Raven's Bride (26 page)

“This very instant.”

Chapter Thirteen

Anna ran to her chamber and dressed herself hastily in the tattered clothes she had worn before, when she and Charlotte had broken Lord Ravensbourne out of prison. As a final touch to ensure she was not recognized, she pulled a soft woolen hat down over her face, with holes cut for her eyes and mouth.

Her stomach was churning and an acid taste crept into the back of her throat, but she felt anticipation rather than fear. Tonight she would know the truth, beyond all doubt, and be able to expose Melcott for the villain he was.

After some searching through old trunks in the attic, Lord Ravensbourne found an equally shabby set of clothes for himself. He pulled a similar hat over his head and face, and covered it all with a large cloak he swung over his shoulders. He looked at Anna, anxiety writ large in his eyes. “Are you ready?”

Anna nodded calmly as she attached her blunt, old dagger to her side. She had no intention of using it on anyone, but it looked fearsome enough. She did not expect to meet much resistance either from Melcott or from Charlotte’s betrothed, old Hetherington. One wave of her dagger, and the two of them would melt before her, as the cowardly, old hypocrites they were. “Surely I am. Let’s go.”

Together they walked quietly over the frozen snow, their heavy boots making no imprint on the ice. Lord Ravensbourne reached over and took hold of Anna’s hand. “Are you nervous?”

No, she was not. She felt as though she was alive again, after being half-dead for months. She took a long, deep breath of cold air into her lungs and whooshed it out again, thrilling in the sensation of exhilaration bursting the bounds of her heart. “Not a whit.”

“You are a brave woman.”

“Breaking into your house and stealing your pardon out of Melcott’s strongbox will be as easy as eating a piece of cake,” Anna replied. “We know exactly where we are going and what we need to come back with. Besides, I am an old hand at breaking and entering. Stealing a condemned man from Norwich Jail was a much more fearsome prospect than breaking into a manor house strongbox. I could do it with one hand tied behind my back.”

“If we succeed in our endeavor tonight,” he said, his face serious, “I will owe you my life twice over.”

“You saved me from the living death of marriage to a man whom I would have grown to hate.”

He closed his hand more tightly over hers. “He must have prized you highly to take such desperate measures to woo and win you.”

Anna shuddered. The realization of the fate she had so narrowly escaped still sent shivers of disgust coursing through her body. “I would have stood before God, promising to love, honor and obey one of the worst of men. I do not want to think about it.”

The door to the manor house was bolted, but a door around the side that led into the kitchen stood ajar. Quietly the pair entered, startling Goody Hepney, who stood stirring a pot on the fire. She started up towards them, the dripping ladle in her hand. “Go on with you now,” she cried, flapping her apron and shaking the ladle at them as if they were a pair of hens who had wandered away from the hen coop. “Shoo, shoo. Get out of the house, or I will deal with you, and no mistake.”

Lord Ravensbourne pulled off his woolen hat and made a low bow. “Goody Hepney, I mean you no harm.”

At the sight of his face, Goody Hepney dropped the ladle on the floor with a cry of delight and enveloped him in her arms. “We thought you were dead, indeed we did,” she said through her tears. “And we mourned greatly that you were gone. Yon black spider in there is a wicked man, be he your uncle or no. I was more sorry than I could say when I heard that your pretty little cousin was to marry him.”

Anna pulled off her own woolen cap, and Goody Hepney gave a gasp of surprise.

“
There will be no wedding in the morn. Melcott has been wickeder than you or I ever thought possible. We have come to steal Lord Ravensbourne’s pardon, which Melcott has kept from him, and then chase the wicked old man out again, back to the gutter in which he belongs.”

“Then come in and welcome. I shall let the servants know to be deaf tonight, and not to hear a single cry for help from the old misers. There isn’t a one of the servants who doesn’t wish you were back home again.”

Anna and Lord Ravensbourne pulled on their caps once more . “Where are the old men?” Lord Ravensbourne asked. “We need to get into my uncle’s strongbox…by stealth if we can, but by force if we must.”

Goody Hepney grimaced as she bent down and picked up the ladle from the floor. “Upstairs, in Mr. Melcott’s chamber, carousing. They have ordered another gallon of hot rum punch—their sixth already.” She gestured towards the pot on the stove. “I was just heating it up for them when you came galumphing in.”

Lord Ravensbourne grinned. “Five gallons of hot rum punch sunk already? They will be seeing double, or even triple by now. They will think Anna and I are a fearsome bunch of cut-throat villains and will follow our orders as quietly as newborn lambs.”

The door to Melcott’s chamber was locked when they tried it. Through the heavy oaken door came the noise of cards and money slapped on the table, mixed with drunken laughter.

Anna rapped sharply on the door. “Rum punch,” she called out, in a cracked voice.

There was the sound of a chair being pushed back, and one of the men stumbled unevenly over towards the door. He unlatched it, opened it a little and peered out at them with bloodshot eyes. “Hand it here,” he slurred. It was Melcott, disgustingly drunk. “Tomorrow I shall be married to a juicy piece of skirt and will need to save my courage for the marriage bed instead of the bottle.”

The two of them pushed the door open, so Melcott stumbled backwards in to the room. “You’re not the cook,” he said, in a voice of utmost surprise. “What have you done with the cook?”

Hetherington belched loudly at the card table set up in the corner of the chamber and patted his gargantuan belly. “And where’s the rum punch and the Stilton cheese? We’re dying of hunger and thirst in here.”

“I have a better question for you,” Lord Ravensbourne said, deepening his voice to disguise it. He shook his stout cudgel at the sozzled pair. “Where’s your money?”

“Money?” Melcott’s voice was a squeak of fear.

“Yes, you’ve heard of it, I’m sure. That yellow stuff made of gold that people such as I would kill for.”

Melcott fumbled in the pockets of his robe. “I…I have some coins here,” he offered, drawing forth a motley handful of copper and brass and holding it out with a hand that shook so violently several pennies fell to the ground with a clatter.

Lord Ravensbourne said nothing, but his look spoke volumes. Anna removed her dagger from its sheath, held it up to the light, and turned it around as if examining the sharpness of the edge. “Gold?” she prompted him.

“There’s plenty of gold on the table,” Hetherington offered, with a big belly laugh, as he swept it into a pile with an expansive gesture. “Come, take it, and welcome. Melcott has just won nigh on a year’s profit off me. It might as well go to a pair of honest rogues as to an old cardsharp with a marked deck.”

Anna walked over to the table and swept a pile of gold guineas into her knapsack. Hetherington saluted her theft by raising his glass to her with a drunken laugh.

“There’s not enough here to stand a shout at the tavern,” she said, doing her best to imitate the north country way of speech, and lowering her voice to disguise her sex. “Where’s the rest of the gold?”

Melcott shivered in his furred robe. “I…I have no more.”

She motioned with her dagger. He deserved to be frightened out of his wits for the evil he had done to his relations. “Shall I slit his ears for lying?” she asked, feeling scarce a pang of guilt at the frightened look on Melcott’s wizened face. She could not see how she had ever thought he had looked like her father. Her father had a serenity and nobility of countenance Melcott would never attain.

“Your strongbox?” Lord Ravensbourne said. “Or would you rather I set my friend here on to you to teach you the benefits of telling the truth?”

Anna watched Melcott’s face dispassionately as his greed warred with his fear. His hands trembled with the thought of having to part with his gold, while the sweat forming on his forehead bore mute testimony to his fear of death.

Fear won. With a shaking step, he tottered over to the cabinet and drew out a strongbox. The contents rattled when he lifted it out and placed it on the card table. “All my worldly possessions,” he said, with a maudlin sob. “Surely you do not intend to rob a man of all that he owns and cast him out into the world at the end of his days, with naught but a crust of bread to bite on?”

Anna looked on him with disgust. How could she ever have considered marrying him? He was repulsive. The very sight of him sickened her. “The key.”

A crafty look came into his eyes, red as they were with drink. “I don’t have the key on me,” he whined. “Shall I take it into the next room, so I can open it up for you?”

She knew he was lying. With the tip of her dagger, she flipped out the chain from around his neck. A small silver key dangled on the end of it. “Try that one,” she said, resting the point of the dagger carelessly against the breast of his jacket.

His face grew gray and beads of sweat stood out on his brow. The acrid stench of fear he emitted from every pore of his quivering body choked in the back of her throat. Slowly, slowly, he backed away from the tip of the dagger, leaned over and fitted the key into the lock.

She knew it would fit. Caring for his stolen gold as he did, he would not leave the key where it might be found by a chambermaid, who would rifle the strongbox herself, given such a chance.

Melcott turned the key in the lock and threw open the lid. “You won’t be needing my papers, now, will you?” he stammered, as he grabbed the papers off the top and tried to stuff them into his waistcoat.

She caught a glimpse of the king’s seal as it disappeared into his clothing. Indeed, she
would
be wanting them. “Drop them,” she ordered.

He dropped a pile of them on the floor, but there was no king’s seal among them.

“All of them.” Her voice was harsh.

Another few papers floated to the floor.

“I said all of them. I do not have the time to wait here all night. Do not try my patience.”

With a groan, as if he were stretched on the rack, Melcott reached into his bosom and let the last few papers drop from his fingers.

Anna gathered up the papers and shuffled through them hastily. She had to suppress a shout of joy when she found the one with the king’s seal, signifying it was the paper they sought.

She beckoned to Ravensbourne and handed him over the precious document. “I canna read worth a bean,” she lied, in her thick Yorkshire accent, “but they must be precious or he wouldna guard them so carefully. You take the papers. They’ll be more use to you. I’ll take the gold.” And she scooped out huge handfuls of guineas from the strongbox and stuffed them in her breeches with riotous abandon.
I am not stealing,
she thought to herself, as a momentary pang of conscience assailed her,
but restoring the money to its rightful owner.

Lord Ravensbourne had taken a coil of rope out of his pocket and was binding the two gentlemen to their chairs. “I apologize for the inconvenience,” he said, with a mocking bow, as he tied knots securely around their wrists and ankles, “but I have no mind to be followed when I leave.”

Anna was stuffing the last handful of gold coins into her breeches when there was a gasp from the open door. She looked up with a start. Charlotte stood in the doorway in her night rail, a white cap on her head, and a look of horrified surprise on her face.

“Robbers,” Melcott screamed, as he caught sight of her. “Charlotte, raise the house. Call up the footmen. Go, go, quickly, or we shall all be murdered in our beds by these ruffians.”

Charlotte stood immobile in the doorway, staring at the scene in front of her. With a muttered curse, Lord Ravensbourne dropped the last of the rope and leaped to her side. Anna let fall the remaining guineas in her hands and followed him, stumbling over the gold as it bounced and rolled on the wooden floor.

“It’s me…Tom. I’m alive,” she heard him whisper to his sister in the shadows around the doorway. “And stealing back my pardon. Delay them for us, if you can. I have much to do before the morning.”

Charlotte gave a quick smile—brighter than Anna had seen on her for many a week. “I will, with all my heart.” Her voice shook with emotion. “Go on with you, and I will deal with this pair of rogues with pleasure.”

He took hold of Anna’s hand and they two of them melted away into the gloom of the night.

Behind them, they heard Charlotte give a great scream. “Oh, I am robbed and murdered and undone,” she wailed, as she stumbled into the room. “Melcott, uncle, help me.” There was a great crash, the sound of shattering crockery, and her wailing redoubled.

“Charlotte always wanted to go on the stage,” Lord Ravensbourne murmured into Anna’s ear. “Shall we go and watch her performance?”

Quietly they stole back again and peeped around the door frame. Charlotte, her hands clasped to her sides, was staggering around the room magnificently. She had already knocked over the card table and the plates and goblets and extinguished candles lay in a puddle of wine on the floor. As they watched, she staggered carefully over to the last remaining lighted sconce of candles, knocking them over with a calculated wave of her desperately flailing arms. The room was plunged into utter blackness.