Page 92 of A Debt Inherited

The cart slowed, turned off the path, and passed between two large trees.

An old stone cottage stood ahead, half hidden by ash and thorn.

Not a prison, Kerr thought. An accounting house.

* * *

Redbourn Heath, July 1812

It took the better part of a quarter hour to get her from the cart to the room.

Wickham held the horse while Kerr lifted Miss Bennet down beneath the tilt. She resisted once, blindly, when her boots found the ground; the cord at her ankles turned the effort into a stumble. Kerr took her by the arm and brought her across the yard, past the pump and the broken barrow beneath the ash, to the low door at the rear of the cottage.

The room was dry and small, the plaster whole and smelling faintly of lime. A pallet lay upon fresh-strewn straw, and next to it stood a cluttered stool: a basin, a crust of bread, and a flagon of water. A heavy shutter closed the one casement; the door barred from without.

She sat gagged upon the pallet with her hands bound before her at the wrist by a loop that fell only so far as to keep her from rising quickly; a coarse blanket lay folded at her feet.

Kerr examined the room a final time. It wanted for comfort, not for conscience.

“It is not my intent to harm you. I will free your mouth if you promise not to cry out. The door is barred, the shutter fixed, and no one will hear you but me. Are we in accord?”

She nodded. He removed the gag. “You have a bit of food and water. The pail is for your necessities.”

He stepped back, drew the door closed, and set the bar into its iron brackets. The wood took the weight with a dull sound. Only then did he turn towards the well pump.

Wickham’s voice came from the treefall. “Is she quiet?”

“A tied hand and a locked door do more than threats.” Kerr kept his gaze on the old barrow. “She will not be harmed by me.”

“Nor starved to death; nor brought to worse. We are not savages.”

“It is not her demise I intend,” Kerr said. “It is her father’s ruin.”

Wickham tilted his head and the heat darkened the braid at his collar. “You may have your vengeance. I shall have my money. Each of us gets what he came for.”

“Let his neighbours whisper; let his invitations dry up; let mothers close parlour doors when his carriage passes. That is the price.”

Wickham laughed, a brief, ugly sound. “Then take your price and I will take mine. Four days is a long while to sit beside a locked door.”

“Then sit elsewhere.”

“And leave you with the lady?”

Kerr looked at him.

Wickham’s smile thinned. “No. I thought not.”

* * *

When Wickham had gone back towards the trees, Kerr returned to the barred door. A narrow hatch had been cut into the upper plank; he slid it back and looked in.

Miss Bennet had not moved.

He lifted the bar and entered.

She sat where he had left her, pale beneath the dust and the marks of the sack, her hands bound before her. She had not touched the bread.

“You should eat,” he said.