Chapter 5
H
is fingers slid up her arm to her shoulder as his mouth pressed against hers. Distracted by his fingers caressing her cheek, she didn’t close her lips fast enough, and his tongue swooped in to stroke hers in a firefly dance.
Her attempt to scream did nothing but open her mouth more, and bend her head back so he could plunder more thoroughly. She grabbed his fingers and wrenched them away from her jaw. His breath caressed hers as his tongue broke contact.
“How dare you!” she yelled when he pulled back. She could feel puffiness where his lips had suckled on hers. The kiss had lasted but a second, yet he’d taken her mouth thoroughly, even giving her a taste of the maple syrup on his tongue.
He hadn’t lost his grin. She wondered if she should kick him in the knee, but Freddie had told her that to be effective, you had to kick someone in the back of the knee, and she stood in front of him. How few tricks she knew to avoid a man.
“I take it you’ve been kissed before, Lady Elizabeth.”
“Why do you say that?” She dropped his hand.
“Ye don’t seem nearly shocked enough.” He winked at her.
Gritting her teeth, she asked, “Why, did my brothers ask you to perform some kind of purity test?”
“I think ye liked my kiss,” he said, studying her.
She put a hand to her chest, glad he’d lost a little of that irritating air of self-confidence. “You are probably used to kissing fine ladies, not housemaids. Housemaids don’t swoon.”
“You are overestimating my social standing.”
She glanced around the room, sure to give him a look at her sardonic expression. “You aren’t living amidst poverty.”
“No, but I am a second son. This will never be mine.” His dry tone hid the smallest amount of bitterness.
“You can take money from people like my brothers to earn your daily bread. Your social position gives you that opportunity.”
He assessed her. “What do ye have against your brothers, anyway? They seem to be good men. Better than Manfred Cross.”
She disliked that all-knowing detective gaze he used. “Freddie took as good care of me as he could. He’s the third son of an earl’s sister. No title in his branch.”
He cleared his throat, reminding her that he had suffered through a long, damp morning to rescue her. “He should have offered ye marriage.”
She closed her eyes against remembered disappointment, old heartbreak. “I thought so too, but it wasn’t to be.”
He lifted an old silver snuffbox from the mantelpiece and clicked it open, then closed again. “Why didn’t ye go home?”
She wished she’d taken that instead of the candlestick. It would have been easier to hide. “Because I made my choice. I wasn’t about to go back and be whispered about, be married off to the first man they could find who would take me. Even before I left, my only choices for husband were terrible. And it was obvious that I needed to marry.”
“Why?”
She did her best to keep her tone measured. “Because there was no place for me. I was my mother’s daughter more than my brothers’ sister, and once she was gone, I was no one’s companion, only a burden. I’d seen what that life is like and I didn’t want it.”
“So you’d rather be a maid tae a jewel thief?”
“I didn’t know he was stealing.” Her voice came out very small. “Truly, he was a law clerk. I brought food to his desk a couple of times when he’d forgotten.”
“Cross turned tae thievery to support ye when he deemed his salary too small for his purposes. I don’t suppose he was very good at it. Both because you didn’t live well and because he was caught.” He returned the snuffbox to the mantelpiece.
“Oh, Freddie,” she whispered. “Why didn’t he tell me? Did I ruin his life?”
“I think he liked the stealing,” Mr. Alexander said. “He seemed rather pleased with himself when I saw him at Newgate.”
“He would have had his defenses up.” She bit her lip, wishing there was something she could do for him, but there was nothing, and she had Hester to worry about. “When is the funeral for the girl?”
“Just waiting for you. Then it’s on tae London.”
“No,” she said.
“At least you’ve enjoyed being a little further compromised,” he said lightly. “And I think ye enjoyed one last adventure.”
She bared her teeth at him, unable to respond to his jokes when she had the baby to worry about.
Someone knocked on the parlor door. Beth turned and saw Cait come in with her shoes.
“We dried them out best we could, but I’m afraid this one cracked along the side,” she said.
“She can’t go outside like this.” Mr. Alexander frowned.
“No one else has feet near her size,” she said. “We looked for something else for her tae wear.”
Beth took the shoes from the maid’s hands and sat down to put them on. The shoes felt smaller, as if the leather had shrunk, and the cracking had created a hole. Still, she was warmer than yesterday.
“I’ll buy you a new pair,” he said.
“Where?” she snapped. “On the train to London? You’ve already said all my possessions were destroyed. This is all I have.”
“All the more reason to get you tae your brother’s quickly. Surely ye can see that.”
“I’m attending that funeral. Then I’m returning to the docks, I hope with a constable in tow.” She matched him glare for glare.
Finally, he gave a sharp nod. “The carriage is waiting tae take us to the kirkyard. The vicar will do a graveside service. Ye did at least find a cloak for her ladyship?”
Cait nodded. “It’s by the door with your coat, sir.”
He took Beth by the elbow and tugged her up, then ushered her out. She turned as they reached the door, looking longingly at the silver snuffbox. How could she manage with no clothes, shoes, or household possessions? And no money, either. Every last farthing was obviously stolen. If it wasn’t for Hester, maybe she would have given up and gone back to London. But she’d manage somehow. Go into service and pay Mrs. Shaw to care for Hester.
She clutched her new cloak around her throat as they went outdoors. Thin rays of sun peeked out between rain-soaked clouds, but the day was a vast improvement over the previous one. The carriage that awaited them was enclosed too, not an open cart. Even more luxuriously, there was a driver. As they walked toward it, a horse and rider appeared on the lane.
Mr. Alexander tugged his hat low over his eyes and squinted. “It’s my brother.”
Gravel eddied around the horse’s hooves as the rider made a dash for them, then pulled up the reins smartly and brought the horse to a stop. “I didn’t expect to see you at Alix Hall, Dougal. Who’s the young lady?”
“Lady Elizabeth Shield, may I present John Alexander, Baron of Alix?”
Lord Alix jumped down from his horse and grinned at her. “I’m not one for ceremony. What’s a lady like you doing with my disreputable brother?”
He had a smile like his brother’s, but a rounder, less guarded face. She was not in the mood to be lighthearted.
“I assure you I’m at least as disreputable. We are on our way to a funeral.”
“You don’t say. Anyone I know?” His gaze quickly traversed her body, stopping briefly at her damaged shoes, before returning to her face.
Beth wondered if he recognized the cloak as belonging to a member of his household. But she wasn’t about to give it up. It could be pawned.
“No, nor anyone we know either,” Mr. Alexander said. “Lady Elizabeth was kidnapped and held in a warehouse in Leith night before last. I got her out, along with a couple of other women, but one died of her injuries.”
“Have you no way of ascertaining her identity?”
“I had Gareth do a sketch of her.” He turned to Beth. “I couldn’t get a photographer, but our stablemaster is a dab hand with watercolors.”
“Very well.” She sighed.
“After we bury her, we’re off tae London to return this lady to her family.”
“You must be very glad to be going home,” the baron exclaimed.
“I want to return to the warehouse and look for other women,” she told the baron. “Your brother wants to get his payment from my family and be done with the matter, but there are innocent lives at stake.”
“I’m sure your family is very worried and wants to see you.” He glanced at his brother curiously.
“Other families will feel the same about their own daughters,” she pointed out.
“The minister is waiting,” Mr. Alexander said, ignoring her comment.
The baron handed the reins of his horse to a waiting footman. “I’ll come with you.”
Soon, Beth found herself sandwiched between the two Alexander brothers. She was certain the situation was most compromising, not that she cared at this point. However, neither of them spoke during the ten-minute ride, though the baron did offer his handkerchief when she sneezed. She recognized the path they took back toward the main road, though the kirk was closer to Alix Hall than her escape route.
Once they arrived at the kirkyard, the baron courteously offered her his arm and helped her through the mud and soaked grass. Her foot was damp before they ever reached the graveside. The dead girl had already been sealed into a plain coffin, and the minister did little more than nod in her direction before he began the brief service, though he behaved very obsequiously toward the baron.
She needed the baron’s handkerchief again and again through the service as she sneezed repeatedly. By the time the gravediggers lowered the coffin into the grave and each of the onlookers dropped a handful of dirt onto the coffin, her eyes were streaming. She was half-blind as Dougal Alexander helped her back into the carriage.
“I don’t think you should go to Leith or London, Dougal,” the baron said as the carriage rolled into motion.
She saw Dougal’s chest rise as he sighed. “Think she’s taking ill?”
“I thought her eyes looked a bit feverish when we met outside, but I assumed it was just your usual effect on the ladies,” the baron said with that Alexander grin.
“She can’t stand me,” Dougal told him. “I guess we’d better get her back tae bed.”
The baron bit back a chuckle.
“Ye know what I mean.”
Beth felt even more unwell by the time she returned to the tower room at Alexander Hall, but she told herself all she needed was more food and rest. So she took it, and when her eyes opened again, the sun indicated it was late afternoon. Berating herself for her inattention to Hester, she resolutely put her aching feet to the rug-covered stone floor.
She needed to escape quickly if she was going to walk back to the
land
before dark. At least the funeral had netted her shoes and a warm cloak. Someone had left a glass of milk and a sandwich on a table by the fire. She downed the milk and wrapped the sandwich in one of the clean handkerchiefs that had been left for her use. Then she pocketed the rest of the clean linen, which could be used as diapers for Hester. Feeling better except for an itch in her nose, she crept down the tower steps.
The door was cracked open again, leaving her to wonder if she really had been locked in the night before. Maybe she’d had a fever and had been much weaker than usual. Instead of descending all the way to the ground floor, she decided to reconnoiter a bit, to see if there was another way out than through the main hall. The first room she passed was a dusty bedroom. Then she saw a dressing room. She darted in there for a minute, but the drawers were all empty except for a couple of old-fashioned shifts. She took them anyway, wrapping them around her neck as scarves. The next room was a library. She gave a little gasp at the sight of all the beautifully bound books, but if they became wet, they’d be of no value. One little volume of Keats on a table caught her eye, though, and it easily fit into the pocket of her cloak.
The next door was shut but unlocked. When she saw the contents there, her mouth dropped open. A weapons room. She realized the family must be much older and more distinguished than she’d thought because many of the weapons were positively medieval. However, there were a number of steel flintlock pistols from the wars of a century ago. They looked clean, and she knew how to load them. She found shot and gunpowder and loaded one, then shrugged and loaded another, feeling like a Highland officer. A leather belt she could hook them onto was hanging on a peg in the corner. She strapped it across her chest, unsure all the while what she planned to do with loaded weapons. Of course she wasn’t going back to the docks; she was going to Hester. But if those slavers came back, she’d be ready for them.
Her contraband weighing her down slightly, she slipped out of the weapons room and down the servants’ staircase at the end of the corridor. At the base of the stairs, she found herself at one end of the main hall, unable to see any exit but the main door. Since no one was about, she darted across the polished wood floor and opened the front door. Then she was in the yard, wishing she dared steal a horse, but the weather was rather fine and Edinburgh wasn’t really that far away. She only sneezed once on the way down the lane.
John tipped over his king with a push of his index finger. “When did you start beating me at chess?”
Dougal grinned. “I believe I was fifteen.”
The fireplace crackled, giving the room a hint of autumn, though it was sunset in April. They’d had a good meal, Cook pulling out all the stops with the baron in residence, and had shut themselves up in their favorite room to catch up.
John scratched the tip of one ear. “That doesn’t sound right. You are giving yourself too much credit.”
“I like a puzzle. I’m good at them.”
“Speaking of puzzles, our cousin, Lord Bullen, sent me a new jigsaw puzzle. It’s a map of France with lots of little details.” John glanced up. “Must have left it in one of the saddlebags.”
“We’ll have time tae do it, what with watching over Lady Elizabeth.”
“Who is she?”