Nightingale. Part 10

John's shout made Jessica jump. "Shut yerself up or I'll slit yer throat and stop yer blathering." The man quailed beneath John's glare. "This is between me and my lady. Has nothing to do with you."

"We was to get the money chest off the coach here and divvy up what's in it."

Bear looked alert, but spoke with uncharacteristic humility. "There's no money chest riding here, only the meager sum we carry in our purses."

"What's in the baskets there at yer feet?"

"Food to see us to the lady's home and back."

"Throw 'em down."

"The food baskets?"

"Right."

Bear did as he was told.

John turned in his saddle and squinted at his three cohorts, then looked back at the coachman. "Empty yer pockets then." He tossed a careless look at Jessica. "The three a' ya."

She reached back onto the seat for her purse. It contained ten ducats - her egg money.

"What's this?" John jingled the coins that were swallowed as he dribbled them into his hand. "The man's a duke, you say, yet he don't give ye any more than this for traveling?"

"That's not his money," she said, swelling with indignation. "I wouldn't take charity from any man, John. You know that. That's my money, from selling the eggs from my own hens."

His face twisted as he shook the ducats from his hand into his trouser pocket. "I'll hold 'em for ye, la.s.s, return 'em when our time comes." He gave her a significant look and a wink.

Caught by surprise, she couldn't control the involuntary shiver and was glad he didn't notice.

John and his men yanked their mounts around, bounded into the woods, and were out of sight when the outriders came into view.

"Why are ye stopped?" one of the men shouted. "What's amiss?"

Jessica stared at Bear and Figg, wordlessly begging them to keep her secret, promising with the plea in her eyes to repay the money they had forfeited.

Shifting his eyes from her to the outriders, Bear said something about a loose harness.

Jessica's brother, Brandon, looked up from a kettle of wash steaming over a fire in the yard and stared at Jessica waving to him from the coach.

"Where've you been, girl?" He eyed the rig and the outriders suspiciously. "What's all this?"

He stopped stirring and wiped his hands on the ap.r.o.n covering his trousers.

Jessica absently allowed Figg to hand her out of the carriage.

"I'm here to ask a favor of you, Brandon," she said, ignoring her brother's questions. As his expression darkened, she rushed to continue. "The job will pay us a lot of money, if I can arrange things so I can do what is required."

Using the favorable responses she'd gotten from John Lout as a guide, Jessica repeated her description of the duke, again painting him as old and decrepit, temporarily incapacitated and willing to pay for her time until he healed.

"You're asking me to take care of this carping old woman by myself?" Brandon scowled as if not able to believe what he was hearing, and glanced toward the cottage.

"Yes."

Jessica didn't mention the duke had offered to let their mother live at the keep. After considering, she decided declining was the wisest course. She had trouble enough caring for her mother without having the woman pampered by a houseful of servants. Returned to their cottage afterward, her mother would, no doubt, expect Jessica to provide the care delivered by an entire staff, including frequent baths and fancy meals.

"He will pay me," said Jessica. "More than I could make off my hens and Mr. Maxwell in a year."

As she expected, mention of payment eased her brother's concern.

"She doesn't require much, Bran." Jessica used the childhood nickname and gazed up at him to remind him that he was taller and older and had done little lately to contribute to their mother's care or upkeep.

"You could live here for the few days required. The cottage is warm on a chill night. You can hunt. If you circulate word, mothers of eligible girls will bring all the food you can eat."

"And wag their pig-faced daughters to simper and flutter their lashes at me." He eyed Jessica skeptically. "How much?"

"Maybe as much as a hundred pounds."

Brandon's eyes rounded.

"They say the old duke is generous that way." She increased her volume. "Ask the coachmen." She turned appealing eyes toward the coach in the road a short distance away. Bear, again seeing the plea in her face, whether he had heard, or not, nodded a.s.surance that whatever she alleged, was true.

"I'll do it for half," Brandon said, trying to appear sure of himself, but continuing to look ridiculous in his washer woman ap.r.o.n.

"Half?" She made her tone indignant. She did not want to promise any portion of her earnings before they were in her hands. Also, of course, Brandon would be suspicious if she agreed too easily. "That isn't fair. I do all the work and you get half the pay?"

"All the work?" He looked at the kettle of laundry still bubbling twenty feet from them. "You're expecting me to provide your mother's food, fix her meals, and clean up after her."

"She is your mother, too. Those are the things I do for her every day, with no help from you, Brandon Blair, much less pay."

"You're a woman. You're supposed to do those things."

"I'm supposed to do those things for a husband and family of my own, like Dulcie does for Clarence. You and she have left me responsible for Mum while Dulcie runs a home of her own and you run wild, cuckolding wealthy men, dipping into their wives and into their pockets while never pa.s.sing a bit along to Ma or me."

"Wedding John Lout seems little improvement over what you do here for Ma."

"Marry John Lout? Whatever made you think I was going to do that?"

"You've been betrothed since you were tots, Jess. Everybody knows it."

"Being betrothed is no guarantee a man and a woman will wed."

It suited her purpose to encourage his thinking it. Only today she again had exploited the a.s.sumption. She had played similar scenes for similar reasons since he declared them betrothed, when she was six and he, ten. Brandon must be mad to think she would marry John Lout. She would die first, or disappear, which was nearer her actual plan.

To create a spirit of camaraderie, Jessica walked to the wash kettle and, with disregard for her fine, new apparel, she picked up the stirring paddle and began to work the boiling clothes.

As she manipulated the laundry, she also manipulated her brother, haggling until he agreed to one-third of the one hundred pounds she expected from the duke.

Calculating, she had bartered fifty ducats to John Lout and thirty-three and one-third to Brandon. How much would that leave? The actual promised five hundred pounds less eighty-three and one-third pounds. She smiled. The balance would allow her to leave Welter for good, once she consigned her other obligations.

Before hanging the clothes to dry, Jessica asked Brandon to loan her any money he had. Grudgingly, he produced three guineas. She walked to the carriage and handed Bear the money.

"Take your men to the tavern in Welter for food and drink," she said and fanned a hand to forestall his argument. "We no longer have food or drink."

Bear squared his substantial jaw. "The duke ordered us to guard you with our lives, Miss."

She put her hands on her hips. "My brother will watch after me, Bear. Besides that, we have only one squirrel to cook. One will scarcely feed our mother and Brandon and me, much less the eight of you."

With an annoyed look at Brandon, Bear nodded. "We'll be back after we've eaten. Be ready to leave when we return, by mid-afternoon. No later." His words sounded more like a threat than a promise.

As the carriage with the ducal crest rumbled off down the road, Jessica walked into the hut to greet her mother.

She removed the woman's soiled clothes and bathed her with warm water from a basin, listening all the while to complaints. Jessica changed the bed before preparing the meal.

When the hut was filled with the aroma of cooking meat and Jessica had made a pan of biscuits to serve with the squirrel Brandon had killed that morning, she mentioned her hens.

"Brandon, my girls need feeding while I'm away." She watched as her brother sopped gravy with a biscuit. "They are important to our income, Mum's and mine.

"You need to go to the pens mornings and evenings to throw them some grain."

Without looking at her, he said, "It'll cost you another ten."

"The hens provide food for your mother, Brandon."

"All right, seven, but no less."

"Five. You sometimes eat here, too."

"All right, five, and the thirty-three."

"Done," she said, offering a hand.

He took her hand in his greasy one and smiled. She smiled back. He had already forgotten the one-third pound. He might overlook the extra five when time came to pay him. Far be it from her to remind him. After all, she was the one earning the duke's award.

At that thought, a vivid picture of Devlin stole into her mind, momentarily blocking out the crude cottage and its inhabitants.

Earlier, she had visualized the old, feeble duke she described, first to John Lout, then to her brother. This sudden image caught her unaware, so vivid it nearly paralyzed her. No matter how she had described him, Devlin Miracle, the twelfth duke of Fornay, was in truth, the smartest, most devastatingly handsome, witty, virile, thoughtful, generous man she had ever met. The mental picture of him, so lifelike, distracted her, and she scurried to clear her plate.

"Jess-i-ca?" Her mother's wail summoned the daughter back from her illusion. "Have mercy, child, and bring an old woman a bit of tea to settle her stomach."

The image of Lady Anne was superimposed over Devlin's, and Jessica remembered that the dowager and Jessica's mother were nearly the same age. Of course, the dowager had enjoyed tangible benefits as well as the attention of a devoted husband. It wasn't fair to compare the two.

"Yes, Mama." She wiped her hands on her ap.r.o.n and hurried to her mother's bedside for her cup.

Leaning back, his feet crossed and propped in front of the fire, Brandon looked from their mother in her bed to Jessica.

"She could get up and fetch that herself."

Their mother flashed him an angry look. "I no longer have dependable use of my legs, Brandon. Jessica knows that."

"It's your own sloth, Ma, that keeps you bedfast. That and Jessica's energy. You have her fooled, but not me, and I'm the one's going to be seeing after you for the next ... " He looked startled. "For how long, Jess?"

"Maybe as long as ten days." Seeing his scowl, she revised. "Maybe less, depending."

"Will he pay you more for a longer stay?"

"It is likely."

Brandon pursed his lips. "If it's a week, the old girl may be back on her feet and waiting on herself by then."

Their mother narrowed her eyes at him. Jessica recognized, for the first time, that these two, mother and son, were both accustomed to having their own way. The only thought worse than returning home to support her mother and argue with Brandon was the prospect of marrying John Lout.

Dear G.o.d, she hoped that did not happen. She needed money to escape - and find a way to provide for her mother without being physically present herself.

The coach had begun its return trip when Jessica signaled a stop. Figg leaped down, strode to the carriage door, and poked his head inside.

"What is it ye'r needing, Miss?"

"A moment's conversation with Bear," she said.

Bear clamored off the box. At Jessica's nod, he opened the door and offered a hand to steady her step down. She walked a little way before she motioned for him to accompany her.

They walked in silence before she turned to confront him.

"There are things I do not know," she began. "I might be of more a.s.sistance to the duke if I were enlightened."

He gave a series of nods, indicating he understood.

She looked into his eyes trying to decide if she should trust him. "What is your true name, Bear?"

"Ben Bruin."

"Ah, so that's why they call you Bear."

"That and my size, Miss."

"Will you tell me how you became friends with His Grace?"

It was like pulling teeth, but gradually Bear warmed to her questions.

He had been a wanderer and nearly thirty years of age when he tramped into Gull's Way some twenty years before.

"The old duke's sons were h.e.l.lions back then," Bear said, smiling a bit as he drifted back in memory. "They were into every nook and cranny, every cave and hole - harmless places mostly, along with some that wasn't so harmless. The old duke and her ladyship needed help with 'em."

Jessica did not want to look at the man or distract him once she had him talking.