upstairs, and frighten Miss Victorine and Lady Disdain enough that they’d never commit another crime.

But he remembered the huge man who had carried him away when they drugged him. At times during this interminable week, he’d heard a man’s voice rumbling upstairs. He’d be lucky if Amy didn’t hit him over the head—right now, she’d probably like to—and have the man drag Jermyn’s unconscious body back down to the cot where they would affix another manacle.

Jermyn couldn’t bear another six days without sun or fresh air. He had to get out of here.

Noiselessly he leaped back to his cot. He picked up the broken manacle. Small flakes of rust fell into his palm. Apparently, while its outer appearance was clean, the inner mechanism had rusted away…leaving him free. He thrust his feet into his boots. Donned his jacket and his greatcoat. Going to the aging cabinet that rested against the wall under the window, he performed a cautious test to see if it could hold his weight, then hefted himself onto it. He pried the window open—it had been sealed so long it squawked in protest—and peered out.

Spring-green grass thrust from the ground in clumps around the window. He pushed them aside, but he could see no one. It was safe to crawl out. Digging his toes into the rough rock of the wall, he hauled himself up by his elbows, through the narrow opening to freedom.

The air was cool and damp, swirling with the gray mist that covered the setting sun. He rested his cheek on the grass and took the first fresh breaths he’d had in six days. His blood coursed strongly through his veins. He was free!

He couldn’t wait to get home and set plans in motion to settle the score with Miss Amy.

No, wait. First he would have a bath. Then he would settle the score with Lady Disdain. Personally and very, very slowly.

Standing, he took another deep breath and, giving in to impulse, he beat his chest and laughed aloud. He had just escaped imprisonment…and he had just taken a woman from ignorance to ecstasy. He had never felt such triumph.

Miss Victorine’s cottage stood on the hill overlooking the village and the sea. He knew if he followed the road, he could go to the pub and there find someone to row him back to the mainland.

Jermyn started toward the village. His leg felt good as he stretched out to stride with his normal gait.

He wondered if Miss Victorine would come down to check on him, and winced to realize she would. She would bring down his supper, discover he was gone, and be upset. Not because he had escaped; he’d heard Miss Victorine suggest he should be let go. No, she’d be upset because she enjoyed their evenings together. Every night she came down and made lace, listened as Amy read, or watched as the two younger people played chess. Miss Victorine reminisced about days gone past, told stories, and made Lady Disdain behave with courtesy. And she made him behave, too.

In truth, he had grown to like the evenings with Miss Victorine and Amy. They seemed…normal. Peaceful. As if he were part of a family, or living in a memory of his childhood before his mother had…

He jerked himself back to the present. He didn’t care to think about
her
. His mother. The betrayer.

He entered the outskirts of the village. Light shone from none of the windows, and the mist and the encroaching night gave the line of cottages an air of desolation. At least…he hoped that was why they looked so unkempt. When he was a lad and he had visited, every home had been a place of pride. Now it seemed no one cared whether the whitewash peeled off the walls or the thatching needed repair. It was almost as if the village had been abandoned by those who loved it most.

He hunched his shoulders, thrust his hands in his pockets, and strode toward the pub.

That building had light enough, but the windows were covered with oiled cloth rather than glass. He could hear voices and the clink of pewter, and his mouth watered at the idea of good English ale from a country pub.

But he couldn’t go in. The place hummed with voices; it sounded as if everyone in the village was within. Certainly Jermyn hoped so, for if that was true, Amy’s thug was in there.

Jermyn leaned against the wall by the window. He would wait until some sturdy oarsman came out. Then he would be on his way across the channel to the mainland, to his home and bath.

He huddled into his coat and smiled into the mist. He enjoyed imagining the look on Lady Disdain’s face when she got to the bottom step and saw the empty cot.

Of course, she might make an excuse not to come down tonight. He’d made her a happy woman and at the same time scared her out of her wits. She’d been as amazing as he had imagined, and when it came to Amy his imagination had been both fertile and diverse. But holding her in his arms had been almost as satisfying as dipping his wick in another woman’s lamp, and that made him realize he couldn’t have Amy hanged.

To do so would deny him his pleasures.

So tomorrow was going to turn out differently than anyone could imagine. Uncle Harrison would hear from his very displeased, very much alive nephew. Miss Victorine would get a stern talking-to from her lord. And Lady Disdain—

“Will they get any money out o’ this kidnapping, do ye think?” A man’s voice. A disturbingly familiar man’s voice.

Jermyn’s head snapped around. He moved closer to the window.

“I’m fearing fer the whole project.” Another man’s voice, also familiar.

“I told ye we shouldn’t get involved.” A woman’s voice, lamenting and accusing.

“Ye’re not involved.” Another woman, her voice tart and snappish. “No one will accuse ye o’ anything. You’ll not be punished at all—but remember this—if this had worked, ye’d have profited.”

“I never asked fer money!” The first woman yelped like a kicked puppy.

“Yer cottage is as bad as any in the village. Do ye think we’d let it fall down around yer head? Ye’d have let us fix it fer ye, but don’t ye worry. We’ll not drag ye under int’ our hash.”

“Mertle!” Jermyn recognized the deep male voice. He’d heard it just this afternoon up in Miss Victorine’s kitchen. Amy’s thug. The tall man who’d helped with Jermyn’s kidnapping. “Mrs. Kitchen doesn’t deserve such a tongue-lashing.”

“Well! I should hope not!” Mrs. Kitchen huffed.

Rather pointedly, Mertle said nothing.

“He hasn’t always been this way.” A different man’s voice, yet somehow familiar. Deeper, with almost no accent and the slight quaver of age. “Do you remember, Pom, when you were lads together romping about, and you and His Lordship explored the cliff at Summerwind Abbey? The cliff above the ocean?”

As Jermyn strained to remember who this might be, the pub collectively started to chuckle.

“Ah, nay, ye don’t have t’ tell that story.” It was the deep voice.

Pom. Jermyn remembered Pom from his childhood. They’d been the same age—and even then, Pom had been a big guy. A gentle lad, but three inches taller and already rowing out with his father after the fish.

Now, remembering that day Amy had drugged him, Jermyn realized Pom wasn’t big anymore. He was a giant.

Jermyn flexed his fists.

The older man continued, “The two of you started jumping off the cliff onto a rocky ledge not far below, and the old lord saw you and thought you’d both fallen to your deaths.”

“When we crawled back up to the top, Lord Northcliff caught us by our jackets and exercised his good right arm on our backsides.” Pom sounded pained, as if he remembered the lesson as clearly as did Jermyn.

The pub rocked with laughter. How could they know the way Father had looked, so pale and livid Jermyn had been frightened? And when Jermyn had tried to explain they had crawled all over the cliff and knew where to jump, Father had roared, “The wind and the waves are always crumbling the rock away, and I’ll be damned if I let the ocean take you, too.”

It was the only time Jermyn remembered hearing his father refer to the tragedy of his mother’s disappearance, and the only time he showed the pain she caused him.

“Should there be trouble, I’ll take responsibility for everything,” the quavering old voice said. “If His Lordship hears that I led my sheep into rocky pastures, surely he’ll—”

“Hang ye instead o’ us?” Mertle’s voice again. “We’ll not stand by fer that, Vicar.”

Ohh. Vicar Smith was the one who wanted to take responsibility.

“We’re in this t’gether,” Mertle said. “We did it t’ help Miss Victorine, t’ help ourselves, and t’ right a great wrong—”

“And t’ save His Lordship’s soul.” That deep male voice again.

Save my soul?
Jermyn could scarcely believe the impertinence.

“Aye, Pom, that, too,” Mertle agreed.

“I’d say we were trying to save Mr. Edmondson’s soul, too, but I fear that’s a lost cause,” the vicar said wryly.

“Aye, and there’s some o’ us more concerned about His Lordship’s soul than about Mr. Edmondson’s.” General laughter followed Mertle’s pronouncement.

So they didn’t like Uncle Harrison. After this week, Jermyn admitted to more than a slight niggle of unease about him, too.

“I’ve never heard o’ a whole village being hanged, so I think we should trust t’ God His Lordship will have mercy,” she said in a forcedly cheerful tone.

Jermyn waited to hear someone agree that he would, indeed, have mercy.

Instead, Miss Kitchen said, “He’s not like his father. He’s like his mother, running away from tiresome duties he doesn’t want t’ perform. He won’t have mercy. He won’t even know what they do t’ us.”

When Jermyn slipped back into the cellar, the broken manacle still rested on the floor, his cot was still rumpled from his tussle with Amy, the stove still gave off its warmth, the chessboard was still set up awaiting a new game.

Nothing had changed. Miss Victorine and Amy hadn’t realized he had escaped. The room looked exactly the same.

It was the world that looked different.

His
mother.

Sitting in a chair, he removed his boots and thrust them, with their betraying wisps of grass and dirt, under the cot. Going to the cabinet, he wiped away all evidence of his escapade.

He hung his greatcoat over the chair, and reaching for one of the towels set out for his ablutions, he dried the mist from his hair.

He sat in the chair, and the gibe returned, relentless, distasteful.

He’s like his mother, running away from tiresome duties he doesn’t want to perform.

Standing, he paced across the room, then back again.

How dared that woman compare him to his mother? Why had everyone agreed? He was like his father. How could they not see that? He looked like Father. He rode like Father. He had the same pride in the Edmondson name and the Northcliff title.

But the villagers thought he was like his mother.

How could they say that?

With relentless logic, he answered his own question.

They didn’t know who he looked like or what he took pride in. They hadn’t laid eyes on him for eighteen years. All they knew was that he had neglected his duties.

He
had. Not Uncle Harrison.
Jermyn
had. For Jermyn’s father would have never allowed another to assume the responsibilities of the marquess of Northcliff, no matter how closely connected he was. True, Uncle Harrison had been handling the family fortune when Father was alive, too, but Jermyn knew his father had insisted on a quarterly accounting from his brother. Father had personally employed a steward to manage the estates, and that steward had reported to him, not Uncle Harrison. Perhaps Father done so for a reason. Perhaps he hadn’t completely trusted Uncle Harrison.

For good reason, if what Jermyn had heard tonight was true. The villagers were destitute and so desperate they were willing to help Miss Victorine kidnap him as a way of seizing control of their destiny. Now they faced certain disaster—deportation, hanging, the workhouse—stoically and together. Well, mostly together. Mrs. Kitchen had made her displeasure clear, but she’d been the lone disgruntled voice.

As much as Jermyn hated to admit it, Lady Disdain was right. He was a wart on the noble ass of England.

But he was
not
like his mother. He had wiped every bit of that woman’s treacherous influence out of his mind and his heart.

He was like his father. He had strayed from the proper path, but he would take the reins in his hands starting now.

So how did he intend to start?

He would remove Uncle Harrison as his business manager and find out exactly what he intended by not sending the ransom.

He would visit each estate in turn, speak to the butler and the housekeeper, to the villagers, to the farmers, and correct whatever problems had been neglected.

Before he left the cellar forever, he would seduce Amy…and he even knew how.

Amy walked toward him, smiling as she discarded her clothing…

“Jermyn, dear.”

At the sound of Miss Victorine’s voice at the top of the stairs, he jumped guiltily. Speedily he erased the full-formed fantasy from his mind. He did
not
want Miss Victorine to know what he was thinking—or what he was thinking with.

She came down the stairs carrying his dinner tray, Coal padding along on her heels.

He wanted to leap forward to help her, but he was bound by a broken manacle and a deception, and he had to satisfy himself with taking it from her when she reached him.