Arsenic and Old Armor (40 page)

“
Take her down,” he spat.
“Now!”

“
Should we wait for you in
the courtyard, Torquil?” the man clutching Fiona asked. Fiona tried
to jerk her hand free, but her captor twisted her arm behind her
back, taking hold of her hair with vicious force.

“
No, I will catch up,” the
man responded gruffly. He turned with a sneer toward Margaret. “We
have a very sad occurrence that needs to take place
here.”

A look of horror came into Margaret’s eyes,
and she cast a final look at her daughter as they dragged the
screaming child from the room.

Lord Gray, Margaret Drummond’s uncle, was
the first to discover his niece’s body. The shocking news traveled
like a thunderbolt through the countryside.

From what could be gathered, earlier in the
evening a group of strangers had kidnapped Margaret’s daughter,
Fiona. On the eve of such momentous expectations, after waiting two
long years for the child’s father’s return to them, the shock of
this loss had proved too much for Margaret—she had lost all sense.
In despair, she had taken her own life, poisoning herself in her
daughter’s room. They had found the note she left, professing that
life was not worth living without her child.

People searched high and low throughout the
Scottish countryside. But the fruitless effort was curtailed a
fortnight later when the worst gale in fifty years tore across
Scotland, spreading havoc and destruction from the Outer Hebrides
and the Isle of Skye to the Firth of Forth and Edinburgh
itself.

Neither the child nor her kidnappers were
ever found, and those who loved her wept, thinking her dead.

Here's an excerpt from May McGoldrick’s next
novel

PROMISE

She had killed the man.

Dropping the poker, Rebecca covered her
mouth to stifle her own scream of horror. The crimson liquid pumped
from Sir Charles’s scalp and soaked into the rug in a rapidly
widening arc. He lay sprawled face down on the floor, his head away
from her. In her haste to reach the door, she tripped over an
outstretched foot and landed heavily on her hands and knees beside
him. Immediately leaping to her feet, she gasped at the sight of
her attacker’s warm blood covering her hands. She stared from her
hands to his inert body.

“
No!” she sobbed, running
her palms again and again over her skirts. “No!”

Her fingers were trembling violently as they
tried to unlock the door. Glancing fearfully over her shoulder, all
she could see of him was the head of powdered, golden hair now
streaked with the dark shades of his own mortality.

The key turned, and Rebecca stumbled into
the hallway. She only managed a few wobbly steps toward the
staircase, though, before crouching down and retching violently on
the brilliantly flowered carpet.

“
Miss
Neville...Rebecca.”

She lifted bleared eyes and saw the butler
coming down the stairs. The serving maid Lizzy was directly behind
him.

“
Oh, my God! What have you
done?”

She had no chance to answer Robert as
another serving maid began to screech at the library door.

“
BLOOD!”

And still louder.

“
Murder!”

Rebecca covered her ears and shook her head
as she staggered to her feet. The shouts and the chaos surrounded
her, but she couldn’t answer. There was no sound in her throat but
broken gasps for air.

And then she ran.

She felt hands reaching for her. Shouts
behind her. She didn’t stop, though, flying down the steps to the
front door and opening it before they could reach her.

On the street she saw flashes of faces in
the yellow arcs of lamps. Voices and shouts. On she ran as fast as
her feet could carry her. She was not even a block away, though,
when cries of murder rang out. The sounds of running footsteps.
More shouts.

At the crossing street, Rebecca turned the
corner and then stumbled off the high curb and into the
thoroughfare. Regaining her balance she tried to dash across as the
darkness of the park on the far side caught her eye. But the rush
of a carriage coming straight at her froze her in her tracks. She
could not move, could not breath. Stunned, she watched the hooves
of the horses pounding toward her.

So this was to be her end. There would be no
hanging. She would be trampled escaping the murder.

“
Get out of the way! Out of
the way, you fool!”

Rebecca saw the coachman struggle with the
horses, but she couldn’t move. The carriage veered to the left. The
horses reared as they plunged past, and she felt a hand pull her
away as the wheels of the carriage thundered by.

The next moment, she found herself sitting
on the street. Faces were staring down at her with evident concern
and surprise, but not one of them looked at her accusingly.

With senses suddenly acute, she looked up as
the carriage stopped a short distance away. The driver was shouting
at his team of horses and trying to start the carriage again. From
the tiny window, a young woman’s ashen face peered out.

When their gazes connected, Rebecca knew. In
that face she saw desperation that matched her own. She dragged
herself to her feet and ran toward the carriage, stretching out a
hand.

“
Help me!” she called.
“Please, take me!”

From the corner of her eye, she saw a mass
of people rounding the corner.

“
Murderer! Hold that
woman!”

The carriage was already rolling when she
saw the door swing open. She could barely hear the weak commands
from inside but saw the driver look back at her.

With renewed strength, Rebecca dashed for
the open door and climbed inside as the driver cracked his whip.
The carriage jerked forward and in an instant was racing through
the streets of the city, leaving the shouting throng far
behind.

The pale woman in the carriage drew the
curtains, and darkness enveloped the two riders. It took a long
moment before Rebecca managed to catch her breath. As her eyes
adjusted to the dark, she heard the driver shouting at the team of
horses as he slowed to turn a corner.

The woman who sat across from her stared
searchingly at Rebecca. On her lap, beneath a well-made cloak, she
held a small bundle.

“
I am innocent.” Rebecca
heard herself blurting out. “My name is Rebecca Neville. I...I
lived at Mrs. Stockdale’s Academy in Oxford up until a month
ago.”

Her rescuer continued to study her in
silence. The woman was young…not much older than Rebecca. Her
clothes bespoke obvious wealth. But there was fear in her drawn,
pale face…a look of desperation that Rebecca could see now even
more clearly.

“
I...I was hired to be a
tutor...by Lady Hartington...for their three children...and then
her husband arrived...” She lost the words as a knot rose in her
throat. She dashed tears off her face with the back of her stained
sleeve. “He tried to...he attacked me...the wife was away...I swung
the poker at him. I killed him…and now they are after me. But he
tried to...to...I...”

She couldn’t continue. Burying her face in
her hands, Rebecca leaned forward and lost herself in her own
misery as the carriage jerked roughly from side to side. A moment
later, a delicate handkerchief was tucked into her hands. She took
it gratefully and wiped her eyes.

“
I am sorry. I shouldn’t
have involved you with…”

“
Do you have family?” The
woman’s voice was kind but weak, as if she were in severe
pain.

“
I don’t...although I was
told tonight that I might have a relation...” She shook her head
hopelessly. “I have no one to go to. For all of my life I’ve been
told I was an orphan.”

“
No matter what he did,
they will hang you.”

Rebecca stared down at her hands in her lap.
The stains from Sir Charles’s blood, mixed with the ink she’d
spilled earlier, created grotesque markings on her dress. The white
handkerchief against it was a shocking contrast, even in the
darkness of the coach.

“
I would not have acted any
differently, even knowing the consequences.”

She stabbed again at her tears. There was a
noise from the woman’s lap. A small mewling cry. Rebecca’s eyes
rounded as she watched her rescuer push aside the cloak and reveal
an infant tightly swaddled in blankets.

“
He is awake.” There was
tenderness in the young woman’s face as she looked down on the baby
in her arms.

“
So small!” Rebecca found
herself whispering as she leaned over to look at the
child.

“
He was born only this
morning.”

Her eyes lifted to the pale face. “Are
you...the mother?”

The woman smiled faintly. “I am Elizabeth
Wakefield. And yes, I am the mother.”

The carriage lurched and Rebecca laid a hand
on Elizabeth’s knee as the woman winced with pain.

“
You are not well. It is
too soon for you to be leaving your bed after delivering a
child.”

“
I...I am well enough...to
look after my son.” She ran a finger over the infant’s furrowed
brow. “I am calling him James.”

There were other questions racing through
Rebecca’s mind, questions more important than the child’s name.
Where was her husband, for example, and why was it that Elizabeth
was traveling alone at this time of night with her infant son? But
the sadness that enveloped the woman, the love that shone in her
eyes as she looked down on the baby, restrained Rebecca from asking
anything more.

Instead, she sat back, thoughts about her
own situation crowding her brain. Thoughts about how insignificant
her entire life had been. Thoughts about how quickly it was going
to end when they tried her and hanged her for Sir Charles
Hartington’s murder. Her hand drifted unconsciously to her throat
as she wondered for a moment how painful it was to hang.

Her eyes focused again on the mother and
child across from her, and she wondered if there had ever been a
moment such as this in her own life. She wondered if her own mother
had ever held her with such tenderness and…

She shook her head and looked away as
emotions tightened like a fist in her throat. Too late for such
thoughts, she scolded herself. Even if Jenny Greene were indeed her
mother, it was far too late for such thoughts.

From the time she’d been a little girl,
Rebecca had been raised with Mrs. Stockdale’s constant reminders on
the value of virtue that must accompany the improvement of a girl’s
mind. Indeed, she had grown into womanhood schooled on the
difference between right and wrong and, more importantly, on the
fragile nature of a woman’s chastity. Much more so than with the
other students, it seemed, the schoolmistress had been keen on
constantly reminding young Rebecca about the necessity of hiding
her “unusual” looks, of binding and taming her willful and
flame-colored tresses. No, nothing should ever be allowed to steer
her—even momentarily—off the narrow path of decency and
respectability.

It all made sense now. Mrs. Stockdale’s
persistence had simply been the result of her suspicions about the
“bad” stock Rebecca had probably issued from. Indeed, she wondered
with a pang of bitterness, though, what her former schoolmistress
might think of her actions tonight.

The carriage rumbled to a sudden stop.
Rebecca’s heart leaped into her throat. She clutched her skirts in
her hands and stared at the closed door of the coach. She could
smell the rank odor of fish and rotted wood, and guessed they were
close to the Thames. “I suppose...this is the end.”

“
There is a boat waiting
for me here.”

Elizabeth’s words drew Rebecca’s gaze.

“
I am taking a boat from
here to Dartmouth where James and I will be boarding a ship headed
for America.”

All Rebecca could do was hold her
breath.

“
I am...I am not well. And
we are traveling alone.”

A tear rolled down Rebecca’s cheek as she
stared into her guardian angel’s face.

“
I want you to come with
us.”