Magic Embrace
by
Jennifer Horsman
SMASHWORDS EDTION
*****
PUBLISHED BY
Jennifer Horsman on Smashwords
Copyright © 2011 by Jennifer Horsman
Smashwords Edition License Notes
This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each person you share it with. If you're reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then you should return to Smashwords.com and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the author's work.
*****
Chapter One
The grey light of dawn swept into the small attic room where Juliet sat in the window seat, staring down at the mist-shrouded garden, the Bible on her lap replaced by a young lady's dreams. Her lovely reflection in the small glass pane revealed the delicately boned face, ivory white skin, and enchanting dark blue eyes—eyes that solicited comments from everyone. They were large and widely spaced, framed in thick, coal black lashes with two thin brows that often danced as she talked, highlighting the emotions so plain there. The faintest smattering of freckles crossed her small straight nose and her teeth were small, even, and white, set against finely carved lips.
The reflection revealed a strange joy to her beauty as well, an impression one could easier feel than explain. Yet just as these last years had darkened her life, so too had fear altered the light of her eyes and marked her face with a profound sadness. Fairwood's head housekeeper, Bess, recently summed up the subject with: "Oh, she be as pretty as a fairy book princess, such a light around 'er but, ‘tis like the angels made 'er beauty for happiness, then abandoned 'er to the wrong fates..."
Juliet remembered a time when her dreams were spun from the rich tapestry of life, woven with the thoughts, impressions, and emotions her mother had imparted through the telling of a hundred fanciful stories. Oh those dreams! Her imagination stretched to the four corners of the world, where she populated her dreams with all manner of peoples and unlikely situations: King Arthur and Merlin, Egyptian princesses and Brazilian slaves, pirates and maidens, missionary daughters and heathen princes, Norwegian lords and ladies. These dreams made a simple walk in the woods a sojourn into the world of the fairy people; a carriage ride became an exciting journey to the faraway cities of Bethlehem or Saint Petersburg; a common Sunday bonnet was a jeweled crown. Dreams and more dreams, like a rainbow of color arching over everyday life, she had thousands of them.
Fear gradually changed the shape of those dreams.
Her dreams had changed the day she came to Fairwood, changed again four years ago when she first fell in love with Tomas, the day they met on the way to church. Now Tomas held the star position in her dreams, dreams filled with visions of escaping. She dreamt only of the time Tomas would take her away from Fairwood by the act of marriage. What comfort she found in knowing it would all be over then! Again and again she imagined their happy home, a home blessed with love and laughter, the happy sound of their children.
Yet now she rarely thought past the end of the day.
She looked up from the mist-shrouded garden to see her reflection. The young lady staring back at her startled her, this frightened, haunted creature. Pain joined the fear in her eyes as she saw what she was becoming, what she would become. For now she had only one dream left to her, a single dream taking on a real-life importance—a dream in which only one thing happened.
A dream of a time in which she would feel safe again . . .
Cardiff, I805
Four men stood alongside their mounts in the cold mist of pre-dawn, tense with the air of expectant danger. Not a single bird's cry interrupted the profound quiet. Rocky cliffs towered above them, the jagged tips disappearing in the thick fog. Two of the three younger men stood poised with pistols drawn. Matched by unwavering gazes, the pistols were leveled at the distance.
Admiral Ferris stood stiffly between them. The drawn features of his weathered face reflected the ominous duty ahead. His gaze kept returning to Ensign Cooper, the young man beside him. The horror of the hell the young man had been through showed in the dark red rings circling his eyes, a horror he said haunted even his sleep. The pain of it appeared in the admiral's eyes too, and he looked heavenward, sending a prayer for the strength to get through the next hour.
"And to you Garrett," he added in a solemn whisper, "may your revenge exact the cruel price of the blood spilt."
As the admiral stood there waiting for the confrontation—cold, worried, and filled with dread—he thought of all of Garrett's passions, the iconoclastic beliefs and philosophies that shaped his life. Garrett could spellbind any gathering of men with the startling elegance of his beliefs. The most unlikely candidates—once King George himself—found themselves agreeing with these strange ideas; ideas the statesman termed anachronistic, the religious called sacrilegious, the king himself would brand as treason. How many times had he, too, listened to Garrett's passions, arguing with Garrett until he was red-faced and stiff-necked, disturbed enough to finish a bottle of Napoleon's own cognac, only to think it over again later as Garrett's words inevitably repeated in his mind, until he would finally find himself thinking, why, that is true! Nodding his head, he'd think, Garrett, you are right after all...
The world at large, and England in particular, was not ready for Garrett's ideas of a world republic, ideas supported by the writings of John Locke and taken up in part by the new United States. By the time he was twenty-four, Garrett saw this, and though at times he seemed uncomfortable with the knowledge, he knew by then his calling in life was one of action rather than words, especially as the world was at war. Needless to say, everyone from the king through the Admiralty was interested in securing the young man's commission when he finally returned from his long sojourn into the Orient and India, places that had changed him much. "A man must fight for what he believes in, what he knows is right," Garrett declared to the Admiralty. "I am ready to fight, but gentlemen, I am not—I repeat, I am not—about to be party to the indiscriminate killing of boys on a battlefield, the arming of England's sons against France, our king against Napoleon. I am morally repulsed by man's incessant need to wage war, by the destructive force of our killing—"
"What are you saying?" Nelson demanded furiously. "Napoleon must be stopped!"
"Aye, he must be stopped. I shall devote the next years of my life to that purpose, but not by leading men into battle. I propose a different means to our end. Hear me out."
The admiral stared blankly into the misty grey light permeating the land and shading his thoughts. He felt a great sadness as he thought of Garrett and his unnatural heroism. It seemed like a cruel test of fate: as if the fates had decided that if Napoleon could not make Garrett renounce what meant most, then let us find the thing that will. Let us see which is stronger, his notion of justice or the force of his great strength. For the admiral knew Garrett would indeed have to turn his back on his highest principles in order to exact his revenge.
And Garrett would have to have revenge.
"Two men, riding from the west!"
The sound of hooves pounding the earth arrived long before the two men could be seen. They first appeared as a black streak followed by a rusty red blur. The two armed men steadied their pistols, searching the grey mist behind the rapidly advancing riders.
Ensign Cooper took a meaningful step back. The tall dark rider looked like Satan himself, emerging from the cool grey mist shrouded in a black cape and riding an enormous black steed. The great beast reared as he reined the stallion to an abrupt halt, and using an impressive riding skill the tall man agilely dismounted in one fluid motion before the beast's legs touched ground again.
Garrett's hand grasped the reins tightly. He gently stroked the fine head as he whispered something in the beast's ear. The reins were released. The horse pranced off, disappearing in the mist like a dream upon waking. As he watched the man of legend approach the admiral, Ensign Cooper suddenly believed all the stories surrounding his name. Black Garrett rose to the legendary title of England's greatest traitor, a man rumored to have been born and bred in the British aristocracy but who fell from these heights to become France's most feared pirate and celebrated hero. Black Garrett's control extended from the colonial seas to the new American states, a domain Napoleon was said to allow only because he was not willing to make Garrett his enemy. A man whose real name, Ensign Cooper had learned, was Lord Garrett Ramon Van Ness, first earl and lord of Devonshire.
He stood unnaturally tall, nearly a half-foot taller than the tallest among them, and he moved with the self-confident and arrogant air of the great, as a Caesar or Alexander must have walked in centuries past. Blacker than raven wings, his long hair touched his broad shoulders with a disregard of the conventional. Thick brows arched over his arresting dark gaze, yet his eyes revealed the contradictions of his character far more than did the unexpectedly handsome face, the fine large nose, or the generous curve of his mouth set against an unusually strong square chin.
Garrett was said to be brilliant in the areas of philosophy, science, and military history, and this famous intelligence showed in his eyes, as did the enormous force of his will, more frightening than anything else. Few would be fool enough to underestimate his enmity. Yet what stole the young ensign's breath in a small pained gasp was the way in which Garrett shared with his brother, Edric, a humor and passion for life. He too had the gleam of a man who laughed often and hard.
Garrett received the salutes given him with a nod, the barest trace of a mocking grin. "At ease, ensign," he said in a clear, aristocratic voice as he removed his gloves. "I have not lived this long by letting would-be assassins pass unnoticed. As it is, more than a dozen pistols are aimed at the spot."
This information startled the young men, for they had searched the surrounding areas, in vain. Other than the man accompanying Garrett, there was no trace of his equally famous band of men, men whom Garrett had handpicked over the years with an eye not only for the varied skills of warriors but also for intelligence and a passionate commitment to the idea of a world republic. The many tales surrounding Garrett, his men, and their ship, The Raven—tales that filled the papers of three nations—were simply not to be believed, and few people actually did. Their outrages and daring made them into a modern-day legend, so that most everyone thought of Garrett and his men as no more real than Robin Hood and his merry men, King Arthur and his knights of the round table. . .
Garrett studied the young ensign briefly before gracing the admiral with his full attention. He might have made inquiries into the admiral's family, their mutual friends and concerns, a conversation that would shock the world—indeed, the very idea of Admiral Ferris standing alongside Black Garrett would have shocked the world—but he knew the admiral had not summoned him over a thousand miles to conduct teatime chatter. As he met the admiral's gaze, meaning passed between them and all pretense of formality dropped as Garrett abruptly stiffened. "Ferris . . No, not Nelson?"
The admiral shook his head. "No, by God's grace Nelson is fine, residing abroad but destined, we've learned, to return. Though by all that's holy Garrett, it is bad news."
"Well? What then?" he asked in sudden indifference, as if having eliminated that possibility, no other could be of consequence.
The man who had accompanied Garrett rode up to stop just behind him. He remained mounted, looking like a great Nordic warrior, an appearance that to Garrett's amusement often sent country maids running off in fright. He was as tall as Garrett but even wider, and just as frightening to look at, with a mane of flaming red hair and beard. He wore no coat against the chill, only buckskin breeches, thick boots, and a vest made of fox skin. An archaic saber hung ominously from his belt, a warning when none was needed. Presently his bright blue eyes focused with abrupt concern on Garrett, for Leif Hansal-Campbell had the gift of a seer, and he knew what the admiral was going to say even before he spoke, "Your brother, Garrett. Edric—"
For a long moment Garrett's dark gaze searched the admiral's face, as if to see the truth of those awful words. As he did, he slowly shook his head. No, not Edric...his mother's favorite, her joy and comfort in this world. Dear God, anyone but young Edric, he whose life felt far more precious than his own. Anyone but Edric...
The admiral waited, letting the question come when it would, but with sudden horror he realized his hands trembled like a woman's. He thrust them into the pocket of his dark blue overcoat and closed his gaze, as if to shut out the horror of what would come next. "I fear," he said in a pain-filled whisper, "the worst has yet to be said."
At those last words the great giant came off his mount to place a hand on Garrett's shoulder, a hand that Garrett seized tightly in his own, his gaze riveted upon the admiral.
"He was murdered most cruelly, Garrett. Young Ensign Cooper here, Edric's friend, survived to tell the story but ...but Garrett, in all my years, I've not heard of anything so brutal. The devil himself could not have bettered the horror of it. I beg you, my son—nay, I implore you—spare yourself the details of his fate."
The tension was palpable as Garrett listened to this last with widening eyes, blazing with emotion. He could not now speak but Leif spoke for him. Always. In a remarkably gentle voice marking an ancestry where Swedes joined their Scottish cousins, he said: "We are prepared for the worst. Let no detail be spared."
"The man's name is Stoddard. You know of him of course..."
*****
A great stillness descended over Fairwood’s Manor. From the downstairs green room, where she nervously pretended to dust, Stella heard the trees rustle against the windows, a bird cry in the distance, and the faintest clamor of pots from the kitchen. If she stood perfectly still, she imagined she could hear the twin sounds of the rushing river and the master's quill scratch across the page, this above the pounding of her heart.
The dust rag dropped as she clasped her work-callused hands together in prayer, biting back the tears. Please, dear Lord, stop him… Find some way to stop him!
She jumped, hearing the chair scrape as he finally got up. She heard him move to the brandy decanter resting on the serving tray against the window and the clink of his glass as he set it upon the table. The footsteps returned to the desk. A drawer opened and shut
"No!" Stella’s whispered plea sounded as she rushed to the door leading to the hall. She leaned against it, her knuckles, clenched tight. Another door opened and she heard Mr. Williams, a small, elderly, bookish creature, the master's secretary, address him forthrightly. "Master Stoddard, will you be leaving for the docks now?"
Terrified himself, Williams held his breath as Master Stoddard turned to see him there. The setting light shone behind him, outlining his height and girth, his great size adding to his supreme air of omnipotence. Thick grey curls haloed extremely regular features—he was once a handsome man. Not now…but perhaps Williams only imagined the cruelty etched in the lines of his face, cruelty shining in those strange, awfully cold blue eyes.
"Why, Mr. Williams, would I do that?"
"I ...thought you might want to check the Victoria's cargo—"
"Did you now?" He stopped himself from shouting as the small mouse like man, his irritation with him bordering on contempt. "Or did you find the unparalleled presumption to interfere with my authority?"
"Oh no...no, Master Stoddard, I'd never presume—"
"That's right, Mr. Williams! Don't you dare presume so much as your next breath in my house! Is that clear?"
"Yes sir, yes..."
Turning his back to him, Stoddard made his way down the hall. Stella peeped out from behind the closed door. She looked first to Williams, where hopelessness passed between them, before anxiously watching the retreating back of Master Stoddard. She saw the coiled whip in his hand, the devil's own tool. As soon as he disappeared up the stairs, Stella dashed down the hall, through the back doors, and into the chilled evening air.
She ran to the kitchen and through the doors, bursting upon the small, solemn gathering in what they called cook's corner, the only happy place in Fairwood and only because Master Stoddard would never condescend to enter a kitchen. Bess and the kitchen helper, Samuels, looked up, knowing what she was about to say from the agony on her face. Neither Bess nor Samuels ventured to share the news that had arrived less than an hour ago. Was it good news or no, a light from the heavens or a new torment from hell? Bess, with an old woman's wisdom, sadly suspected the latter.
"Master's headed to 'er room with the whip!"
Bess took Stella into her fleshy arms for comfort, shaking her graying head sadly to reflect the collective sentiments of the entire household, "That poor, poor angel. Lord save 'er. ...Such goodness and unhappiness, 'tis enough to make a soul question the Maker's wisdom. There she be so kind and gentle, fragile as porcelain, while 'er cousin —"
Bess had been about to compare sweet young Juliet with her cousin, the master's own daughter, Clarissa, but the old woman stopped. What was the point? They had all watched the two young mistresses grow into two vastly different creatures, until now it was hard to believe they were of the same race, yet alone the same blood. Not that Clarissa had her father's cruelty, she didn't. No one did. Yet the young lady's inclinations were just as wicked, to be sure. Only two months past now, Bobby found the girl in the hayloft with Niles, a groom. A groom!
Oh Lord, the shock of it still upset her every time she thought of it.
That wasn't the problem now, anyway. "Twill be a miracle if Mistress Juliet survives this time." Lord knows, it wasn't the first time the master took a strap to the girl, but each time seemed worse than the last. Only ten and seven from May, young Juliet had more scars than a negro slave in the hateful states of the new America, scars that were hardly the worst of it, too.
Samuels kept his eyes on his boots as he ventured tentatively, "We knew 'twas comin' anyways. She should not have pit herself against his will. I said meself—"
"You hush!" Stella pulled away from Bess's embrace. "Juliet did not a thing wrong. All she has left is her reading. 'Ceptin' for Tomas, 'twas 'er only comfort in this world and when he took away that, she said herself to me, 'twas disobey or die of loneliness."
Bess searched Stella's face, the dark tumble of curl framing the frightened brown eyes, and she knew. "You were the one sneaking the master's books to the young mistress, weren't you now?"
Stella nodded guiltily. Juliet had begged her, "Stella, you don't know what 'tis like to own a passion for books and learning, to have the very best library in the whole country within the same roof, and to be forbidden to use it. Don't you see? Save for Tomas, I have nothing else now. Nothing. He has taken everything from me, everything that means anything...I can't let him do this last to me. I just can't."
"Well, naught to be done now. What a sad house we live in, for sure. All the pain…" She cringed, shaking her head. "I cannot imagine it. Come on, stand straight girl, she'll be needin' you now. Let's get the salve and warm water, some soup, too, not that she'll have a stomach for it. But Stella…" Bess stopped, then looked to Samuels for help.
Stella searched the elderly woman's face.
After a sigh, Bess removed a note from her apron pocket. "There couldn't be worse timing. Tomas has come back, awaiting' at the river as we speak."
Stella took the piece of paper and, not knowing how to read, looked briefly at Samuels to see her own uncertainty reflected in his gaze. She sank into a chair, "Maybe Tomas can take 'er away this time…"
"A fairy tale wish!" Bess said with uncharacteristic vehemence. "And don't you be giving' that girl any hope either. La! I've half a mind not to give it to her this time, just to spare that poor child some grief."
The unspoken thought behind the words filled Stella with the fear that it was true. Juliet loved Tomas, and he loved her, but it did seem…wrong to make her wait in this house for another year until the time his father would allow him to marry, after he finished his studies at London's university. "Tom will do right, he has to."
"And what will happen then? ‘Tis a nightmare to dwell on what the master will do to 'er if 'e discovers she spoke to Tomas, much less planned to marry the boy."
'Twas enough to steal the hope…Bess shook her head but ventured no more. The words were merely poor vessels to carry them away from what was happening to a young girl anyway. "Go on now, miss," she finally said, feeling suddenly tired beyond her years. "The mistress will be needin' you now."
A short time later Stella knocked softly on Juliet's door. No answer came from within, but she didn't expect one. She quietly opened the door and stepped inside. The passing twilight had left the house in darkness. A single lamp shone over the bed where Juliet lay perfectly still on her stomach, her nightdress gathered at her small waist. The light reflected off the brilliance of her dark red hair, woven into a thick braid that cascaded off the bed and almost touched the floor. Stella approached with trepidation, and with a gasp she saw the bloody marks laid across the many scars of the past.
The terror always felt so much worse than the hot, stinging pain. Juliet tried to fight it the only way she knew: she slipped into the safe world of dreams. She tried to imagine the time when Tomas would take her away, but it seemed so far away...so far away from the reality of her uncle and his hate, the helplessness of a fate she had no control over.
She wanted so desperately to feel safe again.
Tomas, I love you now and forever, I love you…
He would be returning soon, very soon, perhaps this week. Each day of waiting seemed like an eternity. The length of their separations began to frighten her. She tried to justify and make sense of her fears. Considering her uncle and this house, it was reasonable she should be frightened of happiness, for her uncle would snatch it from her if ever he had a chance. Tomas's reassurances played over and over in her mind: "My darling, darling, he can do nothing! Tis true we must sneak like common thieves to see each other, but that will soon be over. Listen to me," he spoke softly to her doubt, "if ever he tries to come between us, I'll marry you without waiting for the end of my studies. And tell me, Juliet, what could he do if you were my lawful wife?"
She closed her eyes tightly and thought of it now, trying to battle this fear, a dread she felt hanging on the horizon, a thing far worse than this beating. What could her uncle do to them? She tried to foresee it, to anticipate the workings of her uncle's malevolence, but how could she? How could she guess what harm he might do once they were married?
Yet they would be married soon, they would! Once Tomas finished his term at the university, four months from two weeks past exactly, he would come for her and take her away from here.
It would be over; she would be safe…
Stella exercised extreme gentleness as she carefully wiped the slender back with a cool cloth. Not once did Juliet cry out, though she shivered uncontrollably. "Oh, Juliet… my poor, poor lady. How badly does it hurt?"
Juliet shook her head, unable to reply as she tensed fighting the shivers and the searing hot sting as Stella now began to lay the salve to her wounds.
"Oh, dear God, easy…easy. You're bound to get a fever from this…Mercy, 'tis a wonder you can still draw breath." Trying to ease Juliet's attention from the sting of her ministrations, she asked angrily, "What did he say to you?"
"At first nothing," Juliet whispered, her normally melodic voice changed with fear or pain or both. "Stella, Stella, I didn't know he was to do this to me. Not with all his financial woes, the worry of losing the house…I knew he was angry when he discovered the book missing from his library, but when the bankers came today, I thought he had forgotten. So when he appeared in my room and I saw the whip, I, I was so frightened...I couldn't bear it and I ran to the window," her voice lifted with the emotion, falling to a whisper of defeat, "And…and he struck me then--"
Stella cautiously slipped around the side of the bed to see her mistress's face. "Mercy in heavens."
The bruise marked her face just as the fear marked her eyes, and Stella slowly reached out to touch it. Juliet winced slightly. Stella stopped her tears, crying when Juliet no longer could, and returned to applying salve to the wounds on Juliet's back, waiting until she was done before revealing the news of Tomas's return.
Stella's thoughts kept turning through circles of helplessness. "She's tried to run away twice now," her husband had summed it up the other night. "Think of those mad dogs, Stella! He said the next time he'd kill her and he would at that, I have no doubt. He’d watch as those dogs tore her to pieces, along with anyone who tried to help her. Nay, her only hope is that boy she loves…"
Juliet managed to overcome the stinging pain long enough to reveal her own confused thoughts: "He told me he would purge the stain of my mother's wickedness from his house if it was the last thing he ever did, and that it was for disobedience as much as for stealing his book that he beat me. He said he would beat servitude and obedience into me nightly if he had to."
Why did he hate her mother so? Why did his hate still burn seven years after her mother's death? For trading England for France? For falling in love with a Frenchman? For bearing a child without benefit of matrimony?
It was as if her uncle kept punishing her for something her mother had done, without ever telling her what this might be. Assuming, of course, there was a rationale behind his cruelty, however demented and unjust. Yet all Juliet knew of her parents came before her mother's death just before she entered her tenth year. Before she was born, her father had been murdered in the post-revolutionary struggles of the Committee of Public Safety, in which he had been a participant. He had dedicated his life to the committee and had lost it in the service of their exalted cause. He had died before she was born, but he lived on in the colorful pictures her mother painted of him for her. He had been a hero: brave, moral, and handsome…
Yet her father died leaving them no inheritance, and any other time but now Juliet would have smiled when she thought of the story her mother had made up to explain his neglect. With the wisdom of a seventeen-year-old, she knew now many heroes were simply poor. Her mother could not bear to leave such a plain truth alone, so she adorned it with her imagination, turning it into something exciting and lively, something worthy of telling over and over again. With no inheritance, her mother had to work in a flower shop across the city, leaving her to the loving care of Madame Gaston, an elderly widow with whom she lived over a bakery shop in Montparnasse.
How she missed the old woman, too, her tender loving care, the warmth and happiness of Monsieur Rovere's small bakery, his teasing and laughter and generosity. She missed these simple and good people terribly. What happened to them? She sent hundreds of letters through Tomas with careful instructions to return the post to him, but she never got a reply. Sometimes she worried that they, too, had left her…
Mamma, I miss you most of all…
Her mother arrived on the Sabbath and stayed with her until Tuesday. Each hour they were together was a holiday filled with joy and laughter and frivolity: they went to parks, cafes, museums, theaters, and music halls. They talked and sang, laughed and pretended Tuesday would never come. Her mother told her so many things, fanciful tales about people and places, love and life…Her mamma was so terribly beautiful, yet even as a young child Juliet had seen a strange sadness hidden beneath her smile and laughter…
What was it mamma? What secret did you keep from me? It's as if you knew what would happen to us, parted by death and me forced into my uncle's cruel hands. That letter sitting on the nightstand the night you unwound our hair and died, the letter that made you weep with fear. Was it from him? The uncle you never told me about?
Her mother had never once mentioned her uncle—she had told a completely different story about their lost English family: a century of barristers, her grandparents passing in the terrible influenza epidemic that left her mother an orphan. Juliet still remembered the day when, as a young ten-year-old girl still lost to her grief at her mother's death, her uncle's agent arrived at the bakery in Paris, literally pulling her from Madame Gaston's arms. She remembered the crying and screaming and monsieur's threats, and it seemed the terror started that very day…
"There, 'tis done," Stella finished, but, "Lord, Juliet, you're shivering with the fever. Let me fix this blanket around you." No cloth could touch her skin, but Stella carefully covered her legs and padded a blanket around her sides.
"Stella," she whispered the name and said, not for the first time, "I don't know what I'd do if not for your comfort."
As if it were enough, Stella sighed and rose to fetch a brush from the vanity. A soft knock sounded on her door. Both young ladies tensed. Juliet flinched as she looked up to stare at Stella in alarm. Would he come back at this hour? Or did Bess sneak back into the house to see her?
"Who's there?" she asked in a whisper.
" 'Tis me, Clarissa…Please do hurry, I must speak with you..."
Juliet watched as Stella moved swiftly to the door, opening it to Clarissa. "Clarissa…" The young lady was tall and quite lovely, though for reasons not clear to Juliet, she refused to see the similarity between her older cousin and herself.
"They kin pass for sisters," she once overheard Samuels say. "Save for the eyes…" The likeness stemmed from their hair, like her mother's, the same burnt red color that must run in the family, though Clarissa wore hers at a fashionable length, just off the shoulders and ironed into tight ringlets that took hours to make. The likeness stopped there; where Juliet's eyes were dark blue, Clarissa's were pale like her father's, and where Juliet's face was oval, thin, almost angular, Clarissa's was all rounded, plump, whimsical. Even Clarissa's figure, the sloping shoulders and voluptuous curves, enhanced her look of extreme delicacy and whimsy. She wore a white silk nightdress that swept the floor as she stepped inside the dim light of the modest room, ignoring Stella in the way that she had with servants.
Juliet carefully tried to sit up to face her cousin. This was the first time Clarissa had ever entered her small attic room. Trepidation marked her cousin's steps. Her pale blue eyes considered her but briefly before they anxiously swept to either side. The revulsion quickly disappeared, changing to a fear that shocked Juliet. Now her cousin, too, was afraid of something, as if fear were indeed a contagious disease running rampant in the household.
Juliet could not guess why, for as far as anyone knew, Clarissa reigned as the only living being her father loved since his wife's death at Clarissa's birth. He treated her like a princess, showering her with presents and affection. To see his face when Clarissa was in the room was to see a changed man. Of the entire household, though, only Juliet knew Clarissa's secret: that she returned her father's love with a carefully concealed hatred. Yet she had never shared the reason for her hatred, and, perhaps unkindly, Juliet suspected it had naught a thing to do with his malevolence toward others.
She had never been close to Clarissa. Until last year, Clarissa had been away at boarding schools where wealthy English families of position sent their daughters. She returned to Fairwood only for holidays, appearing as a brief interruption of the pattern of days, leaving only the faint scent of perfume in her wake. Except for those holidays, Clarissa might never have existed at all.
Even now, they saw each other infrequently, taking care to honor the inexplicable antipathy Clarissa felt toward her, the tension put between them for no reason beyond an extension of her uncle's hatred. Those few times they were together, for church and Sunday supper, they were painfully civil to each other, rarely talking and then only on the most superficial of levels: the weather or the Sunday sermon, the tepidness of the stew, for her uncle had expressly forbidden their friendship on a day Juliet would never forget, the day after her arrival from France.
On that day her uncle sat her down in his great study to paint the picture of her life for the next long years. "Your mother never wanted me to see you. She had reason to fear. She is finally in the hell she so justly deserves. And now my poor, poor Anna cannot stop me from fulfilling my…ah, Christian duty to at least care for you, her precious daughter. A duty that upon my word," he swallowed the drink whole, "will make you pay for your mother's slutting wickedness before I at last join her in the grave. This duty extends to seeing you housed, fed, and raised within the strictest orthodoxy of Christian life. Though make no mistake, each time I look into your eyes and see hers, I will be reminded of the despicable circumstances surrounding your birth. I will not pretend otherwise."
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 Fairwood 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…I 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.
Clarissa 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 showing 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 cannot 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, can 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 tor 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. And 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.
*****
Chapter Two
Just before the eighth bell each morning, a carriage left Fairwood 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 and damp fog 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 had 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 soon enough.
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 destroy 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 previously unknown 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."
Mr. Wilson took in these changed conditions with a startled gasp. "But 'twill take months and—"
"People will starve. Indeed, no one in Bristol will challenge my authority again and those rumors that I can't pay my debts will finally cease—" Stoddard stopped upon hearing horse's hooves coming alongside the carriage. He slid back the window siding to see a riderless horse galloping alongside the carriage. "What the devil!"
Gayle agilely clung to the carriage footstool as he knocked out the driver, bringing the carriage to a slow halt. Gayle poked his pistol through the window as a greeting. Stoddard gasped, stopping just short of a scream as he stared at the barrel of a long ivory-handled pistol. He flew to the drawer across from him, but as his hand grasped the pistol there, the carriage stopped and Gayle leaned full inside. Stoddard felt the cold sting of the barrel of his pistol hard against his cheek.
"There'll be no more killing for you now," Gayle said easily. "Take care man, I've a terrible twitch in my hand. Step out easy and meet your sorry fate."
Stoddard emerged from the carriage to find himself looking at the barrels of eight pistols. Fear mixed evenly with rage, a potent mix vented at last in a demand, the last he would ever make: "What in God's name is the meaning of this?"
The silence stretched endlessly as Garrett studied me man haunting his nightmares of these last two long weeks. He now understood Leif's quiet insistence that he disarm himself, for had he a pistol in his hands at this moment he would have fired point blank to his head, an action far too merciful for the evil he saw. Not a small evil either, but one far larger than he had anticipated. Arrogance, pride, and cruelty were written on the large man's features, shown in the harsh, deeply curved lines of his face, even in the light of his gaze; all of it validated the many tales of terror he had gathered since he learned of Edric's pitiful death.
The name Stoddard had not been unfamiliar to him or to any other man remotely connected to shipbuilding, shipping, and the seas. For a hundred and fifty years the Stoddard family owned one of England's greatest shipbuilding enterprises, a declining enterprise owing to the unlimited timber reserves of the Americas and the industriousness of her people. This decline Stoddard, and men like him attempted to slow by lowering wages and increasing production, so that among far more damning things associated with Stoddard's name, everyone in shipping talked about the miserable working conditions among the laborers of Bristol.
Stoddard's gaze narrowed as incredulity overrode his fear, and while he was not fool enough to go against pistols unarmed, his unquestioned authority remained fixed in his squared shoulders and firm stand. He looked at each man briefly, holding first Leif and then Garrett in his gaze. Garrett looked like a madman as he removed a cask and took a long draught before meeting this gaze with the frightening look of a rabid dog: there was rage, extreme agitation, and yet unmistakable pleasure.
Stoddard cried, "Just who the devil do you think—"
"Ah, the very devil indeed," Garrett said easily. Unlike his emotions, neither words nor thoughts nor actions were in anyway tempered by his drunkenness. "I am your worst nightmare come to life, a man whose reputation follows the name Black Garrett." He added as if commenting on the weather, "And I've come to kill you."
"Black Garrett? Kill me?" Stoddard s gaze widened dramatically as he looked up at the unusually tall, handsome man who claimed the famous name. His mistake was to laugh derisively. "The same name used by every lawless criminal on sea and land. Forgive me if my credulity stretches to break--"
Leif motioned once. A tall savage looking man brought his mount up and before another word could be uttered, he sent his booted foot hard into Stoddard's stomach. Wilson screamed from within the carriage as he saw his employer double over with an unnatural grunt, the pain of it seizing the whole of his body. Then Stoddard rose slowly, cautioned now.
Garrett watched dispassionately. "The point, my doomed man, is that I forgive you nothing. Least of all the horror of the way you put my brother, Edric Van Ness, to his death. A horror I shall watch you endure before very long now."
Nothing on earth could have saved Stoddard; likewise, Garrett could not imagine anything that could make his own pain worse. Nothing until he heard Stoddard gasp, still trying to recover from the force of the blow: "Edric Van Ness? I don't know who you're talking of, and if you think—"
Garrett moved before any other man could comprehend the implication of those awful words. In a sweep of motion, he swung off his horse and pinned Stoddard to the carriage door, towering over him with the sudden evidence of his rage. He held him there with the strength of one large hand. "My God, man," his eyes blazed with unspeakable emotion. "tell me that isn't so! You know Edric's name! You know what heinous crime I speak of!'"
Yet when Garrett saw he didn't, it filled him with horror; his long fingers tightened around the fleshy neck. "Just how many men have you discovered your precious daughter laying with? How many men has she accused of rape? And how many men have you had castrated and gutted and left to bleed to death?"
For the first time the terror of what was happening worked its way into Stoddard's face, as Garrett choked the air from the passage to his lungs. So crazed was he with his rage that Garrett had no awareness of the great strength he brought to bear on the man's neck, no awareness of Stoddard's sputtering gasps as his face blanched first white then blue. Stoddard's life might have ended mercifully then and there but for Leif. The only man who could or would do it, Leif swung off his horse and put his huge arms around Garrett to pull him away.
Stoddard dropped unconscious to the ground and Garrett stepped back, staring in shock, "Rouse him," he said, feeling a sick pleasure—he recognized it as such—at the sight. Gayle landed two hard slaps to his face and Stoddard opened his eyes to hear: "Aye, such a quick death will not be your fate. I will make you live just long enough to watch the great show I will make of your daughter's rape, then to feel your own castration." He turned away. His disgust with himself finally reached the depth of his soul. "Tie and sack him."
*****