Foiled Escape
Claude and Leonora had both slept late on Sunday, and Jocelyn had stayed in her quarters through the day.
She read. She paced the floor. She cursed herself for not asking Mr. Brandon to mail her letter to Margaret.
“Probably would have read it first,” she grumbled, but she did not truly believe the man would betray her trust.
She watched out the window and noted when Claude made his way towards the conservatory once more.
“Why does he return there again and again?” she asked herself.
“Should the repairs not be finished? He said they were only minor, and why do the repairs fall on his shoulders? Should there not be someone on the estate to whom those responsibilities belong?”
More questions arrived when Leonora announced over supper that she and Claude would be traveling into Pickering on the morrow.
“We have legal papers to sign regarding Shard House. I pray we shall not be required to stay overnight. We must wait for Mr. Hammond, the solicitor, to ride up from York to finish the paperwork. Either way, I do not wish you to leave the house. Yorkshire is dangerous if you do not know your way about. Not even to the garden, Jocelyn. Do you understand me?”
For a moment, Jocelyn had thought she might walk to the village and mail her letter, or, better yet, catch a coach back to London. She would be frightened, but, she reasoned, she was already terrified. “Yes, ma’am.”
She had again stood for a long time at her window. The rain from earlier had ceased for now. Jocelyn thought she had seen Mr. Brandon standing in the shadows of the tree line, but his appearance had been so unexpected that he was gone before she fully realized he was there.
*
Jocelyn had not gone down to see her housemates off, thankful for a few days of peace.
Nevertheless, she watched from the window in her quarters as the coach made the turn to the right and dropped out of sight behind the tree line.
Later, over breakfast, she casually asked the maid how often the mail coach traveled through the village.
“Only twice weekly, miss. Wednesday and Saturday. Goes to York, but I am not assured where to after that.”
“I wanted to write to my guardians,” she explained.
“I understand, miss.”
“Is it also a public coach if I need it to return to London?” she inquired while spreading butter on her toast. “My family hired a private coach to send me to Yorkshire, but that is expensive. I would not want to put them out again unless it was necessary.”
“Yes, miss. It be for travelers also.”
Jocelyn had hoped for a different response, for she did not think Leonora and Claude would be away so long.
Much later still, when she was confident that the few servants in the house were all belowstairs, Jocelyn decided if she could not return to London without a confrontation with her housemates, then she would discover why she had been forbidden to enjoy certain parts of the estate.
Obviously, with Mr. Brandon watching the house, though he claimed to be doing something else, meaning, watching her, there was something odd—something evil happening at Shard House.
If she was to be prepared to defend herself when it showed its ugly face, she must learn the why and the wherefore of Shard House and its residents.
Therefore, she would reclaim her life. She skirted the gardens and followed the narrow lane towards the glass house.
A new storm, as well as a fog was rolling across the moors, and the shadows thickened.
In the distance, as sound traveled on the cooler air, she thought she could hear the river crashing against the rocks.
The recent rain had likely swollen the stream; however, she did not turn her steps back to the manor house.
Determined, with a deep inhalation, she arrived at the conservatory and opened the door, lifting up on the hinge to prevent a squeak.
She stepped into the semidarkness. She wished she had brought a lantern, but she could see what she had come to find.
Plants were placed along the glass wall, but there was no floor in the middle of the conservatory.
The bricks from the center had been removed and the earth turned up.
Though there were a hundred possibilities, like someone searching for the Blanshard jewels, which had been mentioned often by her housemates, Jocelyn whispered, “A grave.”
Unfortunately, she did not realize she had company. “Leonora Blanshard,” Mr. DuBois announced.
“It was all going so well,” the fake Leonora said, “until we received your guardian’s letter.
Leonora lived in relative obscurity. Only a few servants.
Easy with which to dispense. George pretended to be her late husband’s nephew.
The old lady was quite out of her mind and did not realize the farce we practiced.
I was Claude’s wife. He pensioned off the remaining servants, and we searched for the Blanshard fortune.
Then Mrs. Marlow’s letter arrived. I suppose Mrs. Marlow and Leonora had already corresponded before we arrived at the house. You were already on your way to her.”
“And your roles had to change,” Jocelyn finished the woman’s thoughts.
“We are accustomed to improvisation. We hired a few servants. I wore those atrocious clothes and pretended to be George’s aunt. That was the worst of the charade.”
“You were the blonde at the fairgrounds,” Jocelyn declared. Everything fell into place. “Why did you escort me there,” she asked the man, “if you planned to meet up?”
“I did not know Elizabeth meant to follow us there,” he admitted. “And we’ve had so little time… But Mr. Brandon found you alone.”
“You deserted me to that drunken riff-raff,” Jocelyn accused.
“It was my doing,” the woman declared. “Your story reminded me of my own. Left alone by parents I do not remember. First, in the charity house, where George and I met, and then on the street. You think us some sort of criminals.”
“How could I not?” Jocelyn whispered.
“Naturally, you would judge,” the woman accused. “If Mr. Marlow had not rescued you, my life and yours could have been similar. Unlike you, I was never perfect. I learned to live in my own way. Not in London’s fashion, but perfectly fit for the Continent.”
They were still inside the conservatory, and a quick glance around her told Jocelyn that darkness and the thick fog had arrived while they were talking. The moon was hidden behind a bank of clouds.
“Leonora Blanshard was dying,” Elizabeth continued to justify her actions. “She was the type to have lived quite outrageously. Overindulgence in everything.”
“So you helped her along?” Jocelyn asked as she looked for a means to escape.
“Leonora regularly hired and released her servants. You should be happy you never encountered her,” Elizabeth declared as she lifted her chin in defiance.
“New servants. I removed Leonora’s and Blanshard’s portraits from the family gallery so no one would know the difference.
I wore her clothes. Her wigs. It had been nearly ten years since she had been in the village or even attended church.
No one recalled her countenance with confidence.
I managed to fool everyone. It would all have been easy, but… ”
“I arrived.”
“My disguise was working. Your arrival brought more notice to Shard House.”
“We must be done with this,” George said coldly.
“I suppose,” Elizabeth said with a sigh.
“It would all have gone perfectly well if Mr. Brandon had not seen you and George together in the village. George had to turn the gig around, but Brandon saw enough to confirm where we were hiding in plain sight. Likely noted the crest on the side of the gig, or a few questions to the locals would be all it would take.”
Jocelyn swallowed the words announcing that the gentleman had followed her in London, but the idea that he had admittedly followed her before she knew she was coming to Yorkshire did not make sense. However, she had no time to consider that part of this mystery.
“It is over,” Elizabeth said. “We found Leonora’s jewels and have been to Pickering, where we sold them.”
“To the man George met at the fair,” Jocelyn said as the truth arrived.
“He is now traveling to York so he might sail to the Continent,” George admitted. “We could have gotten more if…”
“If I had not come to Shard House,” Jocelyn finished again.
Silence followed. The moon characteristically broke through a bank of clouds. They all remained so still that they could each have been a marble statue among the plants, but their stances spoke of the tragedy happening to them.
“I have warned you repeatedly about your kind heart,” George said in ominous tones, but whether the warning was meant for her or Elizabeth, Jocelyn could not say. “Everything else has been executed as we expected. You, Miss Byers, are the only rut in our smooth road to happiness.”
Just as Jocelyn thought it would be, Claude DuBois’s persona returned in a blink of Jocelyn’s eyes from civil to something more sinister.
George’s lips gently curled in a familiar smile, but there was no cordiality within his tone.
“How should we do this?” he asked, but Jocelyn knew he already had something in mind.
“Hopefully you do understand that your screaming and fighting me will be useless.
Though I suspect you will do so despite all my warnings.
“Leonora Blanshard died in her sleep, and we buried her among the flowers she loved,” he explained, as if Jocelyn needed to know the story they would tell the world.
“She took too much laudanum, more than she realized. As for us, we have plans. I should say, I have plans. But, first, we must attend to you.”
He seized Jocelyn’s arm with an iron-tight grip and began to half drag, half shove her through the conservatory’s door and towards the woods.
“You’re insane,” Jocelyn accused as she stumbled forward, nearly falling.
“I have a dream of being rich. Most men do. That would make the world insane. The difference is I have a logical plan to achieve my dream. That, my dear, is not insanity, but rather genius.”
“You have executed all this for money!” she accused.
“Not the money, but rather the freedom and power it provides a man.”
His grip on her arm tightened again, forcing Jocelyn to move ahead of him along the path.
“Where are you taking me?” Jocelyn pleaded.
“To the river. You will kill yourself. We all know you thought someone was following you in London. Your mind was not right. You wandered away from me at the fair, and it took me forever to find you. You will be like Shakespeare’s Ophelia.”
Jocelyn stumbled again, but he jerked her upright. Elizabeth followed them at a distance and spoke no objection.
The rain-swelled river thundered across the rocks and splashed against the tree trunks along the bank. Shrubs were thick along the slope leading to the restless water. Jocelyn could smell the moist earth and the water-soaked bark.
Her breath came in short gasps as he shoved her along the rock-strewn path that led to the pier.
“I wish it did not have to be this way,” George said with a careless shrug. “But you’ve been too curious.”
Jocelyn attempted to block out his voice, but to no avail.
The wood of the pier was rotten in places. Moss clung to the broken slats, and the pier was flimsy, while the rain had made the river a tumultuous force.
“It is deep at the end of the pier,” George announced in a flippant manner. “With your cape and all, you’ll sink quickly. Likely catch on a rock or branch and drag you down again and again. No one can swim in that torrent.” He tossed a small branch into the water to prove his point.
“You truly mean to do this?” she asked as he prodded her forward another step.
The planks were set several inches apart.
George held her arm as the wood groaned beneath their combined weight.
Jocelyn finally realized that Elizabeth no longer followed them.
Jocelyn looked again at the water, and she froze in morbid fascination.
She could envision herself floundering against the swift torrent, and her heart beat faster still.
Instinctively, her knees locked, refusing to permit her to walk.
George shoved her hard, but instead of going closer, Jocelyn fell backward, into him. He cried out, and the wind caught his objection and threw it back at them.
Jocelyn attempted to run, but the pier was wobbly, and she stumbled forward, falling on her hands and knees. In a flash, George was over top of her, tugging at her shoulders—her arms—her hair, but Jocelyn clawed at the gap between the planks, holding on for dear life.
It became excessively quiet, when George took a step away from her. Jocelyn dared to glance up at him, and his face was a mask of rage. His chest was heaving, but his eyes were not on her. He laughed quietly as the phantom cries of a woman carried back to them on the wind.
Jocelyn looked to the edge of the pier, expecting to see Elizabeth crying out to George. But Elizabeth was nowhere to be seen. Instead, Mr. Brandon stood just off the planks. “It is over,” Brandon called out.
“Not if I trade Miss Byers’s life for mine.”
Jocelyn heard the click of George’s gun. “Which will it be, Brandon?”
He aimed the gun at Jocelyn’s head.
She screamed seconds before she saw a streak of orange fire and another second before she heard the explosion.
George threw his hands up, his eyes wide with disbelief.
He staggered backwards, his scream dying in his throat as he windmilled for a few seconds before falling into the rapidly rising water.
Instantly, or so it felt, Mr. Brandon put his arm about her and supported her upward. It seemed an eternity before he gently nudged her into his embrace. “You are safe,” he repeated again and again.