The Deathly Portent (2 page)

Before Aidan could respond, a chorus of mocking laughter echoed into the darkness. And then the boys were off, running back in the direction of the village green.

Aidan watched them disappear into the gloom until discomfort reminded him that he was standing in the driving rain. Hastening back into the house, he shut the door and shot the bolts, shaking off the damp. Then he turned to find the fugitive leaning into the wall, her breath coming short and fast.

“Softly, ma’am. You are safe now.”

He spoke without thought, and the dimly seen outline of the woman turned towards him. But if she was about to speak, she was forestalled by the maid who accompanied her.

“Safe, is it? She’ll not be safe, Reverend, if she goes back to the cottage. They’ll come after her there, sure as check, if that fellow is dead.”

Low-voiced, at last the other spoke. “I should not have told him.”

“Hush now, Miss Cassie. It ain’t no use repining.”

In the gloom, Aidan saw the woman sway. The maid caught at her before he could step forward.

“Begging your pardon, Reverend, my mistress is like to fall down if I don’t get her sat down quick.”

“Yes, of course. Forgive me, ma’am. Will you come into the parlour, both of you?”

Darting ahead, Aidan held the door open, thankful that his two candelabra spilled a modicum of light into the hall to show the way.

“Take care as you enter. I am but half unpacked as yet, and the floor is strewn with belongings.”

“Never you fret, sir,” said the maid. “I’ll see to her.”

Aidan took up the candelabrum from the floor and watched the maid shepherd her mistress towards the wooden settle.

“Sit you down, Miss Cassie.”

Obedient, the woman sank into the seat, and then she looked up, directly into his face. The candlelight gentled the harsh planes of her dampened features into a softer glow, and Aidan realised she was barely a woman yet. A girl—aged by suffering?

“You befriend me at your peril.”

Struck by the vibrant note in her husky voice, Aidan held her gaze, speaking with gentleness.

“As a man of God, it is my duty to befriend anyone who calls upon my charity. Where is the peril in that?”

He watched her fingers curl into claws. “They will revile you. They will tell you I am in league with the devil and you must shun me.”

“Then they will find themselves mightily at fault.”

She stared at him, her eyes dark with a species of pain that cut Aidan to the heart. “I should not have told him.”

The maid clicked her tongue at this repetition, and Aidan glanced at her.

“Pray sit by your mistress and take care of her while I fetch my housekeeper, who will find towels and prepare a bedchamber.”

“A bedchamber?”

Aidan smiled at the shock in the maid’s voice. “You asked for sanctuary, did you not? I cannot think it wise for your mistress to venture out again tonight.”

The girl shuddered, pulling her cloak more tightly about her. Aidan moved a step closer and set his hand palm up. She looked at the hand, then up into his face.

“You are a gentle man, sir.”

Then, like a child, she lifted her hand, fingers outstretched and trembling, and set it upon his. Hers was a slim, cold hand, colder than his, and Aidan held it strongly.

“Let me but set all in motion, and then you may tell me everything.”

T
he overnight storm had given way to a fresh summer day, with a rapidly rising temperature. But it had left the roads a quagmire.

Lord Francis Fanshawe was hot, sticky, and decidedly out of temper. He unbent his body from useless contemplation of the axletree, in the vain hope that Ryde was mistaken in saying it was broken. He shifted to flex the ache in his back from bending too long and regarded the muddy road with acute disfavour. The coach wheels were stuck fast, and his boots were caked. They were probably ruined forever—or would be, once he put them in the hands of the boots at a wayside inn. Why in Hades had he come away without his valet?

As if in sympathy, his stomach growled, protesting the hours since breakfast. Francis glanced over to where the three remaining horses, released from their traces and temporarily tethered to a nearby tree, were grazing, ready to eat themselves into a stupor while Francis starved.

At that instant, his gaze fell upon his bride, and his vexation intensified. Tillie was palpably to blame for these evils, but instead of decently railing at an unhappy fate, she could think of nothing better to do than to wander along the roadside admiring wildflowers and humming.

“Ottilia!”

His wife of a few short weeks merely turned her head and waved before continuing on her way. Francis cursed and strode in her direction.

“For pity’s sake, come and wait in the coach,” he called. “You will exhaust yourself wandering about in this heat.”

Tillie checked and turned her clear gaze upon him, raising her brows.

“I am more like to faint from being shut up in that stuffy coach, do you not think?”

“No, I do not. It may be hours before Ryde or Williams gets back.”

His groom, despatched to locate the nearest smithy, had gone off in one direction across country, while the coachman, riding the post-horse, had gone back along the main road towards Atherstone, through which they had passed a little before the breakdown, in a bid to locate a decent hostelry where some form of transport might be hired to enable the stranded travellers to seek shelter.

“Surely not,” objected Tillie. “That kindly yokel spoke of a village a mere half mile or so from here.”

Francis all but snorted. “Do you know no better than to take a country fellow’s estimate for gospel? I daresay it is five miles or more to this Witherley place, if we only knew.”

For a moment, he received no reply other than his wife’s measured regard. Francis knew that look.

“If you are about to try your cajolery on me, Tillie, let me warn you I am not in the mood.”

Tillie’s characteristic laugh escaped her lips, and his ill temper lightened briefly. “I can see that, my dearest.”

She stepped gently off the grass verge and picked a path across the muddy road, holding up her skirts. Having wisely left her travelling greatcoat in the coach, she was clad only in a gown of soft green muslin that emphasised her curves, a mere wisp of lace tucker covering the swell of her bosom. Below her chip straw bonnet, tendrils of her banded hair escaped confinement under a cap and her high-boned cheeks seemed unaffected by the heat that was adding to Francis’s frustrations. For an instant he softened, reflecting on the pleasure the mere sight of her gave him, transformed—thanks to his mother’s insistence and his own open purse—from the dowdy companion he had first encountered. Then his eye
caught on the clutch of coloured stems tucked in her fingers, and his irritation flared anew.

“You are the most maddening female, Tillie,” he told her as she came up.

She looked rueful. “Dear me. Am I still in disgrace?”

Francis almost relented, but for the lurking twinkle in his wife’s eye. “You know very well we should not have been in this mess had you not insisted on leaving your godmother’s this morning. Anyone with a modicum of common sense must have known what the outcome would be after such a storm as we had last night.”

To his intense satisfaction, his wife’s patience cracked.

“For heaven’s sake, Fan, don’t start again! All well for you, able to leave the room the moment you could no longer endure it, but I was obliged to answer again and again to the same set of questions and comment. I tell you, if we had not escaped, I would have been ready to stab her with the carving knife.”

“Thus ensuring you don’t receive a farthing when she is finally gathered to her forefathers.”

“Just so,” Ottilia said, disregarding his sarcasm. “Far safer to leave at once.”

The duty visit to Lady Edingale had indeed been trying, as Francis was obliged to concede. Tillie’s ancient benefactor, a schoolfriend of her deceased grandmother, was both deaf and forgetful. She had signally failed to grasp the fact of Ottilia’s marriage, despite endless repetitions by both parties and the old lady’s long-suffering companion. Or if she had grasped it, she had forgotten it within minutes, enlivening every attempt at conversation with a refrain that at last alienated even his wife’s wide tolerance.

“You should think of getting married again, Ottilia. You cannot be mourning your lost love forever.”

In vain had his poor Tillie, virtually shouting into the old lady’s ear trumpet, protested her new state. It proved of no avail to point Francis out as her husband, for whenever he
walked into a room where she was, Lady Edingale invariably took immediate exception to his presence.

“Who is this? What’s that? Francis, you say? Know him? Of course I don’t know him. Never seen the fellow before in my life.”

Nevertheless, it had been foolhardy to set out in these conditions, despite the early promise of the sun. Annoyed with himself for giving in to Tillie’s insistence against his better judgement, Francis was aware of being driven to vent his spleen unfairly. He moderated his tone.

“Tillie, I’m hungry and hot and frustrated.”

A faint smile flickered on her lips. “And sadly out of temper.” She lifted the gloved hand in which her collection of wildflowers was still clutched and rested it lightly against his chest. “Could you truly have endured another such night of creeping about in the dark?”

Francis felt his irritation melting away. Lady Edingale’s steadfast refusal to acknowledge their marriage had resulted in furtive assignations in either one of their allotted separate bedchambers. His fingers came up to grasp her hand as he lifted a teasing eyebrow.

“To tell you the truth, I was rather enjoying the romance of it all.”

He was rewarded with the gurgle that never failed to affect him.

“You should have mentioned that at the outset,” said Tillie. “Such an argument might well have persuaded me to remain.”

“What, and miss this adventure?”

“How well you know me!”

He had to laugh. “Wretch!”

Tillie leaned up, and Francis obligingly kissed her on the lips.

“Am I forgiven?”

He gave an elaborate sigh. “I suppose I must be magnanimous.”

“Especially considering I am the newest of brides and entitled to a deal more latitude than might normally be the case.”

“Latitude? I am more like to end by locking you up and forbidding you to leave the house under any circumstances.”

“I should call on your friend George to throw a rope ladder up to my window,” returned his wife with scarcely a tremor in her voice. But the mischief in her eyes drove away the last of his irritation.

“Is that the best you can do?” he scoffed. “For shame, Tillie. And here I thought I would provide you with puzzle enough to tax your ingenuity to the utmost.”

Before she could retaliate, a hail from behind drew Francis’s attention. Releasing his wife, he turned to see his groom reentering the main road from the little lane into which Ryde’s steps had been directed by the local whom Francis had earlier accosted.

“Ah, there you are at last.”

A
s Ryde crossed the road towards them, Ottilia noted a look of perturbation in the man’s face.

“All is not well, I think,” she murmured.

Her husband cast her a frowning look but made no comment, instead turning his attention back to the groom. “Had you no success? Don’t say there is no blacksmith at this village after all.”

A faint smile twisted Ryde’s lips as he came up. It struck Ottilia as grim. A dour fellow at the best of times, the groom was nevertheless, so Francis assured her, one of his household’s greatest assets. He had served his master from Lord Francis Fanshawe’s earliest years and, like his valet Diplock, had followed him through his soldiering adventures. Ottilia had learned already to trust the man’s judgement.

“There’s a blacksmith, all right, m’lord,” he responded, removing his hat and wiping his hand across his grizzled and sweaty head. “Only he’s dead.”

Ottilia saw renewed vexation leap quickly into Francis’s eyes, and she made an immediate effort to deflect his attention. “Recently, Ryde?”

“Last night, m’lady.”

“Last night?” Francis echoed. “If that isn’t the devil’s own luck.”

“For Duggleby, m’lord, as I hear is the man’s name.”

From no other servant would her husband have accepted the implied rebuke, Ottilia knew. She intervened swiftly, knowing his temper to be exacerbated already.

“What happened to him, Ryde?”

“Seems the roof caved in on him, m’lady.”

“Good God,” uttered Francis, startled. “Then the poor fellow was crushed to death?”

“Was it the storm, Ryde?”

A faint twitch attacked the groom’s mouth, and his eye gleamed. Noting these rare signs of amusement, Ottilia waited with burgeoning interest.

“The storm, m’lady, or a witch’s curse, if the villagers are to be believed.”

A spurt of laughter was surprised out of Francis, but Ottilia was intrigued.

“How could that be?”

Ryde shrugged. “I couldn’t make much sense of it, m’lady. Seems this witch claims she saw the roof come down in a vision.”

“Wise after the event, eh?”

“Before, m’lord. By all accounts, this Mrs. Dale gave warning to this Duggleby a couple of days back.”

“And it happened as she said? Sheer luck, no doubt.”

Ottilia put up a finger. “Don’t dismiss it so lightly, Francis. Perhaps the woman has second sight.”

The groom was nodding. “That’s what they say, m’lady. It ain’t the first time as she’s been right.”

“And I daresay the villagers don’t like it?”

“No, m’lady. They say she caused the roof to fall in.”

“Yes,” Ottilia mused, “people are apt to attack what they fear or do not understand.”

“That’s why you spoke of a witch’s curse, Ryde?”

“Yes, m’lord. Only it’s worse than that. Seems the place was set afire. And rumour has it the doctor weren’t satisfied as it was the cave-in as killed the blacksmith. They’re saying he had his head bashed in.”

“But his head must have been damaged by the falling masonry,” objected Francis.