The Barefoot Princess (8 page)

And he had the uncomfortable thought. Perhaps he
was
never charming. Certainly his father had never been charming.

Which was better than being like his mother: enchanting, inconsequential, fickle.

His mouth hardened. “Never mind. Go upstairs. I’m not a child. I don’t need for you to entertain me.”

“Fine.” She stuffed the beadwork into her pocket. “I’m sure you’re incapable of concentrating long enough to learn, anyway.”

He took the two steps to his cot, the bloody chain rattling as he moved. He flung himself down. “Yes, because I am such an negligible, irresponsible, laughable fellow.”

She hesitated, clearly not comprehending his mood.

“Take the candle.” He dismissed her with a flick of his fingers.

With a flounce, she left him staring into the dark.

The next day, Pom stood in the sunny, bustling square in the village of Settersway on the first really fine day of spring. Unlike these mainland folk with their fine, colorful booths, Pom sold his fish out of a basket. He was a common sight here. He sold his fish every week at market and he knew the noise, the smells, the people…the pole by the well where scraps of paper flapped in the breeze. If a man had a mule for sale, there he placed the announcement. When the navy wanted to capture a deserter, there they placed the reward information. Sarrie Proctor had even advertised for a husband on that pole, and got herself a hard-working one, too. And the courting youth sometimes sealed their love letters and placed them on the pole for their sweethearts to find.

It was one such sealed letter that held Pom’s attention. He’d seen a fine fellow step up to the pole, place the letter on a rusty nail, and leave. Pom was tall, taller than anyone else in the square, and he had spent an hour scanning the square, looking for suspicious men lingering in the shadows. Men who would capture the one who grabbed that letter and take him away.

He saw no one.

At last, satisfied that Mr. Harrison Edmondson hadn’t sent a spy, Pom nodded to Vicar Smith.

Vicar Smith finished his conversation with Mrs. Fremont and strolled toward the center of the square. Toward the pole. He lingered, the wisps of his white hair ruffled by the wind, appearing to examine the booths with their wares, and at the moment when the ever-shifting crowd was at its height, he plunged into the center. For a tense moment, Pom lost sight of him. Then he emerged, walked to Mrs. Showater’s booth hung with loaves of bread, and purchased a sweet bun. He headed for the booth selling the ale, ignoring the Gypsy fortune-teller as he passed.

Only Pom saw the letter transfer from Vicar Smith to his own Mertle, dressed up in bright rags with her skin dyed with walnut juice to a toasty brown.

She finished reading the palm of the giggling girl before her, no doubt promising wealth and a handsome husband. Standing, she tucked her coins in her purse, checked to make sure her kerchief and her scarves covered her blond curls, and started toward Pom. She winked at all the men she passed, read a few palms as they were thrust before her, and when she drew close to him she looked him over from head to toe. “Ye’re a big one.” She swayed her hips enticingly. “Does the rest o’ ye match yer height?”

The women around them laughed, and Pom didn’t have to pretend to be unnerved. He hated being the center of attention.

Mertle knew it, too, and grinned.

At the sight, Pom jumped.

Somehow, she’d blacked out one of her teeth. His wife was enjoying herself far too much.

Taking his hand, she cupped it in her own. She frowned, muttered, leaned in so that her scarves fell forward—and she placed the folded letter in his palm. She pressed his fingers over it and drew back. To the crowd that had gathered, she announced, “He’s married t’ a blond witch who’ll take my eyes out if I try a love spell on him.”

One of the onlookers gasped. “How did she know that?”

“My destiny lies elsewhere,” Mertle declared.

“So it does,” Pom said. “Go on then and find it.”

With another grin, Mertle walked from the square.

Vicar Smith had disappeared, too, but Pom made himself wait until he’d sold all his fish before he left. Then he hurried to the harbor to his boat, and as he untied it from its moorings, the vicar and his wife, now dressed in her usual garb, leaped in.

“Gents, did ye see anything?” Mertle asked.

“No one,” Vicar Smith said.

“No one.” Pom put his shoulders to the oars and took them out of the harbor.

“So Mr. Edmondson took Miss Rosabel’s threats seriously. That’s good.” Vicar Smith coiled the rope on the bottom of the boat.

Pom shrugged.

“What’s the matter?” Mertle rubbed his arm. “Everything went wonderfully well.”

“Too wonderfully well.” Pom scanned the horizon. “I’ve met Mr. Harrison Edmondson. A slimier, more sneaky coot I’ve never met.”

“What are you saying?” Mertle scanned the horizon, too.

“That I don’t like this,” Pom said. “It was too easy.”

Chapter 9

“W
e’ve got it! Miss Victorine, we’ve got it!” It was late afternoon when Amy ran into the cottage, the letter from Harrison Edmondson clutched tightly in her hand.

Pom followed at a slower pace.

Miss Victorine hurried out of the kitchen, an apron draped over her gown, her brown eyes sparkling, Coal on her heels. “Thank heavens! Now we can release His Lordship.”

“Yes, more’s the shame,” Amy retorted, but she could scarcely contain her jubilation.

On hearing Amy’s sentiment, Miss Victorine looked anxious. “Dear child, you can’t say that you think it is right to imprison a young, healthy lord.”

“It’s done him good.” Amy broke the seal.

“How can you say that?” Miss Victorine asked.

Amy scanned the words on the page. “He’s, um, learning…” Her words petered out. “…patience.”

“What’s the matter, dear?” Miss Victorine’s voice quivered.

Amy looked up. Miss Victorine and Pom were staring at her. She didn’t know what to say. How to tell them.

“Might as well just speak it, miss.” Pom stood there, stalwart as always but ill-able to withstand further financial hardship.

Miss Victorine was bent, fragile, still bruised from her tumble with Lord Northcliff.

Coal sat balanced on his rear, licking his stomach.

And Amy had dragged them into this.

“Mr. Harrison Edmondson declares he won’t pay the ransom. He says…he says he’s sorry, but we’ll have to kill Lord Northcliff.”

“I don’t understand it. He must not believe we’ll really kill him.” Amy sat at the kitchen table and cradled her aching forehead in her palms.

Miss Victorine’s forehead wrinkled in confusion. “Well…we won’t.”

“But he doesn’t know that!” Amy wanted to be indignant. Instead she was flabbergasted. “He doesn’t know we’re two women with a desperate plan. As far as he’s concerned, we’re hardened criminals. We’re murderers. Even if he pays the ransom, we could still kill Lord Northcliff!”

“We could never kill anyone.”

“I don’t know about that. As obnoxious as Lord Northcliff is…” At Miss Victorine’s gasp, Amy relented. “All right, we couldn’t kill him, either.” Although when he lolled on the bed like some Roman god or snapped at her as if she were some village trull, she really thought murder seemed too good for him. “But Harrison Edmondson doesn’t know that!”

“So ye keep saying.” Pom stood at the door, his arms crossed over his massive chest. “Yet Mr. Edmondson is ever a treacherous swine. Perhaps he thinks ye’ll kill his nephew and doesn’t care.”

Amy lifted her head and stared at Pom. The whole world had gone crazy, and Pom with it.

“Pom, what a dreadful thing to say!” Miss Victorine sounded shocked. “I do not like Harrison, either, but he’s not a murderer.”

“No, Miss Victorine. In that case, he would not be the murderer,” Pom pointed out stoically. “If that’s not the case, why wouldn’t he send the payment?”

“We asked for too much.” Miss Victorine thought about that, then nodded as if that satisfied her. “Poor man, he must be devastated at the thought of his nephew being put to death for lack of a few pounds.”

“But he’s rich! His factory is making thousands of yards of beaded lace!” Amy slapped the table. “With your design!”

“Dear, you don’t understand finance,” Miss Victorine said. “When an operation starts, it takes capital to pay for the machines and the building. That’s probably where Harrison’s money has gone.”

“How do you know that?” Amy asked.

“My family hasn’t always been impoverished.” Miss Victorine nodded wisely.

“Neither has mine,” Amy said, “but we’ve never had to handle our own money.”

“You had a steward?” Miss Victorine’s eyes lit up as they always did when she considered the romance of Amy’s past. “Well, of course you did. And a lord chamberlain and a prime minister—”

From the cellar, a man’s roar sounded. “Amy, I can hear you talking. If you’re back, you can let me go!”

“Dear heavens.” Amy was in despair. “What can we tell him?”

“We?” Miss Victorine widened her eyes artlessly.

“Yes, I suppose I deserve that.” When Northcliff yelled again, Amy looked toward the stairs. “What do
I
tell him?”

“That we’re going to release him anyway?” Miss Victorine suggested.

“Don’t be silly. We can’t give up now! He knows what we’ve done and without funds, we can’t escape.” Amy stood. “No. Let me handle matters.” She started for the stairs.

“Miss. Ye might consider soothing the savage beast.” Pom nodded toward the loaded tray Miss Victorine had assembled for Northcliff’s tea.

“Why should I curry favor with that man? He’s at our mercy.” But Amy’s defiance echoed emptily through the kitchen. Her feet dragged reluctantly as she walked to the teapot. She poured a cup, stirred in a teaspoon of sugar and a splash of cream. She placed half the buns on a separate plate for Miss Victorine and Pom, and rearranged the ones remaining. She slipped Mr. Edmondson’s letter under the plate.

The bellows of impatience from below were steadily increasing.

Picking up the tray, she moved carefully toward the stairs, wishing with all her might that she didn’t have to face Lord Northcliff and try to explain what had happened.

Coal slipped down the stairs after her.

The bellows stopped as soon as the first step creaked beneath her weight. She felt Northcliff’s gaze on her, intent on her every movement. She watched the full teacup, determined not to spill a drop. Determined not to look at him.

As she placed the tray on the far end of the table, he said, “What a lovely picture of domesticity you make. A mobcap and a white frilly apron would complete the illusion.”

At his sarcastically drawled tone, her gaze flew to his.

He
knew.
Somehow, he knew.

She glanced toward the stairway.

“You’re wondering if I can hear what goes on up there. I can’t. But when you come down the stairs bearing a conciliatory tea tray and that expression”—his voice was rising—“I know something went wrong.”

The cat slunk around the edges of the walls, keeping a wary eye on his humans.

Amy’s spine stiffened. “But there’s nothing you can do about it. You’re our prisoner.” Yet she pushed the tea tray toward him, staying well out of reach of his long arms.

“Yes, I am, and stinking sick of it, too.” He had a gash on his chin, the mark of a razor wielded by his own inexpert hand. “When will I be released?”

“Have a bun. They were fresh baked this morning from Best’s Bakery in Settersway.”

“I don’t want a bun.” He spaced annoyance between the words. “I want out!”

“We can’t do that yet.” She perched on the arm of the chair, taking care to present a casual demeanor, as if she breathed without constriction. “At least drink your tea while it’s hot.”

He disregarded everything except what she wanted him to disregard. “Why can’t you release me?”

“Because your uncle won’t pay the ransom.”

“What?”

The heat of his blast almost knocked her off the chair.

“Your uncle won’t—”

“I
heard
you.” He didn’t so much stand as unfold to a towering height. “Do you expect me to believe that?”

“What reason would I have to lie?” Temper sizzled along her nerves—and the barest suggestion of excitement. For whatever disreputable reason, she liked having Northcliff chomp and roar. Seeing him possessed by anger made her heart skip in her chest. Made her skin tingle. This odd, shameful mood wasn’t something she liked to admit, nor was it something she understood, but it lived in her and she lived in it. In him. “As big a boor as you have been, do you for a minute imagine I want to keep you here?”

“I imagine you’ve enjoyed this—holding a lord’s fate in your insignificant hands. Using me as a whipping boy for all the men who have treated you with disrespect and not accorded you the homage you presume you deserve.” He paced to the end of his chain, his muscles flexing and stretching like a tiger’s on the prowl. Like Coal’s, who slid beneath one piece of furniture to the side of another, cautiously peering at them. “I don’t know who you are, but Lady Disdain, this scheme of yours was always destined to fail.”

“So do you believe the scheme is a failure? Or that I’m lying about the ransom so I can keep you here out of spite?” She offered the choice. “Because you can’t have it both ways. Either your uncle is refusing to pay the ransom because he can’t scrape the money together—”

“Absurd!”

“Or I’m playing a game that includes only you and me and a gloating pleasure at seeing you chained—”

“Do you deny it?”

“No, I don’t deny it!” She came to her feet, too. “You deserve to be whipped, too, until you learn some manners, although I suppose it’s too late for that. But if the latter is true, if I’m keeping you here to torment you, what’s the end, my lord? When do I say, ‘I’m done with this’ and leave? Because in case it’s escaped your attention, we’ve poured our last shillings into providing you with good meals.”

“You call these good meals?” With a sweep of his arm, he cleared the tray. The china cup and saucer shattered as they hit the wall. The buns flew into the dirt. The letter fluttered to the floor.

Coal howled and raced upstairs.

At the shatter of porcelain, Amy saw red. “Although Miss Victorine could ill afford the white flour or the meat or the eggs, she bought the best for you.”

“What would you have fed me? Gruel?”

“Gruel would have been more common fare here on the island.”

“I am not a damned commoner!”

“You certainly are not. The common fisherfolk and farmers work. They create. They contribute. While you’ve abdicated every responsibility and become nothing more than a wart on the noble ass of England.” She was shouting.

He was not. With each word, his voice grew softer and colder. “You are plain-spoken, girl. Ladies do not use such language, and they most certainly don’t speak so to their betters.”

“I would never speak so to my
betters
.” Amy clenched her fists at her side and in her pique her eyes became the color of a tempest-swept ocean.

She was magnificent, and he wanted to take her and shake her. And kiss her. And take her. And show her the meaning of helplessness as she had shown him.

A broken cry from the bottom step distracted him.

“Children. Children!” Miss Victorine stood wringing her hands, her faded gaze darting from Northcliff to Amy to her broken treasures. “What are you doing? What have you done?”

“He’s a selfish, conceited, arrogant jackass who deserves to starve—and as far as I’m concerned, he can crawl in the dirt after those buns and eat them in the dark and the cold. And I hope he chokes on them.” In a rage, Amy stormed up the stairs.

Jermyn stared after her, furious that she had goaded him into a loss of temper.

Because he had nothing to do except read. Because he was bored. Because…because his hands itched to touch her. He’d seen much more beautiful women, danced with them, and if they were in the demimonde, slept with them. But he had never met a woman who challenged him as did Amy Rosabel. Her eyes flashed when she saw him, her sharp tongue ripped his character to shreds, yet the way she moved brought his heart to his throat…and brought other parts of his body to attention.

He could blame his incarceration for this madness, but he’d felt a stirring the first time he laid eyes on her…when she drugged him. Of course he had shrugged it off; a master didn’t indulge himself with his maids. But discovering that she was not his servant had freed his desire, and meeting her challenges had captured his attention. When she was gone from his sight, he brooded about her. Who was she? Why was she so prickly? When she was with him and spitting defiance, she made him feel alive as he had never felt before. He was half mad with lust. Perhaps all mad to want a termagant like Amy. In fact, he was most certainly totally insane. “That woman brings out the worst in me.”

“I know. The two of you…”

Jermyn started at the sound of Miss Victorine’s quivering voice. He had almost forgotten she was there.

“I should never have let her come d…down alone. Not when it’s such b…bad news.”

Miss Victorine, he realized in horror, was crying and trying valiantly to hide the fact.

“She truly is a sweet girl, and you…you’re a d…delightful boy, but the t…two of you are like oil and water.”

“And somehow the oil keeps catching fire.” He kept his tone prosaic as she trudged across the floor.

By painful inches, she lowered herself to the floor to kneel by the shards of her cup and plates. “Yes, yes, an apt simile, my lord.” She touched the broken pieces as a mother would touch an injured child, gently, with bent and trembling fingers.

In the haze of his rage, a cool finger of guilt intruded. He remembered that most of the china on which he’d been served had been chipped, and that Miss Victorine handled it painful care, as if it needed to last the rest of her life. Or as if each piece carried generations of memory.

“Let me help you.” He had enough chain to get that far.

When he stepped closer, she flinched.

And he recalled that he’d held a knife to her throat. He thrown her aside, too, with the best of intentions, but he’d seen the purpling bruises on the thin skin of her arms and seen how she hobbled.

“Please, my lord, let me pick up the pieces.” She did so.

He watched her, his fingers limp. He’d never before thought of himself as a good-for-nothing, yet now he felt useless and helpless. When Amy said that, he’d rejected the idea with scorn. But now he wondered—when a man acted like a spoiled boy and blamed it on another—was he not in truth a spoiled boy?

Miss Victorine dragged the pewter tray toward her. She handed Jermyn the letter.

He glanced at it. Uncle Harrison’s handwriting.

He put it in his pocket.

She picked up the buns and brushed the dirt off of hem. “I’ll take these upstairs. I’ll bring you down the clean ones, and pour you a new cup of tea.”

And eat the dirty ones herself.

Leaning over, he swept two of them into his hands. “No. I’ll eat them.”