Vintage Love (293 page)

She pressed her hands to the boy's face. “Your cheeks are cold, darling,” Lorna murmured, lightly rubbing the pink skin to warm him.

“Yours are wet, Sissy.” Daniel's chilled fingers smeared a tear toward her ear. His pale features pinched together. “Are you crying because you miss Brother?”

Lorna gave a watery laugh. As if she could miss the wastrel who had only brought them ruin. “No, sweetling, I'm crying because I missed
you
.”

His slim arms circled her neck. “It's a silly rule, that ladies can't go to a burial. Now that I'm baron, I'm going to change it. You should be able to do anything you please.”

She nuzzled the top of his head. His hair, honey-tinged brown, smelled of wind and dry leaves. “My own little knight in egalitarian armor.” Fierce love thundered through her body. She would protect Daniel from Mr. Wiggins and anyone else who threatened her family. No matter what, she would keep Daniel safe and give him a home.

Even if she had to sell herself, body and soul, to do it.

• • •

After tucking Daniel into bed, Lorna swathed herself in Thomas's billowing black cloak and stepped outside. The early November evening carried a bite in the air, but she welcomed the brisk chill.

Her sturdy boots carried her across the lawn and down the familiar path through the small home wood to the lane heading into the village. The gathering dusk didn't signify. Her feet knew every root and stone along the way.

Since the funeral, Lorna had kept a semblance of calm about her for Daniel's sake. After the harrowing months they'd endured, the boy needed a return to the order of their life before Thomas's illness. All through the day, though, anger built inside her, until she felt her ribs would crack with it. The fire in her belly drove her onward.

Avoiding the village high street, Lorna slipped down the alley beside a tavern. Yellow light and sounds of male conversation seeped from chinks between the boards. She shrank from the light and noise, clinging to the shadows.

Two turnings brought her to the church, and a quick sprint across dead grass took her to her brother's grave. A little nosegay Lorna gave Daniel for the purpose lay atop the mound of earth. Thomas had a place in consecrated ground, blessed with the peace he'd ripped away from her.

Rage bubbled up from her gut, filling her throat and choking her. She wanted to scream at Thomas, to lash out at him for destroying the home she'd worked so hard to keep. How was she to find the money to pay the wretched Wiggins, except to sell her home or herself? A terrible choice. An impossible one. Marriage wasn't even a viable option. Lorna had no suitors. No man came sniffing after the homely daughter of a poor, country baron. Even if she started hunting a husband now, she would never marry in time to save Elmwood from Wiggins. No hero would swoop in to deliver them from ruin—it was up to Lorna to protect her family. She wished she knew the vile words Thomas knew. Nothing in her feeble lady's vocabulary was profane enough to express her outrage.

But she did know a couple, she recalled, compliments of her dear brother.

“Cunt.” The word felt guttural, like a good, cleansing cough. “Fuck.” Lorna didn't know how to use them in a sentence, but they were the worst words she'd ever heard. She hurled them at her dead sibling repeatedly, imbuing them with a healthy dose of hatred. When she'd had her fill of obscenities, she spat on his grave, in defiance of God's law and man's.

“How could you do this to us?” she demanded of her sibling. The anger that had sustained her all day turned to apprehension. “What shall I do?”

The more Lorna considered the hopelessness of her situation, the more she felt herself swamped by dread. Suddenly, her chest seized; her lungs refused to draw air. Fear clawed at her throat.
Have to get away
. Escape was the only thought left to her. If she stayed in this spot, she would surely die. Some distant part of her mind recognized no immediate threat, but the larger portion of Lorna's consciousness was overcome with the certainty of impending doom.

She whirled in a billow of black wool and launched herself into a dead run, her skin crackling as if from an imminent lightning strike. Lorna's feet only carried her a short distance from Thomas's resting place before she fell to her knees. Her vision narrowed and her ears rang, and then she knew no more.

Some time later, Lorna awakened to darkness. Her eyes felt gritty and her head ached, after-effects of the terrifying episode she'd suffered. She was in the cemetery, she recalled, curled inside Thomas's cloak. She pulled it from her face and choked back a yelp.

A huge hound loomed over her, slobber dangling in twin strands from loose jowls. It pressed a cold nose into her neck and snuffled. Lorna shoved at the beast's head. “Get off,” she hissed. The dog licked her face.

“Hey, wassat?” The voice was nearby. “Coop,” it called in a whisper. “Bluebell found somethin'.”

“Body?” answered another voice—Coop, Lorna surmised. “S'not like the digger to leave one out. Might be one for the pauper pit. Pretty Lem, see what's what.”

Lorna tried to back out from under the slavering Bluebell, but her hairy captor simply flopped down on her chest, pinning her. A few seconds later, a figure appeared with a shuttered lantern, illuminating the tan and black bloodhound. “Good girl, Blue. What you got? Is it—oh, shit!”

Lorna just made out the surprised face of a young man before he ran in the other direction. Bluebell heaved herself up and loped after Pretty Lem. “It's a lady, Coop! A live one! Pack it up, boys.”

“Can't yet,” said Coop. “Bob's in the ground.”

Lorna scrambled behind a nearby gravestone. When no one immediately pounced on her, she peeked over the top. It was still night, dark except for the light of two lanterns illuminating a group of four men. They wore roughspun clothes, with scarves, gloves, and hats shielding them from the cold. Pretty Lem frantically gestured to where he'd found Lorna. One tall, lanky man propped himself against a shovel driven into the ground, as casual as you please. A third stood at the light's edge, minding a mule team hitched to a wagon. The fourth man, average in height and build, exuded an air of authority. He had to be Coop, the leader. That one listened to Pretty Lem and peered into the darkness. Lorna ducked behind the stone.

“Fartleberry, the second we've got the goods, start filling. Lem, you and me'll load.” Coop issued orders with military efficiency. “Out o' the earth bath, Bob.”

Bob's in the ground
, he'd said a moment ago. The hair on her nape stood on end as she peered once more over the gravestone. An elongated, white shape emerged from the dank ground. In a sickening rush, Lorna realized they had opened her brother's grave.

Before she could consider the folly of it, she was pounding toward the gang. “Stop!” she cried. The too-large cloak tangled around her legs; she went sprawling, face first, into the loose soil that used to cover her brother.

The gangmen glanced her way, but continued their grisly work. Coop dragged Thomas's wrapped body away from the grave, while the thug he'd called Fartleberry gave a hand to a fifth man emerging from the ground.

Lorna sputtered dirt and swiped at her nose. She'd spat on Thomas's grave just hours before, and thought it the worst insult possible. Compared to this atrocity, it seemed a tender caress. “Put him back!” she demanded.

The hulking brute fresh from the ground leaped the open hole and grabbed Lorna around the middle. He hauled her away from the dirt, which Fartleberry began shoveling back into Thomas's empty grave.

“What'll we do wif her, Coop?” the big man's voice rumbled.

Fartleberry chucked dirt into the hole at an impressive rate. Lorna noted the shovel the man used had a wooden head, not iron. “We oughter do her and sell three, 'stead of two.” His words were muffled by the scarf covering the bottom half of his face. The calm way he suggested Lorna's demise made her lightheaded.

“We're not doing nobody,” Coop said.

He and Pretty Lem loaded Thomas into the back of the wagon, alongside another corpse. Bluebell propped her front feet on the wagon bed and sniffed the bodies, while Lem retrieved another shovel and joined his comrade in moving dirt.

“Ten quid ain't worth our necks.” Coop wiped his hands on his baggy trousers, then swatted Fartleberry on the back of the head. “Use your breadbox 'fore you go spouting off, fool.”

He sauntered toward Lorna with a lantern. She twisted in her big captor's hands. For her pains, Bob merely lifted her from the ground and held her more securely against his filthy coat. He smelled of death and worms. Her head swam.

Coop hoisted the lantern to her face. Lorna squinted at the light. “You picked the wrong night for a midnight stroll, girl.”

As her eyes adjusted, Lorna took in details. Coop had a large nose, spiderwebbed with blood vessels. His ruddy cheeks were covered in gray stubble. Pale, suspicious eyes squinted at her.

“I wasn't strolling,” Lorna informed him, “I was visiting my brother's grave.” She kicked her boot heel into the big man's shin, earning an “Oi!” in return. “Tell your ruffian to let me go.”

“Set 'er down, Bob, but keep a hand on 'er.”

As soon as Lorna's feet touched the ground, she ducked out of Bob's grasp and darted to the wagon. She tugged at the dingy linen covering her brother. “Put him back! He isn't wearing any valuables, nothing worth stealing.”

Bob reached her in a few quick strides and snatched her arms. Bluebell bayed and pranced around them in a circle, as if they were playing a game.

“Beggin' to differ, miss, but we got what we came for.” Coop's nose dripped; he swiped it with the fringe of his scarf. “Daft Jemmy,” he called to the mule handler, “get the team ready to go.” To the men filling Thomas's grave, he said, “Double time, lads. We're gone in five. Harty Choke Boys won't be none pleased when they find we've picked their garden.”

Fartleberry grunted in reply. He wielded his shovel like a fencing master with a foil, graceful and swift. The hole was nearly full again. Beside him, Pretty Lem methodically arranged the soil neatly at the edges so it resembled the undertaker's original work.

“What do you mean, you've got what you came for?” Lorna demanded. “Who's the other body? And why do you want them? Thomas wasn't important. He wasn't …”

She trailed off as Coop chuckled. Behind him, Pretty Lem gently replaced Daniel's nosegay atop of the grave. Once the gang cleared out, no one would ever know tonight's macabre crime had taken place. No one but Lorna.

From the wagon bed, Coop fetched a coil of rope. “Your Tommy might not've been worth anything to you,” he said as he approached, “but he's worth ten quid to the anatomists. Maybe twelve, if we can offload 'im fresh.”

The implication shocked Lorna to her core. She barely noticed as Bob spun her so Coop could tie her wrists. The hempen rope bit into her flesh, snapping her mind into focus. What the thief said horrified her. Appalled her.

Intrigued her.

“Wait just a minute!” Once more, she kicked large Bob's abused shin and wrestled around to face Coop, flinging her arms free of the rope. Annoyance pinched the boss's lips, but Lorna was riding high on the sudden deliverance laid before her. “Be perfectly clear, sir. You mean to sell my brother's body?”

“Yeah, that's right. Now turn around like a good ewe and let me tie you up. I wouldn't argue with a third quarron, so don't make me do somefin unfortunate, eh?”

The threat hadn't much weight behind it, but who knew what these miscreants were capable of? Lorna licked her lips, recognizing a moment of decision was upon her. This was a group of thieves, she told herself, not murderers. If Coop and his gang meant her violence, they'd have done it already—wouldn't they?

Squeezing her eyes shut, Lorna summoned the image of her little brother. Daniel relied upon her. She'd sworn to do whatever it took to provide for and protect him. And so she would. The decision made, a strange calm settled over her.

Pretty Lem hopped to the driver's seat and took the reins from Daft Jemmy. The remaining men and the dog clambered into the bed with their frightful cargo, leaving room on the front bench for Coop. And Lorna, if she got her way. “Bob, help me into the wagon, please,” she instructed her burly captor. She strode the short distance to the wagon, leaving a protesting Coop to trail in her wake.

“What in the bleedin', blazin' hells is this? Bob, don't you lift a finger to help her.”

Lorna turned on a heel and shot Coop a quelling look. “Thomas's body belongs to his family. If anyone is going to sell it, it will be me.”