Damsels in Distress (9 page)

Not knowing was a torment worse than all others, because hope chased fear and fear chased hope around her mind in a feverish circle. Then he was standing before the cage.

Jane peered into the gloom as he unhurriedly unlocked the door.

She could not see a whip or a birch, but that meant little. She could not see a bowl of food either, but that meant equally little. He had brought down trays of food before, set them on the top of the cage and then dragged her out to flog her before taking the tray away again.

Often he had come with a fearsome whip and then sent Polly to the top of the steps to fetch food. Jane knew it was Lord Makepiece’s method; that he meant his prisoners to spend time quivering with uncertainty. It was his way of breaking captives to his will, and she understood that utterly. But understanding did not stop the method working. He was her master now, and she his trembling slave. That was all there was to it.

‘Get out,’ he ordered, his voice brusque, her stomach tightening at the tone. Both girls hurried to obey, whereupon he produced a key and unlocked the collars around their throats. Then he handed Polly the key and ordered her to unlock the manacles that fettered their wrists and ankles.

This unexpected order only increased Jane’s terror, for Makepiece’s dungeon had taught her to fear any sort of change, and as the heavy iron clunked to the stone floor she felt oddly naked and uncomfortable, almost as if she had derived some strange security from her brutal bonds.

‘Follow me,’ he ordered, and turned, knowing his prisoners would obey.

There were two simple shifts laid on the rack, and he picked them up and threw them at the naked girls. ‘Put these on,’ he ordered.

Jane did as she was told, her mind reeling. Being clothed, albeit minimally, felt incredibly strange. She glanced at Polly, who was looking down at her shift with astonishment and incomprehension.

He ordered them to follow again, and as they unsteadily ascended the stone steps Jane’s legs were shaking uncontrollably. Being unchained and clothed was strange enough, but the idea of leaving the dungeon made her feel quite dizzy. Polly stumbled on the last step and Jane knew her fellow captive was feeling the same way.

There was light from a window in the passage they passed into, and Jane found herself blinking at a brightness quite forgotten in her subterranean world of glowing braziers and guttering candles. A man approached, stopping to confer with Makepiece and casting a curious glance towards the two young women. Jane had almost forgotten there were other people in the world.

The brief conversation concluded, they followed their master into a panelled study, where he sat at a desk and unlocked a drawer, from which he produced a scroll.

‘First, Polly,’ he said in a businesslike manner, ‘I have secured a pardon for your treason, girl. You will not go to the scaffold. Instead you will travel as an indentured servant to my plantation in Virginia, where I trust you will work diligently to repay my kindness.’

He smiled at Polly’s uncomprehending face. ‘Don’t worry, my child,’ he added. ‘You will be worked hard and flogged often. My overseers run a tight ship, and you will soon feel quite at home.’

He turned to Jane. ‘Now, my lady, are you ready to sign your full confession.’

‘Yes, master,’ she said quickly. Events were confusing and her head was spinning, but she was still his trained possession. Even so, as she added a slightly shaky signature to the document, Lady Jane wondered if she was signing her life away.

‘Good,’ Lord Makepiece said briskly, sprinkling sand on the fresh ink to dry it and then blowing it away.

He pulled a cord on the wall and there was a brief uncomfortable silence as they waited. He smiled at his trembling, confused captives. ‘There is a ship leaving Bristol for Virginia in three days, so you will be sent off in the morning, Polly…’

Makepiece was interrupted by a knock on the door, and then the appearance of a servant.

‘Ah, Mortimer, take this girl to my chamber and secure her to the bed, there are ropes waiting,’ he ordered the man.

‘At once, my lord,’ the servant said, and gripping Polly by the upper arm he steered her from the chamber.

‘I must say my goodbyes to Polly,’ Makepiece said to Jane, with a grim smile. Then he snapped his fingers, as if remembering something. ‘Oh yes,’ he went on, his eyes twinkling with a cocktail of amusement and malice. ‘I expect you are also curious to learn your fate.’

‘Yes, master,’ Jane confirmed; the response drilled obedience but also true. She was now quite desperate to know her fate – whatever it might be.

‘Of course, a traitor like you cannot be allowed to run free and conspire with other papists,’ Makepiece said deliberately. ‘And of course, you are too noble to be transported like Polly, to be an indentured bond-servant…’

Dread seized her; she could almost feel the block cold beneath her throat as she waited for the executioner’s axe to fall, or would it be the hangman’s noose. No, her noble blood would ensure the block. She felt herself sway and was surprised not to fall in a faint.

‘Your estates must be forfeit, your person prevented from ever threatening his majesty. We have discussed your case long and hard, and we can see but one solution.

Jane licked her dry lips, saliva deserting her as she awaited her sentence.

From the same drawer Lord Makepiece produced another scroll. Jane looked at it with terror as he unfolded it carefully, muttered quietly as he read it to himself, and then looked over it at her.

‘This is a royal warrant; it grants you a full pardon,’ he relayed the verdict.

‘A pardon, m-master?’ Jane echoed in an astonished whisper, the incredible relief making her feel sure she now would swoon after all.

‘Yes,’ he confirmed, nodding sagely, ‘a pardon on one condition.’

‘On one condition, master?’ Jane mumbled dazedly, barely aware of what she was saying.

‘Yes, one condition.’ Lord Makepiece smiled like a hungry wolf eyeing the young deer he was about to bring down. ‘His majesty insists that we marry immediately, my lady…’

‘Damn but if that isn’t a fine figure of a man!’ declared the Honourable Horace Wittingstall, admiring his reflection in the mirror.

‘Man?’ snorted Farquar Salisbury. ‘That’s not what that trollop in Covent Garden called you at half-term!’

A guffaw ran round the senior common room and Horace blushed a little pink.

Turning from the mirror he took a fob watch from the pocket of his gloriously patterned silk waistcoat and glanced down at it.

Snapping it shut he pocketed the piece again and then picked up a cane from the selection in the elephant foot umbrella stand.

‘Well,’ he said, ‘I’m off to thrash those little snots, Grindle and Denwood minor. I’ve had them waiting an hour for it, so they should be good and ready. Do you want to come, Salisbury? I’ll let you have a crack at ’em.’

Farquar waved a hand in dismissal. ‘No thanks, old chap,’ he said in a bored tone. ‘Truth is I’m bored to death with caning snivelling boys.’

‘Hold hard, I’ll come and help you tickle ’em, Wittingstall,’ said Lord Valentine Strumpshaw. ‘Who the hell do you want to wallop if not boys then, Salisbury?’ he asked, as he selected a cane from the same umbrella stand with professional care. ‘Full grown men, all fit and muscular?’

The rapt way he said this caused another ripple of merriment to run round the common room. ‘Strumpet’ Strumpshaw was one of those chaps who treated beastliness almost as a religious vocation.

‘No, not chaps at all, actually, not even great rough oiks with bulging muscles,’ Salisbury said quietly but intensely. ‘I was thinking more of the fairer sex.’

‘What is it, Ginny?’ Penelope Simpson asked with concern.

‘Oh, nothing, just an old acquaintance,’ Virginia Chisholm said, trying to stay calm. She folded the letter quickly and stowed it in her pocket.

‘Come on, Ginny, you can tell me,’ Penelope probed, kneeling at her friend’s side and taking her hand. ‘Are we not the best of friends, dear Ginny? Truly, whatever it is, you can tell me.’

Virginia looked at her companion for a moment. Penelope was a sweet lady of twenty-six, two years younger than herself. She had fair hair and clear blue eyes, which now blinked up at her questioningly. ‘All right,’ she said, taking a deep breath. ‘I’m in an awful pickle, Penelope. You remember I told you about when I worked at Nettlesham Grange?’

‘Yes, when you were still a governess.’

‘So you see, I had her. I had her, and then before I got to enjoy the fruits, the trollop did a flit.’

Salisbury and Wittingstall had sole possession of a carriage. The train rattled towards London, and at last they were released from school rules and prefectorial duties.

‘She ran away?’

‘Actually, she got married. Did rather well for a little governess. Married some obscure but wealthy old laird, a friend of Uncle Owen’s, who brought him down to shoot our pheasants. Miss Cavendish became Mrs Chisholm and disappeared to some Highland wilderness.

‘Good hunting in the Highlands, Salisbury.’

‘For savages like you, and I believe, for creatures known as ‘midges’. For my own part I prefer to stalk more sophisticated game.’

‘Oh, Ginny, but why?’

‘I was desperate. My sister had run away with a captain in the militia and there was such a scandal. We had to pay his price to marry her. Mr Salisbury offered to help, but of course he also had his price.’

‘But, but, to let him whip you?’ Penny’s blue eyes were wide with wonder.

‘I think… I thought, the punishment was just, for the indecency. Though there was no… you know. I was a virgin when I went to my marriage bed. It was only a few times, and he did not flog me hard. It was a cat with soft tails of flat leather. The worst thing was being naked. That,’ Virginia blushed, remembering, ‘and the lewd things he said to me.’

‘Men!’ Penelope snorted, shaking her pretty head in wonder. ‘They are such beasts, so full of unnatural lusts.’ There was a faraway look in her eyes as she spoke, but then she shook herself from her reverie and turned her attention back to her friend.

‘Men,’ Virginia echoed with a sigh, ‘and also boys.’

‘Oh my good lord!’ said Wittingstall, with a broad grin. ‘So you saw the pretty governess being flogged by your dear old pater? How? What on earth had the little baggage done?’

‘How,’ Salisbury crooned languidly, smiling at the delightful memory, ‘was through the keyhole. I candidly admit that in my misspent youth I was a horrid little sneak. As to what she had done, I don’t think it was anything much. The old man was always putting housemaids over his knee, but she was of good family. He paid her, or at least, that is what she said.’

‘Oh my good lord,’ Wittingstall repeated, ‘what a trollop. You mean, like at Mrs Berkeley’s?’

‘Well, it was a private arrangement, but otherwise exactly.’

‘So then what?’

‘Well, I confess I had a bit of a pash for our Miss Cavendish. She was a truly tempting thing. Long, brown, wonderfully soft hair, lovely figure, pretty green eyes, rather a snub nose and… well, you get the picture. I wanted little Ginny badly but I was only sixteen. This gave me a chance.’

‘And?’ Wittingstall leaned eagerly forward. He strongly suspected that his friend was enjoying teasing him and deliberately drawing the story out.

‘And I confronted her. There was a tearful scene. A rather pathetic attempt to assert her nonexistent authority; she never was
my
governess you see. At last she started begging me not to expose her as a trollop, to which I generously agreed on one condition.’

‘Go on, go on!’ Wittingstall begged, eyes shiny with excitement.

Salisbury produced a document from the inside pocket of his jacket. He carefully unfolded it, smiled briefly and passed it to his friend. ‘The condition was,’ he disclosed, ‘that she sign this.’

‘You signed a confession?’ Penny said, aghast. ‘Oh Ginny, what were you thinking?’

‘Clearly I wasn’t thinking,’ Virginia said, sadly shaking her head. ‘I was in a panic, and he was such a sinister boy. I signed it, knowing he wanted it to use against me, to force me to… well, I don’t know what.’

‘You mean he didn’t use it?’

‘I mean he did not get the opportunity. He had to go back to school before the chance arose, and then Archibald proposed. He was three times my age, but he lived so far away and he was kind, and only slightly mad.’

‘So you married Archie and ran away to Glen Affright, or wherever.’

‘And nothing happened for a year or so. Then Archie died, and then I supposed the little beast had forgotten all about it. If I had realised otherwise I would never have come back.’

‘From the sounds of him he would have tracked you down in Scotland, eventually. Archie’s death was covered in
The Times
. At least here you have friends.’

Penelope reached across and reassuringly squeezed Virginia’s hand. The two young women looked up and exchanged wan smiles.

‘And so,’ Penelope asked, ‘what exactly does this obnoxious schoolboy want?’

‘You cannot be serious!’ Penelope glowered at Salisbury, then at his smirking friend. The young man blackmailing poor Virginia was not what she had imagined. He was rather dark and saturnine, with long black hair and an almost bohemian dress sense. But most astonishing was his poise, for an eighteen-year-old blackmailer; Farquar Salisbury had extraordinary self-possession.