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As if to show her that he didn’t believe her claims her brother was not in the house, he glanced over her shoulder into the house.
Unfortunately, just then, a barely audible thump came from the direction of the kitchen.
Jessica sighed and wondered if Ben wanted to go to prison. If he carried on the way he was, that was exactly where Lloyd and Carruthers would put him. To her delight, Rupert, the cat, chose that moment to push through the kitchen door.
“Rupert,” she chided. She could have wept as she watched him prance with ultimate feline arrogance toward her. “Have you been knocking food off the table again?”
She bent down and swept him into her arms. Having a bundle of wriggling fur between her and the magistrate made her feel a little safer. She nuzzled Rupert’s hair for a moment, and surreptitiously watched Lloyd signal to Carruthers that it was time to leave.
“Later,” Lloyd warned briskly.
Jessica didn’t bother to answer him and kept her attention on the cat in her arms. She waited by the door until Carruthers stepped across the threshold. He had barely cleared the doorway before she stepped back and kicked the door closed with considerably more force than necessary and slid the bolt home with a resounding thud.
Satisfied that the magistrate had gotten the message, she wandered back to the kitchen in search of Ben, whom she hoped was now hiding.
He wasn’t.
He sat at the kitchen table with his crossed ankles propped up on one corner, slicing into an apple as he ate.
“Have they gone?” he drawled nonchalantly.
Jessica was incensed. She was physically trembling with terror yet here he was, eating without a care in the world.
“How could you be so selfish?” Jessica asked as she dumped Rupert into Ben’s lap and snatched the knife from him.
It wasn’t for her safety that she took it; it was for his. Right now, she was so angry with him she wondered whether a good, long, stint in gaol was just what he needed. If only to snap him out of his careless disregard for, well, everything.
“What?” Ben’s brows lifted as though he hadn’t got a clue what was bothering her.
“He is going to come back, Ben,” she warned.
Ben shrugged. “They are all bluster, sis. They won’t be back. Lloyd hasn’t got anything he can pin on me, and he knows it.”
“Why did they come here in the first place then?” She countered, unwilling to let Ben dismiss what had happened so casually. “If you think they can’t touch you, why did you hide in here like a coward?”
Ben’s eyes flashed with anger as he stood.
Jess was too lost in her fury to notice. “I mean it. Think about it. If they don’t have anything on you, why did they not go to Billy’s house, or Craig’s, or Smithers’? Of all of the places in the village, why did they choose to come here?”
Ben stared at the apple in his hand as though it was going to provide him with the answers he couldn’t give himself.
Jessica’s frustration grew as she watched him shrug. She knew from the thoughtful expression on his face that he couldn’t be entirely sure if the magistrate had seen him with the pheasants or not. He was trying to bluff his way out of trouble. His response warned her that he had no understanding of what would happen if they got caught either. Nor was he particularly interested in what it felt like to be her, pestered by those horrible letches; Lloyd and Carruthers.
“Do you give a damn what happens to me?” she asked quietly. “Lloyd came to threaten me – not you – me. I am easy pickings for the likes of him if you are behind bars,” Jessica ground out. “God, you selfish ingrate.”
Tears gathered on her lashes at the thought of being in the house with the magistrate circling like a vulture outside. She would have to sell the place if that happened because the consequences to her future would be dire if she didn’t.
She wasn’t usually a violent person but, at that moment, wanted to smack her brother on the head for making her already insecure life even more uncertain.
“I won’t end up behind bars,” Ben said a little less cockily.
While the look on his face was doubtful, there was just something in his voice that made her study him a bit more closely. She knew that look and stepped closer. Her voice dipped to a menacing whisper so unlike
her natural voice that Ben’s shocked gaze flew up to hers.
“Seeing as you are so confident in your ability to evade justice, you can meet the magistrate when he returns. I certainly won’t. I am done covering for you.”
“Jess,” Ben whined, but then leaned back when she pointed one long finger at him.
