Chapter 1 #2
Peregrine. What sort of mother beheld her squalling child and pronounced, “We shall call this tiny, helpless thing Peregrine.” Though he rather looked like a Peregrine now.
Tack and saddle neatly hung, horse watered and fed, she entered the house through the kitchen.
Susan rushed toward Grace, looking for the source of the blood. “Are you all right?”
“Come on, then. Help me undress.” Grace placed the invitation and one of the prints carefully on the counter and eyed the steaming tub. “Is there more hot water?”
“In the kettle.”
“There is a wounded man in the south wing. Will you bring Botkins the kettle and some rags?”
“You loaded the gun? Don’t say it. We’ll all be hanged.”
“We’ll get to Spain.”
“Spain? Another wild fancy. What for? You’d not stop.” Susan gathered rags and filled a basin with hot water.
“I have no grudge against the Spanish. It’s the English aristocracy I despise.” She dropped into the water. “Ah. This is felicity. Susan, if you were lost, I would spend my life searching for you.”
“Had I known the trouble you are, I’d have spent my life giving you the slip.”
“Except Botkins remains with me, and you love him.”
“Curse the both of you.”
Grace obliged with a hearty profanity as Susan departed.
When the water became cold, Susan had not returned. What did it mean? Discovery held no appeal, but the water no longer soothed. Grace dripped from the tub. She wrapped herself in a linen towel and stood near the flaming hearth.
Father Arundel would ease her mind. Wearing only a shift, she took the papers she’d found in the saddle bag and left the kitchen. She mounted winding stairs to a sunlit room.
“It will be hot today,” Father Arundel said, his face tilted upward toward golden light flowing through a stained-glass window.
“Already is.” Grace reclined in a worn chaise lounge, her favorite place, though today it begrudged its usual comfort.
“What have you done, child? Much scraping and thudding from the south wing disrupted my morning vespers.”
“Forgive me, Father, for I have sinned.”
He turned toward her his pewter eyes reflecting light. Though sightless, they prickled into her as if she extended her beating heart for his examination, a feeling that resurfaced despite having shared a roof with the priest for over a year.
“Is it serious?”
“I shot a man.”
“You loaded the Queen Anne. Foolish child.” He chuckled softly.
“What if I killed him?”
“Botkins would not be clattering about if the man were dead.”
A small coil of dread unraveled, but the colossal knot that pressed her ribs remained. She did not wish to discover the state of her captive. Better to sit beside a blind priest who kept her in his house, despite knowing her sins—well, most of them.
“But if he dies, consider this,” Father Arundel said. “If you had not come here, I would certainly be dead. A life for a life, though I am an old man and not worth much.”
“I’ve never known you to be callous.”
Father Arundel laughed and smacked his knee. “You are too young to understand that things have a way of sorting themselves out. Perhaps this is what you need to stop your nonsense.”
The thought tempted her and began to dismantle the pressing darkness in her chest, the weight easing.
Panic flared. She couldn’t. Without the anger, without the hard knot of vengefulness, what did she have?
She dragged it all back, clutching it close.
The blackness, she understood. The emptiness beneath terrified her.
She pulled forth the image of her mother, blue-lipped, purple hands clutching a bottle of gin.
Dead. The coroner said she died of asphyxiation, too intoxicated to manage her own vomit.
Grace scarce remembered a day her father did not smell of alcohol.
But there was a time before her brother began selling the poison that killed their mother.
And Grace had sold it, too. At first from necessity, later to discover the mastermind behind the production and distribution of gin. Her search led to the Duke of Stulton.
“Father Arundel.” Grace removed the paper she’d found in Peregrine’s saddle bag.
“I found a bundle of print in the man’s saddle bags.
The image shows a man at a lectern and various people lined up before him.
Beneath it reads, ‘The Effects of Lewis le Petit a Bankrupt 1759.’ Then lists items to be sold: 100,000 soldiers, naval stores, properties, et cetera.
” She read the entire text, including names and places up for auction.
“It’s a squib.” As one familiar with coaching houses, she was occasionally paid for distributing the prints, often bribing innkeepers to display them.
“Squib?”
“You would call it political satire.” She’d learned this phrase from Father Arundel over the year they’d studied together, but politics did not interest her so was struck from her lessons. “What does it mean?”
Father Arundel turned blank eyes to the ceiling. “The author implies our peerage benefits from the collapse of France. Lewis le Petit is Louis, king of France. More treacherous is ‘G.R.,’ our own King George. ‘W.P.,’ is William Pitt. This man you’ve injured is dangerous.”
This could be her chance. “The Duke of Stulton invited him to a house party.”
Father Arundel’s face darkened. “I advise against it.”
“It may be the chance I seek. And I tire of highway robbery.”
His brow lifted. He always sensed her lies.
“It’s providential,” she said. “This man, Peregrine, galloped into my path for this very purpose. I will have my revenge and start an honest life.”
The priest made a noncommittal sound.
Grace kissed his forehead and left. Time to speak with this Peregrine.