Page 57 of The Ladies Least Likely

“ Areah! ” the girl cried. “I knowed ee’d come over so, I knowed it, and still I let ee—” The words stopped, a muffled sound following. A sound like her parents had made in the grip of their fevers, a wounded creature keening with pain.

“Cease your screeching,” the baronet said shortly. “I will not have you in my house until you rid yourself of this unfortunate development.”

“Rid me—rid me!” The girl gasped. Amaranthe shivered at the agony in her voice. “Ee shall give me a coin or three to turn me off, then? I’ve not a penny for my pocket!”

“You dare ask me for money!” Her cousin’s cold fury was worse than any roar. “Your morals are as light as your skirts. Consider yourself released from my employ.” He added with a sneer, “Slattern.”

Amaranthe’s mind refused to order the facts.

Eyde, it would seem, was with child. But for Reuben, wed to pale, fretful Favella, to be father of this babe, and not acknowledge it?

True, a bastard child could not inherit his house and lands, but to turn Eyde off entirely—this was a malice she would not have thought even Reuben possessed.

There was a suck of air, as if her cousin drew on a cheroot. It would be in line with his arrogance for him to smoke in the stables, a building which could easily catch fire. But it was Eyde, sobbing.

“I’ve nowhere to go. No one a’ will take me.”

“That,” said the baronet, “is likewise your problem. Not mine.”

Amaranthe couldn’t distinguish the sounds that followed. A cry, cut off as if bitten, the hiss of sliding leather, then a familiar snap. At a howl from the girl, Amaranthe rushed forward.

Eyde knelt in the tack room, her skirts stirring the dirt and hay upon the floor, her arms flung up over her head as the baronet slashed the short, sharp horsewhip toward her head.

Amaranthe’s heart stopped beating for a moment, though that didn’t stay her steps.

Her life as a rector’s daughter had been so gentle, and she knew only tenderness from her parents.

It had been a sobering education when she fell under her cousin’s wardship and learned a man could be capable of gross indifference to his fellow creatures, as well as insolence and casual cruelty.

Before she knew how she’d arrived there, she stood between Eyde and the baronet, her hands raised, her voice a shriek unfamiliar to her own ears.

“Cousin! Stop, I beseech you.”

The baronet’s lip curled and with an angry, contemptuous stroke he brought the whip down on Amaranthe. The braided leather laid a trail of fire across her forearms and wrists, and the cluster of beads at the tip shredded her fine gloves. Amaranthe sucked in a breath of outrage and true fear.

“She came at me. I’ve a right to protect myself,” Reuben snarled.

“But if you beat her, she might lose the babe.” Amaranthe’s hands burned as if she’d touched acid, and her cousin’s scowl was terrifying. She understood now. He had done something base, and he did not want to be discovered in it.

“’Twould be a solution for us both,” Reuben answered.

The baronet was not a handsome man. Her elder by more than a decade, born the heir of an eldest son, he had always been condescending.

Amaranthe knew from two years of living beneath his roof that he was a man who valued little beyond his own pleasures and the respect he felt due him.

But she had never, until now, known him to be so completely deprived of morals.

“Favella will have fits when she learns you did this.”

The words slipped out before she could consider the wisdom of mentioning the baronet’s wife.

Favella, the one thing in the world the baronet cherished, was delicate and excitable, and not upsetting Favella was the axis about which the household rotated.

Favella’s need not to be vexed was one reason that much of the housekeeping, visiting, and other duties of the house had fallen on Amaranthe.

But for her cousin to defile the marital bed?—

The baronet’s face reddened, his lips in an ugly twist. “Favella isn’t to hear a word of this.” He glared at Amaranthe and then Eyde, who flung her arms around Amaranthe’s knees and clung for dear life.

“I don’t see how she cannot,” Amaranthe blurted.

Eyde’s condition couldn’t be hidden if she stayed in their service, and Amaranthe couldn’t let the baronet toss her out.

Eyde’s family hadn’t been able to support the girl alone; how could they feed two more mouths?

They were more likely to send her away. Illegitimate children had no place in the world.

Her cousin’s face turned calculating, and he stepped forward and grasped her hand. Amaranthe sucked in her breath as his grip pinched where the burning lash had fallen. Her palm stung.

“You forget yourself, cousin.” Reuben’s breath was foul, and she saw rot in his teeth as he bared them at her. “I have been lax with you, I see. Letting you take advantage of my good nature.”

That was a jest, surely. Her cousin kept most of her allowance for himself.

He watched every pat of butter she put on her bread, every lump of sugar she carved off the loaf for her tea.

He read the letters that came and went from her brother at Oxford and her friends from school.

She’d had to leave Miss Gregoire’s when her parents died because Reuben would not stand her tuition.

The baronet pulled Amaranthe toward him, and she turned her face aside as he leaned close, his chuckle wafting onions and sour beer in her face. She breathed through her mouth, trying not to gag with disgust and terror.

“I think, dear cousin, it is time you began earning your keep.”

“I already do everything a wife does,” Amaranthe lashed out, not looking at him. She feared she might faint from the humiliation of being treated so.

He sneered and tugged her arm, trying to pull her against his fleshy stomach, his fleshy thighs. “Not everything, cousin. But perhaps you should. It might teach you a lesson about who your master is.”

Amaranthe bit down on her lip so she didn’t whimper. She was innocent, but she felt her innocence being shredded like rags. Her cousin had done something vile to Eyde, and now he meant to turn his attentions on her.

“Let me go.” Amaranthe drew her arm up and twisted, breaking his grip.

He stepped back, but his expression didn’t falter.

“Make no mistake, cousin .” His leering gaze traveled down her neck and over her bodice.

The smart riding jacket, Favella’s castoff, suddenly felt filthy against her skin.

“You and I will reach a new understanding about your freedoms beneath my roof. You have lived on my generosity long enough.”

He didn’t spare a glance for Eyde as he strode away, dropping the whip on the floor. Amaranthe was tempted to pick it up and throw it at him, but it would serve no purpose. She extended a hand to help Eyde to her feet and winced as Eyde gripped the welts on her palms.

“You cannot stay here at Penwellen, Eyde.” Amaranthe tried to keep her voice from breaking with despair. “Do you have someplace to go?”

Eyde’s face crumpled. “Me mum’s whimmy at er best, and me da—ee’ll do whip me proper.” She wiped away tears. “Miss. Ye can’t stay here neither. He won’t be said nay.”

Amaranthe shuddered and pushed away the dark image Eyde’s words conjured. She’d be whipped to ribbons before she took the risk that her cousin would force himself upon her. “It seems we’re both leaving Penwellen, then. But where are we to find aid?”

Amaranthe had no coin; she’d given her last farthing to Mr. Finney.

She didn’t dare step inside the house. Favella would fly up in the boughs at the sight of her, dirty and bleeding, and Reuben would deny any accusations.

Best to get away quickly and send for her things later.

But where to go? Her chest squeezed with panic.

Her brother, Joseph, lived in tiny rooms at Oxford.

His stipend barely kept him; it could not accommodate a sister and a maid.

Her father’s relatives had sent her to Reuben; they would refuse to support her.

Her mother’s few remaining friends were poor and frail.

But how was she to flee to a strange place, alone and unaided, and what employment was she fit for, eighteen, gentle-born, with a Cornish girl in her keeping who would never be able to find work with a babe in arms?

No one in Haye or Callington would hide them from Reuben.

The baronet might not be admired, but as her legal guardian, he had every right to demand Amaranthe’s return.

No one she knew here could protect her. The nodding acquaintances she had made, aside from Mr. Finney, were Favella’s friends, and so was the rector’s wife.

Amaranthe spared a pang for the thought of Mr. Treen, the man who had taken over the printer’s shop in Callington.

He was handsome and courteous and while all the girls giggled at him, Amaranthe had thought that once or twice he had looked appreciatively on her.

But an acquaintance so slight could not be called upon to intervene between her and a man of the baronet’s standing.

She must think how to get herself and Eyde to safety, and survive along the way.

No good calling Thaker for assistance; the boy did not hear.

He’d help if he could find them, but he had an uncanny way of keeping himself from the baronet’s path.

She would ask at the kitchen door for Cook to wrap them some bread and cheese, and perhaps fetch Amaranthe’s cloak.

At least she had not yet taken her book to the house.

She still had her most precious possession.

It would break her heart to part with it, but she could ask Mr. Finney to return her money.

Or, at worst, sell or pawn the book elsewhere for a roof over their heads.

The trap stood parked in its customary place, the pole resting against the ground. The well and the seat sat empty.

The valise was gone. Reuben had stolen her book.

A red wave of fury washed over Amaranthe, followed by an icy rage. That gesture alone—that he would rob her—told her more than anything else he would not be reasoned with. She must flee if she meant to keep her virtue and possibly her life. The welts on her hands burned as she clenched her fists.

After a quick, hurried exchange with the cook at the kitchen door, the two women had their cloaks and a small basket of food, but little else.

“Where do we two go, then, miss?” Eyde whispered, wide-eyed.

“We shall go to my old schoolmistress at Bath. Miss Gregoire will surely help us.”

Amaranthe eyed the sunny sky, that warm, deep-washed blue that belonged only to the south of England.

How cruel that such a sun would shine on a day that had taken everything from her, but perhaps God in His mercy would grant them fine weather for their travels.

They would catch a farmer’s cart where they may, but most of the path would be spent walking.

With a young girl several months pregnant and Amaranthe in her worn half-boots.

“Upcountry,” Eyde said apprehensively. Anywhere beyond Cornwall was a wild, uncharted country to the Cornish natives.

“Somerset,” Amaranthe confirmed. She took the girl’s arm and they set off north.

She wouldn’t miss Favella. She wouldn’t miss anyone here save Thaker and Mr. Finney.

She was glad, in a way, to rid herself so resolutely of her poisonous cousin.

But what would happen to her and Eyde, if they survived the journey and the footpads and highwaymen along the way, she couldn’t begin to say.

All that she’d miss was her Book of Hours.

She would come back for it. Someday she would confront her cousin and she would win back what he had taken from her.

He could strip her of everything, home, possessions, income, pride, but he could not have her dream of her future. She would not allow him to take that.