Chapter Eleven
P ol slept the night in Jackie’s shack. Or, rather, part of the night. It was cold without the blankets she must have retrieved, but he put on extra socks and covered himself with his greatcoat and managed to catch a few hours’ sleep.
He should be honest, if only with himself. It was not the cold that kept him awake, nor the loss of the only home he had known in sixteen years, nor the uncertainty of where he would find work and how soon, nor even worry about Gran.
Perhaps it was a little about the uncertainty of work and quite a bit of worry about Gran. Mostly, though, it was Jackie. She was the daughter of an earl. A French Comte , which was the equivalent of an English earl. Dispossessed and dead, to be sure. But still, how could the baseborn offspring of a viscount’s exiled son and his Italian mistress dare to court such as she? She had the breeding and—beyond a doubt—the training of a grand lady. She was beautiful, intelligent, brave, intrepid, and altogether wonderful.
All she lacked was money, and he did not have enough to make up for his deficiencies. Except he wanted her. Was he in love? He didn’t know—he had seen little of the emotion in his years at Riese Hall. But he admired her, he desired her, he couldn’t stop thinking about her.
When he had heard her call out and had burst through the bushes to see Whitely pinning her down, he had been filled with an incandescent rage. He hoped he would have leapt to the defense of any woman in such a situation, but the red-hot fury that surged to the beat of the words “mine, mine, mine” was something primitive he’d never before experienced.
As was the possessive surge of desire he’d felt after Whitely was subdued. It was as well her mother was there, or he might have embarrassed himself and distressed her further by kissing her witless.
He hadn’t wanted to let her out of his sight. When Lord Barton insulted her, it was all he could do to keep from punching him. Only with deep reluctance had he left her so he could go to Alstonebridge and secure her safety.
He had to court her. He could not imagine ever feeling for another woman what he felt for her, and without her, his future would be bleak indeed. Whether or not she accepted him was up to her, but he would do his best to persuade her.
He must have drifted off when he had made that decision, for the next thing he knew, the dawn light was filtering in through the single window. He rose, washed as best he could in the rain barrel, and dressed for travel. The vehicles he had hired would be leaving Alstonebridge about now and would be here in two hours. Too early to visit the ladies, then. He sat on the bench just outside of the shack, pulled out a notebook and a pencil, and began a list of ideas for finding a new position.
*
Maman was up at dawn. They had finished packing all her fabrics and notions the previous evening, as well as their clothes and personal belongings, the kitchenware that they owned, and their pictures and ornaments. Everything was crowded into the parlor, taking up the middle of the floor. They’d pushed the furniture that had come with the cottage up against the walls.
“Hurry, Jacqueline,” Maman said, giving her shoulder a gentle shake. “We have the whole house to clean before we leave.”
Jackie thought about arguing. When they had arrived the place was dusty, dirty, and uncared for. They had cleaned for three days straight and had kept it clean ever since.
But there was no point in saying anything. Though they’d been here for years, Jackie was old enough to remember the frequent moves when her father had been alive. Every single time, Maman insisted on cleaning everything until it gleamed before she would leave their old place. Sometimes, when the move was urgent, because Papa had upset someone, she would clean all night. “I will not have some woman moving in here and thinking it has been a home for pigs,” she always said.
Then, when they arrived at a new home, she did it all again. No place they moved into was up to Maman’s standards. Jackie sighed and resigned herself to more cleaning, both here and later in Little Tidbury.
By the time she was dressed, Maman had brioches and coffee ready, and they were soon washing down walls and scrubbing floors. “It will not take long,” Maman commented. “We should be ready by the time the transports arrive.”
At that moment, someone knocked on the door. Not a simple rat-a-tat-tat, either, but pounding, on and on, as if the person outside wanted to batter the door down.
Jackie guessed who it was before the hated voice shouted, “Let us in before we break down the door!” Lord Riese, his words slurred and stumbling.
“He has been drinking,” Maman commented, calmly, then shouted back, “Go away, Lord Riese. We have paid the rent. If you break into our home, you will be committing a crime.”
“Gonna throw the bitches out,” said another voice. “Pay them back for having Bill Whitely put in prison. No skirt gets to do that to my mate.”
“Tha’s right,” Riese roared. “Tried to get me in trouble with Lord Barton. Upset my mother.”
Maman had opened her trunk and was searching around under her clothes with one hand. She pulled out the espingole that Jackie’s father had bought for her many years ago during their escape from France.
It was a gun like those the mail-coach guards used, but shorter, its barrel just over two feet long and flared at the tip—for easy loading, Maman had told Jackie, and so that the six lead balls with which it was loaded could more quickly diverge. The gun was designed to stop a group of attackers, which was why the English equivalent, the blunderbuss, was a favorite on the mail runs.
Her hand had dived into the clothes again and come out with a leather bag from which she was loading the gun with quick efficient movements. “We will back up against this wall, cherie ,” she said, calmly. “If they break down the door, I shall wait until they are all through the doorway and then shoot.”
“Yes, Maman,” Jackie said, looking around for something she could use as a weapon. The fire tools had been packed, but she retrieved the poker. Maman nodded with approval. “And the kitchen knives, Jacqueline. They are on the table in their box. Fetch and set them ready to our hands.”
Jackie obeyed, taking the opportunity to make sure that the back door was locked and barred. The kitchen window was too small for anyone to climb through, even if they managed to break out the wooden supports that held the little panes of glass. The windows in the bedroom and the main room were larger, but of the same type. If they came in that way, they’d be vulnerable to her poker, and she wouldn’t hesitate to use it.
She put the knife case near Maman, open so the knives were within easy reach, and stationed herself where she could easily reach any of the windows in a few paces.
The men outside were making so much noise that surely the neighbors must have heard, even though the nearest was two hundred feet or more away. But the neighbors were all tenants of Lord Riese. What could they do against four inebriated men, one of them the landlord?
Jackie could pick out at least four voices, all clearly drunk. Two were singing. Jackie could not make out all the words, but enough of them to know it was about vile things the singer wanted to do to a series of girls known only by the name of their city, with a typical chorus line being, “…until the virgin of York is a virgin no more.”
The other two, one of them the viscount, were arguing about whether to ram the door with a log or chop it down with an axe.
“Go home, Lord Riese,” shouted Maman again. “We are armed, and will protect ourselves against anyone who enters.”
A new voice entered the fray. “I would listen to her if I was you.” Pol! He sounded almost bored, but Jackie could picture him—tall, lean, and alert, perhaps with his pistols in his hands.
“You traitor,” Riese screeched. “You tried to have me arrested.”
“You sent the Whitelys to abduct Miss Haricot,” Pol answered. “I was only just in time to stop Bill Whitely from raping her.”
“You bastard,” Riese shouted. “You lie. You want her for yourself.” He addressed his friends. “He always wants what I have,” he whined. “He makes up to the servants and the tenants so they like him. The steward likes him better than me. Even my own mother says I should be more like the Italian half-breed.”
“He won’t shoot you, Riese,” said one of his inebriated mates. “He’s your cousin.”
“He’d like to shoot me, wouldn’t you, Polly? You’d like to be viscount instead of me. You think you’d make a better viscount than me. Well, I’ve got the title, and you can’t have it! Finders keepers!”
“He can’t have the title, Riese,” said another friend. “He’s a bastard.”
The viscount sounded confused when he said, “Yes.” But then, more firmly, he added, “Yes, of course, he is.” He hushed his voice so that Jackie could barely hear. “Never tell anybody. It’s a secret.”
“Go home, Oscar,” Pol said. “You’re drunk. Go home and sleep it off.”
“Maybe we had better do what he says,” one of the friends offered.
Jackie held her breath until Oscar shouted, “Madame Dressmaker! I want you out by Saturday! There’s no place for you on my estates. And you can take your bitch of a daughter with you. Come on, fellows. The cow isn’t worth it.”
Except the word he used was not cow, but another word intended as an insult. Jackie had heard it around the stables but was not entirely certain about what it meant. No matter. He was going away, and soon, so would they.
Jackie and her mother stood, stiff and anxious, until a firm knock on the door. “They have gone, Madame Haricot.” Jackie sagged as the tension went out of her, and Maman crossed the room quickly to unbar the door and let Pol in.
“Mr. Allegro, good timing,” she said.
He took in the espingole , which she still had in her right hand. “It looks as if you were ready for him, but given yesterday’s fiasco with Lord Barton, it is probably as well not to have to spend the morning explaining the injury or death of the local viscount and his friends.”
“I quite agree,” said Maman, a slight shake in her voice the only evidence of the tension she had been under. “You are early, Mr. Allegro. I am glad of it.”
“I could not sleep,” he admitted. “I was thrown off the estate last night, and spent the night in the shack in the woods. Just as well, since otherwise I might not have been here so early. Now. What can I do to help?”
Maman set her gun to one side. “But I shall keep it handy in case they come back.” She found Mr. Allegro a broom, and he impressed Maman and Jackie by knowing how to use it. By the time the carriage and cart arrived to take them and their possessions away, the house was clean to Maman’s standards, their little flock of chickens had been confined in a series of baskets, and the nearest neighbors had been invited to help themselves to vegetables from the garden and fruit from the trees. “For the rent is paid for the next quarter,” Maman said, “so they are my vegetables and fruit to give away.”
“We shall stop in the village,” Maman decreed, “to say goodbye to the shopkeepers. After all, we no longer need to keep our departure secret from Lord Riese.”
“Don’t mention where we are going,” Pol warned. “I’ll tell the post boy and the carter the same.”
*
Pol treated the two men from Alstonebridge to an ale at the inn.
“I’ve heard ye’ve been dismissed and turned out, sir,” the innkeeper said. “I’m sorry for it. This place won’t be the same without ye. Have ye somewhere to go?”
“I’ll be looking for a new position,” Pol told him.
“I wish ye all the best, sir. You’ve been a fair man to deal with.”
That was a surprise. Pol had thought the innkeeper one of Riese’s supporters. He had to change his mind about quite a few other people when he left the inn to find a crowd of villagers and a few farmers from the surrounding land waiting to say goodbye to him.
The blacksmith was there. He had a bit more freedom of speech than most, since he owned his own cottage and smithy and provided essential services not just for the village and farms but for the travelers who made the inn and shops prosperous.
“You’ve kept Riese from ruining this village,” he said. “With you gone, he’ll have no brakes at all. He’ll drive us headlong into disaster. Within years, I reckon. I’ll be looking for another place, though my father and his father had the smithy before me.”
There were a few nods and some affirmative murmurs, many stony faces, and no one who denied what the blacksmith had said.
“I hope you are wrong,” said Pol. “I wish you all only the best. If I can help, I shall, but I’ve only ever had a tiny amount of leverage with my cousin and my aunt. And apparently, I’ve used it up. Will you all let friends who are not here today know that I said goodbye and good luck?”
“And the same to you,” said the blacksmith and a chorus of others. On a flood of goodwill, Pol climbed into the post chaise, where Jackie and Madame Haricot were already waiting, and the post rider set the horses into motion.