The Trials of Alaric (Twist Upon a Regency Tale #8)

Chapter Eighteen

B ea and Reina went out early to visit Mrs. Gorry. The poor woman had had a disturbed night, with Padeen in pain and unable to sleep, and two of the children suffering nightmares in which their father was beating them. She was exhausted but determined.

“I can’t have Eamon back, Lady Bea. But he is my husband. The law says I cannot stop him from moving back in, from beating me, from beating the children, from getting another child on me. What am I to do? If I went to my family, my father would send me back to Eamon, though I think my brothers would help me. But I don’t want to leave my friends and the children’s friends. I have a job here, too. Who is to say I could get work again? Especially work that lets me have time if the children need me. What am I to do?”

“I will talk to my father,” Bea told her. “I think you can apply for a separation on account of his violence. I am certain Dr. Bryant would stand witness to the injuries to the children. You would need the magistrate to appoint someone else as guardian of the children—someone you trusted. You would retain custody, Mrs. Gorry, but someone else would have the legal right to stop Gorry from taking the children away from you. Perhaps your father, or one of your brothers.”

Mrs. Gorry narrowed her eyes, thinking. “Would your father do it, my lady? Gorry is not going to come after the children if your father stands for them.”

It would be the ideal solution. “I will ask him,” Bea said. “At the moment, you are safe. Gorry is locked up, and he is not going anywhere before he comes up before my father to explain why he should not be exiled.”

Back at the castle, she and Reina joined the rest of the house party in the drawing room, where Papa was about to tell the men about the exercise ahead of them. They would be moving the estate’s stud bulls from one pasture to another. It was a small herd—only five bulls—but they were the Isle of Claddach’s own breed. Small for cattle, hardy, and clever.

The Claddach cow was gentle of disposition and gave copious quantities of rich milk. The Claddach bull’s character, by contrast, was surly at best and downright dangerous at worst. Still, if they worked together as a team and obeyed the instructions of the herdsmen, the suitors should be able to manage with little difficulty.

Papa raised a hand as a signal to be quiet, and the room hushed. But, wait a minute. Where was Alaric? Luke, too, was missing.

Even as she had the thought, Fairweather spoke up. “Redhaven and Versey are not here, my lord. Shall we send a footman to let them know the meeting is about to start?”

“They are gone,” Beverley sneered. “Redhaven’s brother Viscount Stavely came to fetch him to face justice for raping Lady Stavely back when she was engaged to Redhaven. I don’t know why Versey went with him.”

There was a burst of comments. Bea didn’t listen. She was having trouble catching her breath and her head was spinning.

“Silence!” Papa raised his voice. It had the desired effect. Everyone fell silent.

“Lewiston,” Papa said to Bea’s uncle, “I am distressed to have to inform you that I cannot like your son. He tries to cause trouble. He listens at doors. He spreads malicious gossip. He treats other people with disrespect. He does not act the part of a gentleman.”

Beverley’s mother began a protest. “Well, I never…”

However, her husband said, “He is, I will acknowledge, a disappointment. I think his cousin would be the making of him. Beatrice my dear, I do hope you will have him.”

“I will not,” Beatrice said, absently. Her mind was still absorbed in Beverley’s accusations.

Beverley added his voice to Aunt Lewiston’s, both of them decrying Bea’s unwomanly determination and Papa’s foolishness.

“Enough,” Papa said, with some force, and again, the room fell silent.

Beverley was the first to speak. “I only speak the truth,” he said. “Stavely did say that Redhaven r… forced Lady Stavely. I heard him.”

“You were not in the room,” Papa said, “so I must suppose you had your ear to my study door and were forced to move away before you heard the rest of the discussion. Since you have repeated the accusation in front of others, I shall explain that the accusation Beverley overheard was retracted when Lord Stavely realized he was mistaken. Redhaven and Versey have gone with Stavely—voluntarily—to assist with a family matter. They will return by this evening. I have excused them from the bull run and instructed them to be back for dinner.”

“You have favored Redhaven from the beginning,” Beverley accused. “He should never have been part of the trials, with his terrible reputation. My aunt agrees with me, do you not, Aunt?

Mama looked embarrassed and began shifting restlessly, avoiding everyone’s eyes, while she sought something to say. “Well, Beverley, dear, there are different ways of looking at such things, and taking one thing against another…”

“I shall be the arbiter of who is suitable and who is not,” said Papa, sternly. “All you need to know, Beverley, is that you are not.”

“I withdraw my suit,” Beverley declared. “I wish nothing further to do with you, with Claddach, or with your daughter.” On the final word, he swung around on one heel and left the room.

“Good riddance,” said Papa.

“I have never been so insulted in my life!” Aunt Lewiston declared.

Papa pressed his lips together as if he was swallowing the first words he came to mind. Bea would love to know the retort he was refusing to vocalize.

“Oh, Dorothy,” Mama said to her sister. “Don’t take on so.”

“Your daughter will die an old maid, Mary,” Aunt Lewiston insisted. “You mark my words.” She marched off after her son.

“Oh dear,” said Mama, looking between Bea and her father. “Now look what you have done.” And she ran off after her sister.

“Are you sorry to lose your cousin as a suitor, daughter?” Papa asked.

“No, Papa. But did Lord Stavely really accuse Mr. Redhaven of… that ?”

Papa said that Lord Stavely had accepted he was mistaken, but he must have had a reason for the terrible accusation, must he not? Bea had trouble believing that Alaric would leave with his brother if such a matter still lay between them. What had really happened?

Papa was not minded to be helpful. “You can apply to Mr. Redhaven for further information. For now, we must move on to the bull herding.” He pointed to the chief cattle herd, who was waiting quietly in the corner. “Gentlemen, you will go with Mylechreest, here. He will tell you what you need to do.” He went to follow the gentleman from the room, but Bea placed a hand on his arm.

“Papa, Mrs. Gorry is anxious to separate herself from Gorry. By law, and with the children given into her custody, and into the guardianship of a man she trusts. Will you help?”

Papa nodded. “The young men will be at least half an hour sorting themselves out, and perhaps another half hour doing the moving. I have a few minutes, Bea. I shall ride down into town on my way to the bull pens, and see what Gorry has to say for himself.”

But when the constables went to fetch Gorry from the cells, he was gone. How he had escaped, no one knew, but the constables soon found that he’d taken his former employer’s fishing smack from the harbor, and that he had a passenger. People who had been on the harbor walls at the time swore that the passenger was Lord Beverley.

*

Tarquin, Alaric, and Luke decided to leave the footmen with the carriage rather than precipitate a fight by arriving in strength. Perhaps Bebbington would be sensible about the matter, though they doubted it, since their approach to the estate had been interrupted when a young woman had stepped out in front of the horses calling, “Lord Stavely!”

It was Eloise’s maid. She told them she had been turned out of the house and told her mistress would no longer require her. Certain her master would return for his wife she had been waiting in the bushes since late morning.

Bebbington would not see them, and his butler tried to shut the door in their faces.

When they were refused entry, Tarquin pushed past the butler and stood in the entry hall, calling for Eloise. His shouts brought Bebbington out of his study. “She is not returning with you, Stavely. Get off my lands before I have you thrown off.”

Alaric and Luke moved up beside Tarquin. Bebbington’s eyes widened and then narrowed. “Redhaven. You are not welcome here. Nor is your friend. Watts! Summon footmen to have these intruders removed.”

The butler looked alarmed but left through an unobtrusive door.

“You have no legal right to keep Eloise from her husband,” Alaric told Bebbington, “and if your footmen lay hands upon me and Versey, here, we shall sue you for assault.”

“Eloise!” Tarquin shouted at the top of his voice. He was rewarded by a loud clatter and the sound of screaming. No. Not screaming. Words, in a high-pitched voice.

“Help! Tarquin! Help!”

Just that, and then silence, but Tarquin was already leaping up the stairs, two at a time. Alaric and Luke followed. Bebbington did not—presumably he was waiting for reinforcements.

At the second-floor landing, Tarquin stopped, looking at the doors that led from the stairwell on three sides. “This floor, or the next?” he asked.

Alaric shook his head. He didn’t know. They would have to search each floor and fight off the footmen he could hear muttering down in the entry hall.

“Eloise!” Tarquin shouted again and had his reply. Another large crash and the sound of a voice swearing mingled with a shriek of pain.

“This way.” Tarquin pulled open the door between them and the source of sound, into a passage with closed doors on both sides. Behind them, on the stairs, the thump of feet indicated that the footmen had overcome their reluctance to tangle with three members of the aristocracy.

As Tarquin hurried down the passage, listening at each door, Alaric removed a pike from a display on the wall. Luke must have guessed his intention, for he pulled the ties that held back the drapes on either side of an alcove. They worked together to tie the handles of the door leading to the stairwell to the pike, which was long enough to stretch the width of the door frame.

Just in time. They had no sooner finished tying and tightening the rope than someone began pulling on the door on the other side.

“There will be other stairs,” Alaric said to Luke.

Tarquin had heard something at one of the doors, for he was kicking at it with his booted foot. Alaric came up beside him, and at the count of three, they both hit the door at the same time. It burst open. Despite the seriousness of the situation, Alaric felt a surge of joy at working in unison once more with his twin.

Eloise was inside, struggling in the grip of another woman. The sudden entrance of Tarquin and Alaric had the captor losing her hold, and Eloise threw herself into Tarquin’s arms. “I knew you would come for me. I told my brother.”

“I am sorry,” Tarquin told her. “I should have listened to you.”

“Time for apologies later,” said Alaric. “We need to get Eloise out of here.”

“My maid,” Eloise said. “They took her away. I have to rescue Maisie.”

“Maisie is safe,” Tarquin assured her. “She waited for us outside. She is in the carriage.”

Luke had opened the window and was staring out. “We can get out this way,” he said. “We’ll need to tie the sheets together. Alaric, can you get the door shut again? And locked?”

Alaric had been keeping an eye on Eloise’s jailor, but she did not seem to be intending any hostile moves, so he turned his attention to the door. They’d burst it open without breaking it, and it took Alaric a matter of moments to turn the key in the door to free the latch, shut it again, and relocate it. “Help me move that chest in front of it,” he ordered the jailor. She cast a wary glance at the other two men then complied.

Just in time, for there was a thunderous rattle of knocks on the door. “Purston! Open up. Is my sister safe?”

Eloise was climbing out of the window, her face white. Luke had gone ahead, and Tarquin was helping his wife. Alaric frowned at the woman—apparently her name was Purston—and he put his finger to his lips.

“Purston!” came another shout.

“You’d better follow us, Mrs. Purston,” Alaric told the jailor. “Bebbington is likely to take his anger out on you.”

Purston surprised him then. When she began to shout back through the door, Alaric made a move to clap his hand over her mouth to gag her but stopped when he realized she was trying to deceive Bebbington to keep him from realizing that the brothers were already in here with Eloise. “How do I know it is the viscount?” Purston demanded through the door. “You could be the villains after my lady, pretending to be Lord Bebbington.”

She nodded to Alaric and whispered, “You go first, m’lord. I’ll follow.”

“Thank you. Follow and we’ll take you to Birkenhead. We’ll give you some money to get away.”

She curtseyed. “Thankee, m’lord. I’d be right grateful. I’ve no love for them as women and no wish to help them.”

Alaric wasted no more time ducking out the window to climb down the sheet. It wasn’t far. The window looked out over the roof of a lower part of the house, and the other three were already on their way across the roof to the edge where several trees grew close to the house. They were the outliers of a wilderness that stretched all the way to the road where their carriage waited.

As he sprinted after them, he heard a shout, and looked back. They had been seen from another window, and the man there was calling out to others! Mrs. Purston was almost to the lower roof. He didn’t wait for her but followed the others. Eloise froze on the edge of the roof, but Luke held out a hand from the closest branch of the oak and Tarquin murmured to his wife and lifted her, holding her out over the gap until she reached a hand for Luke’s and a foot for the branch, and was safe.

They scrambled together out of Tarquin’s way, and by the time Alaric reached the edge, Tarquin was helping Eloise down the trunk. Alaric took the leap and followed, scrambling down the tree as fast as he could, to join the fight he could hear below him.

Above, the tree shook as Mrs. Purston followed.

Two footmen were trying to stop the escape. Luke was fighting one of them. Tarquin was holding the other off but was hampered by his refusal to let Eloise go. Alaric grabbed the man and threw him into the one Luke was fighting, and they went down in a tumble of arms and legs.

Luke began to relax, then stiffened again as he saw Mrs. Purston descend the tree.

“She’s with us,” Alaric told him. Tarquin and Eloise were already running, hand in hand, into the wilderness.

Mrs. Purston had picked up a fallen branch, with which she thumped the two footmen on the head, one after the other. They subsided into a heap. Luke’s eyebrows shot up, but he said, “Very well. Let’s go, then.”

In moments, they were in the carriage, a little squeezed for room, with the footmen holding on wherever they could to the outside. They headed back to Birkenhead where the yacht awaited.

Except, when they got there, it was to see the yacht sailing away down the Mersey.