Chapter Two
Livy
Livy had comedown to earth with a crash. Everything had been going so well. Sanderson had come in response to the letter. He had drunk the wine she had given him and passed out. Her collaborators had helped to strip him and put on the goat’s head. Exactly as they had planned.
And, oh, the uplifting sensation of striking back at all the men who thought they could have whatever they pleased while denying the same freedom to women!
Pacing beside the ass, surrounded by her temporary subjects, she had felt powerful, free, and above all, accepted. And thenhehad arrived. The man in the hood. Riding through the gathered women to haul their prisoner up onto his horse, and then delivering the devastating words that laid bare her mistake.
It didn’t help that something about his voice, his posture, his sheerpresencemade her tingle, and not in an unpleasant way. A ridiculous and shaming reaction to a complete stranger she had just offended.
Why had she insisted on having none of the locals in the room before Sanderson had been blinded by the goat head? She had meant to protect them from retaliation, and instead, she had led them into a debacle.
Though they didn’t seem downhearted. They were carrying on with the plans they’d had for the evening before the Maplehurst Hall party had joined them. Blankets had been spread out on the ground. Some of the matrons were carrying around baskets of food.
Several of the villagers were passing out jugs of wine. A group was singing. Livy had heard the tune before, but the scandalous lyrics were new to her.
“Come along, Miss Wintergreen,” said a girl from the village that Livy had met earlier in the evening. “Come and have fun.”
Livy allowed herself to be led to where her sister and other people from the house party were sitting, all mixed in with the villagers and other neighbors. “I am so sorry,” she said to them. “My mistake has ruined the evening.”
“Not your mistake,” someone protested. “You had no way of knowing that the silly boy would take the letter to the wrong brother.”
The whole neighborhood—but not the house party—had known that Colin Sanderson was holding a scandalous gathering at his house for Livy’s cousin Jasper Marple and his friends, all of whom were apparently cut from the same cloth. Mrs. Sanderson had gone to spend Christmas with her mother and had given every maid under forty leave to do likewise. Mr. Sanderson had responded by bringing in a carriage load of scandalous women from the nearest town.
“It sounds as if Colin Sanderson well and truly deserved a shaming,” Cilla observed. “What a pity we got the wrong brother. We didn’t even know therewasmore than one brother.”
“If I had asked someone who knows him to look…” Livy said.
“They are kind of alike,” another of the villagers offered. “Mr. Drake and Mr. Colin. Though I doubt Mr. Colin Sanderson looks so good with his shirt off! Mr. Drake works on the farms and such.”
That remark set all the women into talking about the two younger Sanderson brothers, and Livy heard more than she wanted to know about how kind Mr. Drake was, and how Mr. Bane could be depended on to lend a helping hand to anyone in need.
Livy learned there were four Sandersons—their father had had three sons and a daughter, all with different mothers. Each was named for one of the plants whose medicinal properties were the foundation of the family fortune, though the eldest insisted on being called Colin rather than Hemlock.
Apparently, the eldest brother did not get on with the other two. Mr. Bane was the odd one out, dark where the others were fair, and the villagers conceded that one could not altogether blame Mr. Sanderson for not wanting his father’s by-blow to live under his roof—“even if he has been raised as a gentleman, and even if his father wanted him to stay.”
They agreed, though, that Mr. Sanderson was unkind to his legitimate half-brother as well. “Maybe because Mr. Bane and Mr. Drake are as thick as thieves. Always have been, ever since Mr. Sanderson—the old Mr. Sanderson, who was their father—brought Mr. Bane home.”
Livy learned the odd fact that Mr. Bane always wore a hood to conceal his face, and the various neighborhood speculations about his reasons. A base-born son with a ruined face. A pity he was the first man Livy had ever met that produced that disquieting tingle.
Papa would be horrified if you announced atendrefor a merchant’s scarred bastard son. It was the first cheering thought Livy had had since Bane Sanderson crashed her party. If it wasn’t certain to backfire on her when her father went rampaging to Mr. Sanderson to order him to withdraw his suit, she might try it.
*
Bane
In the morning,Drake was a bit sluggish but otherwise unharmed. “Nothing but a few bruises, Bane. I am fine. Sorry they didn’t get Colin as they intended, though. I wonder what they had against him? Knowing Colin, he probably seduced someone he shouldn’t. Ah, well. Misrule Night will come around again in Marplestead in just under a year. We can hope they get the right Sanderson next time.”
He was fully recovered by the time the revelers at Bancroft Hall went home, and Drake prepared to do likewise.
“If Colin has heard what happened, you might be going home to trouble,” Bane warned. “He won’t want to risk you telling Frannie that the revelers thought you were him.” Everyone knew that the victims of Misrule Night had done something scandalous, even if no one ever said what it was. Word had spread through the neighborhood that the shaming had been intended for Colin Sanderson, and if no one knew the specific reason for it, everyone agreed that they were not surprised.
Drake waved off the warning. “Leaving aside that I would never tell Colin’s wife anything to distress her, poor woman, we are nearly ready to go out on our own. If Colin throws me out, shall we just move our leaving date up a bit?”
“Done,” said Bane. “Just keep your distance, Drake. Don’t let him goad you into a fight.”
He fretted right through the morning, until Drake turned up at the blacksmith’s on the riding horse he had purchased last year, leading his older horse, which was carrying laden saddle bags.
