Kent's Orphans: The Prisoner Part 1

Kent's Orphans.

The Prisoner.

Karyn Monk.

For GENEVIEVE.

with all my love.

FUGITIVE LOVE.

"You could have been killed," Genevieve said. "All it would have taken was for someone to recognize you and you would have been dragged into jail and hanged by nightfall."

Haydon regarded her with steady calm. She sensed his powerful attraction to her, felt it as keenly as if his hands were upon her and his mouth was over hers. She drew the blanket around her tighter, only to feel his heat and scent engulf her senses further. Her voice was barely a whisper. "Why?"

She studied him, waiting. Haydon felt as if she were trying to look inside him and understand who he really was. She had a right to know. She had risked herself and her beloved family to keep him safe. There was only one reason why he'd acted as he did, but he scarcely dared admit it to himself. And yet in that moment he could suddenly no longer contain it.

"I did it for you, Genevieve."

Her eyes widened. A terrible, desperate longing surged through her, the need to be held by him, to be kissed and stroked and covered by the glorious power and heat of him. With a little sob she ran to him, wrapped her arms around his neck, and crushed her lips to his as she drew him closer to her heart.

Chapter One.

INVERARAY, SCOTLAND.

WINTER 1861.

HE CRACKED OPEN A WEARY EYE, HIS VISION blurred by pain and fever.

"Evenin', yer lordship." A heavy set of iron manacles dangled ominously from the warder's grimy fist. "How are we keepin' tonight?"

Haydon regarded him warily and said nothing.

The warder laughed, exposing a jagged array of rotting teeth. "Quiet this evenin', are we?" With his muddy boot he nudged the dish of congealed porridge abandoned at the foot of Haydon's wooden bed. "What's this? Supper not to yer likin', milord?"

"The lad can have it." Haydon nodded at the scrawny figure opposite him hunched upon the frigid floor. "I'm not hungry."

The rawboned youth did not bother to look up, but remained huddled in a ball, his thin arms locked around his knees in a vain attempt to find some warmth.

"What say ye, Jack?" asked the warder, shifting his attention. "Are ye wantin' his lordship's supper to fill yer belly?"

The boy looked up, his gray eyes hard and glinting with naked hostility. A thin white scar marred the otherwise smooth skin of his left cheek. "No."

The warder laughed. The rations provided in the prison were as foul as they were mean, and he knew the lad had to be hungry. "Hard little b.u.g.g.e.r, ain't ye? Don't need a thing from anyone-except for what ye steal, of course. Thievin' runs in yer blood just like whorin' ran in yer ma's, don't it, lad?"

The boy's lean body tensed. Haydon watched as his skinny arms tightened farther around his knees, fighting to keep his anger under control.

"That's the trouble with ye wh.o.r.es' b.a.s.t.a.r.ds," continued the warder. "Ye're born with bad blood and ye die with bad blood, and in between ye do nothin' but stink and make life a misery for the rest of us. Well, today," he drawled, jangling his manacles ominously in front of the lad's face, "I'm goin' to see if I can't beat some of that bad blood out of ye."

A hint of fear seeped into Jack's cold gaze.

Haydon clenched his jaw as he slowly eased himself onto one elbow, fighting a wave of pain and dizziness. The beating he had received some two weeks earlier had broken several ribs, and fever had sapped him of much of his strength. Even so, concern for the lad made him force himself to a sitting position. "What are you talking about?" he demanded.

"Been sentenced to thirty-six stripes o' the lash, our young Jack has." The warder took perverse pleasure in the alarm that drained the blood from the youth's filthy face. "Did ye think I'd forgotten about that, lad?" He laughed, then spat on the floor. "The sheriff takes a dim view of sc.u.m like you stealin' valuables from honest folk. Thinks a little beating and a few years spent at a reformatory school in Glasgow might cure ye of yer evil ways. But we know different, don't we, Jack?" He sank his beefy hand into the boy's hair and hauled him roughly to his feet. "We know a filthy little s.h.i.t like yerself can only end up dead, either killed by yer own kind, or hanged as a murderer, like his lordship over there." He shoved Jack hard against the wall. "Now, I suspect that bein' strapped to the whippin' table with yer wrists manacled and yer bare a.r.s.e bleedin' beneath the lash of my whip ain't goin' to cure ye of yer wicked ways. All the same, I want ye to know," he finished, laughing, "that I am goin' to b.l.o.o.d.y enjoy it."

Rage, hard and hot, suddenly flooded the lad. With a quickness and strength that Haydon found surprising in a half-starved youth, Jack plowed his bony fist deep into the warder's flaccid gut. Sour air blew from the jailer's rotting mouth, part groan and part curse. Before he could recover, Jack had drawn his fist back and rammed it into his tormentor's jaw. The warder's head snapped back, cracking his decrepit teeth together with a sickening crunch.

"I'll kill ye!" the warder raged. He dropped his manacles and swung a heavy fist at the boy. Jack ducked just in time, deftly avoiding the blow. "Come here, ye rotten little p.r.i.c.k!"

He swung a clumsy fist again, and Jack spun neatly beyond it, betraying an uncommon ability to evade a.s.sault. His fury augmented with frustration, the warder charged at the boy like an angry bull, ramming into him with all the power of his substantial girth. Jack went flying into the wall, his thin body and head crashing against the frigid stone surface. Pain glazed his eyes and he stood helplessly a moment, fighting to regain his strength and focus.

"I'll teach ye to dare raise a fist to yer betters!" roared the warder, pinning the boy against the wall as he prepared to smash the lad's face with his fist.

Powerful hands suddenly clamped upon the warder's shoulders with brutal force. In one swift motion, the warder was ripped from Jack and sent hurtling across the cell. He crashed into Haydon's wooden bed, shattering the structure beneath his considerable weight. With a groan, he extricated himself from the debris, then stared at Haydon with equal measures of surprise and fury.

"Touch the lad again," Haydon intoned softly, "and I'll kill you."

He forced his labored breath to come in shallow pants, trying to manage the pain tearing through his side. It was an effort just to stand, but Haydon could not let the warder see that or he would be finished. And so he stood tall and locked his legs beneath him, hoping to G.o.d that the dizziness swirling through his brain would cease before he was forced to succ.u.mb to it.

The warder hesitated. Haydon was a man of impressive stature, and a convicted murderer besides. Clearly his jailer was trying to a.s.sess his odds of besting him before he made his next move.

A drop of fevered sweat trickled down Haydon's cheek.

The warder's mouth split into an ugly smile. "Not feelin' well, are ye, milord?" Sneering, he rose to his feet.

"I'm feeling well enough to bash your skull in," Haydon a.s.sured him.

"Are ye now?" His opponent looked doubtful. "Somehow, I don't believe ye."

With that he grabbed a heavy wooden plank from the broken bed and smashed it with all his might against Haydon's injured side.

It was a blow that would have been debilitating for any man, but with his broken ribs and nauseating fever, it was unbearable. Haydon sank to his knees, fighting the agonizing pain racing through the muscle and bone of his fractured rib cage. Before he could shield himself from the next blow, the warder struck again. The heavy bat cracked against his spine, knocking him to the floor. Overcome, Haydon was unable to protect himself as the warder began to kick him savagely about the ribs and back with his heavy, mud-crusted boots.

"Stop it!" screamed Jack, springing onto the warder's back and pummeling him with his fists. "You'll kill him!"

The warder abandoned his attack on Haydon as he tried to knock Jack off his shoulders. He rammed backwards into the wall, effectively disengaging Jack's hold. "And I'm goin' to kill ye as well, ye stinkin' little son of a b.i.t.c.h!" He jerked the boy to his feet, locked his hands around his throat and began to strangle him.

"Take your hands off him," commanded an outraged woman's voice. "Now!"

Startled, the warder released his grip on Jack.

"Good G.o.d, Sims," gasped the prison governor. "What the devil is going on here?"

With excruciating effort, Haydon turned his head. Governor Thomson was a short, round apple of a man, with a badly receding hairline. He compensated for the lack of hair on his head by proudly promoting the wiry gray bush that sprouted from his chin, which he kept neatly trimmed in the precise shape of a gardening spade. He was dressed from head to toe in his customary black, which Haydon supposed was appropriate attire for a man who spent his days within the forbidding walls of a prison. In a way, he mused, Governor Thomson was just as condemned by his profession as those whose pathetic lives he imprisoned.

"These two prisoners were tryin' to kill me!" yelped the warder.

"Governor Thomson, is it your policy to permit the use of brutal force on mere children?"

The woman standing beside the governor was an apparition in gray, her face sheltered by her bonnet, her slender body lost somewhere within the folds of the dark cloak that enveloped her. And yet there was a self-a.s.surance to her that was unmistakable, a dignified confidence and barely contained fury that filled the frigid little cell with righteous energy.

"Of course not, Miss MacPhail," Governor Thomson a.s.sured her, his head shaking nervously from side to side to underscore the point. "All our prisoners are treated with fairness and dignity-unless, of course," he amended, glancing down at Haydon, "they pose a threat to others. In a situation like that, I'm sure you understand, Mr. Sims here is obliged to restrain them."

"They were tryin' to kill me!" the warder squawked, trying his best to look as if he had barely evaded death. "Attacked me like a pair of wild animals, they did-I'll be lucky if I haven't broken anything." He rubbed his elbow, evidently in the hope of eliciting some sympathy.

"And why do you suppose they did such a thing?" demanded the woman icily.

The warder shrugged. "I was just takin' the lad for his whippin', when he suddenly went mad and-"

"You were going to whip this boy?"

Haydon couldn't decide which was greater, her horror or her fury.

"The sheriff has sentenced him to be lashed," explained Governor Thomson, as if that somehow absolved him and the warder of any responsibility in the matter. "Thirty-six stripes, in addition to forty days imprisonment here. Then he is to spend a further two years in a reformatory school."

"For what crime?"

"The lad's a thief," Governor Thomson reported.

"Is he, now?" The woman's tone was blatantly caustic.

She turned and approached Haydon, releasing the ties of her bonnet as she did so. The dark headpiece slipped down her back, revealing a woman of far greater youth and beauty than he had initially suspected. Her face was pale against a ma.s.s of honey-colored hair tinged with red, which was carelessly escaping the pins she had used to try to contain it. Her eyes were large and dark against her milky skin, her features small and elegantly carved. Her beauty was as luminous as it was out of place in the foul darkness of the cell, as if a glorious flower had suddenly bloomed between one of the cracks in the filthy floor. Untroubled by the prospect of dirtying her clothes, she knelt beside Haydon, her brows drawn together with concern as she studied his pain-etched face.

"Are you badly injured, sir?"

Haydon regarded her in silent fascination. She was not so young after all, for the fine web of lines around her eyes and across her forehead were testament to a life lived at least twenty-five years, perhaps more. She had known trouble in those years, the faint shadows beneath her eyes and the furrows between her brows made that clear enough, but he sensed there had been much laughter as well. In that moment he longed for nothing more than to see her smile, to watch the warm light of amus.e.m.e.nt drift across her lovely face, and see the sweet lines around her eyes crinkle with pleasure.

"No," he murmured thickly. For all he knew, inside he was bleeding to death. It scarcely mattered. Dying upon the floor with this magnificent creature looking down upon him with such tender concern was vastly preferable to being hanged the following day before a jeering mob. He stared at her intently, willing her to stay near, afraid that if he so much as blinked she would be gone and he would be left to finish whatever remained of his miserable life alone.

She laid her hand against the rough growth of beard on his cheek, then placed it lightly upon his fevered brow. Her touch was soft and cool and sure. Somehow, it filled him with a kind of fragile hope. It must be the fever, he realized with vague disappointment. There was no hope for him.

"This man is gravely ill," she announced, her eyes never leaving his. "He is almost afire with fever and he has been badly beaten. You must send for a doctor immediately."

The warder snorted with laughter.

Governor Thomson was only slightly more courteous, regarding her as if she were utterly innocent in matters that were best handled by men. "I am afraid, Miss MacPhail, that this man has been found guilty of murder and is sentenced to hang tomorrow. Since his crime is of the most serious nature and his punishment but hours away, I'm afraid I cannot justify troubling the prison surgeon to examine him-especially considering he will not live long enough to benefit from any treatment that might be prescribed."

Her body stiffened, although she was careful to keep her expression composed. Clearly the mention of murder and hanging had affected whatever her previous a.s.sessment of him had been. She withdrew her hand and Haydon felt lost, as if the gentle thread of compa.s.sion joining him to her had snapped.

"No," he protested, grasping her wrist and pulling her toward him again.

Alarm flared in her eyes, and he realized his mistake. He could well imagine how he appeared to her; a battered prisoner sprawled on the floor of a dank cell, filthy and unshaven and perhaps crazed by fever, trying to hold her against her will. He closed his eyes in despair, still clinging to her slender wrist, but his grasp was gentle now, and she could have broken free if she wished.

She remained where she was, the skin of her wrist clean and cool against his grimy fingers.

"I am no murderer," he murmured, unable to fathom why it should matter to him that she know this.

She hesitated a moment, studying him soberly. "I am sorry, sir," she finally said in a soft voice, "but that is now a matter between you and G.o.d." Gently she extricated herself from his hold. "Jack, would you kindly help me move this man to that bed?"

"I'll move him," growled the warder.

"Thank you, but I think it would be best if the boy and I did it," she returned firmly.

Jack obediently went to Haydon's side. Together he and the woman helped him to his feet and onto the remaining bed.

"If you will not call for the surgeon, perhaps you will permit me to send my maid to tend to this man this evening," she said, adjusting the coa.r.s.e folds of a foul-smelling blanket over Haydon. "I see no reason why he should not be permitted some measure of comfort on his final evening."

Governor Thomson stroked his thick gray beard uncertainly. "It really isn't necessary-"

"It would scarcely reflect well upon you or your prison were he not fit to stand during his execution tomorrow," Miss MacPhail pointed out. "It might give cause for some to question the treatment he received while he was entrusted to your care." She cast an accusing look at the warder.

"On the other hand, I see no harm to your maid paying him a visit," Governor Thomson relented.

"Very good." Satisfied that she had done all that was within her power to help Haydon, she turned her attention to Jack.

"Permit me to introduce myself, Jack. My name is Genevieve MacPhail, and I would like to speak with you-"

"I never stole nothin'," he spat vehemently.

"I don't care whether you did or not."

Surprise flickered in his gaze, but he was quick to shroud it with sullen indifference. "Then what do you want?"

"I live in a house in Inveraray with some other children who, like yourself, have been through some rather difficult times-"

"I'm not a child," he interrupted rudely.

"Forgive me. Of course you aren't. You must be what-fifteen?"

He straightened his posture, pleased that she had overestimated his age. "About that."

She nodded as if greatly impressed by this. "Well, I was wondering, Jack, if instead of staying here in prison and then proceeding to a reformatory school, you would be willing to come and live with me for the duration of your sentence."

Jack's eyes narrowed. "You mean like a servant?" His tone was openly scornful.

"No," she replied, untroubled by his hostile att.i.tude. "But you would have ch.o.r.es to do, the same as everyone there does."

He regarded her skeptically. "What kind of ch.o.r.es?"