Destitute On His Doorstep

The colonel shuddered, groaning. As he watched her bandage his injured hand his voice was harsh with bitterness. ‘Dear Lord in heaven! Could Atkins not have dealt me another wound but that? He’s made damned sure my sword hand is useless.’

Always practical, the girl said, ‘You have another hand, Colonel, a perfectly good one. If you are half the man you are reported to be, you will learn to use it. There will be other battles to fight before this business is done. Now come. The more important matter of saving your life concerns me now.’

Going to the door, she opened it a crack and looked out. Seeing the guards were as she had left them and the soldiers who weren’t clogging the taverns carousing on the village green, she beckoned the Colonel forwards. ‘Go round the church to the back. Walk through the graveyard and when you come to the gate let yourself out and turn to your left. Halfway down the street turn left again down an alley way. There you will find a horse waiting for you.’

Wonder, astonishment and, finally, admiration glowed in the Colonel’s eyes. Before slipping out he paused to look at the young stranger he fully believed to be a youth. There was a strange intensity in the pale face under its unruly mop of curly black shining hair. ‘You’ve thought of everything. It’s a scheme worthy of a master planner.’

The gratitude in his voice took the edge off the girl’s fear. ‘Promise me you will take care of the horse. His name is Arthur.’

Colonel Russell frowned with concern. ‘It is your horse?’

She nodded.

‘And yet you are willing to part with it.’

‘There is no other way you can get away from the village. All I ask is that you treat him well.’

‘I promise you no harm will come to it by my hand. You help me even though you know what will happen to you if you caught. Your age will not protect you. You will be hanged for a traitor.’

‘I know that, sir.’

‘Why are you helping me?’

‘This is war, Colonel. Captain Atkins may be of my persuasion, but that doesn’t mean to say that I have to like him. I don’t hold with personal vendettas. I could not stand by and watch him kill an honourable man.’

‘Thank you. Human nature is full of surprises. You are a remarkable young man. I am grateful. Avery, which is staunchly behind Parliament, has been taken by the Royalists, but it is only a matter of time before we take it back. Can I not persuade you to change sides? We could do with men like you.’

She would have laughed out loud had she not thought he might see through her deception. ‘I am not yet old enough to fight, sir. If the war is not over when I am of age, then my sympathies are firmly with the Royalists.’

‘And your name? At least tell me that?’

She grinned, a mischievous, wicked twinkle dancing in her dark eyes. After a moment’s thought, she said, ‘You may call me Tom, sir.’ She inclined her shining head in a respectful bow, the smile widening on her lips. ‘Glad to be of service.’

‘God be with you, lad. I’ll never forget the debt I owe you for saving my life.’ With that he slipped away.

When he had disappeared round the church and she had locked the door, covering her tracks, she put the key back in the guard’s pocket. She was elated, considering all the danger to have been worthwhile to acquire Colonel Russell’s esteem and to help him escape the odious Captain Atkins. Thrusting her hands into her own pockets, she left Avery and followed the road that led to her home. Already she missed her beloved Arthur, but, knowing he would aid a brave man escape the clutches of Captain Atkins and that he would be well cared for, she didn’t mind so much.

On finding his prisoner had escaped, in his rage Jacob Atkins came to two decisions, which he would never alter as long as he lived. The first was very simple. One day, he would meet that accursed Colonel again—and when he did, he would kill him.

Chapter One

Jane looked with distaste and a cringing fear at the chair Jacob Atkins would have her bend over so he could beat her with the thin cane which he was casually slapping against his booted right leg. His one remaining eye held a strange pinprick of light that Jane, with a sinking heart, knew boded ill for her. It would not be the first time she had felt the sting of that cane. Red welts usually criss-crossed her back for days following a whipping. He seemed to take special delight in marking her bare flesh.

‘Please do not use that on me.’ Her voice quavered. ‘I have done nothing so terrible that deserves a beating.’

‘It is a punishment you will receive, Jane, and as usual you are being impertinent.’

Jane hesitated, then, her terror bolstering her courage, though she was sadly aware that it wouldn’t make any difference to what was about to happen, she raised her head bravely. ‘There is nothing wrong with trying to defend myself. These—these punishments have to stop,’ she said haltingly. ‘I am not one of your daughters. I will not be beaten into submission.’

Jane watched with dreadful, terror-filled fascination as his face turned a dangerous crimson; the colour of it appeared to leak into his eye. She held his gaze with something like defiance, her proud nature rebelling against compliance to this man. She just hoped he wouldn’t notice how violently she trembled, the fear instilling uncertainty of what form of punishment he’d use on her if she openly defied him. While her lovely face seemed almost without expression, her eyes betrayed her inner fear as she stared back at him.

When he moved to stand directly in front of her, her heart sank and her blood ran cold when he raised his hand and she felt his fingers brush her neck. On a gasp she struck at his hand, only to find her own as quickly imprisoned. He seized a handful of her long, thick hair, pulling her head back with spiteful force.

‘Oh, no, Jane. You have much to learn,’ he hissed, his mouth close to her ear. ‘If I want to touch you, touch you I shall.’

She stood rigid and silent, his touch making her skin crawl. A violent shivering shook her from head to foot when he released her hair and his grip tightened around her neck with ever-increasing brutality. With helpless fury she looked into his eye.

Jacob gave a slow, satisfied smile. How he craved to run his fingers over the white skin beneath the dress of this girl while she trembled before him, to look on her nakedness and see her proud, complacent smile turn into a grimace of terror as she cried and pleaded for mercy. Just as suddenly as he had touched her he pulled himself together. The smile faded from his face and his hand released her.

‘How dare you question my authority, Jane, my judgement. I would advise you to obey me immediately or go to your room until I give you permission to leave it. I have to go out and will not be back until tomorrow afternoon, at which time we shall continue this discussion and I will consider the punishment you deserve.’

‘By all means lock me in my room,’ she uttered tremulously. ‘I would rather that than be beaten by you for merely riding out alone. I am nineteen years old and what I have done does not deserve a thrashing.’

Jacob watched her closely. As she stood before him, he felt a certain satisfaction in knowing how much she feared him—hated him. She was quite magnificent as she held her head high and her eyes shone with bravely held tears. But she had defied him and he would not have it. He would make a show of his authority. The girl, his late sister’s stepdaughter, was full grown, a strong and healthy girl with too much pride, and he would not rest until he had thrashed that pride out of her.

Jane Lucas was a beauty. Her sun-warmed flesh and peach-coloured lips and her warm dark eyes were accentuated by the midnight blackness of her hair.

‘Do not think you can escape, Jane. Do you remember what happened the last time you ran away from me?’ He laughed, delighting in the horror that suddenly appeared in her eyes, for she had tried to escape him—twice—and each time he had found her and brought her back. Her punishment had been severe, and she had been kept in her room until she was fit to be seen. ‘You will take your punishment,’ he said, smacking the palm of his hand with the cane. ‘I promise you that.’

He stood directly before her, and Jane could clearly see the huge bulge that filled the front of his breeches. He was breathing rapidly, his face suffused with colour. A horror so great, so overwhelming, a thought so preposterous, so disgusting, was running through her mind like quicksilver. Surely he would not subject her to … Dear God, no, but then … Yes. Jacob Atkins was perverted and he could and he would if he had his way.

At fifteen years old when she had come to live in his house, she had been wise enough to recognise that he enjoyed the spectacle of degrading a gently nurtured girl even more than he would enjoy the physical act of ravishing her. Now, one glance at his flushed features laid bare the lascivious nature of his private thoughts, and the humiliation that those thoughts were directed at her was too dreadful to contemplate, but they told her that he intended the second pleasure to follow the first.

All their lives his daughters had suffered pain and fear at his hands. They had always been afraid of him, even when their mother had been alive and she had done her best to interpose between her rage-filled husband and cowering children. Now grown women, they were still meek and obedient and punished for the slightest transgression. The youngest, Elizabeth seventeen and Anne a year older, were vulnerable and weak, whereas Hester could withstand his indifference, his cruelty, for, apart from the beatings, which seemed to give him some perverse pleasure, he barely infringed on their daily lives.

He had made them what they were. They were fed and clothed and slept in warm beds, but they were nervous and terrified of their own shadows, always looking over their shoulders to see if their father was watching them. Nobody could stand against Jacob Atkins—nobody—not even Jane. But somehow, some time, she would make good her escape. She would leave his house for ever and go back to …

There was a place she knew where time went by on widespread wings, a place where she had known nothing but happiness and love and been allowed to grow and flourish as every young woman should be able to do. But here in Jacob Atkins’s house time plodded wearily on, slowly, painfully on calloused feet. With her stepmother dead and finding herself now quite alone and increasingly the target for her step-uncle’s unwelcome attentions, she knew it was time to leave his house—to go home to Bilborough Hall.

Jacob turned his back on her to show his absolute contempt—or so he would have her believe, but the truth was that he would not be content until he had accomplished what he had set out to do, which was to make her understand the rules she would have to live by in his house, and by the time he had finished with her he was certain she would obey those rules. Moreover, his body’s almost uncontrollable desire for her had to be slaked, which was why, when he had triumphed over her flimsy defences, he had decided to take her for a wife.

‘You are disobedient, Jane—indeed, you seem to enjoy openly defying me. If you do so one more time, I shall be forced to take further measures.’ He turned to face her. ‘You have no idea how cruel I can be.’

He was wrong. Jane knew the cruelties he was capable of inflicting on people. The pain his punishments elicited had heightened her dread of him. So great had been her ordeals during these years at his hands that she likened his house to a torture chamber.

Looking at Jacob Atkins now, that was the moment she realised that he had slipped over some invisible line between cruel viciousness and into madness. His eye flickered at her and a fleck of white frothed at the corners of his mouth. Perspiration beaded on his forehead and his face was scarlet with some inner rage.

Repulsed, Jane whirled about and fled the room. Hester met her on the stairs. Her usual pleasant smile was not in evidence as she looked at Jane with concern, seeing not for the first time the signs of distress.

‘Are you hurt?’ she enquired softly.

Jane shook her head. ‘No, Hester—at least no more than usual. I’ve been ordered to go to my room.’ Through the mists of shock and fear she darted a nervous look around to make quite sure no one was listening. ‘I think it’s time I left this house,’ she whispered fiercely. ‘I fear for my safety if I remain here any longer. Your father will not be satisfied until he has beaten me into the ground. He is to be away until tomorrow afternoon. Enough time for me to prepare. I intend to be away at first light. This time I am determined, Hester.’

Picking up her skirts, Jane carried on up the stairs. Hester hurried after her.

‘But is that wise?’ Hester asked, on entering Jane’s room, her concern evident. ‘He will come after you. He caught up with you the last time you tried to flee—and—and he hurt you so much, Jane.’

‘I know, but last time I had nowhere to go. This time I shall go to Bilborough.’