Jennifer Horseman (3 page)

What followed was a great list of his demands, rules he felt necessary to keep her from "your mother's wickedness and sins. . ." He forbid her to mention her parents' name, to mention any part of her life in Paris; he forbid her to speak or sing in French, to suffer any idleness or indiscretion that might lead her away from a chaste Christian life. "Therefore, you shall be given a tutor, and beyond the studies common to young ladies, I shall further induce you into Christian piousness and obedience by demanding you copy one chapter of the Bible daily. . . . My greatest fear of course is that you pollute my daughter's gentle and fragile countenance. This will not be tolerated. Therefore, I will demand you limit your association with Clarissa to the barest civility. Fortunately, she shall be away most of the time, at Fairwoods only for holidays, and so your influence, as I am determined to see it, cannot be much. . . ." Clarissa, Julie had reasoned, must have received a different warning for the same purpose: keeping them from friendship.

One day not long ago Clarissa had shown her an unexpected side of her personality with the revelation of how much she hated her father. Out riding, Clarissa came across her and Tomas in the woods by the river. Clarissa might have been her uncle himself, as far as Juliet was concerned, and her fear was great indeed. Yet Clarissa had laughed as if it were a joke, "You, too, my distant cousin? Refuge in a young man's arms? No, cousin, your secret is safe with me." Then with real vehemence she said as she kicked her heels to her mare, "I'll not tell my father, whom I hate more than life!"

Those words of hatred haunted Juliet. A page turned in her mind to a new and different picture of her cousin. All of Clarissa's docility and pretty sighs, her lace and ruffles, perhaps even her fragile state of health . . . well, could they not be a pretense put on for her father's benefit? Could there possibly be a young lady numb with hate and cold with bitterness beneath the extremely quiet and gentle countenance? Why though? Was she, too, afraid of him, though he had never raised a hand to her? Juliet never knew for sure; she had hoped the incident would bridge their separate lives and had waited for Clarissa to approach her. Yet she never did.

Until now. Juliet searched the large, anxious eyes, seeing all the signs of her cousin's extreme distress. Clarissa had been ill with a mild pneumonia for well over a month now and yet there was no sign of it. Still, large red lines circled her eyes and it appeared as if she had been crying, agitated by heightened emotions.

"Clarissa?" Juliet said her name in a question.

"Your face," she whispered as she touched her own. "And Missy said Father . . . took a strap to your back?"

Juliet's eyes lowered, not knowing what to say as Clarissa stepped around the bed. Clarissa said nothing as she stared at the slender arch of her cousin's back for a long time; the silence spoke well of her shock.

Clarissa came back around, and to Juliet's utter incomprehension she dropped to her knees before her, burying her face in her lap, crying. Juliet froze, hardly knowing what to make of this most unexpected show of emotion. Her hand touched her cousin's curls, tentatively at first, but then, moved by her cousin's distress, with the kind if not loving sentiments her heart found so readily.

"I ... I fear he is mad!"

This was not a new thought. Juliet often used it as the only explanation for his unfathomable cruelty. Yet the idea was obviously new to her cousin.

"I don't know what to do . . .1 am lost. I must leave this house, and yet—"

"What happened?"

"I can't speak of it," Clarissa told her, her eyes filled with worry and emotion. "I know you will find it hard to believe, but what he has done to me is so much worse. There was a young man . . . and Father found us. ... I was so frightened that I, I ... oh," she closed her eyes tight in a desperate effort to shut the vision from her mind: the rage and jealousy on her father's face when she let him find them, let him know that Edric had made love to her. . . . Then the rage had turned to murder and she cried, "I can't speak of it! I can't!" Clarissa hardly had to act this part. Every time she closed her eyes she heard young Edric's screams and it terrified her. Her father had earned his death a hundred times, and when on the morrow—dear God, let it be so! —he died, it would be the happiest day of her life. Only she would not die with him! It was his madness and sickness; she had suffered enough.

She never believed Edric when he talked of an older brother, a famous criminal his family had disowned, a man of wealth and power whom he could not name. "Everyone knows him! I am forbidden to speak his name but can you not guess?" She thought he had made it up to impress her; she had even laughed at his stories, until after her father and his men had left Edric to die in his young friend's arms, locking her in the next room to listen to the awful sound of abject pain and terror as he died so terribly slowly. She overheard his last words to his friend, demanding word be gotten to his infamous older brother.

She still could not believe the name Black Garrett. She hadn't believed it, not at first. She thought somehow that he had made it up to scare her. Until suddenly the gruesome circumstances of Edric's death appeared vividly in her mind—to save her, she thought—and she realized the terror caused by Edric's mutilation could not exist merely to frighten her. Then she had been terrorized too: the most famous criminal and barbarian in all of England was going to come for her and her father, and he would do things worse than killing. She had been about to run to her father, screaming, when from the heavens she saw her salvation. Black Garrett would have his revenge, but only half of it. ...

Confused, Juliet looked to Stella for help, but her friend only shrugged slightly, having no idea what to make of it, either.

"I've come to warn you," Clarissa finally managed shakily. Her very life rested on getting Juliet out of the house on the morrow, and she braced as she asked: "Missy said that your young man has come back, that he sent you word and you should be seeing him on the morrow?"

"What?" Juliet's eyes flew to Stella. Was he back? Dear God, has he come back?

Seeing that Juliet didn't know, Clarissa almost panicked.

"Yes." Stella removed the note from her pocket and brought it to her mistress. "I thought to wait until you recovered some afore showin' you."

Juliet read it at a glance: "Waiting as you read. Love. Always."

Tomas was back! Waiting for her, but—"Do you know, cousin? Is my secret safe with you?"

"You know it is! And . . . and I want to help you. I can not in conscience bear the thought of you getting caught as I did." Clarissa stopped and looked away, her pause more ominous than any words, or so Juliet thought. Juliet saw only that something horrible had happened, that Clarissa had been caught by her father with a young man and then, then what? "What happened to you?"

"You cannot want to know. . . . Oh, believe me," she cried dramatically, sending the curls swinging about her face as she shook her head. "You know his wrath better than anyone, though I dare say he would be more merciful to you than to me. It was horrible and I just... I just can't bear the thought of you suffering likewise. Oh my cousin, I know I've always ignored your affairs, he made me, but now I will assist you in any way I can. On the chance father returns early to find you gone tomorrow, I'll stall his discovery until. . . ah, Stella or someone else has a chance to find you and bring you home. Do tell me, though, just so I might rest easier, how you plan to slip out tomorrow. Where will you meet him?"

Clarissa was truly frightened by the idea of her getting caught! Juliet tried to imagine why. What was this event she kept alluding to, an event that triggered this sudden change? How could it matter though? She had to see Tomas at whatever risk, he was all she had in this life, her only love and solace. She had to risk everything to see him, for she had nothing without him.

"He'll never catch me," she said finally, to reassure herself as much as Clarissa. "I simply plead a headache and send word to my tutor, Mr. Grover. He has never told your father yet, not when he gets paid for no work. As soon as your father leaves for the docks, I slip out the back doors when no one is looking. I return before him and no one ever knows, past those like Stella here, whom I can trust."

Perfect . . . perfect. "Just to be certain of it, here," her voice dropped to a whisper, as she pulled a ring from her finger and handed it to Juliet.

Juliet stared in disbelief at the ring. Rubies and diamonds formed a delicate flower set in platinum. Though she knew nothing of jewels, she was certain the ring was worth a fortune. She looked at Clarissa with confusion.

"I want you to have this as a token of our wills now joined against his. It shall protect you."

The unexpected gift left Juliet speechless for a moment. "Oh, Clarissa ... I can't-"

"You must! Cousin, cousin, do you remember the handkerchiefs you gave for Michaelmas last year? I never told you how much they meant to me. I cherish them as a token of a friendship that never had a chance because of ... him. We can't let him ruin us anymore. Please, give me a chance, I want nothing more. Wear my ring always," she purposely put it on Juliet's middle finger, the mangled one. "It shall be a symbol of a new beginning for us. It will protect you ever more from him."

Juliet would never forget how, as she stared at the lovely ring, a tingling ran from her finger up her arm, racing in a chill down her back, a feeling that it wasn't hers and never would be, that she had no right to wear it. She pushed the feeling away, moved beyond words by Clarissa's gesture of friendship.

"Promise me you'll wear it always?" Juliet nodded slowly. Clarissa's forced smile could not begin to overcome the fear in her eyes as she rose to leave. She hesitated with one last word before shutting the small attic door behind her, "I will be praying."

Juliet watched her retreat, not knowing for whom Clarissa would be praying but sensing it wasn't for her. She stared at the note. Fear surrounded her, alone with the faintest trace of perfume, this strange ring, and the note in her hand. As if the hot stinging pain that made her tremble was only a warning of what lay ahead. As she spent many lonely hours trying to sleep, her desperation grew, and from it she knew she had to ask Tomas to forsake his father's rules and marry her at once. Tomorrow might be too late.

Just before the eighth bell each morning, a carriage left Fairwoods Manor to travel along the well-kept road leading to the Bristol shipyard and docks. It was the habit of Master Stoddard to make the trip every day except the sabbath, and Garrett and his men knew all of Stoddard's habits. A thick grey mist covered the land and sea, serving as a convenient shield for the ten armed and mounted men waiting for the imminent arrival of the carriage, but no shield was necessary, for an entire platoon of red coats could not stop Garrett from his revenge.

Garrett's men stood out along the roadside in plain view of passersby. Not that an English military presence would interfere. Bristol's small garrison had orders from the highest authority, orders to refrain from aiding its most prominent citizen on this day, orders to leave twelve of the finest mounts on Port Street and to take the rest of the day on leave. Orders no one objected to.

A meadow opened before them, spreading out like an enormous green blanket. A thin forest of birch and pine trees lined the road. A small farm sat in the distance, complete with cows and plow horses roaming free in the field. The idyllic scene contrasted sharply with the tension gripping the mounted men, men who were as accustomed to danger as most others were to monotony, and while Leif eagerly filled his lungs with the fragrant morning air, he imagined it held the taste of the blood that would be spilt this day.

Leif watched Garrett in silence. Garrett looked like the mad and dangerous man he had become: the dark, unbound hair and a two-weeks growth of beard added harsh color to his face, while he wore only sailing breeches, a vest, and thick black boots. He wore no weapons save for a dagger in his boot. Tension constricted his heavily muscled frame. Normally, Garrett enjoyed drink little, far less than most men, but since the early morning hours he had been drinking. Though he showed no outward sign, he walked on a thin line of oblivion, a necessary condition in order to do what he must this day. More than anywhere, the madness revealed itself in his eyes, as if he saw his brother everywhere, a vision he must extirpate. Where humor and passion normally marked a lusty thirst for life, the tension now betrayed a thirst for revenge, a thirst to be quenched this day.

Leif knew well that revenge was a primitive, destructive force. Yet destruction was often necessary for life; Garrett needed his revenge as an eagle needs the wind. Not just to right the wrong or to murder the murderer, or even to merely blot out the horror of his brother's gruesome death, but to extirpate his feelings of rage and helplessness at not having been there to protect the much-loved boy who had so desperately needed him, a helplessness foreign to men and their actions, far more so to a man like Garrett.

Garrett's dark gaze finally rested uneasily on the curve of the road in the distance where the carriage would first be seen. With heightened senses, an anticipation of this thing he must do, he heard the rumble of the carriage wheels in the far distance even before young Gayle and Heart, waiting up the road. Through the thick mist he made out the movement of those two men's horses. His hand rose in a signal to his men. "Remember, I want him alive at any cost."

Stoddard looked up from his papers to gaze at Wilson, sitting across from him on the maroon velvet seats of the carriage, before replying to his concern. "There won't be any labor problems in Bristol anymore."

Mr. Wilson stared with marked disbelief. "You ... my gracious lord, you've decided to meet the demands?"

Amusement tinged the large man's response. "I do not concede to the 'demands,' as you call this pitiful attempt to blackmail me, of common laborers. No, I taxed the last of my reserves and purchased the two foodstuff and dry goods shops in Bristol. The owners were finally persuaded to accept my offer last night." He did not bother saying how it was done, past, "Suffice to say they were given no choice. I should have done it years ago. The stores have been stripped and left bare, a situation that shall remain until the workers concede and those five ships are finished."