Lies and Misdemeanours (8 page)

“I know. I am incredibly grateful to you all but cannot help but wonder what we should do now,” Charlie declared flatly. “Star Elite or not, you could hang for this if you get caught,” Charlie sighed as they cantered steadily across the fields. “Meldrew is nothing if not swift. If he gets his hands on us again, everyone will be hung so swiftly that Sir Hugo won’t even have the chance to saddle his horse before we are at the end of the hangman’s noose, and that includes Hetty.”

“Sir Hugo knows about Meldrew, Charlie. He received Hetty’s letter and immediately sent a rider out to find us. We rounded up the men and came straight here, but didn’t arrive until last night. Sir Hugo has stayed in London to round up more men and notify the upper echelons in authority. He promised he would be a day behind us. Even with any unforeseen delays, he should be with us the day after tomorrow,” Joshua reasoned. “All we have to do is keep everyone out of Meldrew’s clutches until then.”

“We will have a shoot-out with anyone who bloody well tries to take any of us,” Marcus said as he patted his gun. He took a moment to dig into his saddle bag and tugged out another gun, which he passed to Charlie. “In case of emergencies.”

“That’s all very well and good,” Charlie argued as he took it off him with a nod. “But Hetty isn’t out of Meldrew’s clutches. Nor is Mabel for that matter. Both of them are still in that bloody town. Her red hair is beautiful, but it is like a bloody beacon. Meldrew will look out for her because she is not too hard to miss, is she? Not only that but she is my wife, and Simon’s sister.”

Barnaby sighed and thought of the red-headed beauty who had looked petrified yet so determined, and could understand Charlie’s determination to get her back. If he was in Charlie’s situation, he too would fret and panic until he got a woman like that back into his arms.

“Why in the hell did you let her do it?” Charlie demanded from nobody in particular. “You know that she is distinctive. She wasn’t even in disguise.”

“She said that you would see her in the crowd. She was supposed to give you assurance,” Joshua warned.

“She did make sure I saw her, but if I noticed her, then so could Meldrew,” Charlie reasoned.

“Hetty volunteered for it. We argued with her but, in the end, she made it clear that she wasn’t going to stay behind at the house and fret. Nor could we move her to a safe house against her wishes. We needed everyone in town to help get you and Simon out. She couldn’t exactly stay at the mill by herself, now could she?” Barnaby reasoned.

“She was quite argumentative,” Joshua added. “Mabel, her friend, said that a woman’s scream would be more distinctive, and would worry the crowd a bit more. She was right.”

“I have never seen any crowd panic like that.” Barnaby shook his head in disbelief. “It’s pure bloody genius really.”

Joshua threw Charlie a somewhat mischievous look. “The pouches worked well.”

Charlie was starting to feel as though he had been living in a different country over the last few days and lifted his brows at Joshua.

“Pouches?” He demanded querulously.

“She carried two pouches full of pig’s blood. When she held them tightly they burst, and spilled blood into her pocket. It leaked through her dress. She started to scream that she had been stabbed. The more she clutched her side, the more the blood leaked through her dress, the more convincing she became. Mabel started to shout that there was a killer on the loose,” Joshua explained.

“Pandemonium reigned,” Barnaby added with a proud grin. “She did us proud. It went better than we expected.”

Charlie gave him a dark look. “I hope so. It is bad enough that she risked her life for us. I will be damned if I will sit back if our situations are reversed, and she ends up condemned for taking part in helping us escape.”

He studied the fine tremors that lingered in his hands, and clenched his fists to hold them steady.

“It was bloody risky. What if Meldrew’s men catch her?” Simon asked.

“She won’t be strip searched, now will she? She could say that she had no idea where the blood came from. She was going to make sure that the pouches were disposed of so she wouldn’t be caught with them. There is nothing to prove that she did anything. Even Meldrew couldn’t condemn an innocent woman just for being related to a prisoner. The public wouldn’t stand for it,” Barnaby reasoned.

“Sir Hugo would get her out, if Meldrew gets hold of her,” Joshua added firmly at the doubtful look on Charlie’s face. “She will be fine. She is really rather resilient, isn’t she?”

Barnaby glanced at Charlie. “She reminds me of some of our colleagues’ wives.”

“I still can’t believe she did this,” Charlie declared with a shake of his head.

In that moment, his stomach gave up the fight and he leaned over to one side of the horse, and promptly lost his condemned breakfast. Minutes later, he sat upright again and threw a rueful look at his colleagues.

“We will go back for them,” Barnaby declared firmly. “But you get to stay behind. Once you are safely hidden, we will go back and fetch her. If she hasn’t turned up at the mill, we will look for her in town. Meldrew knows what you look like, but he hasn’t got a clue about us.”

“We could tell Meldrew that we are in town to watch the hangings,” Joshua announced. “If the bastard challenges us, he has a fight on his hands.” He took a moment to glance at his watch and mentally calculated where the women should be by now. “They are in disguise now anyway, so Meldrew isn’t likely to be a problem to them anymore.”

He glanced at Charlie but knew from the look that lingered in his eyes that he wasn’t convinced, and wouldn’t be until Hetty was with him.

Charlie bit back a sigh of impatience. Although he knew that his colleagues had everything covered, his mind whirled in a confused kaleidoscope of emotions, thoughts, doubts and fears. He wished he could settle on one particular feeling and work on it but, all he could think about right now was that Hetty was back in that town, with his arch-enemy within spitting distance.

“You should have set fire to the gallows,” Charlie snarled.

It was bad enough that he had been put through his recent trauma. To think of someone as beautiful and innocent as Hetty going through something like that tortured him.

“She is stronger than you think,” Barnaby warned. “She may look innocent and doe-like but she has a heart of a tiger, she does. She will make a good wife for you. She was worried sick this morning, but not for her own safety. She was worried that she would be prevented from doing her job properly and you would get hung.”

Charlie nodded. He still wasn’t sure if he should be proud or appalled.

“I can’t wait to meet her again,” Barnaby added quietly. “We saw her last night, but only briefly because she was making plans with Mabel. She had already decided with Wally that they had to do something. They had planned things with a few of the regulars at the tavern. When we turned up, they were a bit wary until we gave them a note from Sir Hugo. We didn’t really get much chance to plan much, but we agreed that it would be us who got you down from the gallows while Hetty made her way out of the crowds with Mabel. Wally and his friends were going to act as a distraction, or a barrier in the crowd to make sure that Meldrew’s men, or the jailers, weren’t able to get anywhere near any of us. It worked too – sort of.”

He threw an unrepentant grin at Charlie, who rolled his eyes.

“I am indebted to you for saving me,” Charlie replied. “God knows where I would be if it wasn’t for all of this help.”

“We would have still tried to save you,” Joshua replied.

“Thank God we didn’t have to hang on your feet,” Barnaby sighed fervently.

Joshua yawned. “None of us got any sleep last night. We all went through the plans so many times that we know it like the back of our hands.”

“The safe house, Afferley, doesn’t fall within Meldrew’s jurisdiction. If he turns up, we can kill him because we work in authority; legally, and have Sir Hugo to support us. If the man has the gall to knock on the door, we have the authority to demand he get the necessary paperwork in order to arrest any of us. By the time he does that, Sir Hugo will be here.”

The harshness in Barnaby’s hard voice was so uncharacteristic that Charlie turned to look at him carefully. He frowned at the ruthlessness he saw in the depths of Barnaby’s dark eyes, but was very glad that the wheels within the Star Elite had turned so swiftly. 

“The whole plan has, so far, gone better than we had hoped,” Barnaby assured him. “Hetty has done her job superbly, in spite of her worry.”

He looked over at Charlie and watched him look in the direction of the town for the fifth time in a handful of minutes, and frowned thoughtfully.

“We will keep them safer if we just keep moving,” he warned Charlie, just in case the man was thinking about going back, in spite of what they had said.

“They know we married,” Charlie growled. He heaved a sigh of disgust and shook his head.

Although he had considered that marrying Hetty had been the best course of action to take at the time, the association between the two of them now could very well condemn her.

“What?”

Charlie looked at his colleagues. “I married Hetty two days ago, while I was waiting to be hung.”

“Why?” Barnaby growled with a frown. “Last night nobody mentioned that Hetty was your wife. We just asked for her when we got to the mill house because she had sent the letter to Sir Hugo.”

“I thought it was the best way to keep her out of Meldrew’s clutches. If I was hung this morning, Sir Hugo would make sure she was protected while Meldrew was brought to justice. I wanted her safe.” Charlie cursed bitterly. “We married in the jailer’s office. For God’s sakes, she is my wife. Meldrew knows it.” He glared at his colleagues. “The bastard will want to get hold of her, if only to draw me out. She is the wife of a condemned convict who has just escaped his brand of justice. Right now, she is about as wanted as I am.”

Barnaby whistled through his teeth at the same time that Marcus cursed.

“We have to get her,” Barnaby growled.

Charlie sighed. “I know. I just hate the thought of her having to try to get out of there by herself, especially having heard about everything she has done for me. It doesn’t seem right that she face Meldrew alone.”

He was stunned by the fact that she had been so incredibly brave. It was humbling, and left him deeply touched and, if he was honest, more in love with her than ever.

Silence settled over them all as they rode through the countryside. Everyone scoured the area but, for all intents and purposes, they could have been on the only people in the county because they didn’t see any sign of anyone as they rode across field after field toward Afferley.

“Let’s get you to the safe house and wait for the others. Then we will go back and fetch her.”

With no other option available, Charlie reluctantly nodded.

Hetty was cold, miserable and exhausted.

“Do you think everything is alright?” She whispered to Mabel, who looked equally as tired.

The entire town was in the process of being searched from top to bottom. Every inch of every room had been turned upside down. Thankfully, no trace of the four prisoners who had escaped death earlier that afternoon had been found as yet.

Hetty felt a fine sheen of sweat break out on her brow as she watched the heavily cloaked men stalk arrogantly down the road. She was sure that she had ‘guilty’ written somewhere across her forehead for the world to see. Surely the jailers would recognise her – wouldn’t they?

“Oh God, brace yourself,” Mabel warned. The look of horror in the older woman’s eyes made Hetty’s own eyes widen in terror.

She scoured the area and didn’t have to look too far to realise what had caught her friend’s attention.

There, further down the road, was the very man they were trying to avoid: Cedric Meldrew.

“We can’t go that way. We will be done for,” Mabel whispered urgently.

She tugged the hood of her cloak higher over her head and ushered Hetty into a narrow alleyway beside them. They had no idea where it would lead them, but anywhere was better than the main street right now.

“Why isn’t he out searching with the jailers?” Hetty whispered. She lengthened her stride to keep up with Mable’s half-run. “Slow down a bit. If we start running we will draw attention to ourselves.”

She glanced around the nearly empty streets and tugged on Mabel’s shawl until the woman slowed her pace to a fast walk.

“I can’t help it,” Mabel cried in a hushed whisper. “He isn’t searching with the jailers because the arrogant oaf won’t get off his idle backside and do it himself. He knows he has got half of the town on guard for him. That wastrel has everyone working for him, and will bully anyone who refuses to help him, you know that.”

Hetty sighed and nodded. “Do you think that we really stand a chance of proving he is the one responsible for Blagmire’s murder? I mean, he has so many people scared of him –” She almost careered into Mabel, who suddenly slammed to a stop, and turned to place herself directly in front of her.

“Now don’t you start that, Henrietta Jones. You and I both know that man is as guilty as sin. He has committed a crime here.” Mabel pierced Hetty with a hard stare. “If he has done the crime, there is evidence somewhere. Those men from the War Office will know what to do. They have done as they said they would so far. Right now, we have to stay away from Meldrew, and try to get out of this blasted place.”