By the Sword (33 page)

"Aye, it probably will.” His eyes narrowed. “But if it does, yours will burn with mine. You bear as much responsibility for the past as I do."

"I?” Her eyes widened. “It was not I who ravished my granddaughter and cuckolded her husband."

"It was you who forced her into marriage with a man she did not love.” He took a step closer, and she picked up the cane and held it threateningly at him.

"And do you plan to beat me as you have my daughter?” Jonathan said with icy composure.

He caught the cane as she brought it down in his direction. With an easy movement he wrested it from her grip and broke it over his knee. He flung the pieces aside and stood facing Dame Elizabeth.

"Now tell me, what this child done that you should treat her so?"

"She is a lying, deceitful Jezebel. The spawn of a whore and the devil. She must needs be beaten to correct her wicked ways.” Dame Elizabeth's voice cracked with the fury of her emotion.

Jonathan looked away from the woman to the child who still cowered on the floor sobbing into her hands.

"Come to me, Tabitha,” he said softly.

The child looked up at him, her hazel eyes wide, and he held out his hand to her. Slowly she pulled herself up and looked first at her great-grandmother, who remained completely still, fixing Jonathan with a look of sheer hatred, then at her father. Jonathan met her eyes without flinching, and hesitantly she took a step towards him.

He knelt down and held out his arms to her. Almost tripping, she ran, falling into his arms. He held her close, feeling the warmth of her small, fragile body—his daughter.

"Tabitha?” he whispered. “Would you come with me?"

She looked up at him fearfully then at Bet who cowered in the doorway, watching the scene in the parlour with large, fearful eyes. “Dame Elizabeth would never let me,” she said.

He looked over the child's head at her great-grandmother, seeing her for what she was: an old, dying woman. She held no terror for him anymore.

"It's not for Dame Elizabeth to say,” he said.

"You take her from this house and I will set the soldiers after ye,” Dame Elizabeth's voice had lost none of its spite.

He nodded. “Yes, you probably will,” he said, “but it alters nothing. Tabitha is my daughter and she is coming with me."

The old woman subsided into a chair. “You'd take her from me?” she asked and for the first time she sounded fretful and pleading.

Jonathan did not reply. Words were inadequate to express his repulsion for this woman whose mean spirit had shadowed the short life of her granddaughter and now seemed set to do the same to her great-granddaughter.

He looked back at the child. “Do you want to come with me?"

"Where will we go?” Tabitha's eyes shone with sudden hope.

Dear God, I have no idea
, thought Jonathan. He forced himself to smile at the child. “We'll know when we get there,” he said.

He stood up and looked at Bet. “Bet,” he said, “dress her warmly and pack her things."

Bet looked at him. “Sir Jonathan,” she said, looking over at the old woman who sat hunched and defeated in her chair, “she'll send for the soldiers, you can depend on't."

"I'll be long gone, Bet. Now hurry."

Bet disappeared upstairs leading Tabitha by the hand and leaving Jonathan alone with Dame Elizabeth. She glared up at him like a predatory bird caught in a net from which it knows there is no escape. He had nothing to say to her; she was beyond his contempt.

Bet returned with Tabitha dressed in a thick winter cloak. She clutched a small bundle of clothes and the raggedy doll he had seen her with the day before. She looked up at him and smiled bravely and just for a moment he thought he could see a little of Tom in her.

"Are we going now?” she asked.

He nodded and Bet knelt down beside her and made pretence of fussing over her cloak. “Now you be very brave and very quiet and do everything your father tells you,” she said in a tear-choked voice. “It'll be a grand adventure. Just remember your Bet loves you."

The child threw her arms around Bet's neck. “I love you too,” she said.

"Bet, would you come?” Jonathan asked impulsively.

The maid looked at him then over at the old woman. “No, thank ‘ee, Sir Jonathan,” she said reluctantly. “I can't leave her, not now."

He nodded. “Will you be all right?"

Bet gave him a smile. “Aye. She'll rant and rave but she knows I'm all she's got."

"Well I can't leave her to raise the soldiers as soon as I have walked out the door.” He sighed. “I have no choice but to lock you in the cellar.” He stood back from the door and bowed mockingly. “After you, ladies."

Dame Elizabeth laughed, a harsh, humourless cackle. She rose to her feet and hobbled towards him and her eyes, unrepentant, held his for a moment.

"Take your spawn and I wish you well of her! She'll bring you naught but grief. Born of tears she was.” She rounded on Bet. “And as for you, you traitorous baggage, you'll be out by the evening."

"Oh, you don't mean that,” Bet said. “It's for the best and you know it."

Jonathan gestured towards the cellar door. “In there, both of you."

He waited until the old woman had descended the stone steps before catching Bet's eye. He held up the key and indicated that he would leave it where it could be reached under the door.

Bet nodded in silent agreement. She would ensure Jonathan a good head start. He shut the door and locked it, gently placing the key within reach. He returned to the parlour where Tabitha waited for him. Jonathan held out his hand. Looking up at him with her trusting eyes, Tabitha placed her small hand in his.

Another gust of icy wind, laced with sleet, whipped through Jonathan's sodden cloak. He wanted to put as many miles as he could between himself and Oxford and he had ridden hard, in the certain knowledge that the old woman would send the soldiers after him. His horse shivered underneath him, lowering its head in exhaustion. It could barely put one foot in front of the other and yet London lay just a few miles away, tantalizingly within his grasp.

He looked down at his daughter, who lay limp and unresponsive in his arms. While he and the horse could make the distance, he knew instinctively that if he kept going he would kill Tabitha. She had borne the long day with great fortitude and even chattered to him over the morning, but now her eyes were closed, the lashes dark on her damp, ashen cheeks.

He had no time to think through what he intended to do with the girl. He had briefly considered returning to Seven Ways but London was closer—and Seven Ways would probably be the first place Dame Elizabeth would send the soldiers. He could not ask that responsibility of Kate at the moment. He had decided he would write and tell her about Tabitha as soon as he reached safety, then perhaps some suitable arrangement could be made for the child's welfare.

For now, he had one refuge close at hand. He knew it involved danger to himself, but for Tabitha's sake he had take the risk. The child whimpered and Jonathan held her closer. This would probably mean the end to any hope of reaching the continent, but he was beyond caring about himself. The child needed rest and here, if anywhere, she would get it.

He turned the weary horse into the forecourt of a neat, half-timbered house that stood on the banks of the Thames River, only two miles from London. Despite the late hour, a light still burned in a downstairs room of the pleasant house that had been more nearly a home to him than Seven Ways had ever been.

He dismounted stiffly and, carrying the child, knocked gently on the door and stepped back. A small, portly man opened the door. He held his candle up and peered out into the dark, cold night.

"Who's there at this hour?” The man blinked into the darkness.

"It's me, Uncle,” said Jonathan wearily, moving into the light thrown by the candle.

Nathaniel Freeman thrust the candle upward and peered into the face beneath the dripping brim of the beaver hat. “My God.” he declared in surprise, a response that prompted a wry smile from Jonathan. “Is this madness, boy?"

"Of a kind,” Jonathan said. “We need shelter for the night."

"We? What do you have there?” Freeman gestured at the bundle in Jonathan's arms.

"My daughter, Uncle."

Jonathan took a step towards the door. His surprised kinsman stepped back to let him pass and followed him into the house.

"Your daughter? I didn't know you had a daughter. Come into the study, lad, and put her by the fire.” Freeman fussed in his wake.

"What's happening? Nathaniel? Who was that at the door?"

A plump, diminutive woman, dressed in her night rail, stood on the stairs. Jonathan looked up at her, and she gave a small squeal of pleasure as she recognized him in the dim light of her husband's candle.

"Surely not? Is that Jonathan? Oh my dearest boy! What brings you here?” she asked.

Her husband frowned at her. “He says he has his daughter with him, Hen, and by the look of her, he's nearly killed the child."

"His daughter?” Henrietta Freeman put her hand to her mouth and scurried down the stairs.

To judge by the papers on the table in the study, Nathaniel had been working late. Jonathan laid the child down on the hearth beside the cheerfully crackling fire. He knelt beside his daughter, gently chafing her frozen hands, as his aunt took charge of the situation, summoning a maid for blankets, dry clothes and hot milk. Tabitha's eyes flickered open and looked back at him, her eyes huge in her waxen face. She was too exhausted to even shiver.

Henrietta knelt down beside Jonathan. “Oh the poor little lass!” she said. “Come here, my lovely, let's get you out of those wet clothes."

She began unfastening Tabitha's soaked cloak as the maid appeared with blankets, hovering at her mistress's elbow. Gently Henrietta stripped the child of her wet clothes, and as she pulled off the child's shift she gave a small gasp of horror.

"Jonathan! What have you done to this poor child?"

Jonathan sat back on his heels. He stared at the wheals that covered the child's back and arms. He could see from the colour of some of the bruises that the old woman had been in a habit of beating the child. He turned a stricken face to his aunt.

"That was not my doing, Aunt. Her great-grandmother...” He tailed off. No words were adequate to describe Dame Elizabeth Woolnough. “I took her from that witch this morning."

"Oh, poor darling! Only a monster would treat a child so.” Henrietta moaned, holding the child close to her.

Jonathan stood and dashed his hand against the panelling in his anger and frustration, wishing now he had taken his sword to the vile old woman. Nathaniel put a hand on the younger man's shoulder.

"You're done in, Jonathan. Sit down and let Hen see to the child."

Jonathan sank into a chair while Henrietta wrapped Tabitha in the blankets and forced some warm milk into the child's unresponsive mouth.

Thomas poured Jonathan a brandy. “Perhaps you'd better tell the story, lad?” he suggested.

Jonathan took a sip of the excellent brandy, feeling the warmth slide like fire into his frozen bones. “She's Mary Woolnough's daughter,” he said at last.

His aunt and uncle looked at him in surprise.

"I thought that was all over long before the war?” Henrietta asked.

Jonathan shook his head. “We met again in Oxford during the war. Only then it was adultery."

His aunt pursed her lips in disapproval.

Undeterred, Jonathan took another swig of the brandy and continued, “I'm not proud of what I did, Aunt, but Mary didn't tell me she was with child when I left Oxford. I'd never have let it come to this had I known. I was told later that Mary and the child had died in childbirth. That was hard enough."

"And you're certain this is Mary's child?"

"Tabitha,” Jonathan said. “Her name is Tabitha. I learned only recently that the child lived and resolved to seek her out. I found her living with Mary's grandmother, Dame Elizabeth Woolnough."

"Ah, yes. I recall that it was Dame Elizabeth who sought to break your relationship with Mary."

Jonathan closed his eyes. “It was such a long time ago,” he said. “Mary has been dead these six years past."

"How did you come to learn the child still lived?” Nathaniel asked.

Jonathan shook his head. “It doesn't matter,” he said.

Nathaniel sat back with a lawyer's impassive face and looked thoughtfully at his nephew. “Are you sure she is your daughter?"

Jonathan leaned forward. “Yes, Uncle, I'm absolutely sure,” he said.

"Nat!” his wife scolded. “You just have to take one look at the mite to see she is a Thornton.” Henrietta stood up with the child in her arms. “I think it's time for one young lady to go to bed,” she said. “She has had more than enough adventures for one day."

Jonathan took Tabitha from his aunt. “I'll take her, Aunt Hen."

"Jon, you're wet through and in need of food yourself,” his aunt protested.

"I can wait,” he said.

Henrietta told him which room had been made up and he was gratified to see a fire in the hearth and a warm brick in the bed. As all her clothes were soaked through, she wore an old shirt of Nathaniel's as a makeshift nightdress that swamped her slight frame.

He laid her in the bed and pulled the covers tight over her.

"Where's Lucy?” she asked.

"Who's Lucy?"

A look of distress crossed her face. “My dolly,” she said. “Mama made her for me before she died."

Jonathan reached into his jacket and pulled out the disreputable object he had rescued from a puddle earlier in the day. Fortunately the warmth of his body had dried the doll. He straightened the doll's limbs and skirts, which had been made with such love by the child's mother. The thought of Mary's small hands, lovingly plying a needle for her unborn child, brought a stab of pain. He tucked the doll into bed beside the child and she drew it to her, snuggling down in the big, warm bed.

"Close your eyes, kitten,” he said.

A small hand crept out from under the covers and found his hand. “I used to dream about you,” she said. “Bet said you were very brave and handsome. I thought one day you would come for me but you never did."