The Rebel (51 page)

Complete Book List as of 2012

Writing As May McGoldrick:

Made In Heaven

Ghost of the Thames

Scottish Dream Trilogy

Dreams Of Destiny

Captured Dreams

Borrowed Dreams

The Rebel

Tess and The Highlander (A YA Novel)

The Promise

Highland Treasure Trilogy

The Firebrand

The Enchantress

The Dreamer

Flame

The Intended

Macpherson Trilogy

Beauty Of The Mist

Heart Of Gold

Angel Of Skye

Thistle and The Rose

Writing As Nicole Cody & May
McGoldrick:

Love and Mayhem (reissued as Arsenic and Old
Armor)

Writing As Jan Coffey:

Aquarian (A YA Novel)

Blind Eye

The Puppet Master

The Deadliest Strain

The Project

Silent Waters

Five in a Row

Tropical Kiss (A YA Novel)

Fourth Victim

Triple Threat

Twice Burned

Trust Me Once

Here's an excerpt from May McGoldrick’s next
novel

(First book of Scottish Dream Trilogy)

by

May McGoldrick

London

January 1772

“We are going in the wrong direction!”

Instead of turning west at the ancient
Temple Bar, the carriage had turned east on Fleet Street, and the
driver was now whipping his team through the busy traffic going
into the City. The lawyer raised the head of his cane to the roof
of the carriage to get the attention of the driver, but the touch
of Millicent’s gloved hand on his sleeve made him stop.

“He is going where he was directed, Sir
Oliver. There is an urgent matter I need to see to at the
wharves.”

“At the wharves? But…but we are already
somewhat pressed for time for your appointment, m’lady.”

“This shall not take very long.”

He sank back against the seat, somewhat
relieved. “Since we have a little time then, perhaps I could ask
you a few questions about the secretive nature of this meeting we
have been summoned to attend this morning.”

“Please, Sir Oliver,” Millicent pleaded
quietly. “Can your questions wait until after my business at the
wharves? I am afraid my mind is rather distracted right now.”

All his questions withered on the man’s
tongue as Lady Wentworth turned her face toward the window and the
passing street scene. A short time later the carriage passed by St.
Paul’s Cathedral and began wending its way down through a rough and
odorous area in the direction of the Thames. By the time they
crossed Fish Street, with its derelict sheds and warehouses, the
lawyer could restrain himself no longer.

“Would you at least tell me the nature of
this business at the wharves, m’lady?”

“We are going to an auction.”

Oliver Birch looked out the window at the
milling crowds of workmen and pickpockets and whores. “M’lady, I
hope you intend to stay in the carriage and that you will allow me
to instruct one of the grooms to obtain what you are looking
for.”

“I am sorry, sir, but it is essential that I
see to this myself.”

The lawyer grasped the side of the rocking
carriage as the driver turned into the courtyard of a tumbledown
wreck of a building on Brooke’s Wharf. Outside the window, an odd
mix of well-dressed gentlemen and shabby merchants and seamen stood
in attendance on an auction that, from the looks of things, was
already well under way.

“At least give me the details of what you
intend to do here, Lady Wentworth.” Birch climbed out of the
carriage first. Despite the biting wind off the Thames, the smells
of the place—combined with the stink of the river’s edge—were
appalling.

“I read about the auction in the
Gazette
this morning. They are selling off the estate of a
deceased physician by the name of Dombey. The ruined man moved back
from Jamaica last month.” She pulled the hood up on her woolen
cloak and accepted his hand as she stepped out. “Before he was put
in debtor’s prison, he succumbed to ill health some ten days
ago.”

Birch had to hurry to keep up with Millicent
as she pushed her way through the crowd to the front row. “And
what, may I ask, in Dr. Dombey’s estate is of interest to you?”

She didn’t answer, and the lawyer found his
client’s gray eyes searching anxiously past the personal articles
that were laid out on a makeshift platform. “I hope I am not too
late.”

The lawyer did not ask any more questions as
Millicent’s attention turned sharply toward the set of wide doors
that led into the building. The bailiff was dragging out a
frail-looking African woman wrapped in a tattered blanket and
wearing only a dirty shift under it. A crate was placed on the
platform, and the old woman—her neck and hands and feet in
shackles—was pushed roughly onto it.

Birch closed his eyes for a moment to
control his disgust at this evidence of the barbaric and
dishonorable trade that continued to curse the nation.

“Lookee, gennelmen. This here slave was Dr.
Dombey’s personal maid,” the auctioneer shouted. “She’s the only
Negro the medical bloke carried back with him from Jamaica. Aye,
sure, she’s a rum thing with her wrinkled face. And she’s of an age
to rival Methuselah. But gennelmen, she’s said to be a weritable
African queen, she is, and bright as crystal, they tell me. So e’en
though she’s worth a good thirty pounds, what say we start the
bidding of at…at a pound.”

There was loud jeering and laughter from the
group.

“Look, now, gennelmen. ‘Ow about ten
shillings then?” the auctioneer announced over the roar of the
crowd. “She’s good teeth, she has.” He pulled opened the woman’s
mouth roughly. There were crusts of blood on the chapped lips. “Ten
shillings? Who’ll start the bidding at ten shillings?”

“What bloody good is she?” somebody
shouted.

“Five, gennelmen. Who’ll start us at
five?”

“The woman is nothing more than a refuse
slave,” another responded. “If we were in Port Royal, she’d be left
to die on the wharf.”

Birch glanced worriedly at Millicent and
found a look of pain etched on her face. Tears were glimmering on
the edges of her eyelids.

“This is no place for you to be, m’lady,” he
whispered quietly. “It is not right for you to be witnessing this.
Whatever you came for must be already gone.”

“The advertisement said she was a fine
African lass.” A middle-aged clerk, sneering from his place at the
edge of the platform, threw a crumpled
Gazette
at the old
woman. “Why, she’s too old to even be good for—”

“Five pounds,” Millicent called out.

Every eye in the place turned to her, and
silence gripped the throng. Even the auctioneer seemed lost for
words for a moment. Birch saw the woman’s wrinkled eyelids open a
fraction and stare at Millicent.

“Aye, yer ladyship. Yer bid is in fer—”

“Six pounds.” A second bid from someone deep
in the crowd silenced the auctioneer again. All heads in unison
turned to the back of the auction yard.

“Seven,” Millicent responded.

“Eight.”

On the platform the man’s face broke out
into a grin as the crowds parted, showing a nattily dressed clerk
holding up a rolled newspaper. “Why, I see Mr. Hyde’s clerk is in
attendance. Thank ye fer yer bid, Harry.”

“Ten pounds,” Millicent said with great
vehemence.

Birch scanned the number of carriages in the
yard, wondering from which one of them Jasper Hyde was issuing his
commands. A large plantation owner in the West Indies and
supposedly a good friend to the late Squire Wentworth, the
Englishman had wasted no time in taking over all of the squire’s
properties in the Caribbean after his death in payment for debts
Wentworth had owed him. And if that were not enough, since arriving
in England, Mr. Hyde had positioned himself as Lady Wentworth’s
chief nemesis, buying up the rest of the bills of exchange and
promissory notes the squire had left behind.

“Twenty.”

There was a loud gasp of disbelief and the
crowd began to shift uncomfortably.

“Thirty.”

The lawyer turned to Millicent. “He is
playing with you, m’lady,” he said quietly. “I do not believe it
would be wise—”

“Fifty pounds,” the clerk called without a
trace of emotion.

A group of sailors near the edge of the
platform turned and scoffed loudly at the clerk for pushing up the
price.

“I cannot let him do this. Dr. Dombey and
this woman spent a great deal of time on Wentworth’s plantations in
Jamaica. From the stories I’ve heard from Jonah and some of the
others at Melbury Hall, she became a person of some importance to
them.” She nodded to the auctioneer. “Sixty pounds.”

Birch watched Jasper Hyde’s clerk appear to
squirm a little. The man turned and looked toward the line of
carriages. The rolled newspaper rose in the air before the caller
could repeat the last bid. “Seventy.”

The rumbling in the crowd became more
pronounced. There were sharp comments to the effect that he should
let the woman have the slave. A couple of the sailors edged
threateningly toward the clerk, muttering derisive obscenities.

“This is all a sick game to Mr. Hyde,”
Millicent whispered, turning away from the platform. “There are
many stories of his brutality on the plantations. The stories about
what he did after taking possession of my husband’s land and slaves
are even worse. He is answerable to no one and has no regard for
what few laws are observed there. This woman has witnessed it all,
though. He will hurt her. Kill her, perhaps.” Her hands fisted.
“Sir Oliver, I owe this to my people after all the suffering
Wentworth caused. I cannot in good conscience turn my back when I
can save this one. Not when I have failed all those others that
Hyde took.”

“That it, yer ladyship?” the auctioneer
asked. “Yer giving in?”

“Eighty,” she replied, her voice
quavering.

“You cannot afford this, m’lady,” Birch put
in firmly but quietly. “Think of the promissory notes Hyde still
holds from your husband. You’ve extended the date of repayment
once. But they will all come due next month, and you are personally
liable, to the extent of every last thing you own. And this
includes Melbury Hall. You just cannot add more fuel to his
fire.”

“One hundred pounds.” The clerk’s shout was
instantly swallowed up by a loud response from the crowd. Birch
watched the man take a few nervous steps toward the carriages as
the same angry sailors moved closer to him.

“One ten, milady?” the auctioneer, grinning
excitedly, called out from the platform.

“You cannot save every one, Millicent,”
Birch whispered sharply. When first asked by the Earl and the
Countess of Stanmore to represent Lady Wentworth in her legal
affairs a year ago, he’d also been informed of the woman’s great
compassion for the Africans whom her late husband had held as
slaves. But his expectations had not come close to the fervor he’d
witnessed since then.

“I know that, Sir Oliver.”

“For all we know, he might already own this
woman. In the same way that he has been acquiring all of the late
squire’s notes, he may have done the same with Dombey. This may
just be Jasper Hyde’s way of draining the last of your available
funds.”

As his words sank in, Millicent’s shoulders
sagged. Wiping a tear from her face, she turned and started pushing
her way toward the carriage. Halfway out of the yard, though, she
swung around and raised a hand.

“One hundred ten.”

A round of exclamations erupted from the
crowd. Gradually, people parted until she was facing the pale-faced
clerk across the mud and dirt of the yard. Having already retreated
to back edge of the crowd, the man shook his head at the auctioneer
and looked back at Millicent.

“Lady Wentworth can have her Negro at the
price of a hundred ten pounds.”

The mocking tones of the man, accompanied by
his sneer, caused the sailors to lose the last of their restraint,
and two took off after him. The clerk turned and bolted from the
yard. Watching him run, Birch felt the urge to go after the clerk
himself. There was no doubt in the lawyer’s mind that this ordeal
had been arranged. In a moment, the sailors returned
empty-handed.

She laid her hand gently on his arm.
“Regardless of Mr. Hyde’s actions, I had to save this woman’s life,
Sir Oliver.”

Millicent Gregory Wentworth could not be
considered a great beauty, nor could her sense of style be called
au courant
by the standards of London’s
ton
. But what
she lacked in those areas—and in the false pride so fashionable of
late—she made up in dignity and humanity. And all of this despite a
lifetime of oppression and bad luck.

Birch nodded respectfully to his client.
“Why not wait in the carriage, m’lady. I would be happy to take
care of the details here.”

A small writing desk was being handed up and
placed exactly where the slave woman had stood a moment earlier.
Millicent watched several members of the crowd edge forward for a
better look at the piece of furniture. They were far more
interested in this item than in the human being who was auctioned
off before it. Only the competition of the bidding had attracted
their attention. She turned to watch the woman being led across the
yard, with Sir Oliver trailing behind.

Appalled by the entire proceeding, Millicent
pushed her way through the crowd to the carriage.

“She will be brought to my office this
afternoon,” Birch said as soon as he had climbed in some time
later. “And, since you do not wish to have her delivered to your
sister’s home, I will arrange for a place for her to stay until you
are ready to leave for Melbury Hall.”