Chapter 4
HANNA
Hanna dragged her feet as she slowly walked away from the cottage. It was already late afternoon, and no matter how fast she walked, she knew she would be late enough to ire her father.
Everything she loved lay behind her in that cottage.
Maria, an old friend of her mother’s, had taken Hanna in when everyone in the village turned their heads with shame as she passed.
As soon as her condition had become apparent, her father had turned her out of the home, leaving her to the wolves when Hanna needed him the most.
Her mother would never have turned away from her, Hanna refused to believe otherwise. Her mother had worked in service her whole life and had gotten Hanna the position there as an undermaid. She had known what a woman faced in that situation.
The ways of the men who came through those doors. Arrogant, entitled. Taking what they wanted when they wanted it.
Hanna drew the fading red cloak tightly around herself, trying to remember her mother’s scent, gone from the fabric for many years now. Sometimes Hanna thought she could almost remember it.
She knew what she needed to do.
Hanna had no recourse. She must write to the young Lord Emsley and tell him of the child.
Hope that he would acknowledge his blood and offer some small allowance or support.
It galled her, but the thought of little James falling ill, or worse, ending up in a foundling home, was just too unbearable to think of.
Maria was a widow, too old to work, relying on the charity of the parish and her small annual allowance. She had no living children of her own. A trial, and a blessing. For surely they would never have approved of Maria taking in the bastard babe of a disgraced servant girl.
Hanna’s leather half boots dragged in the dirt of the road as her exhaustion made itself felt. She was absorbed in her thoughts and spied the horses on the road a minute too late.
Even as she tried to dash for the undergrowth of the wood, the youths circled her with their horses. Laughing and spitting at her feet.
“What have we here?” called one, the son of a tenant farmer. His fellows snickered, the horses' hooves churning the dirt as Hanna kept her eyes down, refusing to look at them as she searched for a gap to make her escape.
“Fancy a bit of a tumble?” yelled another, braver than the others. “I’m sure this one wouldn’t mind a green skirt in exchange for a few coins,” he added, to loud guffaws all around.
Hanna felt anger surge, her spine stiffening with indignation. Just as she was about to take a chance and dart through the horse’s legs, a loud shout rang out.
Alaric Wolff stepped from the woods beside the path, his brow furrowed with anger as Hanna stared in surprise. Unspooling the whip tied at his waist, Wolff cursed, lashing the legs of the nearest mount and sending the beast rearing, its rider tumbling to the ground with a yell.
Stalking over, Wolff viciously kicked the youth where he lay, making him gasp in agony and curl up around his middle.
“Get yourselves gone, the lot of you,” Wolff said in a dangerously low tone, his tight grip on the handle of the whip creaking ominously .
The youths looked nervously at each other, and then they turned their steeds and kicked their mounts off, leaving the last one of them still gasping on the floor.
Wolff snarled and kicked him again, viciously, with a grunt of dissatisfaction. Choking on his breath, the young man hauled himself to his feet, unsteadily mounting his horse and turning it back down the path.
“I’ll have my eyes on ye!” shouted Alaric as the cowards fled the scene, leaving Hanna standing in the middle of the road, her cloak stained with dust, basket crushed on the ground and hands shaking from nerves and fear as she stared at Wolff in shock.
He gave her a careful once-over, his eyes scanning her slowly from her head to the tips of her boots. He seemed to note she was relatively unharmed, as he nodded in her direction and said, “I’ll not let those pricks bother you again, you hear.”
Hanna blinked. Surprise and relief warring inside her.
Why would Alaric Wolff give a care for her?
“I thank you,” she managed to utter, even as the man stalked back towards the edge of the forest, sending her a lingering look.
“Alaric. You call on me if ye need,” he said in his low, deep voice, before disappearing into the darkness of the trees.
Breathless, Hanna picked up her skirts and hurried home.
But she couldn’t shake the feeling that Alaric was watching her still.
She didn't know if it was relief or fear that she felt in response.