The Leopard Prince (19 page)

“What?” Tony asked.

“The rain,” George said. “Perhaps it won’t stop. Perhaps it will continue forever until the mud in the highway turns to a stream and rises up and becomes a sea and we float away.” She traced a finger through the condensation on the inside of the window, making squiggly lines. “Do you think your carriage is buoyant?”

“No,” Tony said. “But I shouldn’t worry. The rain will stop sometime, even if it doesn’t seem so at the moment.”

“Mmm.” She stared out the window. “And if I don’t care if it goes on? Perhaps I wouldn’t mind floating away. Or sinking.”

She was doing the right thing, everyone assured her so. Leaving Harry was the only proper choice left to her. He was of a lower class, and he resented the difference in their ranks. Last night, he’d been ugly in his resentment; and yet, she couldn’t fault him. Harry Pye wasn’t meant to be anyone’s lapdog. She hadn’t thought she was confining him, but he obviously felt demeaned. There was no future for them, an earl’s daughter and a land steward. They knew that;
everyone
knew that. This was a natural conclusion to an affair that should never have been begun in the first place.

But, still, George couldn’t shake the feeling that she was running away.

As if reading her thoughts, Tony said, “It’s the correct decision.”

“Is it?”

“There was no other.”

“I feel like a coward,” she mused, still looking out the window.

“You’re not a coward,” he said softly. “This course wasn’t easy for you, I know. Cowards are people who take the least difficult path, not the hardest.”

“Yet I’ve abandoned Violet when she needs me most,” George objected.

“No, you haven’t,” Tony said firmly. “You’ve turned her problem over to me. I’ve sent Oscar and Ralph ahead of us to London. By the time we arrive, they should have learned where this cad lives. In the meantime, rusticating for another few weeks in the country won’t hurt her, and she has Miss Hope to keep her company. That is what we pay her for, after all,” he finished dryly.

But Euphie had failed Violet once already. George closed her eyes. And what about the poisoned sheep— the reason she’d traveled to Yorkshire in the first place? The attacks were growing more frequent. As she’d left, George had overheard two footmen talking about a poisoned woman. She should’ve stopped and found out if the dead woman was connected to the sheep, but instead she’d let Tony hustle her out the door. Once she’d made the decision to leave Woldsly, it was as if a strange lethargy had taken over her body. It was so hard to concentrate. So hard to know what to do. She felt wrong in her bones, but she couldn’t seem to make things right.

“You must stop thinking about him,” Tony said.

His tone made George glance at her brother, sitting in the blood-red leather seat across from hers. Tony looked sympathetic and worried. And sad, his shaggy eyebrows drawn down. Sudden tears clouded her eyes, and she turned to the window again, although she couldn’t see a thing now.

“It’s just that he was so . . . good. He seemed to understand me in a way nobody has before, not even you or Aunt Clara. And I couldn’t figure him out.” She laughed under her breath. “Maybe that’s what attracted me to him. He was like a puzzle that I could have spent the rest of my life studying and never grow tired of.” They rumbled over a bridge. “I don’t think I’ll ever find that again.”

“I’m so sorry,” Tony said.

George laid her head back on the seat. “You’re awfully kind for a brother. Did you know that?”

“I’ve been most lucky in my allotment of sisters.” Tony smiled.

George tried to smile back but found she couldn’t. She went back to looking out the carriage window instead. They passed a field of drenched sheep, poor miserable creatures. Could sheep swim? Maybe they’d float if their pasture flooded, like tufts of down in a puddle.

They were already out of her lands, and in another day Yorkshire would be behind them altogether. By the end of the week she’d be in London, resuming her life as if this trip had never happened. Three or four months from now, Harry, acting as her land steward, might write to ask if she wanted him to present his report on her lands in person. And she, having just returned from a soiree, might turn the letter over in her hand and muse,
Harry Pye. Why, I once lay in his arms. I looked up into his illuminated face as he joined his flesh with mine, and I was alive.
She might toss the letter on her desk and think,
But that was so long ago now and in a different place. Perhaps it was only a dream.

She might think that.

George closed her eyes. Somehow she knew that there would never come a day when Harry Pye was not her first memory when she woke and her last thought as she drifted into sleep. She would remember him all the days of her life.

Remember and regret.

“Aristos ain’t nothing but trouble. And here’s you, sticking your meat where it don’t belong.” Dick wiped his face.

Harry glanced at Will sitting beside him. He’d finally bought him new shoes this morning. The boy’s eyes had been fixed on his feet, swinging under the table, the entire time they’d been in the tavern. But now he was staring at Dick.

“Here.” Harry dug a few coppers out of his pocket. “Go see if the baker has any sweet buns left.”

Will’s attention was immediately caught by the coins. He grinned up at Harry, grabbed the money, and was out the door in a flash.

“That’s Will Pollard, ain’t it?” Dick asked.

“Aye,” Harry said. “His gran abandoned him.”

“So he’s living with you now?” Dick’s long forehead wrinkled in confusion, and he swiped his cloth over it. “How’s that?”

“I have room. I’ll have to find him a better home soon, but for now, why not?”

“I dunno. Don’t he get under foot when she comes calling?” The older man leaned forward and lowered his voice, but his whisper was loud enough to be heard clear across the room.

Harry sighed. “She’s gone back to London. It won’t come up.”

“Good.” Dick took a giant gulp from the mug he’d set down in front of him when he’d joined Harry. “I know you don’t want to hear this, but it’s for the best. Common folk and gentry ain’t meant to mix. That’s the way God intended it. They stay in their marble halls with their servants to wipe their arses—”

“Dick—”

“And we do an honest day’s work and go home to a hot meal. If we’re lucky.” Dick slammed down his mug to make his point. “And that’s the way it’s meant to be.”

“Right.” Harry hoped to stem this sermon.

No such luck.

“And what would you do with the lady if she’d have you?” the older man plowed on. “She’d have your dangly bits hanging by her bed for a bellpull afore a week was out. You’d probably have to wear a pink wig and yellow hose, learn to do that tippy-toe dancing the gentry do and beg like a dog to have your own pin money. No”—he took another swallow of ale—“that ain’t no life for a man.”

“I agree.” Harry cast about for a change of subject. “Where’s your sister? I haven’t seen Janie lately.”

Out came the cloth. Dick polished the dome of his head. “Oh, you know Janie. She were born a bit off, and ever since Granville got done with her, she’s been even worse.”

Harry slowly set down his mug. “You didn’t tell me that Granville had abused Janie.”

“Didn’t I?”

“No. When did this happen?”

“Fifteen years ago. It wasn’t long after your mother caught that fever and died.” Dick wiped his face and neck almost frantically now. “Janie was five and twenty or thereabouts, a grown woman, except maybe in her head. Anyone but Granville would’ve respected that. Would’ve let her alone. But him.” Dick spat onto the flagstones at his feet. “He just saw her as easy pickings.”

“He raped her?”

“Maybe, at the beginning. I dunno.” Dick stared off. His hand was stopped on top of his head, still holding the cloth. “I didn’t know about it, see, not for a long time. She was living with me, like she does now, but Janie’s ten years the younger of me. Our da had passed years before, and Janie’s mum died when she were born.” The big man swallowed from his mug.

Harry didn’t say anything for fear of stopping the flow of the story.

“Janie’s more like a niece or a daughter to me than a sister,” Dick said. He took his hand away from his head and looked at the cloth blankly. “And by the time I noticed that she was sneaking out at night, it’d been going on a while.” He gave a bark of laughter. “When I found out and told her to stop, she said he was going to marry her.” He was silent a moment.

Harry took another drink to wash away the bile gathering in his throat.
Poor, poor Janie.

“Can you see it?” Dick looked up, and Harry saw tears glittering in his eyes. “He was widowed, so she thought Lord Granville would marry her. Nothing I said could keep her from creeping out and meeting him at night. Went on for weeks and I thought I’d go mad. Then, of course, he dropped her. Like a dirty rag he’d wiped his spunk on.”

“What did you do?”

Dick gave another bark of laughter and finally put away his cloth. “Nothing. Wasn’t aught I could do. She came back and stayed to herself like a good girl. I spent a couple months worried I’d have to house another of Granville’s bastards, but she was lucky.” He lifted his mug to drink, noticed it was empty, and set it down again. “Probably the only time she ever lucked out in her whole life, Janie. And not much luck at that, was it?”

Harry nodded. “Dick, do you think—”

A tug at his elbow interrupted him. Will had returned so silently that the two men hadn’t noticed.

“Just a moment, Will.”

The boy tugged again. “She’s dead.”

“What?” Both men looked at the boy.

“She’s dead. Me gran. She’s dead.” He spoke in a dull tone that worried Harry more than the news.

“How do you know?” he asked.

“They found her on the heath. A farmer and his boys out looking for a stray. In a sheep pasture.” Will suddenly focused on Harry’s face. “They said the sheep poisoner killed her.”

Harry closed his eyes. Christ, why did the dead woman have to be Will’s gran, of all people?

“No.” Dick was shaking his head. “Can’t be. The sheep poisoner couldn’t have killed her.”

“They found false parsley by her, and she was all twisted . . .” Will’s face screwed up.

Harry put his arms around Will’s shoulders and drew the boy close. “I’m sorry.” The boy must still love the old witch, even after she’d thrown him out like the slops. “There, there, lad.” He patted the boy’s back and felt stupidly angry at Will’s gran for letting herself get killed.

“You best be going,” Dick’s voice broke in.

Harry glanced up, puzzled. The big man was looking thoughtful—and worried.

He met Harry’s eyes. “If folks think you’re the poisoner, they’re going to believe you did this, too.”

“For God’s sake, Dick.” All Will needed was to believe Harry had killed his grandmother.

Will lifted his wet face from Harry’s shirt.

“I didn’t kill your gran, Will.”

“I know, Mr. Pye.”

“Good.” He took out a handkerchief and gave it to the boy. “And call me Harry.”

“Yes, sir.” Will’s lower lip began to tremble again.

“Dick’s right, we best be going. It’s getting late anyway.” Harry studied the boy. “Are you ready?”

Will nodded.

They made their way to the tavern entrance. Already men were gathering in knots and talking. Some seemed to look up and glare at him as they passed, but he might have imagined it after Dick’s comment. If Will’s gran had truly been murdered by the same man who’d been killing the sheep, it did not bode well. The people hereabouts were worried about their livestock. How much more fearful would they be if they now had to worry about their children, their wives, maybe themselves?

As they neared the entrance, someone shoved him. He stumbled but had his knife in his hand almost instantly. When he turned, a wall of hostile faces stared back.

Someone whispered, “Murderer.” But no one moved.

“Come on, Will.” Harry slowly backed out of the Cock and Worm.

Quickly, he found his mare and boosted Will onto her back. Mounting, Harry looked around. A drunk was pissing against the tavern wall, but otherwise the darkening street was deserted. News of a murder would travel fast, but maybe night falling would delay it a bit. He should have until morning to figure out how to deal with this.

Harry chirruped to the mare and set out into the gathering dusk, Will clinging to his back. They turned onto the road home. The road passed through Granville land before going over the river to Woldsly. The lights of the town faded, leaving the dark to shroud them. No moon was out to light the road. Or to give them away.

Harry urged the mare into a trot.

“Are they going to hang you?” Will’s voice sounded scared in the dark.

“No. They need more evidence than a bunch of gossip to hang a man.”

Hoofbeats came from behind them.

Harry cocked his head. More than one horse. And coming up on them fast. “Wrap your arms around me, Will.”

He nudged the mare into a gallop as soon as he felt the clench around his waist. The mare thundered down the road. But she was carrying two, and he knew the riders behind would soon overtake them. They were in open pasture land. Nowhere to hide. He could take the mare off the road, but in the dark she’d have a fair chance of putting her hoof in a hole and killing them all. And he had Will to think of. The boy’s small hands clung to his waist. Foam flew from the mare’s mouth, and Harry leaned low over her sweating neck, muttering words of encouragement. If they could make it to the ford, there were places along the bank to hide. Or they could even go into the stream if necessary and follow the water downstream.

“We’re almost to the ford. We’ll be all right there,” Harry shouted to the boy.

Will must have been afraid, but he never made a sound. Another turn. The mare’s lungs heaved like bellows. The riders behind them were growing closer, their hoofbeats louder.
There!
The mare raced down the track to the stream. Harry almost sighed in relief. Almost. Then he saw and realized there had never been any hope at all. On the stream’s far side, shadows shifted in the gloom. More men on horseback were waiting for him there.

They were herding him into a trap.

Harry glanced over his shoulder. He had maybe half a minute before the riders were upon them. He hauled on the reins, cutting the poor mare’s mouth. There was no help for it. The mare half reared, skidding to a stop. Harry pried Will’s hands from his waist. He grabbed the boy’s wrist and flung the crying child to the ground.

“Hide. Now!” Harry shook his head as the boy sobbed a protest. “There isn’t time for that. You have to stay hidden—no matter what they do. Go back to Dick, tell him to get Bennet Granville. Now run!”

Harry kicked the mare and drew his knife. He didn’t look back to see whether Will had done as instructed. If he could draw the attackers far enough away from Will, maybe they wouldn’t bother going back for one small boy. He charged full gallop into the stream. Harry felt a grin stretch his lips just before the mare slammed into the first horse.

He was surrounded by plunging horses and foaming water. The man nearest raised his arm, and Harry drove his knife into the exposed armpit. The man didn’t even groan when he fell into the stream. Around him, the horses whinnied and the men shouted. Hands grabbed for him and Harry swung his knife viciously. Desperately. Another man fell into the stream, screaming. Then they pulled him from his horse. Someone caught his knife hand. Harry closed his right hand, the one with the missing finger—into a fist and hammered at any flesh near enough to hit. But there were many of them and only one of him, and they were raining down a storm of kicks and blows.

In the end, it was only a matter of time before he went under.