The Dread Penny Society, page 5
“The beast will sense my fear,” she whispered to Sir Frederick.
“I do not doubt it already has. We must simply make certain it senses our bravery as well.”
“What if all the courage I can summon is not enough?”
“If anyone’s fortitude will be sufficient, I haven’t a doubt it will be yours.”
Another growl. Another rush of hot wind. They were drawing nearer. How many more steps before the beast was upon them?
Questions of the monster were quite suddenly swept aside at the sound of whimpering tears.
“Nanette?” she whispered.
Sir Frederick must have heard the cries as well. He slipped past her and, lantern held out in front of him, moved toward the sound. Around a bend in the cave, they found Nanette huddled against the wall, crying and shaking. She caught sight of them and leaped to her feet, rushing headlong into the strong arms Sir Frederick held out for her.
“We must move quickly, child,” he warned her. “The beast will know we are here.”
“We must go! Now!” Franticness added volume to Nanette’s pleas.
Sir Frederick kept the girl close. He held high the lantern they were depending upon. He looked to Lucinda. They exchanged silent nods of equal relief and concern. They had found Nanette, but they were far from safe.
At a quick clip, they retraced their steps but did not get far before the growls and snarls grew even louder. The monster must have been very close behind them.
It senses and thrives off your fear. Be brave.
Nanette froze, eyes wide. Not a muscle in her body moved.
Lucinda looked to Sir Frederick. Worry filled his features. “The monster has seized her,” he said.
“It is feeding on her fear?”
He nodded.
“Can you carry her out, even frozen as she is? Take her as far from here as possible?”
His gaze turned to something behind her, something that drained every drop of color from his face. “We are too late,” he whispered.
Lucinda’s lungs felt like stones in her chest. Her heart pounded against the heaviness. The weight seemed to spread, holding her arms still and her legs rooted to the spot. Moving felt increasingly impossible. Was the beast sensing her fear as well?
She yet faced Sir Frederick and could see that he, too, had grown unnaturally still, eyes frozen on the threat lurking behind her. The growling had stopped, replaced by the loud, steady breathing of something so near she could feel the heat emanating from its body.
If only the highwayman had found the legendary talisman! What hope had they of defeating the beast, or even escaping its clutches, without the protection of the missing amulet?
Against her chest, a warmth started, small and pointed at first, but spreading bit by bit. The necklace. The one the highwayman had found in her carriage! It was responding to the presence of the beast. Could it be the talisman they sought?
No. The highwayman had searched high and low for years. He would not have given it to her if he’d thought for even a moment it was a powerful amulet. Yet everywhere the warmth of it spread, her stiffness abated. It reached her neck. She could turn her head. Then her shoulders.
I am able to move. Only I am able. She and she alone could face the beast that had held so many captive for so many years, that had caused such pain and suffering. Only she.
Why had the highwayman not simply taken the amulet and faced down the beast himself rather than leaving the task to her? He’d not even told her what he’d actually given her.
Can I be so certain I am correct, that this is, in fact, the sought-after talisman? She was able to move enough that she could turn to face the beast if she chose. Whether or not the necklace she wore was the mystical charm destined to destroy the hideous beast, she had to at least try to save them all.
She set her hand on her coat, directly above the necklace. Its warmth spread farther, faster. I must do this.
Lucinda spun about. Mere inches away, a hideous face glared at her. A lion. A dragon. A demon. She didn’t know what it was, only that it was horrifying. It growled low in its throat, steam rising from its wide, flaring nostrils, saliva dripping from its long, pointed fangs.
As when she had been stopped by the highwayman, and later, rushing to the forest to save her home, Lucinda held her chin up, shoulders back, and told herself she was braver than she felt.
“I—” Her voice shook. She began again. “I am not—”
The beast released a piercing, earth-shaking howl, the heat of its breath nearly knocking her down. She ought to have been terrified, but she felt a growing calm.
“I am not—”
Again, it interrupted her declaration with an anger-filled roar. Its enormous clawed feet scratched at the cave floor. Its broad beastly shoulders crouched, glowing eyes narrowed on her.
“I—”
It crouched lower, shifting its weight again and again from one taloned paw to the other, clearly preparing to pounce.
“—am—”
It leaped for her, hooked claws aimed for her head.
“—not afraid of you.”
Light poured from her necklace, so bright it penetrated her coat, filling the cave with a red glow. The beast, in mid-flight, was tossed away from her by the force of the light.
Lucinda, herself, was thrown backward. She landed on her side, skidding along the rocky surface, glowing and hurting and confused.
Complete silence descended on the cave. No claws tearing at rock, no hot, heavy breaths. She pulled herself up on her elbows. The necklace no longer glowed. The lantern Sir Frederick had been holding was extinguished. She could hear nothing and see nothing.
“Nanette?” Her voice quavered. She was concerned for the girl, yes, but not truly afraid. No longer. The fear she had felt upon first seeing the beast was, somehow, gone. “Sir Frederick?”
“We’re here.” His deep, steady voice proved vastly reassuring.
“I cannot see,” she said. “The beast may be—”
“You’ve destroyed it.” Nanette spoke with surety.
Something brushed against her. She flinched back, only to realize it was Sir Frederick. He pulled her into his embrace. Her hands found Nanette there with them. She clung to them both.
“You’ve done it, Lucinda,” Sir Frederick whispered. “I knew you would. I knew it from the very first.”
“The beast really has been destroyed?”
“It has.”
“And I’m no longer afraid,” Nanette said.
Sir Frederick helped her to her feet. As Nanette had said, the aura of fear that had filled the place, that she had fought against while facing the monster, had dissipated.
The lantern was lit a moment later. Sir Frederick held it aloft, illuminating the cave once more. She saw no sign of the beast she had faced.
“It is gone,” she said in amazement.
“When the light from your necklace reached it, the monster simply dissolved.” He held out his hand.
She set her hand in his. “Then the necklace really is the amulet.” She wrapped her other hand around Nanette’s.
“It is,” Sir Frederick said.
She eyed him as they moved swiftly but carefully from the cave. “You do not seem surprised.”
“I recognized it,” he said.
“Then why did you not tell me? Or take the talisman yourself? You knew where the beast was and what it was and—”
“I haven’t your bravery, my dear. I could not have done what you did.”
She shook her head. “If you had worn the amulet, you could have.”
“The necklace was important, but it was not the crucial element. Others have attempted what you just did and failed.”
They stepped from the cave into the forest. She had all but forgotten it was daytime. It had been so dark and foreboding in the cavern. She looked back at the mouth of the cave. The beast was truly gone. She, somehow, had faced it and, without knowing, defeated it.
“I have never been truly brave,” she said.
Sir Frederick raised her fingers to his lips and pressed a kiss there. “Your bravery was apparent from the very first. I knew then that you were the one we’d been waiting for.”
Their first meeting had been tea amongst neighbors. She’d hardly been brave then; she hadn’t needed to be.
They walked through the forest, hand-in-hand-in-hand.
“The monster truly is gone?” Nanette asked as they approached Hilltop House. “It won’t come back?”
“It won’t come back,” Sir Frederick said. “Our Miss Ledford made quite certain of that.” He looked to Lucinda. “You’ve saved us all.”
He then did something Lucinda thought never to see: he smiled. A heart-melting, soul-warming, dimpled smile.
Installment VII
in which our Heroine seizes her Happiness!
Lucinda casually mentioned over tea the next afternoon that she meant to take a walk in the woods and do all she could to find the highwayman. She hinted that she meant to tell him all that had happened the day before and that the necklace he had given her was the amulet he’d been searching for. Sir Frederick had shown only minimal interest, nodding and expressing his relief that the forest was now a safe place.
She knew she was not wrong about him. His smile had given him away.
Thus, when she saw her highwayman sauntering down the forest path toward her, she could not entirely contain the excitement she felt. All that she had come to admire and enjoy about this mysterious man of daring and intrigue, and all she had come to love and cherish about Sir Frederick’s generous and caring heart, were found in one remarkable gentleman.
“Miss.” He tugged at his bedraggled hat. “Fine thing seeing you here.”
“I looked for you in this very spot yesterday,” she said, “but it seems you were occupied elsewhere.”
His mouth tipped in a smile. “I was, in fact, in the forest yesterday.”
She bit back a smile of her own. “I know.”
Curiosity tugged at his mouth. “You do?”
“And, by the end of the day, I understood why I couldn’t find you.”
He tucked his hands into the pockets of his outercoat. “Did you?”
“I also discovered why Sir Frederick told me that he knew I was brave from our very first encounter, when that encounter involved no degree of courage.”
The highwayman grew noticeably uneasy. “Because he misremembered?”
“No.” She stepped up to him and, rising onto her toes, reached up and took hold of the brim of his hat. “Because he is you.” She pulled his hat off. Sir Frederick. Her Sir Frederick. Her highwayman. “Why the ruse?”
“The amulet was found during my father’s lifetime, but it did not work as it was meant to. We had the talisman, but not the one intended to wield it. Our only hope was to find someone inherently brave.”
“So you held up carriages to gauge your victims’ reactions?”
“I severely disliked the necessity of it. It felt cruel and was certainly not kind.” All the bravado of the highwayman melted away, replaced by uncertainty and heaviness of heart. “I wished again and again I were in a position to be truthful with you about all of this. That day when we saw each other in town, I was discussing my work as a highwayman, which necessitated my dismissal of you; I could not risk you overhearing.”
So many things were making sense to her at last.
He took her hand as he’d done the day before, but this time with an aura of pleading. “I will understand, my Lucinda, if you cannot forgive me for deceiving you. The secret was simply too vast and the consequences too potentially devastating.”
She understood fully and deeply. “My darling Frederick.” She set her arms about his neck. “My dear, brave highwayman.”
In true dastardly fashion, he bent and kissed her, declaring his love and devotion through the earnestness of that very personal gesture. Lucinda clung to him, reveling in the certainty she felt within his arms, and in the promise that they could weather any storm.
Together.
The lady and the highwayman.
Chapter I
Morris Wood had clocked twelve years of life and had nothing but survival to show for it. He worked what reputable jobs he could scrounge, filling the gaps with pickpocketing and nipping second-rate bunts from unsuspecting costermongers and selling the bruised or misshapen apples for a few coins. He wasn’t a bad sort, just a lad born under an unlucky star.
“Carry your parcels, miss?” he asked, his tattered hat in his hands, as a finely dressed woman stepped out of a milliner’s shop.
She looked to her maid, walking at her side. They exchanged amused smiles.
He wasn’t so easily put off. “You’re like to be full knackered after a day of shopping. Allow me to lug your goods, miss.”
Morris watched, hopeful. The younger misses and the oldest matrons were most likely to cross his palm with a farthing or more, sometimes even a shilling. He need only bow and scrape and try to look a bit younger than he was. Pity paid, after all. And little ones got a blimey lot of pity.
The fine lady motioned to a carriage two skips away. “I am going only so far as there.”
“I’d carry your load that far, miss.”
The gentry sorts had a way, when he’d worn them down, of dropping their shoulders and sighing like they had to empty their lungs all at once. Pity paid, but so did exasperation. He’d take the coins however they came.
The lady’s parcels were carried to her carriage. Two sixpence were set in his hand. He pocketed them, along with the few other coins he’d managed to pull together that day. It was a meager pile, nowhere near the bunce he’d like to claim as his own. Still, it’d be enough to pay his daily due for the roof over his head that night. Another couple of morts out doing a bit of shopping, a gent here or there with a bit of silver jingling in his coat, and Morris’d have something left over after the Innkeeper took his share.
He walked down the street with his hands tucked in his pockets, whistling. The day was fine. He appreciated the weather for more than the convenience. Rainy days or windy days or otherwise miserable days tended to empty the streets. It was hard to go dipping when there were no jangling pockets wandering about. Honest work wasn’t easier to claim either when the fine coves and morts kept to their houses.
Morris spotted his chum Jimmy standing by a fishmonger’s cart. He gave a quick nod, pausing as he drew near. “Swiping?” he asked behind his teeth.
“Guarding.” Jimmy’s eyes pulled wide, looking as surprised as Morris felt. Urchins like them weren’t usually trusted with preventing a thieving.
“You drawing bunce for it?”
Jimmy nodded. “I’m to watch all these carts and warn if someone’s looking to nip off with something. The lot are paying me a shilling for the day.”
“A shilling?” Morris whistled in appreciation. “I ain’t never pulled down a shilling in one day for anything respectable.”
“Boy,” a gravelly voice called. “I don’t pay you for nattering.”
No more chattering. Pocketing a shilling meant Jimmy’d have loads left even after paying the Innkeeper. Morris wasn’t about to rob him of that. Honest work was a rare enough thing, and they needed every penny, every shilling, every guinea they could tuck away. Jimmy and Morris meant to make something of themselves. A fellow needed money to do that. Money and a whole heap of luck.
“I’m a bit short,” Morris said. “May ’ave to pick a kick or two.”
“Don’t get caught,” Jimmy warned. “Enough of us’ve been swept up.”
Morris knew it well enough. He kept on his way, keeping an eye out for opportunities. The Innkeeper wouldn’t let him stay without the daily rent. But nearly every night, one or more of the urchins that took refuge in the Inn didn’t return from their day on the street. He’d guess, if pressed, that they’d been caught nipping off with coins or pocket watches or whatever else they could wrap their fingers around to bring back to the Inn. He didn’t intend to take a ride in the Black Maria anytime soon.
He’d managed to earn a few ha’pennies here and there for odd jobs and tasks. He didn’t have to go dipping the whole the rest of the day. Jimmy’s shilling put Morris’s earnings to shame, but they were a team. What one of ’em tucked away, they’d both be helped by.
With the relief that came from money in his pocket, Morris made his way quickly down the streets of London toward the slum where he spent each night. He’d not gone far when a sight caught him up short. The finest carriage he’d ever seen. Half at least was covered in gold. The rest, white as snow, hadn’t even a speck of dirt on it, no matter that the streets were terribly dusty. On either side of the driver, who was wearing white livery with a three-point hat, two red flags flapped and flew.
“S’help me Baub, I’ll have me a carriage like that one day,” Morris whispered to himself, watching the awe-inspiring vehicle fly past. Someday. Someday he’d be out of the gutter. He’d be able to read, able to pay his own way without being beholden to a cracksman like the Innkeeper, and he’d have a carriage, a fine one like that’n.
He knew the way to the building that the urchins all knew as the Inn. Even with the rotting planks across gaps in the walk and the needed leaps to get safely over, he didn’t have to think much to manage it any more. Easy enough.
He ducked through the misshapen hole in the side of the brick wall. No one knew when it had broken or if it’d once been a proper door, but it was their way in and out, and it was the reason the Inn was so blasted cold in the winter and blazing hot in the summer. Still, it was dry and better than sleeping on the street.
Morris stood in the usual line just inside the hole. The children always queued up when returning for the night. Some were a touch older than he was; most were younger. All were waiting their turn to make the daily payment.
