Page 58 of Lady Beast's Bridegroom
“Or Lady Beast, they called me, too.”
“And your cousin is the evil Lord S. I’ve spoken to my parents, and they agree I have to get you out of here. Those on guard are having supper in the warders’ room at the other end of the passage. It won’t take them long, so we must hurry.”
As she was speaking, she was undoing the knotted sleeves, and unwinding them from around Arial’s waist. She fumbled at the buttons behind Arial’s neck, and in a moment, Arial was able to shrug out of the garment.
Mrs. Parker handed her a cloak. “Follow me,” she whispered.
Arial thought of asking where to, but she could not be worse off, and Mrs. Parker was the only person in the place she partially trusted. Enveloped in the cloak, the hood pulled up over her head, she tiptoed behind the woman along the passage.
The worst part was passing the warders’ room. Mrs. Parker went first, glancing inside as she passed the open door, then beckoning to Arial. Arial glanced inside, too. Five or six men and two women, passing a bottle between them as they exchanged raucous stories about tricks they had played and punishments they had given to the inmates.
At last, Arial and Mrs. Parker slipped through the door at the end of the passage and began to descend the stairs.
The light was poorer, here. Only one lamp was lit, and that a portable one on a table at the foot of the stairs next to the door that led to the doctor’s office.
Feeling for each step, Arial followed Mrs. Parker down the stairs.
Arial was stepping off the bottom step and Mrs. Parker was almost at the front door, when the office door opened. The doctor stood in the doorway. Arial froze in place.
The doctor’s eyes widened when he saw her, and he shouted, at the top of his voice, “Escape! A patient is escaping!” He glared at Mrs. Parker. “Parker, seize this woman.”
Instead, Mrs. Parker tried to open the front door. It would not shift, and before she could pull the bolts and turn the key, it was too late.
The floor reverberated with the thud of boots as the warders upstairs responded to the doctor’s shout. Arial darted towardsMrs. Parker and the doctor grabbed for her but caught her cloak. Arial reached Mrs. Parker’s sheltering arm, and the two of them turned at bay as the doctor and his warders closed in on them.
*
Peter and thosewith him had ridden cross country—hair-raising in a night lit only by a half moon and a few stars. The magistrate said he knew the land well, and he set a cracking pace, cutting across the corner of fields, jumping hedgerows, splashing through streams—he clearly knew what might happen to an unprotected woman in one of those places.
Peter knew they couldn’t go any faster without risking injury to men and horses, but still every mile seemed to take an hour, and the tightest discipline on his mind could not prevent it from rehearsing the horrors that Arial might be suffering at this very moment.
When at last they pulled up in front of the doctor’s house, he checked his watch, and was surprised to see they’d done the whole trip in less than thirty minutes.
A constable was already dismounted and banging on the door, shouting, “Open in the name of the king!”
Despite the hour, the windows, including those near the front door, showed light. Peter, with John at his shoulder, joined the magistrate under the portico as the constable pounded on the door again.
The rumble of voices within was followed by the sound of bolts being drawn back. As soon as the door opened a crack, the constable shouldered it to open it, but the person on the other side resisted.
“Open for the king’s man,” shouted the constable, shoving harder. Peter and John loaned him their weight against the door, and all of a sudden, the person holding it closed stepped away, sothat the constable fell inside, and Peter was only able to keep to his feet by leaping the man.
Behind, he could hear the others entering, but he had eyes for only one person.
There, dressed only in her shift, her arms held behind her back by a brute twice her size, was Arial.
Her face lit up when she saw him. “Peter!”
The brute shook her. “Quiet, you,” he growled.
Peter saw red. He had no memory of drawing his sword or of crossing the hall, but in seconds, the brute was backing away, whimpering, his hand to a cheek that dripped blood.
And Arial was back in Peter’s arms where she belonged.
He held her close, kissing her hair, her forehead, her ear, anything he could reach while she was plastered to him, saying over and over, “You are alive. Josiah lied. I knew you would come if you could.”
“Nothing and no one could keep me from you, my dearest love,” he told her, and she stopped trying to burrow her face into his chest and looked up, her eye shining like a star.
He kissed her lips, and at last some of the tension that had driven him for hours slipped away.
