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“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 make her do 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 five miles. 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.
When Bridget was out of sight, Jessica turned to Phelps. “What did you hear last night?” she asked.
“Friday arternoon he let Tom Hamby’s rabbits loose. Tom chased him up to the far south wall of His Lordship’s park. Yester’ arternoon, the lad raided Jem Furse’s rag and bone bins, and Jem chased him up to nigh the same place.”
Phelps’ gaze shifted northward, in the direction of the park. “The boy goes where they daren’t chase him, right into His Lordship’s private property.”
The boy was seeking his father’s protection, in other words, Jessica thought.
“There be one of ’em little summerhouse things not far from the place where they lose him,” the coachman went on. “His Lordship’s grampa built it for the ladies. I ’spect a lad might get in easy ’nough, if he made up his mind on it.”
“If the summerhouse is his lair, then we’d better make haste,” said Jessica. “It’s nearly two miles from here.”
“That be by way of the main road ’n the estate road,” he said. “But I knows a shorter way, if you don’t mind a steepish climb.”
A quarter of an hour later, Jessica stood on the edge of a clearing, gazing at the fanciful summer-house the second marquess had built for his wife. It was an octagonal stone structure, painted white, with a steep conical red roof nearly as tall as the house itself. Round windows with elaborately carved frames adorned every other side of the octagon. The unwindowed sides held medallions of similar size and shape, carved with what appeared to be medieval knights and ladies. Climbing roses, planted at alternating corners of the octagon, artfully framed windows and medallions. Tall yew hedges bordered the winding gravel path to the door.
Aesthetically speaking, it was rather a hodge-podge, yet it had a certain sweet charm. Certainly Jessica could see how this fanciful place would appeal to a child.
She waited while Phelps completed his slow circuit of the building, peeping cautiously through the windows. When he was done, he shook his head.
Jessica swallowed an oath. It had been too much to hope that the boy would actually be here, even though it was Sunday morning, and he usually limited his assaults upon the village to weekday afternoons. She was about to leave her hiding place to consult with Phelps when she heard a twig snap and the faint thudding of hurried footsteps. She waved Phelps back and he promptly ducked down behind the hedge.
In the next instant, the boy darted into the clearing. Without pausing once or looking about him, he raced up the path to the door. Just before he reached it, Phelps leapt up from his hiding place and caught him by the sleeve.
The child drove his elbow into Phelps’ privates, and Phelps, doubling over, let go with a choked oath.
Domini
ck tore back down the path and bolted across the clearing toward the trees at the back of the summerhouse. But Jessica had seen immediately where he’d go, and she was already running in that direction. She chased him down a bridle path, over a bridge, and down the winding narrow pathway beside the stream.
If he had not been running all the way up the steep hill to the summerhouse, she wouldn’t have had a prayer of catching him now, but he was winded and down to a vaguely human pace rather than his usual demonic one. At a fork in the pathway, he hesitated briefly—it was unfamiliar ground, evidently—and in the few seconds he did, Jessica pushed herself a notch faster. Then she leapt and tackled him.
He went down—into the grass, fortunately—and she on top of him. Before he could think of trying to wriggle free, she grabbed his hair and gave a sharp yank. He let out a howl of outrage.
“Girls don’t fight fair,” she gasped. “Be still or I’ll snatch you bald.”
He treated her to a breathless stream of obscenities.
“I’ve heard all those words before,” she said between gulps of air. “I know worse ones, too.”
There was a short silence while he digested this unexpected reaction. Then, “Get off me!” he burst out. “Get off me, you cow!”
“That is the wrong way to say it,” she said. “The polite way is ‘Please get off me, my lady.’”
“Bugger you,” he said.
“Oh, dear,” she said. “I fear I shall have to take desperate measures.”
