Chapter 35
Thirty-five
Grey
On his way down the river path, Grey noticed the stern of a rowboat pulled up on the shore where the pirate had landed once before.
He was more than convinced the Bradford family had been river thieves.
The cellar hoard and attic window overlooking this stretch of water nearly proved it, in his mind.
What were the chances that at least one of their descendants knew this and meant to employ the same strategy—once Grey was removed from the house?
He recognized Bradford’s burly form traipsing down the river road like a hirsute bear. The fellow needed a good barber.
Interested to see who he might be meeting, Grey checked down the street to verify that Eleanor was still safely waiting at the well.
Then he followed the bear by blending into the shadows of the shrubbery, glad of his good boots and cloak in the thicket of brambles.
The night was more moist than cool. His cloak kept him dry while concealing the white of his linen.
Interestingly, Black Dickie hesitated when he reached the intersection of the river road and the lane leading up to Bradford House. Instead of proceeding to the boat or the house, he slid into a thicket across the road from both. Had he heard something or was he spying too?
Since Grey was beside the river, not far from where Bradford had hesitated, he found a better position among the brambles near the boat and listened intently.
Drunken singing broke into angry shouts, too far away to detect their words or location.
“Stew said you never learned,” a voice commented from behind Grey, startling him into turning toward the river. “Creature of habit, he said, sticks to main roads, never uses alleys. Reckon he was right.”
Stew?
Recognizing Percy’s voice, Grey bristled with fury.
Prepared after that last encounter with the pirate, he had sword in hand in an instant, but the foggy night offered limited visibility.
Since his opponent must already see him, Grey bellowed for the hidden soldiers and swung in the direction of the voice.
Unlike his last clash, this time, he ducked.
But Percy was shorter than the pirate. The oar clipped Grey from a lower position, missing his head but connecting with his shoulder. The cloak provided little protection from the blow. Grey staggered, slipped on the mud, and a second blow from his invisible attacker flung him into the water.
He heard Eleanor shriek—again. He barely had time to wonder how she could see before the swift current caught his cloak and tugged him down. The river might be narrow, but it was well over his head at this point.
By the devil, he wasn’t drowning in this poor excuse for a waterway.
Holding his breath, he used his sword to cut his cloak ties, then releasing his weapon, he kicked up from the bottom with his quickly-filling boots.
A few strokes and he might walk out, except for the weight of the deep current carrying him downriver—not where he wanted to go.
With the riverbank concealing what might be an entire band of murderous wretches, Grey swam his way upstream, against the current. His shoulders ached from the bruising blows. He hoped they wouldn’t give out before he reached the bridge where the miscreants wouldn’t expect him.
Creature of habit, indeed. He didn’t live anywhere long enough to have habits. Surviving was his only tradition.
Boots weighing him down, he struggled against the deep current, pushing his head up enough to gasp for air.
Hoping not to be seen, he punished his aching muscles with a few more strokes, before being dragged down again.
Gasping, he finally saw the low-lying medieval bridge through a haze of exhaustion.
Calling on the last of his strength, he dug his gloved fingers into a few of the stones in the arch and gasped for air.
When his bruised shoulders couldn’t take anymore, he painfully worked his way down to the lower curve.
Not until his fingers finally gripped the narrow parapet did he realize someone stood upon it.
A boot crushed his hand. In the distance, Grey heard screams and shouts, but it was unlikely anyone would reach his attacker before he fell back into the water. If he swam to shore. . . would he be shot down?
“Just die, will you, Cecil? I’m tired of Percy’s cat-and-mouse game. And now he tells me you’re actually courting. . . Did you think I’d wait until you produced your own heir?”
Courting? Was he doing that? His mind was too blurry with exhaustion.
He simply knew he wasn’t dying to convenience Stupid Stew.
Sodden clothing and boots weighing him down, Grey surrendered to the force of senseless rage and released his one hold on safety to grab the boot pinning his other hand—and yanked.
Caught by surprise, his nemesis fell backward, off the parapet, hitting the bridge stones hard.
With his hand free again, Grey tugged his torso onto the parapet, then threw his water-logged boots over. By the time he was on his feet, so was Stew. Raging, Grey launched himself at the portly scoundrel.
Fury gave him strength enough to land solid punches to Stew’s fleshy jaw and flabby midsection, bending the bigger man in half to gasp for air.
The lobcock had never been a brawler. While his heir was wheezing and whining, Grey caught the front capes of his ridiculous greatcoat.
Not caring whether his cousin could swim, he lifted him off his feet, prepared to fling him over, when he heard a female voice crying out in joy and the bailiff bellow, “If you drown him, you’re no better than he is! ”
Well, when put that way. . . Still furious but restraining himself in front of Eleanor, Grey simply kneed his cousin where it hurt most and let him fall, groaning, to the stony bridge.
Then he looked about anxiously for Eleanor, relieved when she flung herself into his dripping arms. Through the fog of exhaustion, this seemed fair reward for not drowning a parasite.
Even wearing men’s clothing, her warm curves heated his blood.
He was vaguely aware of Rafe hauling moaning Stew away, of people shouting from the riverbank, but it was his beautiful Eleanor who prevented him from making a total ass of himself.
He might otherwise have collapsed into a sodden, puking shambles.
As if sensing his imminent collapse, she wrapped her borrowed cloak over his shoulders, let him lean on her, and led him back to the road. There, illuminated by lantern light, half a dozen familiar faces hovered, offering tea and blankets, steering him toward the physician’s cottage.
He balked. Too weary to speak, he turned to Ellie. She nodded understanding, gestured, and her twin appeared like magic to assist him home.
Home. A rented hovel—but the place where the people he trusted resided. Amazing to have people he trusted. After a lifetime of needing no one, the presence of his hired family provided reassurance, as physicians or soldiers could not.
He might need physicians and soldiers later, if he didn’t gather his wits and settle the roiling emotions promising imminent explosion.
Complete strangers called reassuringly or shouted huzzah from the lane’s edges as he lurched back to the house with his sodden boots squelching water.
Apparently soldiers approved of the idiocy of swimming upstream to trounce a scoundrel.
Grey had never particularly needed approval.
He’d given that up as a child everyone called cursed.
So this was one more new experience warming him sufficiently to keep his feet moving in the right direction.
Well, that, and Eleanor at his side, touching his shoulder, catching his hand, keeping him straight so Andrew didn’t bear his full weight.
Unfortunately, upon finally entering home sweet home, they discovered the leather couch he’d been anticipating had been overturned.
The bottom had been ripped open, leaving its guts hanging out and scattered about the worn floor.
A pair of strangers flipped the heavy furniture upright.
The leather cushions were somewhat intact.
Grey gingerly lowered himself, testing the stability under his weight. Thankfully, the solid frame held.
Eleanor briefly vanished while Andrew helped him off with his sodden coat and boots. Grey accepted a blanket rather than force himself up the stairs to change. Obviously, more had happened than his brief sojourn in the water.
He waited until Ellie returned with a huge mug of hot tea laced with brandy before he sought answers.
Even on one of the worst nights of his life, he felt pampered.
Sipping the blessed heat, he wanted to kiss her for her thoughtfulness but reckoned he’d only embarrass her.
He’d give that urge some thought another time.
To Grey’s astonishment, Blackie Bradford arrived hauling the scoundrel Percival.
He’d actually caught the scheming bastard!
Grey wanted to take the breadth of a sword to the wretch’s head and heave him into the river, but Bradford handed the wretch over to one of the guards.
The soldier yanked a rope from his belt and tied up the protesting prisoner.
Besides, his sword was now at the bottom of the river. Grey leaned into the cushions, sipped his tea, and tried to stay upright.
“They’re bringing in Tiny and Mort from the privy,” Andrew reported, producing a basin of hot water for Grey to soak his feet in.
He ought to be embarrassed by the familiarity in front of Ellie, who was bringing out mugs for everyone.
But somehow, she had become a part of him as much as his right arm.
Odd. He’d ponder that later as well. Right now, as warmth seeped into him, he needed answers.
Like, what had they done with his miserable heir?
But as long as Percy was under guard and looking deuced uncomfortable trussed like a pig. . .
Grey lifted an inquiring eyebrow at Blackford, since he didn’t know any of these others hovering about.
“Relations,” the burly Australian explained gruffly, nodding at both Percival and the pair they were hauling in from the privy.
The man was from Australia and related to half the shire?
“Ain’t no family to me,” the lean lad called Tiny spat. “Else you’d be out helpin’ instead of hurtin’! It’s our coins and land they’ve taken! You ain’t been here long enough to know how the rich steal and lie and cheat us.”
“This place ain’t never been yor’n,” Bradford growled back.
“We had our own place! They took it too!” the lad shouted, until the soldier shook him into silence.
Settling beside him with her own cup of tea, Ellie murmured, “The skinny one is Tiny, the one who fixed your carriage wheel. And Mort does look a bit like Mr. Bradford, doesn’t he?”
If Mort was the other of the pair the soldiers had been holding in the privy, he did bear some resemblance to their hirsute neighbor, just a little more polished. Grey remembered him from Thea’s gallery and winced at the headache forming behind his eyes.
Bradford turned his back on his cousin’s outburst to offer explanation. “Dad said I had second cousins, his uncle’s family. Said they had a farm and big herd and I could find work there.”
“Yeah, and the bank got it all!” the noisy one shouted.
Grey did mental calculations and gathered it had been over thirty years since Black Dickie’s father had been transported. Bradford must have been a valued prisoner for him to have found a woman and created a family in the penal colonies.
Tall and bulky, Mort merely looked drunk. If slender, blond Tiny was his brother, they bore no resemblance to each other.
Percival, apparently not as cup-shot, futilely struggled against his ropes, cursing and protesting. The guard in a tattered infantry coat cuffed his shoulder to shut him up.
Grey had thought he knew the hack’s origins. Born into aristocracy, Percy should have been expected to act as a gentleman. Grey should have realized the slime favored the long line of river thieves he’d crawled from. No amount of polish concealed a lack of morals.
Rafe finally arrived, bringing with him Captain Huntley, the cook, and Ellie’s maid.
Miss Fields gasped at the sight of the prisoners. “Misters Bradford!”
“The family you once worked for?” Eleanor asked, apparently remembering everything she’d ever been told about anyone in the village.
Their cook nodded, wide-eyed, then grasping the seriousness of the situation, she fled to the kitchen without another word.
Andrew hastened to haul in a dining room chair so the magistrate could rest his leg. Acting as hostess, Eleanor leaped up to offer brandy. Rafe refused, as usual. The long-suffering captain accepted. He’d probably been sitting at the manor table with friends and family and fine wine at this hour.
Feeling well enough to speak without his teeth chattering but not strong enough to stand to greet them, Grey sipped his tea to heat his vocal cords, then shouted, “Where is my damnable heir?”