Chapter One #2
“Not likely, and he was certainly not going to listen to mine.” Father’s will had reminded Colin that Bane, the base-born son, had been educated to manage the accounts for the business.
Since Colin had deeply resented his father spending money on Bane’s education, his reaction was to toss Bane out of both job and home.
“I’ve been comfortable enough in my rooms above the blacksmith’s barn,” Bane added.
“Not for much longer.” Drake had finished half his toddy and was waxing loquacious. Bane knew perfectly well that they planned to be in London by Spring, shaking the dust off their feet as they left their boyhood haunts.
A knock on the door stopped Drake from embarking on a soliloquy about how much more convenient a London location would be for keeping track of their investments and finding new ones.
“Come in,” said Bane.
It was a boy from Marplestead Manor—an orphan the house employed to clean boots, carry firewood, run messages, and other tasks beneath the other servants. “Sir,” he said to Drake, “Are you the Mr. Sanderson who lives in Marpleton?”
“I am,” Drake agreed.
“Then this note is for you, sir,” the boy said.
He handed it over. Drake opened the seal and read it, then handed it to Bane.
It was written in a feminine hand. If that was not clue enough the sender was a woman, the ink was purple and the paper a soft blue that had been liberally doused with a floral perfume.
Bane grimaced. He didn’t even need to hold it to his nose to inhale the scent.
It had been not so much sprinkled as drenched.
“It’s not a good night for a man to be out in Marplestead,” Bane said, but he might as well have saved his breath.
“I don’t plan to be out for long,” said Drake, “but the lady invites me to a private celebration. What sort of a gentleman would I be if I ignored her?”
“A wise one?”
But Drake only laughed.
“Who is it?” Bane asked. If it proved to be one of the maids at the tavern, he would worry less. But the hand seemed too fine for a tavern maid, and Drake wasn’t aware of any with a name starting with “A”—the flourishing initial that was the letter’s only signature.
Bane shrugged. “I cannot bring a likely candidate to mind,” he admitted, “but I daresay I shall know her when I see her.”
Bane wasn’t easy in his mind, but Drake was a grown man. Bane had no right to prevent him, nor any way to do it, either.
“I’ll walk with you,” he said, instead. “I’m going that way.”
It wasn’t true. The blacksmith’s barn was in the opposite direction. Nonetheless, Bane accompanied his brother to the tavern. “I’m here,” Drake announced, when they arrived. “I don’t need my minder any more, Bane.”
Bane couldn’t resist one more warning. “Be careful, Drake, Tonight is a night for the ladies to take their revenge.” By tradition, New Year’s Eve in Marplestead belonged to the ladies, and anything that happened on that night was ignored by the entire neighborhood the following day.
A drunken husband might wake up in a pig wallow.
An unfaithful one in the stocks. The ladies were inventive, determined, and disguised, so no one knew who had done what.
Drake cut him off with an impatient gesture. “I won’t do anything my fair correspondent doesn’t wish, Bane. I never have. The ladies have no reason to go after me. Will you be safe going home?”
“I’ll be fine,” Bane insisted. “It isn’t far.”
Bane figured the revelers would leave him alone. Rumors about the face he kept hidden had grown over the past fifteen years, since his father had brought him to Bancroft House wounded and near death.
Bane still wore the hood that Drake’s mother had demanded, so she need not look upon the scarred wreck of his right cheek, but in truth, the mark of the knife attack that had nearly taken his life had faded since he arrived at his father’s house, ten years’ of age, grievously wounded, and not expected to live.
His face might not be pretty, but Bane had seen worse.
The hood also threw his mismatched eyes into shadow—and it had been those that had led to his scarring. Wearing it was a habit. And on a night like tonight, something of a protection.
Sure enough, he made it home safely, though he did see a group of a dozen or so women—masked and costumed. They glanced at him and dismissed him. Was one of them the person who had written to Bane? He paused just inside the gate to watch them pass the tavern and keep walking, so probably not.
“The wife is out,” said the blacksmith, when Bane poked his head into the kitchen to see if supper was ready. “It’s Misrule Night. Don’t know what they’re up to, and I’m not going to ask, but it has them all a twitter. Supper is on the table.”
Bread, cheese, and a big slab of plum cake.
Good enough. Bane poured himself an ale and sat down, as did the blacksmith.
They ate in silence—when the lady of the house was home, she chattered enough for all three of them, but the blacksmith was a man of few words, and Bane had been eating alone for most of his life.
Besides, his mind was not on the food or the company, but on his brother.
Something about the whole situation didn’t sit right.
Drake was popular with the ladies, but—as far as Bane knew—this was the first time he’d ever received an anonymous invitation.
Not, in itself, suspicious, but Bane didn’t like the timing.
He couldn’t stop thinking about the fact that, on Misrule Night, women used their temporary freedom to seek revenge.
Revenge for what, though? Drake was, as Bane had cause to know, the kindest, most giving of men, with a positive talent for staying on pleasant terms with his amours both during and after their liaisons.
He had almost finished his ale when a hullabaloo started from outside—the rata-tat-tat of drums, the shriek of whistles, and clanging sounds that put him in mind of kitchens.
“Better check,” said the blacksmith, and got up to open the door, just in time for the parade to pass in front of the smithy and then the cottage alongside it.
The noise makers came first. The clanging, Bane noted, was made by various types of spoons against pot lids. The women all wore costumes and masks, like the group he’d seen earlier. Even their own mothers would not have known them.
More women, similarly garbed, followed the noise makers. They were oddly positioned, in long lines, and it took Bane a minute to realize they were pulling on ropes—at least half a dozen ropes, each with eight or nine women haulers. Others danced among them with lamps, lighting the whole scene.
As he craned his neck to see what they were dragging, he noticed that doors and windows were being opened up and down the village street. The men of the village were silent witnesses to whatever was happening.
“It is a shaming,” said the blacksmith. He sounded awed. “There hasn’t been one in Marplestead for seven years! I wonder who it is?”
A shaming. Bane had never seen one, but he had heard about the last one.
The man had been a serial fornicator, seducing one girl after the other with meaningless promises.
After being led through the whole village and around the major farms and manors all one Misrule Night, he had left town and had never returned.
The object at the end of the ropes was plodding into view. It was a donkey, stolidly ignoring the ropes, the noise, and the murmuring of the onlookers. That, Bane saw at a glance.
What took his attention was not the steed but the rider. He was male. Since he wore nothing but knee breeches and a head-concealing mask in the form of a goat’s head, his gender was beyond a doubt. The broad shoulders and the muscular torso, arms, and thighs also bore witness.
He sat backward on the ass, bound to the saddle with rope, swaying slightly as if he was drunk.
With a jolt of shock, Bane realized he knew that torso, those arms! He narrowed his eyes as the rider drew level, and was aided by one of the dancers, who lifted her lamp so it shone on the rider’s elbow.
“It is Drake,” Bane said.
“Really?” asked the blacksmith. “What has Drake done to deserve a shaming?”
“Nothing,” Bane said, grimly, and took a step forward, but the blacksmith grabbed his arm.
“If you go out there, you’ll be joining him.”
“I can’t leave him there,” Bane protested, but the blacksmith was right. He’d not get Drake free without using his brain instead of just reacting. “I need my horse,” he said. “And a good knife. I’ll grab him when they take him off the donkey to throw him into the pond.”
“They’ll overpower you,” the blacksmith warned. “There are what? Fifty of them? One of you.”
“I can’t fight them. Not women,” Bane admitted. “But I must try. If I get dunked alongside Drake, so be it.”
The blacksmith pursed his lips. “Cut the goat mask off,” he advised. “Let them see they’ve got the wrong man.”
That might work. Bane left for the barn, where he also stabled his horse.
He wanted to merely bridle the horse and be off after his brother, but his common sense told him that he might need the stability of saddle and stirrups. It took several minutes, even with the blacksmith’s help, but at last he was in the saddle and galloping after the Misrule party.
They had reached the pond and were dragging Drake from the saddle, none too gently.
Fortunately for Drake, only a few of the women—ten at most—were involved in the dismounting.
The rest were not even watching. Rather, they waited on the edge of the pond for the next event in the night’s entertainment.
Bane grinned. He would give them something to watch.
He set the horse at a gallop, straight at the cluster around Drake, pulling up only at the last minute.
They had, as he’d hoped, leapt out of the way, and Bane reached down and grabbed the rope that bound Drake’s arms to his body.
“Mount behind me,” he shouted, and heaved as Drake jumped and scrambled until he was seated behind Bane.
The horse danced and skittered. Nightshade was skittish at the best of times, and he was taking exception to the torches, the masked ladies, the noise, the load, and the whole situation. That was a help, for the women who might have objected to losing their prisoner were keeping their distance.
“This is my brother Mandrake Sanderson,” Bane shouted. “He has done nothing worthy of a shaming.” He was pretending with his hands to be attempting to control the horse, but in truth, his calves and heels were encouraging its jittery behavior.
A woman with the crown and staff of the Lady of Misrule stepped forward—an with dark curly hair. He could not see much of her face behind her half-mask, but what he could see distracted him for a moment. She was stunning.
“Mandrake?” she asked. “Not Colin?”
Bane hoped it was her readiness to listen to reason that soothed his anger, and not his awareness of her as an attractive female.
Or perhaps it was just that Colin probably deserved whatever the women cared to dish out.
They had made a mistake, and Bane had rescued Drake before they could half-drown him.
Or all the way drown him, which old timers said had sometimes happened.
“Not Colin,” he replied. “I’ll show you.” Bane twisted in the saddle so he could use his knife to cut the ropes, an act Nightshade made more difficult than it needed to be. “Drake, take the head off,” he said.
“I don’t feel too good,” said Drake, in a voice that quavered all over the register, but he fumbled with the mask and lifted it free. His eyes looked odd. They must have given him something.
As Nightshade calmed, the women gathered closer.
“It is Drake,” said one of the women. Bane couldn’t be sure, but he thought he recognized the voice of the blacksmith’s wife.
“Mr. Colin Sanderson is older,” explained another to the Lady of Misrule.
“We made a mistake,” said a third. “The rider is Mr. Bane Sanderson. He is the other brother.”
Bane, conscious of the absurdity of good manners in this moment, nonetheless bowed as well as he could from horseback. Drake bowed with him, murmuring sleepily against Bane’s back, “How’d’y’do.”
“What was he given?” he demanded. “Drake, I mean. To make him compliant.”
“Only laudanum, and not much,” said the Lady of Misrule. “He will be perfectly well after a sleep. I do not suppose your brother Colin plans to come into the village tonight?”
Bane had to laugh at the cheek of the woman. “My sincere regrets, my lady, but I doubt it,” he said. “You could try another perfumed note.”
The woman considered it for a moment, but shook her head. “I suppose by now word of the shaming will have reached him,” she said. She took a deep breath and let it out. “I shall have to consult with the other ladies. Please tell your brother Drake that we apologize for our mistake.”
Bane, in lieu of raising the hat he’d left behind in his haste, settled for touching the side of his forehead. “I shall pass that on, my lady.”
He turned the horse, being careful not to dislodge his sleepy brother, and rode back to the blacksmith’s barn. He’d be staying awake tonight, so he could keep watch over Drake until the drug was out of his system.
But as the blacksmith helped him to get Drake into the barn, Bane’s thoughts were not of his brother but of the Lady of Misrule. She wasn’t a local lass. In fact, by her accent, she was educated and refined. She must be one of the guests at the all-female house party up at Marplehurst Hall.
Far, far above his touch, then.
And she was magnificent.