“I had better make haste,” Jessica said, rising. “Otherwise I shall be late for church.”
He rose, too, the polite husband, and escorted her downstairs, and watched while Bridget helped Her Ladyship into shawl and bonnet.
He made the same joke he’d made every previous Sunday, about Lady Dain’s setting a good example for the community and Lord Dain’s considerateness in keeping away, so that the church roof didn’t collapse upon the pious souls of Athton.
And when Her Ladyship’s carriage set off, he stood as he had the four previous Sundays, at the top of the drive, watching until it had disappeared from view.
But this Sabbath, when he returned to the house, he did not go to his study as usual. This day, he entered Athcourt’s small chapel and sat on the hard bench where he’d shivered countless Sundays in his childhood while trying desperately to keep his mind on heavenly things and not upon the hunger gnawing at his belly.
This time, he felt as lost and helpless as that little boy had been, trying to understand why his Heavenly Father had made him wrong inside and out and wondering what prayer must be prayed, what penance must be paid, to make him right.
And this time, the grown man asked, with the same despair a little boy had asked, decades ago:Why will You not help me?
While Lord Dain was struggling with his inner demons, his wife was preparing to snare one of flesh-and-blood. And, while Jessica had faith enough in Providence, she preferred to seek help from more accessible sources. Her assistant was Phelps, the coachman.
He was one of the very few staff members who’d been at Athcourt since the time of the previous marquess. Then, Phelps had been a lowly groom. That he’d been retained and promoted was proof of Dain’s regard for his abilities. That he was called “Phelps,” rather than the standard “John Coachman,” evidenced high regard for the man personally.
The regard was returned.
This did not mean that Phelps considered His Lordship infallible. What it meant, Jessica had learned, shortly after the contretemps at Devonport, was that Phelps understood the difference between doing what the master ordered and doing what was good for him.
The alliance between Jessica and the coachman had begun on the first Sunday she’d attended church in Athton. After she’d alit from the carriage, Phelps had asked permission to do his own kind of “meditatin’,” as he put it, at the Whistling Ghost public house.
“Certainly,” Jessica replied, adding with a rueful smile, “I only wish I could go with you.”
“Ess, I reckon,” he said in his broad Devon drawl. “That muddle yesterday with that fool woman’ll be all over Dartymoor by now. But Your Ladyship don’t mind a bit of gawkin’ ’n tongue waggin’, do you? Shot him, you did.” His leathery faced creased into a smile. “Well, then. You be teachin’ the rest of ’em, too, what you be made of.”
A few days later, when he drove her to the vicarage for tea, Phelps further clarified his position by sharing with Jessica what he’d heard at the Whistling Ghost about Charity Graves and the boy, Dominick, along with what he himself knew about the matter.
Thus, by this fifth Sunday, Jessica had a good idea of the kind of woman Charity Graves was, and more than ample confirmation that Dominick needed rescuing.
According to Phelps, the boy had been left in the care of the elderly Annie Geach, a midwife, while Charity wandered Dartmoor like a gypsy. Annie had died about a month before Dain had returned to England. Since then, Charity had been hovering in the Athton vicinity. Though she was rarely seen in the village itself, her son, left mostly on his own, was encountered all too often, and too often making trouble.
About a month and a half ago, a few well-meaning folks had attempted to settle him in school. Dominick refused to settle, wreaking havoc and mayhem during the three times he’d attended. He picked fights with the other children and played nasty tricks on master and pupils alike. He couldn’t be schooled into good behavior because he answered with laughter, taunts, and obscenities. He couldn’t be whipped into obedience either, because one had to catch him first, and he was diabolically quick.
In the last few weeks, his behavior had grown increasingly flagrant, the incidents more numerous. During one week, Dominick had, on Monday, torn Mrs. Knapp’s laundry from the line and trampled it in the mud; on Wednesday he’d dropped a dead mouse into Missy Lobb’s market basket; on Friday he’d thrown horse droppings at Mr. Pomeroy’s freshly painted stable doors.
Most recently, Dominick had blackened the eyes of two youths, bloodied the nose of another, urinated on the front steps of the bakehouse, and exposed his bottom to the minister’s housemaid.
Thus far, the villagers had kept their complaints to themselves. Even if they had been able to catch Dominick, they were baffled what to do with the lord of the manor’s fiendish son. No one yet had mustered the courage to confront Dain with his offspring’s crimes. No one yet could overcome codes of decency and delicacy to complain of Dain’s bastard to his wife. No one, moreover, could find Charity Graves and makeherdo something about her Demon Seed.
It was this last that troubled Jessica most. Charity had not been seen in the last fortnight, during which time Dominick’s bids for attention—as she viewed his atrocities—had grown increasingly desperate.
Jessica was sure it was his father’s attention he sought. Since Dain was inaccessible, the only way to get it was to throw the village into an uproar. Jessica also suspected the mother had instigated or encouraged the disturbances in some way. Still, the method seemed stupidly risky. Dain was far more likely to carry out his threat of having Charity transported than to pay her to go away, if that was what she wanted.
The alternative explanation, even more disturbing, made less sense. Charity may have simply abandoned the child, and for all one knew, he’d been sleeping in stables or out on the moors, in the shelter of the rocks. Yet Jessica couldn’t believe the woman had simply left, empty-handed. She could not have snared a rich lover, else all Dartmoor would know about it. Discretion was not at all in Charity’s style, according to Phelps.
In either case, Jessica had decided last night, the boy could not be permitted to run amok any longer.
The patience of Athton’s inhabitants was being stretched to its limits. One day, very soon, a mob of outraged villagers would be pounding at Athcourt’s doors. Jessica had no more intention of waiting for that event than she did for a possibly abandoned child to die of exposure or starvation or be sucked down into one of Dartmoor’s treacherous mires. She could not wait any longer for Dain to come to his senses.
Accordingly, she had come down to breakfast wearing the same tautly haggard expression Aunt Claire wore when suffering one of her deadly headaches. All of the servants had noticed, and Bridget had asked twice en route to church whether Her Ladyship was feeling poorly. “A headache, that’s all,” Jessica had answered. “It won’t last, I’m sure.”
After disembarking, Jessica dawdled until Joseph departed, as he usually did, for the bake-house, where his younger brother was employed, and the other servants were either in church or on their way to their own Sunday morning diversions. That left only one unwanted guardian, Bridget.
“I believe I had better excuse myself from services,” Jessica said, rubbing her right temple. “Exercise always clears a headache, I find. What I need is a good, long walk. An hour or so ought to do it.”
Bridget was a London-trained servant. Her idea of a good, long walk was the distance from the front door to the carriage. It was easy enough for her to calculate that “an hour or so,” at her mistress’s usual pace, meant three to fivemiles. Thus, when Phelps “volunteered” to accompany the mistress in Bridget’s place, the maid agreed with no more than a token protest, and hurried into the church before Phelps could change his mind.
