CHAPTER THREE #3
She must have sensed the danger. For barely had they reached the last stair, Mama setting her foot to the patterned quarry-tiled floor of the wide hall of the manor, than a flurry of activity and a hoarse shout outside startled them both into immobility.
“Dear heaven, what is it, Betsey?” Verena whispered, clutching at the maid’s arm.
“Nathaniel!”
The cry, shot through with alarm, issued from Mrs Peverill’s lips. The three women froze at the foot of the stairs, three pairs of eyes fixed fearfully on the open front door. Verena herself, thrown by Mama’s voice of conviction, found herself temporarily devoid of resources. Her thoughts whirled.
It could not be Nathaniel! Not now. Oh, pray heaven, not now.
He was meant to be away until this afternoon.
Adam had told her so — promised her. Though indeed he was ignorant of their plans.
She’d had to keep him ignorant, for he would be left to face Nathaniel’s wrath.
And she could not permit him to become involved.
Fittleworth was Adam’s inheritance, his future.
She could not have jeopardised that. But he had seemed so sure — she had invented the only-too-plausible excuse that Mama was in need of a day of quiet.
There was no need to explain further to Adam. It could not be them.
But Squire Peverill was now even walking through the front door, his son at his heels.
Both were in riding dress, booted and spurred.
Nathaniel stopped dead, glaring upon his wife — all but fainting at sight of him, and clinging to her daughter — as he took in the significant apparel in which she was dressed.
Verena saw consternation in Adam’s face.
Should she have told him? Had he known, he might have done more to keep his father away.
Nathaniel found his tongue. “What in Hades are you doing, Abigail? That coach outside — is it awaiting you? Where are you going?”
Long habit, or perhaps present necessity, moved Mrs Peverill to be the first to speak. “P-pray don’t be angry, Nathaniel,” she quavered, releasing her daughter, and holding out suppliant hands.
The abject sound, the sight of her mother cringing before him, forced Verena out of her immobility. Not that! Not one more time could she bear to see Mama’s pride in the dust.
Stepping forward, she threw a protective arm about her mother’s shoulders, and faced Nathaniel, showing him a countenance blazing with determination, underlain with the fierce rage that consumed her.
It was, although Verena had for the moment forgotten her habit of docility in his presence, an expression that he had never previously seen.
“I am taking her away from this house. Away from this life. Away from you.”
Nathaniel frowned. Then he laughed — a disbelieving laugh. “Have you run mad, girl?”
“No, I have not run mad,” Verena told him in a shaking voice. “But I will do so if I allow Mama to remain in your power for one moment longer. We are going. We are going this moment. And there is nothing you can do to stop us.”
His face changed. Verena saw the lean cheeks darken, and shock come into his eyes.
He believed her! What would he do? Her heart began to pound.
Could they still go? They must, for if not they would have lost the advantage of surprise, and he would be on the watch for another escape.
But how, when he stood there looking like a gaoler?
A familiar scowl had drawn Nathaniel’s thick eyebrows together, and his lips were twisting into a snarl. Like a wild beast, Verena thought frenziedly. Mama had married a beast!
Mrs Peverill, recognizing these signs, visibly quailed, giving vent to a protesting whimper as the thunderous gaze she knew so well, feared so acutely, was turned upon her.
“Going?” came in a guttural tone from Nathaniel. His chest heaved. His stature was not above the average, tending to the lean hardness of muscle rather than fat, but aroused he appeared to grow, a menacing force standing squarely in the path of escape. “You dare to say you are going?”
“No, Nathaniel, no…”
The feeble response, hardly an answer, more the plea for mercy that Verena had so often heard on her mother’s lips, sliced through her own fear, strengthening her will. She could not stop now. She dared not, for fear of the consequences to Mama.
“We — are — going,” she reiterated, clenching her teeth against the trembling at her mouth, her hold on her mother tightening.
Nathaniel ignored Verena as if she was of no account, his eyes burning at the shivering form of his spouse. His voice grated on her name.
“Abigail! Would you leave me, Abigail? I am your husband. You belong here. What of your vows? You owe me a duty, Abigail.”
At that, all the pent-up emotion in Verena erupted. “You vile monster!” she threw at him. “She owes you nothing. You have destroyed her life!”
Nathaniel barely glanced her way. “You are not leaving me, Abigail.”
Then, wasting no more words, he moved, striding towards his wife.
Mrs Peverill cried out in fear, and Betsey screamed.
Verena, knowing that she could not afford to fail now, tried to shift Mama away that she might avoid him.
But Mrs Peverill, terrified, was rooted to the floor.
In seconds, Nathaniel was upon them. Hardly glancing where he struck, he flung the back of one hand at Verena’s face, beating her aside.
Then he seized his wife.
Half-falling, Verena caught at the maid, who steadied her, clucking in fright and anger, and then grabbing at Verena’s beaver hat that dropped from its place and rolled. But Verena had no ears for this, no eyes for anything but Mama, held between two iron fists of a man insane with fury.
“Adam!” she screamed. “Help us!”
Her brother had seemed to stand transfixed, hardly able to take in the scene.
But as his father struck out at Verena, something snapped in his head.
Filial duty was forgotten. By the time his sister called for his aid, he had flung off his beaver, tossed aside his whip and gloves, and was already halfway across the hall.
At nineteen, Adam had not the half of his father’s physical strength. But a flying leap threw him onto the man’s back, the sheer weight of the impact driving Nathaniel to the floor. Verena shrieked in unison with Betsey, for his hold was so strong that he took his wife with him.
But Adam, scrambling free, wrenched his mother out of the now slackened grasp, and shoved her to one side with some violence.
Verena was on her haunches, dragging Mama to bring her to her feet, the maid at her side in an instant.
She saw, with a sense of shock, her brother fling himself on top of Nathaniel, holding him down only by virtue of the fact that the breath had been knocked from his father’s body by his fall.
Hardly had Verena and Betsey drawn the shocked and bewildered Mrs Peverill back onto her unsteady feet, her bonnet awry and her dress disarranged, than Nathaniel was seen to be recovering, letting out a roar more frightening than the earlier menace of his angry tongue.
Adam drew back a fist and slammed it into his father’s face.
“Adam!” Verena shrieked in shock.
“Go!” he yelled, as Nathaniel’s head recoiled under the blow, hitting at the hard tiling of the floor. “Go, Verena! Take her, for the love of God!”
Gathering her wits, Verena caught at her mother’s shoulders.
“Come on, Mama! Betsey, quick! There is no saying how long Adam can hold him. Hurry, we must hurry!”
Betsey was quick to follow her lead, catching at her mistress on the other side, still clutching Verena’s beaver in one hand, as Squire Peverill’s fist rose up against his own son, the two of them writhing on the tiled floor.
“God bless you, Adam!” Verena shouted as, with Betsey’s help, she half-carried Mama, the grunts and thuds of the continuing fight ringing in her ears, and ran her out of the wide hall, and into the blaze of sunshine where the coach awaited to take them into a new life.
But it was a life, she thought, coming back to the present, which was not having the effect she had envisaged. Mama had not bloomed — far from it.
They had left, in the end, like animals fleeing a forest fire, the coach rattling down the drive at breakneck speed.
How Mama had wept, even as Betsey had tidied her with frantic haste — as if it had mattered how they looked at such a moment.
How she herself had sat, shuddering in the aftermath of that horrid scene, barely aware of the pulsing throb in her cheek, beset by visions of Nathaniel, riding like the devil in pursuit, afraid every moment that all would have been in vain.
Verena could only suppose that Adam must have got the better of his father, for there had never been any sign of his coming after them, and since no one knew where they were, there was no finding out the truth of what might have happened at home.
Home, she thought bleakly. In that, Mama had spoken truth.
They had no home. Was it that? Was it the loss of all she had possessed, all the familiarity of the world she had known, that precluded her recovery?
It could not be the loss of Nathaniel. It could not be that.
No, no, Mama. That she would never be brought to believe.
But if not that, then why could Mama not rest easy?
It was almost as if she had abandoned any idea of life, had lost the will to live.
Or was her spirit so broken that she wanted to die?
The thought was so painful that Verena drew on a sobbing breath, putting up a hand ready to dash at the threatening tears. The movement of her own fingers threw her eyes into present focus, and she gasped out loud.
She had halted stock-still in the middle of the common, and standing directly before her was Mr Denzell Hawkeridge, his figure exaggerated in size by a greatcoat with several capes, and a curly-brimmed beaver atop his tied-back fair hair. He was staring in blank astonishment at her unguarded face.