Chapter 35
The cart was no carriage, but a low market cart with four iron-bound wheels and a patched canvas tilt drawn over bent hoops. The cover began behind the driving board and ran almost to the tail, leaving only a narrow rear gap where light, dust, and the smell of horse entered together.
Wickham took the board and the reins.
Kerr rode beneath the tilt with Bennet’s daughter at his feet.
That suited him. A man with reins in his hands had less leisure for invention, and Wickham, left idle, inclined too readily towards ornament. The cart took the lane at a sober pace, its canvas brushing leaves from the hedge. Beneath the tilt, boards creaked.
Miss Bennet breathed through the sack in slow, forced measure. Fear had not slackened her.
Kerr had seen fear spend itself in many poor ways: shouting, pleading, bargaining, weeping before the first blow fell. Miss Bennet had spent her first strength in one sharp burst.
Her bound hands rested near her breast; the cord at her ankles denied leverage. She lay on her side, skirts twisted about her legs, unmoving.
A rut caught the left wheel. The cart lurched; she rolled hard against the side plank. Kerr caught her before her head struck wood. She twisted under his hand.
“No,” he said, his fingers closing once upon her shoulder.
She stilled.
From the box, Wickham called back, “Is she injured?”
“No. She struck the board. Nothing more.”
“That is no comfort.” Wickham’s shoulder shifted beyond the opening as he glanced back. “A pity we could not have done it more prettily. A chaise, a note, a willing step into the dark. The county understands an elopement. It gives them a story fit for tea.”
Kerr looked at the hooded girl. She had gone very still.
“Elopement has not served either of us well,” he said.
Wickham’s posture stiffened.
The cart dipped into another rut. Miss Bennet slid hard against the plank; Kerr caught her by the arm and held her until the wheels steadied.
From the box, Wickham said, lower, “You need not return to Ramsgate.”
“We are here,” Kerr said, “because of Ramsgate.”
The reins creaked. The horse slowed where the road dipped beneath overhanging trees.
“Your Miss Bennet hears everything,” Wickham said over his shoulder.
“Then speak less.”
Kerr leant over her and pushed straw between her and the side planks.
For several minutes Wickham obeyed. The road narrowed under trees, and the canvas took the scrape of leaves with a dry whisper. The horse slowed where the ground rose.
At last Wickham said, “How long are we provisioned?”
“Four days.”
Miss Bennet moved at that. Not a start, not panic at first, but a hard gathering of the body, skirts twisting as she tried to bring her knees beneath her. The cord checked her ankles; her bound hands strained once near her breast.
Kerr caught her before she struck the plank again and pressed her down with one forearm across her shoulder.
“Still.”
She fought him then, short and blind and furious, the sack rasping against the boards. He pressed her down until the strength went out of the effort.
From the box, Wickham said, “Four days troubled her.”
Kerr lifted his forearm a fraction. She did not press back.
“Your father will be told what is required. The sooner he obeys, the sooner this ends.”
The cart slowed, turned off the path, and passed between two large trees.
An old stone cottage stood ahead, half hidden by ash and thorn.
Not a prison, Kerr thought. An accounting house.
* * *
Redbourn Heath, July 1812
It took the better part of a quarter hour to get her from the cart to the room.
Wickham held the horse while Kerr lifted Miss Bennet down beneath the tilt.
She resisted once, blindly, when her boots found the ground; the cord at her ankles turned the effort into a stumble.
Kerr took her by the arm and brought her across the yard, past the pump and the broken barrow beneath the ash, to the low door at the rear of the cottage.
The room was dry and small, the plaster whole and smelling faintly of lime. A pallet lay upon fresh-strewn straw, and next to it stood a cluttered stool: a basin, a crust of bread, and a flagon of water. A heavy shutter closed the one casement; the door barred from without.
She sat gagged upon the pallet with her hands bound before her at the wrist by a loop that fell only so far as to keep her from rising quickly; a coarse blanket lay folded at her feet.
Kerr examined the room a final time. It wanted for comfort, not for conscience.
“It is not my intent to harm you. I will free your mouth if you promise not to cry out. The door is barred, the shutter fixed, and no one will hear you but me. Are we in accord?”
She nodded. He removed the gag. “You have a bit of food and water. The pail is for your necessities.”
He stepped back, drew the door closed, and set the bar into its iron brackets. The wood took the weight with a dull sound. Only then did he turn towards the well pump.
Wickham’s voice came from the treefall. “Is she quiet?”
“A tied hand and a locked door do more than threats.” Kerr kept his gaze on the old barrow. “She will not be harmed by me.”
“Nor starved to death; nor brought to worse. We are not savages.”
“It is not her demise I intend,” Kerr said. “It is her father’s ruin.”
Wickham tilted his head and the heat darkened the braid at his collar. “You may have your vengeance. I shall have my money. Each of us gets what he came for.”
“Let his neighbours whisper; let his invitations dry up; let mothers close parlour doors when his carriage passes. That is the price.”
Wickham laughed, a brief, ugly sound. “Then take your price and I will take mine. Four days is a long while to sit beside a locked door.”
“Then sit elsewhere.”
“And leave you with the lady?”
Kerr looked at him.
Wickham’s smile thinned. “No. I thought not.”
* * *
When Wickham had gone back towards the trees, Kerr returned to the barred door. A narrow hatch had been cut into the upper plank; he slid it back and looked in.
Miss Bennet had not moved.
He lifted the bar and entered.
She sat where he had left her, pale beneath the dust and the marks of the sack, her hands bound before her. She had not touched the bread.
“You should eat,” he said.
Her eyes went to the door behind him. “Am I to thank you for advice?”
“No.”
“Then I shall not.”
He pulled the door nearly closed behind him and stood with his back to it.
“You wish to know why you are here,” he said.
“I have understood part of it.”
“That is something.”
“My father is to pay.”
“Yes.”
“And Mr Wickham is to profit.”
Kerr looked at the shuttered casement, then at the loop that held her wrists. “Wickham is seldom present where money is absent.”
“And you?”
“I want an old debt acknowledged.”
She inclined her head. “My father owes you no debt.”
“How would you know that?”
“Because he is an honest man.”
Something moved in Kerr’s jaw. “Your father,” he said, “walked away from Stamford and left my family’s name in the dirt.”
She searched his face. “I do not know what that means.”
“No. You would not.”
Her colour changed, but she did not look away.
“Ask him,” Kerr said, “if you see him again.”
Then he stepped out, set the crosspiece into its brackets, and barred her in with the uncertainty.