Raven's Bride (20 page)

“We’re saved,” breathed Lord Ravensbourne, scarcely able to believe he had survived the twin perils of either capture or death by drowning.

“We’re sinking,” Daventry replied, his voice somber . “And I cannot swim.”

Indeed, their rowboat was taking on water fast, faster than they could bail it out again with only their hands to use as buckets.

Lord Ravensbourne made a split-second decision. He would not risk his friend’s life any further. With a leap that rocked the boat dangerously, he stood up and stripped off his jacket and boots. “We’ll never stay afloat until we reach the
Bonny Lady
. Paddle back to the shore.”

The shore of the headland was tantalizingly close. Daventry looked at it and shook his head. “You’ll be taken if we land. Maybe if one of us rows, and the other bails…”

“The rowboat will get you back to shore safely, but it would be murder to risk it any longer in the open sea. It’s breaking to pieces. You’ve risked enough for me already. I owe you my life and my liberty. Look after Anna and Charlotte for me, if you get the chance.” And with those words, he dove into the water.

The cold hit his body with a shock that took his breath away. Treading water for a moment until he got his breath back, he waved to Daventry, then struck out as hard as he could for the
Bonny Lady
.

The water was colder than he could have imagined. Slowly it leeched all the warmth from his body, slowing him down until his arms felt as heavy as lead and he could barely lift them above his head to propel himself through the water.

Intent on survival, he cleared his mind of all extraneous thoughts, concentrating only on the effort required to swim towards the boat.

His mind was clouding over and his arms were working so slowly he was scarcely moving through the water at all when he felt strong arms lifting him out of the water and putting him in the bottom of a small boat. Feeling more dead than alive, he used the last reserves of strength he had to clamber up the rope to the deck of the
Bonny Lady
.

He could just make out the figure of Daventry standing on the headland and looking out to sea. There was no sign of the rowboat—it must have sunk.

He collapsed with a groan of relief knowing Daventry had made it back to shore. Cold, wet, exhausted from swimming against the waves, and battered and bruised from fighting the rocks and the tide in the little cockleshell of a boat, he felt as though he had conquered the world. He was safe, and on his way to Holland.

Anna had not been long abed that night when she was awakened by a shower of pebbles hitting her window.

She jumped out of bed and hurried to the window to find Charlotte fully dressed, with the carriage and horses, waiting in the lane. In a trice, she had run down the stairs and joined her cousin in the lane.

“I am come to bid you goodbye,” Charlotte said, as she enfolded her in her arms. “I am off to London to seek a pardon for my brother, and I will not return without one.”

“Were you not forbidden to go?”

“A fig for Melcott’s permission,” she said proudly. “Once he had retired for the night, it was child’s play to break out of my room with all that I need for the journey.”

“Have you enough money to get you to London, and keep you while you are there?” Anna asked worriedly.

The proud look on Charlotte’s face slipped for a moment. “Melcott took all he could find in my desk. I was forced to let him find a few guineas and a handful of silver, so he did not suspect I was carrying the rest stuffed into my bosom.”

“You will need more than a few paltry guineas to get you to London and back again.”

“I shall manage with what I have.”

“Wait there for a moment.” Anna disappeared inside and came back again with a purse heavy with coins. “Your brother gave this to us to defray our immediate wants. Take it to secure his freedom again.”

Charlotte hesitated. “I do not want to leave you embarrassed for funds.”

Anna forced it into her hands. “Take it. We want his freedom more than we need anything else. When he is pardoned, he may give me double again, and welcome.”

Charlotte took the bag and tucked it into a pocket tied beneath her gown. “Thank you,” she said, as she embraced her cousin. “Wish me good luck.” Then, without looking back, she climbed into the carriage and disappeared.

Anna watched the carriage until the darkness and a turn in the lane hid it from her sight. She wished Charlotte all the luck in the world, and more.

Lord Ravensbourne had to return a free man. Her happiness was bound up in his innocence.

As was her survival. She had given Charlotte nearly all she and her mother possessed in the world, reserving only enough to allow them to keep body and soul together for a meager few weeks. If Charlotte was not successful in her quest, and if he did not return home soon, fully pardoned by the king, she and her mother would both starve.

Lord Ravensbourne sat cross-legged at a low table in his meager lodgings in one of the poorer quarters of Amsterdam. His brow creased in thought, he wrote his signature on the bottom of the letter with a flourish, and sealed it with a drop of cheap shellac on which he imprinted the marking of his seal ring. “Give it into Anna’s hands yourself, if you can,” he said, as he rose to his feet and handed it to Daventry. The letter itself contained nothing important but his vows of love, repeated as often as he had the space to write them, but they were all the world to him.

He feared they would no longer find favor in his cousin’s eyes. He had sent her nearly a dozen letters in the past months since he had arrived as a poor exile on the desolate shores of the Netherlands, taking some to the foreign post bound for England, and entrusting others to a series of ship’s captains, who had all promised to deliver them into the post as soon as they reached England’s shores.

He had written nearly as often to Charlotte, and even twice to his uncle, but not a word of reply had he had to any of his missives, save a curt note from his uncle telling him that, thanks to the grace of God, all was well in his absence. There was nothing to explain the absence of correspondence from Anna or Charlotte.

Daventry took the letter and tucked it into his waistcoat pocket. “I’ll do all I can.”

“Are you sure it is safe for you to travel back to England?”

Daventry shrugged. “The justice could find nothing to pin on me. Even those pursuing us in the boat could not swear for a certainty that you were my companion. After holding me for six weeks or so, the justice was forced to let me free, with a warning merely to stay out of his way in the future.”

“He will not arrest you if you should come across him?”

“I was not even charged with any crime, but spent my time making merry with the keeper of the prison, as we worked our way through his remarkably good cellar of Spanish wines. I wouldn’t mind being arrested again. We had not even half finished the prison keeper’s case of excellent
canary
when I was let go.”

Lord Ravensbourne thought of his own dark days in Norwich jail and shuddered. “The law was kinder to you than it was to me.”

“I have my poverty to thank for it,” Daventry said, as he swung his small bag over his shoulder. “I doubt not but that the justice looked with favor on my sober black woolen clothes without a scrap of lace or ribbon on them, and decided I must perforce be an honest man.”

Together, the two men walked out into the noisy streets towards the port. Though it was late afternoon and dusk was beginning to fall, everywhere were small craft being poled up and down the canals, carriages creaking over the cobblestones, men and women in sober dress hurrying about their business, and street hawkers crying out their wares in singsong voices.

As they drew nearer the port, the nature of the people in both street and canal changed—no silks or satins here, but the plain homespun of poor, seafaring folk. Taverns became more frequent, and their clientele less salubrious. Women of ill-repute stood in darkened doorways, openly displaying the only wares they had to sell, and calling out lewd invitations to the pair of them. This was the darker side of Amsterdam—the place where hurried murders took place in side alleys and the bodies weighted with stones were dumped into the nearest canal, never to be found again. In this part of Amsterdam, everything could be had for sale, if one was willing to pay the price.

Lord Ravensbourne shuddered, wishing he were well away from the place. With a sense of relief, he delivered Daventry to the ship that would take him back to England and watched as it cast its anchor and sailed off on the evening tide.

His exile weighed heavily on him, lightened only by the knowledge that Daventry would soon be with his loved ones. If there was aught wrong with Anna or with his sister that would account for their unusual silence to all his letters, Daventry would sniff it out.

The sky was dark, nearly to night, when he started on the walk back to his poor lodgings through the rough dockside streets, alongside the noisome stench of the canals, foul with stinking mud, rotten fish heads, and other worse stuff he misliked thinking on.

The streets, gone quiet now, were more menacing by far in the black of night than they had been when there was still some small amount of daylight to see by. No lanterns pierced the gloom of the night, and the mournful quiet of the street was broken only by the soft noise of the water as it slapped rhythmically against the sides of the canal and the harsh sound of smashing pewter and loud quarrels emanating from the doors of the filthy taverns he passed by. All the street sellers had long since departed, and lone pedestrians, such as he, were few and far between.

Once he passed a stout seaman, who looked covetously at the clothes he wore—rough wool as they were, they were at least thick, warm and in good repair, and better than the clothes that most of the docksiders could boast of. Lord Ravensbourne took a firmer grasp of the stout stick he was carrying, and the covetous seaman sidled by him, keeping to the wall, without trouble. But the incident fueled Lord Ravensbourne’s growing sense that the port was not a good place for a stranger to be after dusk.

Several times on his walk back to his lodgings he felt the back of his neck prickle, as if someone were watching him, but his quick glances behind him did not show anyone following him. Feeling unaccountably uneasy, he quickened his pace.

Not until he came within sight of his own door did his breathing come more easily. His hand was on the latch when a soft footfall behind him alerted him to the presence of another. He looked quickly over his shoulder, to catch a glimpse of the rough-looking sailor he had seen earlier in the street, his teeth parted in a ferocious grin, and a drawn dagger in his hand, coming for his back.

He whirled to one side with a sudden burst of speed, as the seaman thrust the dagger at his back. Instead of sliding neatly into his heart, as had no doubt been the sailor’s intention, it struck Lord Ravensbourne in the shoulder, plunging into his flesh until it scraped against the bone.

Biting back a scream of agony, Lord Ravensbourne lashed out with his stick and caught his attacker a resounding crack on the head. The sailor gave a short moan and sank to the cobbles, witless. As Lord Ravensbourne watched in horror, the sailor’s body, propelled by the force of his blow, slid across the cobblestones slimy with dew, and over the edge into the canal with a soft splash.

His head was dizzy and he was growing faint. He had not intended to kill the man, but he could not help him now, even if he would. He was losing blood so fast, he would be lucky if he survived himself.

With his good hand, he pushed open the latch to his apartments, half walked, half dragged himself inside, and latched the door tightly behind him. Then, blood streaming from his shoulder and his arm dangling helplessly at his side, he crawled slowly to the bottom of the stairs and pulled himself upright with his good hand.

Hardly had he put his foot on the first step when everything went black in front of his eyes and he collapsed, senseless, in a heap on the floor.

She was thankful for the food brought by the good harvest. Unfortunately, it seemed they would desperately need every last bite of it.

Charlotte had been away for some weeks, and Anna had heard nothing from her. The king must be intransigent about granting his former favorite a pardon or Charlotte would have been well home again by now, the precious paper clutched gleefully in her hands.

Anna had not heard from Lord Ravensbourne, but neither did she necessarily expect to. The war between England and Holland, while guaranteeing his safety from pursuit by English law, was an insurmountable barrier to the easy passing of letters between them. All trade between the two countries had been suspended, and no spy would risk his hide to deliver love letters to her. She would have tried to send one to him, indeed, but she did not know where he was.