Page 2 of The Villain's Fatal Plot
She slipped her new pet into the satchel and appropriated a few coins while she had it open. Now that her mother was gone, she took the extra coins for her trouble. It wasn’t as if her uncle paid her for running his errands. He assumed allowing her to live in her own home was sufficient recompense.
“He’s a mean cheat, Marmie,” she whispered, retrieving her stick to limp down the mews leading home. “Why hasn’t anyonetaken a cudgel to his head? Run his black heart through with a sword...”
Before she could imagine any more bloodthirsty fates for her father’s brother, an earth-jarring explosion rattled windows and doors, and she stumbled. Shouts of alarm broke out in the distance.
Steadying herself on the stable wall, clinging to the shadows, Faith peered from the mews and watched in shock as the windows of the four-story mansion her father had built glowed from within. Had that been a trick of candles, it would have been a gorgeous sight.
Except the glass exploded, and flames roared from those lit windows. A moment later, fire licked at the roof, and the foggy night sky reflected orange.
Stunned, she froze against the brick, watching the inferno in horror. Shouts, people running... She crumpled into the shadows, fingers digging into the rough brick of the stable.
Her home, everything she’d once owned, all her memories of a happier life, everything she’d hoped someday to claim again...gone? Horror engulfed her as she watched her future and past burn to fiery cinders. Her soul shriveled like the once lovely damask draperies, her mother’s silks, and her father’s books. Tears coated her cheeks. And then, a stray idea caught her...
Like a snail without its shell, Faith Palmer died with her home.
She blinked, not certain from what depth of hell that thought arose. Her insides churned. She swiped at the tears streaming down her face... Without her home or family, dull, clumsy Faith Palmer was quite effectivelydead.
Oddly, that notion left her...free?
“If heaven means dropping the chains that bind us to earth, is this what it feels like to be an angel, Marmie?” Watching her home blaze into a bonfire, she stroked the kitten’s head—the kitten that had saved her life. Had she not been late, had she not stopped to rescue a kitten...
She would have been in her cellar kitchen, fixing her tea as shehad for nearly a decade. Flaming timbers would now be falling on her head, taking with them the last of all she was, the memories of her mother’s laugh, her father’s beloved books, the wardrobe of beautiful hats and silks...
Everyone would believe herdead. How very odd to think no one really knew her except as an inhabitant of that house. She didn’t really know herself. She’d had a few dreams, impossible to execute, but now... Absorbing the disaster and grasping her new freedom, she squeezed the knob of her walking stick and tried to find a different footing.
In the stable were the dreams she’d lived on these last ten years: the books and coins she’d squirreled away, bits and pieces she’d hidden, cautiously planning for that day she might have sufficient funds to either reclaim her home or escape it. She had letters offering hopes she couldn’t redeem...
Until now—well before she was prepared.
The kitten yowled a protest from the satchel—a satchel filled with bank notes and coins. Out of the ashes... hope flared.
Faith Palmer might be dead, but whatever tiny spark of life remained inside the woman standing there, struggling to stay upright, was not. “I can be anyone, kitty...”
Dread and excitement tightened her throat.
SATURDAY
TWO: RAFE
Gravesyde Priory Village,late September 1815
“I hate showingup at Jack’s door as a beggar.” Sgt. Rufus Russell rode through this aging hamlet some miles off the main highway south of Birmingham, searching for anything resembling a wealthy estate.
Not the world’s friendliest man, Sgt. Major Fletcher Ferguson, Rafe’s former commanding officer, continued through the village to the far end—still with no sign of so much as a manor house.
The village was even further from civilization than Rafe’s former home in Norfolk. He’d spent these last years at war because of a highway that had bypassed his home, leaving his family penniless. Since the war’s end, he’d traipsed for months looking for another place he might fit in. This rural nowhere did not appear promising.
He curbed his gelding in the non-existent grass of the village green and rubbed Wolfie’s wiry gray head. Nearly as tall as a small pony, the wolfhound had followed him home from the wars. They’d both like to try peace for a while—but the repose of a graveyard had little appeal. A chilly wind blew as he studied therotting thatch and timber of the village with the ominous sobriquet of Gravesyde Priory. “Did Shakespeare misplace one of his stage settings?”
. Seeing a tavern sign creaking in the breeze, Rafe called a halt and swung down. He and the hound could both use food. He tied the reins to a fence post with no fence.
“We are officers and gentlemen,” Fletch contended grumpily, looking around for water for the horses. “Besides, Jack passed the word he needed help. That doesn’t make us beggars.”
“Non-commissioned officers are not gentlemen.” Rafe found a pump, but the handle fell off in his grip while he argued his case. “The right-honorable Jack de Sackville we knew intelligently resigned his commission and made his fortune in India, while ungentrified louts like us all but begged our way though mud and snow on the Continent.”
Fletch shrugged. “If Jack can’t find enough men to guard his stable or train his horses, then his fortune did not buy him any fancy estate. We have come to offer our services, so we’re not beggars.”
“He’s married an earl’s daughter and is no doubt wealthier than Midas,” Rafe maintained. “We’rebeggars.”
