Chapter 20 #2
Kendall either did not notice or chose not to remark it. His excitement seemed too complete to permit the careful reading of feminine signals. He looked out of the window more than once, measuring distance perhaps, or time. Once, he smiled to himself, and Francesca could have struck him for it.
At length, the carriage stopped before a small cottage set a little back from the road, surrounded by a fence of chestnut paling, in need of repair, which enclosed a narrow strip of winter garden lost mostly to mud and bare stalks.
It was not in a ruinous condition. On the contrary, it had an air of recent arrangement, as though someone had made it just comfortable enough for temporary use and no more.
Smoke rose from the chimney. A side path led to a small outbuilding.
Beyond lay open fields and a line of trees.
There was no sign of neighbouring houses near enough to be of easy use.
Kendall descended from the carriage first and handed them down with punctilious civility.
Francesca hated him for it.
Inside, the cottage was clean, even cosy in a meagre way.
A fire had been laid in the principal room and now burned cheerfully upon the hearth.
There was a table, two chairs, a narrow settle, and shelves holding a modest assortment of crockery.
Upstairs, as they soon discovered, were two bedchambers and a small box room.
Downstairs, near the kitchen, a hamper stood already unpacked in part: bread, cold meat, cheese, apples, a pot of preserves, tea, a bottle of wine, and even a little coffee.
Such details might have seemed considerate in another context.
At this moment they only deepened the offence, as though abduction could be lessened by domestic provision.
Kendall set his hat down and turned to her with an expression of almost earnest appeal.
“Now do you see? You are not a prisoner.”
“Am I not?”
“No. The door is not locked. You may walk out whenever you please.”
She gave him a look of disdain sufficient, she hoped, to expose the falsehood of this generosity.
“With no carriage,” she said, “and no means of returning to Town beyond my feet.”
“You have your maid. You have food. You have shelter. If you remain sensibly where you are for a single day, you will be quite safe.”
“From whom—or what—will I be safe?”
He hesitated, then smiled in a manner which, because it aspired to reassurance, was more sinister than any frank severity. “From confusion.”
“I think confusion has already made itself very much at home.”
Something passed over his face then—impatience, perhaps, or regret at being opposed where he had expected gratitude.
“Francesca, I am doing you a kindness. Had I left you in Town, there are those who might have questioned you, frightened you, perhaps even used you against us. This way, you are removed from the worst of it.”
“Am I, indeed—and tomorrow morning?”
“Tomorrow morning,” he said, “I shall return. By then the business will be done.”
“What business?”
He shook his head. “You promised no more questions.”
“I promised no such thing.”
He stood between her and the door, not threateningly perhaps, but with enough ownership of the space to make clear how little her will signified to him if it crossed his purpose.
Nelly had drawn nearer to Francesca’s side.
The fire crackled. Somewhere outside a crow called across the fields.
The whole scene possessed an intolerable normality, as though this were merely a country call gone awkwardly astray.
Immediate defiance promised no practical advantage, so Francesca said, “Very well. I will stay until tomorrow morning.”
His shoulders eased. “Thank you for being sensible.”
It enraged her that he should approve in such a patronizing way.
He moved then to the hamper and pointed out its contents as though their host rather than captor. “There is enough for the day and night—more than enough, in fact. The pump at the back door is sound. The firewood is stacked under the lean-to. You need not fear discomfort.”
“I shall try to bear this luxury with fortitude.”
Nelly made a choking sound.
Kendall looked from one to the other and seemed at last to perceive that admiration was not to be had. He sighed. “Believe what you please of me today. Tomorrow you may think differently.”
“I doubt it.”
Again, that flash of something fervent, almost visionary, crossed his face. “When England is free of the men who have strangled her, many will think differently.”
There was no safety in answering that. Francesca held her tongue.
At last, he took up his hat again. “I shall come for you in the morning.”
“What are we to do if you do not come?”
“I shall.”
It was not a boast. It was certainty.
He went to the door, then paused and turned back once more, his hand on the latch. “You are not locked in. Remember that. I have not treated you harshly.”
No, thought Francesca, only treacherously. Aloud, she said nothing.
When he had gone and the sound of the carriage wheels at last began to recede, she stood very still in the middle of the little room, listening until even the echo had faded from the road.
Nelly was the first to speak. “Well, this is a fine kettle of fish.”
The homeliness of the phrase nearly undid Francesca more completely than terror had managed. She sat down abruptly on the settle because her knees, which had behaved very well for the past hour, had apparently chosen that moment to become unreliable.
“Nelly,” she said, and was appalled to hear her own voice shake.
Nelly came at once, kneeling beside her with tenderness Francesca would remember forever. “Miss, do not be frightened. Major Manners will have had the note.”
Yes… unless he had stepped out… unless the servant was delayed in his departure… unless they took it for nonsense.”
“They will not.”
Francesca pressed a hand to her brow. “You do not know that.”
“No,” Nelly said honestly, “but I know those gentlemen have been watching everything as if the kingdom depended upon it, and perhaps it does. They will notice.”
Francesca looked around the cottage again, seeing now not the poor decency of its arrangements but the facts of its geography.
Yes, indeed, there was no lock; equally, yes, there was no transport.
Added to that, the cottage stood in open country, with uncertain roads.
She was accompanied by a maid unused to long walking, and the winter light would fail long before they might hope to reach anything substantial if they set out blindly.
Kendall had told the truth in the most infuriating way possible: they were not confined, only effectively stranded.
“He said I was safer here,” she whispered.
Nelly huffed. “Men say many things when they wish women to do as suits their male inclinations.”
Francesca gave a weak laugh despite herself. “That is true.”
She leaned back against the settle and shut her eyes for a moment. The joy of the previous day seemed now a memory from another life, yet even in that desolation one thought persisted, absurd and stubborn as before. Arch would come.
However it may be—whether through manners, through his own suspicions, through Renforth’s plans, through pure chance or cultivated intelligence—somehow, he would understand.
He would not let her vanish for a day without pursuit.
The certainty of that, though perhaps no more rational than her earlier hope, reassured her in a way reason alone could not.
When she opened her eyes again, the little cottage was unchanged: the fire, the hamper, the table, the narrow window giving onto muddy ground and a patch of pale sky.
Nevertheless, she felt altered within it.
The earth had turned over once already yesterday morning in the garden.
Now it had turned again, only more violently.
Whatever happened before tomorrow, nothing in her life would return quite to its previous place.
Tomorrow morning, Thomas had promised, everything would have changed… only not, she suspected, in the manner he imagined.
What was she to do now? She hoped that Nelly was right and they had been watched. Would it be better to stay in the cottage and let the soldiers find her in good time, so as not to distract them from whatever Thomas had planned, or should she and Nelly attempt to rescue themselves?