Raven's Bride (17 page)

Anna reached for his hand and squeezed it tightly. “We know what we are doing. We both love you and could not leave you here to die.”

Once outside again, they made their way through the deserted prison yard to the gate in the front without being challenged.

Anna took a set of keys from around her waist and unlocked the gate with deft fingers. “The horses are waiting over the way. Bring them over and wait for me here, while I fetch Charlotte.” And she was gone, gliding away on her soft-shod feet like a shadow in the night.

He would have followed her, but she had disappeared like a wraith made of smoke before he had gained sufficient command over his faculties to take notice of where she had gone. Stunned by his sudden reversal of fortune, and dizzy with the hope of freedom, he crouched on his heels and waited in the dark, as he had been advised.

With his vision impeded by the blackness of the night, his other faculties sharpened in recompense. The brisk wind pierced his cheek and the smell of fear and desolation that had penetrated into every pore of the thick stone wall that surrounded him assailed his nose.

He strained his ears for the slightest hint that his cousin and his sister had been discovered, but he heard nothing. Rather than suffer them to be caught, he would die a thousand deaths to save them.

He would not have thought either of them capable of so daring a deed. Charlotte was bold enough, given the opportunity, but to dress as a man and risk her own neck to save his? He would never had credited her with sufficient will to carry out a plan, and such resolution and cunning to stick to it and not be discovered.

Anna, his dear Anna, must have led her into the adventure. Frightened though she had seemed to him when she first came begging for his assistance, she had a will of steel and a heart that was all his own.

A soft footfall inside the gate alerted him to the presence of others. He grasped his sword tightly in one hand, prepared to sell his life dearly.

The gate creaked open, and pair of disreputable youths scurried out, pulling the gate closed behind them. He relaxed and lay down the cobblestone he had picked up to defend himself with.

“Tom?” the taller of the youths cried, rushing towards him with great fervor. “You are really free?”

Silently, he enfolded his sister in a heartfelt embrace. He had not thought he would ever do so again. “Thanks to you both.”

“Tom, Tom, I thought you were done for,” she sobbed, as she held him tightly in her arms.

“He might be yet, an we do not make haste and get out of here,” Anna reproved them, as she tugged them apart and pulled them to where the horses were tied. One of the horses whickered a greeting to her, making her jump at the loudness of the noise in the still of the night. “The guards are properly befuddled, but who knows when one of them will get carried away in attending to his duty, and think to check that the prisoners are still locked up tight in their cells?”

The hooves of the horses were wrapped well in rags and made little sound other than a dull thud as they made their way over the cobblestones. They had gone barely the length of half a dozen houses when a great hue and cry arose from the prison behind them and a dozen guards emptied onto the street, their lanterns piercing the black of the night with rays of brightness.

“They have discovered you are missing,” Anna cried. “Ride for your lives, or all will be lost.”

Lord Ravensbourne knew that that way lay disaster. Their horses were good, but they had already traveled a long way, while the horses of their guards would be fresh. They could not hope to outrun their pursuers on their own tired mounts.

He stopped his own horse and motioned the others to go on. “I know a way to delay them,” he said, a desperate idea forming in his brain. “Ride on, and I will catch up with you as soon as I may. Watch for me on the road.”

“But you will be taken,” Charlotte protested, her voice high-pitched with panic. “They will be here any minute.”

Anna pulled the reins of her horse back hard. “We have rescued you. We will not leave you here to die all over again. I will come with you.”

Lord Ravensbourne was already galloping back the way he had come. “Do not mind me,” he shouted back. “Keep yourselves safe.” His mission was hopeless and bound to fail, but for the sake of his womenfolk, who had rescued him, he had to try.

Anna turned her horse around and galloped after him. “Watch for us on the road to the coast, Charlotte. Take the news back to Captain Daventry if we do not make it. Mayhap he will have better fortune in rescuing Lord Ravensbourne if we fail.”

Charlotte hesitated for half a moment before she turned her horse around as well and followed them back. “I am with you both. Three hands are better than two, and if we fail, the captain may as well rescue all of us together.”

Lord Ravesnbourne pulled up his horse by the prison at a little wicket gate that led into the stables. Anna and Charlotte, their horses steaming, came to a halt beside him. Inside the stables, he could make out the silhouette of several figures scurrying around like rats in a granary. He cursed under his breath at the unwelcome sight. He was too late to simply unbolt the stable door and let the horses out to wander in the streets, as had been his first thought.

Another idea struck him, yet more dangerous than the last. Still, with a little luck and a helping hand from God, it might yet work. “A tinderbox,” he yelled to Anna, as he vaulted off his horse. “Do you have one?”

“In the saddlebag.”

“Strike a light then, as quick as you can, and get me a lantern.”

He opened the wicket gate, sprinted over the cobblestones in the yard and unbolted the stable door. A cry went up from the three guards inside when they saw him. One of them staggered over to his musket and fired wildly at him, terrifying the horses with the explosive report, but the shot went wide.

Charlotte primed her own pistol, aimed carefully, and fired. The horses screamed again with fear, and the man with the musket fell back into the hay, one hand clutching his shoulder.

Anna passed Ravensbourne the lighted lantern. He grabbed a handful of straw off the ground and lit it with the flame. In less than a second, it was burning brightly. With a flick of his wrist he sent it sailing into the corner of the stables where it landed on a large hay bale. The bale began to smolder and smoke, and the guard nearest the door grabbed his sword and ran towards him.

For good measure, he lit another handful of straw, divided it into two parts, and tossed them into loose piles of hay on the ground. The hay bale was already burning with a bright yellow flame. The guard with the wounded arm was stomping at it in a desperate attempt to stop it from spreading, while the other struggled to pull his terrified and frantically rearing horse out of the stall to safety.

The guard with the sword stood for a moment, irresolute, looking first at the escaping prisoner, then at the horses behind him, wild with terror at the flames and the smoke invading their home. A scream from one of the beasts decided him. He dropped his sword and grabbed a bucket of water, throwing it on the flames in an effort to quench the fire.

Lord Ravensbourne vaulted back into the saddle of his own mount, and the three of them galloped off over the cobblestones towards the coast road. Behind them they left an orange glow of fire in the dark. This time there was no sound of pursuit.

They rode for some minutes in silence. With each passing step, Lord Ravensbourne felt his heart grow lighter. He had escaped from the sentence of death that had been passed on him, and his freedom seemed more precious and delightful to him than ever before. The night itself was beautiful. He had never seen the moon looking so full and round, or smelled better-scented hay as that which lay cut on the roadside. Even the drops of rain that started to fall on his upturned face ravished his soul. As for Anna and Charlotte, who had risked their all to rescue him, his heart was so full of love and gratitude he could scarce speak.

“I owe you my life, my two brave viragos,” he said, as they left the last of the town behind them. “Anna, I thank you. And Charlotte, how did you come by that musket? You saved my life with your lucky shot.”

“Captain Daventry lent it me. Luck had nothing to do with it—I knew quite well that a shot to the shoulder would wing a man nicely, but not kill him.”

“God himself must have guided your hand.”

Charlotte humphed. “On a calm day I can shoot out a candle at fifty paces.”

After her crack shot in the stables, he was inclined to give her claim some credit. “Where did you learn to shoot like that?”

“In London last season.”

He
certainly had not taught her. He would like to know who had. “I thought you were too busy shopping and going to parties to have time for aught else.”

“There is a lot about me that you do not know, brother. I am not always such a lady as you think I am.”

He didn’t think that he wanted to know any more. “So, where to now? I had not given a thought to escaping. I need some place to hide away until I have proven my innocence.”

“You are to go to the Netherlands, if it please you,” Anna called, her words carried back to him on the wind.

He thought about it for a moment. The Netherlands would be the perfect place to hide, though it would be difficult, if not impossible, to arrange a passage there. “We are at war with them.”

“Exactly,” Anna called. “No one can pursue you over there. The Dutch, in their turn, will not take you for a spy if it is known you are flying from the king’s justice. Or from the lack of it. Besides, they are a sober, religious folk, and you will come to no harm among them.”

“Captain Daventry has some contacts with the Dutch, and is organizing a fishing vessel to take you over in the morn,” Charlotte explained. “He heard of your arrest and came to offer his help in any way he could.”

“Charlotte and I had already devised a way of breaking you out of prison,” Anna interjected, “but we did not know what to do with you after that. We thought of hiding you in an abandoned cottage on your estate, but it seemed too risky, yet we could not think of a better plan. So Captain Daventry’s offer of help was most timely.”

“He will meet you at the cove by his cottage.”

“And introduce you to a fisherman who will take you over to the Netherlands.”

“You will not be in exile forever,” Charlotte said. “I will to the court come morning and will not rest until I have obtained your pardon.”

Anna reined her horse in a little so she was riding neck and neck with his. They rode so close together that her leg brushed against his, and her soft hand stole into his for a moment. “Charlotte is sure she will get you a pardon from the king. But we could not risk that they would hang you before her suit was successful.”

He squeezed her hand in his. He loved her more at that moment than ever before.

A temporary flight to the Netherlands sounded a good plan. Daventry’s honor he knew he could rely on. He was less sure of the inclinations of other members of his household. “And my Uncle Melcott? Does he know of this?”

Both girls were silent for a moment and then both started speaking at once, their words falling out over each others.

“We did not feel it wise to tell him.” Charlotte’s voice was troubled.

“He is such a religious man.” Anna sounded as if she would excuse him, if she could.

“He is such a killjoy, you mean. He would not think it proper for us to dress like this, even though my brother’s life was at stake. He has more concern for the appearance of propriety than he does for truth and justice.”

“He may have tried to forbid us to come, and I would mislike to disobey him.”

“I crept out of the house without telling a soul, and Anna and I harnessed the horses by ourselves. He does not know we are here, or he would have tried to stop us for sure.”

“He told me to have faith in God, and to trust in the law to do what was right.”

“He told
me
to hold my tongue and cease my sniveling.”

“I heard him say to the cook that you were guilty for certain and deserved to hang.”

Anna was nigh dropping off her horse with weariness when they came at last to the place where their ways must part for a time. They had ridden for several hours, and her legs felt as though they had permanently taken on the shape of her mare’s flank. She dismounted with a groan, closely followed by Charlotte.

Lord Ravensbourne dismounted in his turn and took her in his arms. “Anna, I owe you my life. I will never cease to be grateful to you.”

Anna hated partings. She wanted him to leave and to be safe, not to tarry and to risk capture. But she didn’t want ever to let him go. “Then we are quits, my love. I owed you for the life of my mother.”

She shivered with the pleasure of his touch as he ran his hands over the seat of her britches.

“You make a fine-looking boy,” he said. “And a brave, and a daring, and a loyal one.”

“What does a boy in love not dare?”

“Will you wait for me while I am in Holland?”

She smiled through her tears. “I will be as true to you as you are to me.”

“Then you will be as true as life itself, for I will not fail you.”