Page 11 of Exile's Return

‘You are too little! Aunt Agnes, please play with us.’

Summoning a bright smile, at odds with her sombre mood, Agnes picked up the ball and threw it to Lizzie.

‘That’s enough,’ she said. ‘Let’s go back.’

Tossing the ball in the air as she walked, Lizzie chattered about her favourite games and how they should set up a swing in the garden at Charvaley. Agnes walked beside her, holding Henry’s small hand.

‘Would Father mind if we used the oak tree? Oh, I forgot.’ Lizzie stopped, her mouth trembling and her blue eyes filling with tears.

The ball fell from her hand and ran unregarded down the filthy street.

A thin boy in ragged clothes stepped out of a doorway and retrieved the ball from where it had come to rest against a pile of horse excrement. He looked at it, wrinkling his nose before dunking it in a water trough.

Lizzie flew at him. ‘How dare you touch my things, you horrible, dirty boy!’

‘I never…Here…’ The boy took a step back, holding the ball in his hand.

‘Aunt Agnes, he tried to steal our ball. Give it back at once!’ Her blonde curls shaking with outrage, Lizzie put her hands on her hips and glared at the urchin.

The boy seemed to be rooted to the ground, apparently unable to speak or move in the face of Lizzie’s anger.

‘May I be of assistance?’

A dark shadow fell across them, and Agnes looked up to see the man she had passed on the stairs of the inn the previous day. An involuntary shiver ran down her spine as she took in his dark clothes, tanned face and the scar that ran across the right cheekbone, giving him a faintly sinister look. However, the smile that curved his lips and the twinkle in his light grey eyes alleviated his ferocious appearance.

‘Thank you, but I think there has been a misunderstanding —’ Agnes began.

The boy looked up at the stranger. ‘I weren’t stealing,’ he said. ‘It rolled away and I just gave it a clean. Honest, Cap’n!’

The man held out his hand and the boy dropped the object of dispute into it. With a courtly bow, the man presented it to Lizzie. ‘Yours, I believe?’

Lizzie had the grace to colour. ‘Thank you, sir,’ she said.

Agnes prodded her charge in the back. ‘I think you owe this boy an apology,’ she said.

Lizzie’s back straightened and the colour in her cheeks heightened. ‘I will not apologise to this…this street urchin.’

The dark man frowned. ‘But why ever not, mistress? He saved your ball and cleaned it for you. Didn’t you, Matt?’

The boy, Matt, curled his lip in derision. ‘I’ve no use for a stupid ball,’ he said. ‘Why’d I want to keep it?’

‘Apologise, Elizabeth,’ Agnes said, employing the tone that her young charge would recognise as an order.

Lizzie sniffed audibly and looked down at the filthy cobbles. ‘Sorry,’ she said.

Matt said nothing; he just stared at Lizzie with wide, fascinated eyes.

The man laid a hand on the boy’s shoulder. ‘Matt?’

‘‘Pology accepted,’ the boy responded, with the same amount of enthusiasm with which the apology had been tendered.

The man looked up and caught Agnes’s eye with a half smile that seemed to sayChildren!and she wondered what this filthy bit of street refuse had to do with the dark, elegant stranger.

‘Matt, I’m glad you are here. I have a task for you,’ the man said.

The boy visibly brightened. ‘Yes, Cap’n. Anyfing I can do for you!’

‘Thank you for your assistance, sir,’ Agnes said with a small curtsey.