Chapter 1
Major Lord Philip Avondale had been in many a scrape thanks to his twin brother Peter, but being kidnapped in his sibling’s stead was perhaps a step too far, even for a man as tolerant as himself.
A call of, “Oi! Parson!” from the street had distracted him away from a blow directed to his head, disorienting him and giving the villains an opportunity to hustle him into a waiting carriage that smelled distinctly of boiled cabbage and horse manure.
Head spinning, he had been pinned to the floor of the carriage by two equally foul-smelling ruffians for what seemed like hours until they finally arrived at a house, dragged him up the stairs, and dropped him to the floor with a final kick to the ribs.
And here he was. Philip looked around the small and shabby room where they had dumped him, moving his head carefully so as not to restart its pounding again.
The surrounding silence told him the house was in the country, not London.
Light coming through the one small window was starting to fade.
A low pallet stuffed with straw sprawled in one corner and a chamber pot sat conspicuously in the other.
Hopefully, it would prove cleaner than the rest of the room.
It was still better quarters than sleeping rough on the Peninsula.
The scrape of a boot outside the door alerted him to someone’s arrival, and he stood to face whoever was there. He stood too quickly, though, and had to brace himself against the nausea that followed.
The door opened, and two men entered. Complete strangers.
The taller one had a shock of wiry dark hair above his gaunt features.
Bright red blotches on his otherwise pale nose and cheeks marked him as a heavy drinker.
The shorter one was washed-out all over: lank blond hair, dun-colored skin, watery blue eyes.
The taller one sneered at him, while the other seemed to cringe back. “Well, parson. I suppose you never expected to find yourself here.”
“No, I didn’t,” Philip said, with perfect truth.
“It won’t be for long,” the other man piped up. “Just a few days.”
“Do you suppose I could get a chair? Perhaps a table?” Philip gestured to the pallet. “I’ll be dreadfully uncomfortable if that’s the only place for me to sit.”
The first man sneered again. Did he even have another expression? “This ain’t a dook’s palace, you know. You takes what we gives you and be grateful for it.”
“Now, Dickie,” the other man said, “‘e’s a parson, after all. A man of God ought to get some kind o’ consideration, don’t you think?”
Dickie contemplated this idea for a moment and then spat onto the floor, barely missing the toe of Philip’s boot. “I known more parsons than you, Jas. Ain’t none of them worth a farthing.”
As the two men continued to bicker, Philip saw the door open a tiny bit wider so the hunched figure of a woman could creep in. She carried a bucket and a small hand broom—a maid of all work to clean and lay the fireplace, it seemed.
Her face was turned away from him, but something about her was familiar.
The way she moved, even while trying not to draw attention to herself.
Her graceful figure as she crouched to clean the fireplace, the warm brown skin of her arms streaked with soot from the work.
Her nimble hands, as they briskly swept the hearth.
She was doing her best not to draw attention to herself, but he knew her.
She glanced up at him from beneath the brim of a floppy mobcap that barely contained her dark curls. Those same thickly-lashed dark eyes still taunted him from time to time in his dreams, and his breath caught for a moment.
He had not seen her in four years, but he had never forgotten the unmistakable Junia Reynolds.
Major Avondale’s presence ruined everything.
Junia Reynolds racked her brain as she briskly swept the coal dust from the grate.
She had expected Dickie and Jasper to stay overnight in London as they usually did, giving her an opportunity to free her father from the room where they were holding him prisoner.
A spoonful of valerian in the guards’ dinner to make them doze, and she and Pappa would have had an hours-long head start.
Glancing up from beneath her mobcap, she shot Major Avondale a glare that was only strengthened by the little leap her heart had made when she recognized him.
Even with his chestnut curls disheveled and dried blood tracing along his high cheekbone, he had the same air of unruffled calm she remembered from the British warship that had transported her family from slavery in Maryland to freedom in England four years ago.
She had told herself what she felt for him was only a schoolgirl crush, but now she realized she had been looking for him around every corner she turned in London.
It made her even angrier. Where had he been when she needed him, and why must he turn up now to complicate what she had nearly solved?
Junia ducked her head and concentrated on sweeping the hearth as she tried to discreetly eavesdrop on Dickie and Jasper, even as her body prickled with awareness of Avondale’s presence.
The thick London accents were still difficult for her to decipher, but they seemed to disagree about exactly what comforts their prisoner was and was not to be allowed.
It was no surprise Dickie argued for harsher treatment and Jasper for a little softness.
She had already seen how they treated her father.
Pappa.
Gripping the brush tighter, she pushed away the thought. She could not come up with a new escape plan if she did not stay calm and keep a clear head.
“Gentlemen, gentlemen,” Major Avondale said, and she frowned a little into the flagstones of the hearth as she scrubbed. His voice was different than she remembered. He had been a commanding and self-assured officer on board the ship, not this diffident-seeming man in fashionable civilian clothing.
“Gentlemen, there is no need to argue,” he continued when Dickie and Jasper subsided. “If there is no chair or table to be had, then that shall be the lot our Lord has given me.”
Dickie grunted and Jasper smiled tentatively, exposing the several rotting stumps of his teeth. “I thankee, parson. But mebbe the girl can look in the attic for summat for you to sit on.”
Junia hunched down under the unexpected attention, brushing the hearth vigorously one last time before she laid fresh coals in the grate.
“I would appreciate it,” Major Avondale said. She could feel him glance at her, and then away.
With a murmur, she rose back to her half-crouch and scuttled away again, pausing in the hallway just out of sight to see if the conversation continued.
To her disappointment, all she heard was the sound of Dickie and Jasper’s footsteps towards the door, which sent her hurtling down the narrow steps back to the kitchen.
It wasn’t as though there wasn’t enough for her to do, even beside her plans to rescue her father. There was a guard at each of the two doors of the house, but she was the only inside servant. She was kept busy all day with the cooking and cleaning necessary for the five—now six—men in the house.
With a sigh, she pushed through the door to the kitchen, where she had left a hearty stew for the evening meal bubbling over the fire.
Her skills were meager since she had been trained as a lady’s maid, not a cook, but the men didn’t have high standards.
Plain food and plenty of it seemed to satisfy them and left her enough time to continue to assess the house under the guise of cleaning it, a job which would take a dozen maids a full week to accomplish, at the least.
Her biggest problem was the nighttime guards.
Even if she and her father could both get through the small window of his room, that window was directly above the door where Robby stood all night, with the other guard, Jem, at the back.
Things were a bit looser during the day while the guards slept, but then Dickie and Jasper were constantly underfoot, quarreling and sniping at each other while they walked through the house in their muddy boots and left dishes under the furniture for her to pick up.
This was why she had set her plan for when they would be gone overnight…
but they had returned unexpectedly, and with Major Avondale in tow.
Once in the kitchen, she set down the coal scuttle, rinsed her hands and arms under the pump in the sink, and floured the table so she could punch down the dough for the week’s bread.
She had to admit, the kneading and punching relieved her feelings at least a little and helped her keep a clearer head as she devised a way to get around the guards.
The man upstairs must be Major Avondale. He must be. She had seen the recognition on his face, as she knew he had seen it on hers. Why Dickie and Jasper thought he was a clergyman was beyond her, but she hoped she would be able to use their confusion to her advantage.
She punched the dough a little harder than she needed to. It did not matter that she knew him, or that he had been kind when she was a frightened girl on her way to a new country. She could not allow him to stand in the way of her goal.
As she had done every night since the day she had arrived in this house, Junia spooned the evening’s dinner into a bowl for Robby, the younger of the two guards, to take upstairs to her father.
She tried to be discreet about giving Pappa the best pieces of meat, a secret signal to him that she was still there and still working to free him.
Her father was clearly the more valuable of the two prisoners since she was rarely allowed inside his room and, even then, it was under the watchful eye of Dickie or Jasper.
So far, they were less watchful with Major Avondale, and she hoped to be able to turn that to her advantage.
When Robby returned with the empty bowl, Junia said, “What about the other, um, guest?”
“T’other?”
“There’s a man in the other room. A minister.”