Exile's Return (9 page)

I… what…? I am not a whore?

‘I believe I have the right to know a little bit more about you,' she concluded.

He held his hand up and nodded. ‘You have been honest with me,' he said, ‘and, as we are united in this venture, I should be honest with you. My name is not Lucas, it is Lovell. Daniel Lovell. I was taken prisoner after Worcester and sent to the West Indies.' He paused as if considering his next statement. ‘Let us just say I have returned to England from a number of years in exile.'

He was still being less than honest with her, but that explanation would have to do for now.

‘And you prefer not to use your own name because you are a little uncertain of your welcome in England?' she ventured.

That smile curved his lips again. ‘Precisely. So to all intents and purposes we shall travel together as Daniel Lucas and his sister, Agnes Fletcher.' His fingers beat a quick tattoo on the table. ‘And you have my word as a gentleman that I shall view our relationship as just such.'

She hoped the palpable relief did not show on her face. Not that he was unattractive. After careful consideration, following their discussion she considered him most attractive.

‘It might bear some veracity if you were to call me Daniel,' he suggested, adding with a half smile, ‘which, I assure you, is my name.'

‘Daniel.' She tried the name out and found she liked the way it sounded on her tongue. Daniel Lovell may be a man with a dubious past but she had found her new protector.

Impulsively she reached across the table and laid her hand over his. ‘Thank you. Our meeting was God-sent.'

A muscle twitched in Daniel's cheek and he looked down at her hand. It seemed so small against his. The muscles and sinews were strongly defined and there were pale scars on his knuckles and the backs of his hand. For all his gentlemanly accent and demeanour, he had known hard manual labour.

He slid his hand away from hers. ‘I don't think God had much to do with it, but let us leave it at that. You must be tired, Mistress Fletcher.'

She nodded and ran a hand across her eyes. Now the crisis had passed, her body cried out for sleep.

‘It has been a trying day,' she admitted and rose to her feet, every muscle in her body crying out in protest.

He pushed his chair back and stood. ‘It has indeed. We will set out tomorrow as soon as I have procured horses. Do you ride?”

She nodded.

‘I should warn you that I have an errand to perform on our way north. Letters to deliver to friends in Worcestershire.'

‘As Lucas or Lovell?' she enquired, with a smile.

He shook his head. ‘Lovell. The people we go to are friends of my brother's.'

‘Your brother?' she enquired, hoping to elicit something of a personal nature from him.

‘Like your brother, he's dead,' Daniel Lovell replied curtly. ‘Now, I suggest you retire. We have a long ride ahead of us.'

She turned to leave, but stopped and looked back at him as he said, ‘Good night, Agnes, and sleep well in the knowledge that whatever it takes, I will see you reunited with the children. You have my word.'

She frowned. ‘That is a kind sentiment but why are you really helping me?'

He met her gaze without blinking. ‘I told you, we have a mutual interest.' Giving a half shrug, he added, ‘And also because I abhor injustice of any kind, and to place the fate of two innocent children in the hands of Tobias Ashby, and, I have no doubt, Septimus Turner, is an injustice. Pack only what you can carry and be ready to leave by noon. Good night.'

As she reached her room, Agnes fell into a chair, physically drained. She stared at the empty fireplace, the autumn chill in the room winding around her like a cloak. She let out her breath, watching it steam in the light of the single candle.

Leaning on her hand, she thought about the man who had come to her rescue.
God sends his angels in strange guises
, she thought. But then, God has many different kinds of angels, and there was less of Gabriel and far more of Michael in the man who had offered her his assistance. Was Daniel Lovell or Lucas or whatever he called himself the slayer of dragons and avenger that would defeat Satan?

If she closed her eyes she could picture him, clad in black with his bright sword in his hand, facing a dragon. It would be fun to weave a tale for the children.

At the thought of the children she jerked awake. She had to pack. For herself she had little but the respectable petticoats and bodice she was wearing, some clean linen, and …

She looked at the box of James's possessions. Taking a deep breath, she knelt on the floor and opened it. If it had been tidily packed, someone had been through it, throwing everything in higgledy-piggledy.

She picked out a shirt, holding it to her face and breathing in James's scent, still so redolent in the fabric. For a moment her courage failed her. However flawed, her life had been happy and comfortable. Now she had no home, no money, and no prospects. Her single thread of hope was a man with a past who called himself Daniel Lucas.

‘What do you mean, you want to come with me?' Daniel put his hands on his hips and fixed Matt with a hard glare.

Did everybody in London want his company?

The urchin regarded him without blinking. ‘You're a gentleman and I can learn to be your servant. I'd like that.'

‘It doesn't actually suit me to have a servant, particularly one who looks and smells like you,' Daniel replied.

The boy's mouth turned down at the corners and he looked down at his feet, where a long, blackened toenail protruded from the broken shoe.

Daniel huffed out a sigh of exasperation and hunched down to look the boy in the eye. ‘Look, lad. I don't know what's waiting for me where I'm going and frankly, you would be in the way. You can't come with me.'

‘But I've got no other life, Cap'n.' The boy's voice broke on the verge of tears.

Daniel ran a hand over his eyes. Matt could be dead within a few years if he continued his hand-to-mouth existence on the streets, if not from illness or starvation, then the hangman's noose. He sighed and rose to his feet.

‘If I can find a respectable job for you, will you promise me you'll stick to it and not go back to thieving?'

Matt frowned and shuffled his feet. ‘Who'd want me?'

‘I think I know just the person,' Daniel said.

He took the boy by the back of his filthy jerkin and propelled him toward the Old Bayly. Outside the Ship Inn, Matt struggled and squirmed in Daniel's unrelenting grip.

‘You!' Nan Marsh greeted the sight of the struggling youngster with crossed arms and a look on her face that would freeze the fires of Hell.

‘I believe you are acquainted with my young friend here,' Daniel said.

‘What'd he do? Try to rob yer?'

‘No, nothing of the sort. I have a favour to ask of you, Mistress Marsh, and I can think of no one better to accomplish it. I will pay you well to subject this verminous creature to a hot bath accompanied by a dose of soap. I think underneath all that dirt is a good-hearted lad who would make a good pot boy.'

The corner of Nan's mouth twitched and for a moment Daniel thought she might smile. She looked up at him with a definite twinkle in her eye as Matt protested, ‘A pot boy, me? I don't fink so!'

Daniel lifted him up off the ground and held him at arm's length until the boy stopped struggling.

Nan pushed her sleeves up and turned a gimlet eye on Matt. ‘Leave him to me. I'll have ‘im so clean you won't recognize him.'

‘No!' Matt squirmed harder. ‘Not a bath!'

‘That's enough,' Nan said, closing her hand over Matt's wrist.

The boy gave Daniel a last despairing glance. He so resembled a pup that was being punished for some unknown transgression that Daniel had to choke back a laugh.

‘I'm going to see to the purchase of some horses and when I return in a couple of hours I would like to see him clean and properly dressed.'

This time a slow smile spread across Nan's face. ‘It will be my pleasure, sir,' she said. ‘And I think we can rustle up some clothes that'll fit.'

‘Excellent. And feed him too.'

Nan gave the boy's hand a tug. ‘Right, me lad, into the kitchen wiv you. And, sir, if you want good ‘orses, try the farrier up by Aldgate.'

Daniel left the inn with Matt's outraged howls ringing in his ears.

Nan's recommendation proved to be a good one. Daniel purchased a black gelding with a white star, which looked to have the lines of good breeding in it, for himself, and a docile bay mare for Agnes Fletcher.

Back at the Ship Inn he found an unrecognisable Matt sitting on a table in the taproom, eating an apple. He had been scrubbed to a raw pinkness, his hair cut short and standing up in spikes. From somewhere clothes had been found to fit him. Patched and obviously second-hand, they were at least clean and warm and he had well-worn, but solid, shoes on his stockinged feet.

He looked up as Daniel entered the room. ‘She tried to murder me,' he said, pointing an accusing finger at Nan Marsh who stood watching him, her hands on her hips.

Daniel winked at the woman and she rewarded him with a smile.

‘You looked just like yer brother when you did that, sir,' she said. ‘Do ye mind me asking where yer bound … just in case I needs to send word about the boy?'

Daniel's spine prickled. Something in the studied casualness of her tone made him think there was more to the question than first appeared.

‘I have business with an old friend of my brother's, Sir Jonathan Thornton of Seven Ways in Worcestershire. You can send any word there. Sir Jonathan will know where to reach me from there.'

She nodded and he turned to the boy. ‘It's time for me to go.'

The boy's face fell. ‘But I want to come wiv you, Cap'n. Now I'm all clean and respectable like, I could be yer servant.'

‘Do you know anything about horses?' Daniel enquired.

The momentary hesitation gave Daniel the answer as Matt said with great bravado, ‘Of course I do. Brought up round ‘orses I was.'

‘Liar.' Nan lightly cuffed the boy's ears. ‘Wouldn't know one end of an ‘orse from t'other.'

‘Thought so.' Daniel looked up at Nan. ‘Can I leave him with you, Mistress Marsh?'

Nan regarded him for a moment. ‘I could do wiv a good pot boy,' she said.

Matt let out a howl of outrage and Daniel gave the boy a conciliatory smile. ‘I'll pay Mistress Marsh to teach you some manners and in return you can help with work around the inn. When my business is settled, I'll come back. I give you my word.'

The boy cast Nan a baleful glance. She returned it in kind but she laid a gentle hand on the boy's shoulder. ‘He ain't such a bad sort,' she said. ‘Just needs a mother's touch.'

Matt looked up at Nan. ‘You?'

She returned his glare. ‘You just wait, me lad. I'll be the mother yer never knew.'

Daniel laughed and shook his head. ‘I will return for the boy, Mistress Marsh. I just can't say when.'

He left Matt chewing on the apple core and Nan Marsh walked with him to the end of the street, where he'd left the horses, her arms wrapped around herself as a cold wind blew up from the river. She watched him swing into the saddle of the gelding and laid a hand on the bridle.

‘You will come back, sir? It'd break the lad's heart if you didn't.'

Daniel nodded. ‘I keep my promises, Mistress Marsh, and in turn will you be kind to him? I don't want him running back to the streets.'

She smiled. ‘Ask anyone, sir. Me bark's much worse than me bite and I've a soft spot for Lovells.' She raised a hand in farewell. ‘I'll see you again, Daniel Lovell.'

***

Daniel returned to the inn to find Agnes Fletcher sitting in the parlour waiting for him. Well wrapped in a thick woollen cloak, she sat on a high-backed chair with a leather satchel on her lap. Her eyes, ringed with dark circles, looked huge in her pinched face, but the smile she gave him was warm and welcoming and more than a little relieved.

She stood up as he approached her, ‘I thought … '

‘You thought I'd left without you?' he prompted, and a little colour stole into her pale face. ‘I had some business to attend to. The horses are outside. Ready to go?'

She nodded and followed him out to the courtyard where the groom waited, holding the bridles of the two horses.

‘The bay is yours. I'm assured she has a gentle nature,' Daniel said.

Agnes eyed the mare. ‘I am to ride astride?'

Daniel shrugged. ‘I could not procure a lady's saddle at such short notice. You did say you can ride?'

The woman bridled. ‘Of course, it's just that … '

‘ … You are too used to a softer life, Agnes. If you are to travel with me you will ride astride.'

Agnes shook her head and smiled. The transformation to her haggard features took Daniel by surprise. Beneath the dowdy exterior of this little woman was a young girl, and a pretty one at that.

‘I used to ride astride when I was a child. My mother called me a hoyden but never tried to stop me.'

Daniel took Agnes's satchel from her and strapped it to the saddle of her horse. ‘You took me at your word when I said travel light,' he said.

She shrugged. ‘I have very little of my own here in London,' she said. ‘Everything else I brought here went with the children or I left with the landlord's wife to donate to the poor.'

Daniel bent and she placed a neat, booted foot in his cupped hands and lifted herself up into the saddle with a practiced ease.
Quite the hoyden indeed
, he thought. The groom adjusted her stirrups while she carefully and decorously arranged her skirts.

Daniel swung himself into the saddle of the gelding and glanced at Agnes. She looked the picture of a respectable sister in her dark cloak, with a high-crowned hat trimmed with a plain buckle atop a neat, matronly cap.