After The Storm (21 page)

Jenny had been raised to know her station and duties
as the lady of the house. She had no wish to inflict hurt on the
dowager but neither would she be bullied. Jason had expressed his
desire for her to run the household whether they were in residence
or not, and that was what she was going to do. “Again, I do hope
you will not mind, but I don’t intend to
bother
you with the
management of
my
household.
No,
I would not do such a
shabby thing as to foist my duties onto you.” Jenny shook her head.
“I am not one to take such advantage.” Jenny’s freezing sweetness
got through, and the dowager turned abruptly and left, but Jenny
knew she had made a dangerous enemy.

What a sad mess
, she thought.
This
household really needs some straightening out.

As she walked out and through the unkempt field of
tall weeds and bushy clumps of grass, she couldn’t help but feel
sorry for Helen Browne. No doubt the governess had misled herself
into believing that Brad loved her.

Jenny knew that Brad’s charm could take a woman into
just such a mistake. And he should have turned her away, knowing
that she must be in earnest, whilst he was not … yet, Aunt
Beth had always taught her that men, when it came to amorous
liaisons, did not use the head on their shoulders. And the twist to
this was that Howard evidently cared for the young governess. Yet,
from what Jenny could see, she rather thought Howard and the
dowager were lovers!

All at once, Jenny noticed a rose garden whose bed
was covered in weeds, and yet, the roses were in full bloom. “Well,
look at you,” she said as she approached. “In sad condition, but
such lovely roses.” She saw a toolshed a short distance away and
gingerly picked her way through the tall weeds and wildflowers. She
wanted to find a pair of shears and cut a few blooms for her
room.

She was rummaging around the shelves, the open
doorway affording her enough light, when all at once the door
slammed shut!

Startled and uncertain, she turned. She hadn’t
thought the breeze was strong enough to close the door so tightly.
She picked her way over objects on the floor and tried to see
through the darkness. The only light afforded to her was from
cracks in the wall and the small door.

However, she felt her way to the door jamb and from
there found the latch. It wouldn’t budge.

She shoved her shoulder into the door and pushed
hard.
Nothing.

Aghast, she kicked at the door as the sure
realization flooded her mind.
Someone had locked her
inside!

~
Fourteen ~

Hence, viper thoughts, that coil around my mind.

—Samuel Taylor Coleridge

LOCKED IN!
JENNY stood in the darkness, not
really afraid but anxious nevertheless.

Obviously, someone had played a prank. No real harm
could come to her. Doubting herself, she tried again, thinking
perhaps it was just jammed, but all her instincts told her
otherwise. Someone had deliberately locked her in. Who?

Would the dowager have done such a thing?

The Wendall boys?

Helen Brown?

What other choices were there?

“Right you go, Jen,” she told herself out loud. Could
it have been a mistake? Perhaps someone did not see her in the shed
and simply closed and locked it? However, she dismissed this as
impossible, as she had been making a racket looking for shears.

What to do? She let out a long, “Hallo?” and then,
“Anyone about? Please, help.”

Perhaps the prankster would wait an interval and
then, deciding she had had enough of a scare, return and unlock the
door? Again, her instincts told her otherwise.

She began banging on the heavy wooden door.
“Help—halloooo.”

After some twenty minutes of repeating this shout,
she found a crate of some sort and plopped down. “Very well, then,”
she called out to her captor, thinking perhaps they had remained
nearby to see the results of their work. “A joke is a joke, but
this is doing it a bit too brown. Come on then.” It was then that a
tiny squealing and a scurry of small feet made her realize that her
stillness had drawn some bold rats to her.

A terrified scream escaped and filled the air as she
jumped up, tripped over something, and went careening into a wall.
A protruding nail caught and tore at her hand, and she felt sticky
blood drip down her fingers almost immediately.

She stood up straight and bolstered herself. She had
to get out—she simply had to. The thought of sharing this space
with rats was not acceptable!

She began pounding at the walls, until she found the
door once more, and rammed into it again and again.

This did not produce any result, and Jenny had to
face the real possibility that someone had done this for more than
a prank. If she were left here all night, and that could happen if
no one knew where she was, comfort would be the least of her
problems if she sustained a rat bite.

This notion set her pounding again and again, but
when she estimated that another half hour had gone by and no one
arrived to set her free, Jenny felt a trickle of panic set in.

Another hour had ticked by when suddenly she heard
someone moving around the toolshed. She had been leaning against
the wall, moving her feet whenever she could to keep the rats away,
and stopped to listen.

Sure now that someone was there, she started to yell,
“Hallo! Anyone there? I’ve been locked in …
hallo!
”

She was sure it was human and not a friendly dog
sniffing around. She listened, and although the tall grass
disguised their movements, she sensed this was no animal.

The prankster returned?

She then smelled something like alcohol and then a
whiff of smoke.

Smoke
! It was seeping through the crack
between the walls of the shed and the aged wooden flooring.

Smoke? Sudden, impossible dawning filtered through to
Jenny’s mind.

Someone had set the shed on fire!

At first, she only smelled the smoke, but as the
aged, dried wood began to catch, the fire sizzled and made a
horrifying sound.

She backed away from the smoke and began to cough.
Then realization that she would die if she didn’t get out took
over, and Jenny began to scream!

Who would want to kill her?

Jason, who never wanted to be saddled with a wife,
now had his inheritance. If she died in a horrible accident …
she brushed this thought aside. Yet, she knew it was Jason who had
sent Brad off today on an errand, for she had heard Brad tell Helen
this earlier. There was no one about to find her …
no one
at all.

Desperation made her pound at the walls until she was
sure her fists were bruised with the effort.

She was trapped, and for one moment nearly began to
weep, but she wouldn’t do that. She had to find a way out. She
couldn’t give up like that.

She just wasn’t going to cry, and then the door was
flung open so hard it went lopsided on its hinges, and a familiar
male voice called her name.

She fell into his arms, coughing so hard from the
intake of the smoke she could not at first speak, and when she did,
it was to say his name over and over again.
Mac,
Mac,
Mac
!

Johnny’s closest military friend. Her friend …
Mac. He led her away from the burning shed, holding her close as he
rushed her out of harm’s way.

It was like a miracle, unexpected, and so completely
welcome. “Mac—oh, Mac. How are you here? How did you find me? Am I
hallucinating? Have I succumbed to the fire, and I’m dreaming you
are here?”

She felt his strong arms as he steadied her before
setting her on her feet, and then he tried to bolster her spirits
by saying, “Did you ever doubt that I would come?”

She heard, however, the gravity of his voice and
turned. He held her a moment as they stared at the toolshed now
completely engulfed in flames. The dry wood had caught very
quickly. In a few minutes there would only be charred remains.

“Mac, someone locked me in and then … set it on
fire …” she murmured with disbelief. “Why would anyone do
that?”

“I cannot at the moment think of any reason, but
believe me, Jen, we will get to the bottom of this,” Mac said as he
held her close and then frowned. “Jenny, your hand is covered in
blood—you are hurt!”

“Oh, just a cut from a nail I think …” She
looked at herself. Her gown was torn, her lovely shawl filthy. “Oh,
I am a mess,” she said with a shaky laugh.

“Jenny, can you walk, or shall I carry you?” Mac said
on a frown.

She looked up at the husky, rugged lieutenant and
gave him reassuring smile. “Oh, yes, I can walk. How would it look,
if you were to carry me back?” A nervous giggle accompanied her
words.

“Do I give a monkey how it would look?” said the
lieutenant as he scooped her up.

“Mac, Mac … put me down … honestly, I can
walk.”

He continued to carry her as he made the distance
back towards the house, but when her voice filled with desperation,
he relented near the front courtyard and set her on her feet.

He put his arm around her and helped her, for she
stumbled at first, and they made the short distance together to the
front doors.

She stopped him a moment and said, “Mac, someone here
wants me dead. It is impossible to believe, but—”

“Not now, Jenny. I mean to get to the bottom of this,
but now I have to get you inside. The temperature has dropped, you
are shivering, and we have to get your wound attended to.”

“First, tell me, Mac, how do you happen to be here?”
she insisted.

“Do you mean to scold me, Jen? I could not keep away,
you know.” He looked at her sheepishly.

“Scold you? Why, Mac, how could you think such a
thing? You just saved my life!”

He frowned darkly. “I was away when your letter
arrived advising me of your decision to marry the earl. I couldn’t
get to the wedding in time, so I made my way to Danfield, as you
said you would be coming here with your new … husband.”

She laughed, but it was still shaky sound, and she
leaned heavily into him, holding him tightly with one arm around
his waist. “My hero lieutenant,” she said softly.

“If I were a hero, I would have been there to rescue
you from this …
this thing
you call a marriage. And I
am no longer a lieutenant.
Sold out.
M’father needed me. He
is not well and wants me to run the estate for him. Which brings me
to the second thing.”

No time presented itself for more, as they had
reached the front doors, which were opened by the butler before
they even had an opportunity to knock.

“Oh, sir, you found her,” Wimbly said, relief evident
in his voice.

“Was everyone searching for me?” Jenny asked Mac.

“Indeed, the entire household has been on the alert
since your disappearance was marked,” Mac said.

They didn’t get very far, as the dowager came
straightaway into the central hall.

She took one look at Jenny and put her hands to her
face with a horrified exclamation. “Oh, my word, what
happened?”

Jenny’s maid had arrived with a blanket and
immediately ran to her mistress to cover her and started soothing
her with gentle words.

“Jenny, go ahead with your maid and have your wound
tended to. Rest, and I will handle this,” Mac said firmly.

“Thank you Mac,” Jenny said, not sure that it hadn’t
been the dowager herself who had tried to kill her.

She turned once as Joan led her towards the main
staircase and saw Mac’s face. He was looking more outraged than she
had ever seen him. She sighed, and although she was grateful to
him, for he had just saved her life, she also knew at once that his
being here would further complicate matters. Who would want her
dead? Her husband? The dowager? Certainly Helen Browne’s jealousy
would not have moved her to such insanity? At the moment, only two
stood out in this regard, and the notion that her husband could
want her dead made her ill. He couldn’t, wouldn’t, she told
herself. He was a man of honor, in spite of the fact that she knew
that he enjoyed the ladies and his freedom;
it couldn’t be
him
. It had to be the dowager. Perhaps the dowager had only
meant it to be a prank? That was it.

It simply had to be.

~
Fifteen ~

Pure love and suspicion cannot dwell together:

at the door where the latter Enters,

the former makes its exit.

—Alexander Dumas

THE EARL HAD been met with the news from his head
groom in the stables, when he dropped off his horse, that someone
had locked his lady in the shed and that somehow it had caught on
fire.

He rushed off towards the castle, his face drawn, his
stomach in knots, and his mind determined to get to the bottom of
this.

The Wendall boys intercepted him as soon as he
entered the castle and charged him to take his hands. “Dash it,
Uncle Jason, they questioned us like they thought we had done such
a thing, as though we would!” young Robert declared.

“Aye, we like her,” Peter added with a nod of his
head. “And we didn’t set the shed on fire, not by accident, not by
anything. We weren’t even there.”

The earl touched Peter’s hair and ruffled it. “Of
course not. It never even crossed my mind that you two were behind
this. However, did you see anything?”

“Only that new man. Aunt Jenny was missing, and we
were searching for her, when we saw the fire and ran towards it. He
was carrying her back here. That was all we saw.”

“Go on, then,” he said and headed towards the parlor
to find the dowager with a tea tray in front of her and a large and
rugged-looking man sitting beside her rubbing her hands.