The Highwayman's Folly Read online

  Copyright

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events, locales, and incidents are either the products of the author’s imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.

  The Highwayman’s Folly: Book One of The Rewards of Ruin

  Copyright © 2020 by Daria Vernon

  Print ISBN: 978-1-7359814-0-6

  Digital ISBN: 978-1-7359814-2-0

  www.dariavernon.com

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, without the prior written permission of the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical reviews.

  Dedication

  This book is dedicated to a girl that spent many days playing make believe in the backyard.

  I owe you this.

  Contents

  Copyright

  Dedication

  PART I

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  PART II

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Epilogue

  Acknowledgments

  Bio

  Daria’s Dossier

  The Rogue’s Last Letter

  Chapter 1

  Yorkshire, England

  January, 1783

  Beth Clarke scrubbed the frostiness away from a windowpane with the side of her fist and looked out. There it was. Happiness, frosted over.

  A whole childhood’s worth of bright summer memories stretched out across the lawns of Ashecote House. There was the stream that soaked every petticoat Beth owned—at least once. There were the slate steppingstones that scraped each of her knees—at least twice. And there was Aunt Dahlia leaping from the hedgerows to startle her when she was not yet as tall as her pony’s shoulder, scaring the fear right out of her from the start.

  Aunt Dahlia.

  Beth had lost her mother too young to feel motherless, but now, the notion held a sudden pang of familiarity and the emptiness of the bed behind her was keenly felt.

  In lieu of a mother, it was Dahlia who had educated her on womanhood. She’d provided such a spirited model of it that her father might not have endured it had it not been delivered by his own dear sister.

  Tree climbing, pond swimming, and sword fights with the statuary were all encouraged. At the end of those summer days, Beth and her aunt would trudge back to the house so that Uncle James could deliver a half-hearted chiding about the state of their clothing before they changed for dinner.

  Most antics fetched barely a raised eyebrow from Beth’s father, Barnaby. The only time he’d attempted to draw the line, it was in regard to riding. Dahlia had told him: The best way to protect Beth from an accident like the one that befell her mother is to give her an excellent seat on a horse. The argument must have been compelling because Beth started learning to ride at her earliest memory. By her last teenaged summer at Ashecote, she was the most skilled equestrian in the family.

  Now those memories were covered in snow—not the sort of snow that leaves the expanse looking downy and festive, but the sort that freezes hard to the dead grass and soon makes mud. In nearly three decades of visits to Ashecote House, she’d never once seen a January there. Looking outside now, she could understand why her father had avoided it.

  A sigh made the glass fog up again, and Beth remembered the embroidery hoop in her hand. A needle still dangled from the fabric on rosy floss, leaving a beautiful amaryllis a few petals shy of a bloom. She held it up to the gray light of the window and examined it.

  She had enough skill to serviceably finish the piece where her Aunt Dahlia had left off, but did she have any desire? She looked back up as if she could still see through the glass, as if she could see everything as it once was, green and blooming. The girl she was back then would have left embroidery in the sewing basket. The girl she was back then would have sifted through her aunt and uncle’s library for tomes that had maps of faraway places. The girl she was back then might have batted her eyelashes at a stable boy.

  Now she looked at the embroidery hoop and felt it calling her dutifully. She was thirty years of age and had not been that girl for more than a decade. She turned around to face her aunt’s empty bed. She was this girl now. This woman. Now and for the rest of her life.

  She wrapped the fabric reverently around the hoop and placed it into a trunk atop the last of Dahlia’s things. Her eyes skimmed the room for any other items of importance.

  She caught a glimpse of herself in the dressing table’s mirror and paused. How glum she looked, how tired. Her pallid face and the white stock at her neck struck a puritan contrast against the dark navy of her traveling habit. She tucked a strand of brown hair behind her ear and tried to smile for the benefit of the reflection but could not.

  Most of her aunt’s things had been loaded onto a cart the day before and sent ahead, but Beth had first rescued one of her aunt’s cloaks from a chest. It was a black woolen thing, long and hooded, and quite out of fashion. Dahlia had worn it in mourning for her husband, and now Beth would wear it in mourning for her.

  She was adjusting it on her shoulders when its massive heft suddenly lightened. Knuckles, cool and clammy, brushed against the back of Beth’s neck.

  “Desmarais.” Beth pulled away sharply, putting space between herself and Dahlia’s rangy land steward. “I’m almost ready.”

  “You look . . .”

  Beth pulled the front edges of the cloak together before his hollow eyes had time to peruse her body.

  “. . . just like an angel in her clothing. She would have approved.”

  Beth sidestepped the knobby hand that seemed to be moving fast toward a caress of her cheek. “I’m almost done here,” she said. “I’ll join you outside momentarily.”

  Desmarais’ hand opened up and a pendant dropped between his pale fingers, caught by a black ribbon. “Don’t forget this. She wished for you to have it.”

  I know. Beth suppressed a frown as she reached for the familiar necklace. Dahlia had promised it to her explicitly. The enamel pendant depicted Ashecote House in a ring of flowers. Dahlia had worn it daily, even in the sick bed. Noticing it missing during funeral preparations, Beth had immediately suspected Desmarais.

  The soft velvet ribbon pooled in her hand. “Thank you,” she said curtly, snapping her fingers shut around it.

  Beth closed the lid of the large trunk beside her. “Tell them that this one is ready to be loaded onto the boot.”

  “Of course, and I assure you that this, and everything we sent ahead this week, will make it safely to Greenthorne.” He moved to take her hand, but she didn’t allow it. He continued with his slithering, servile tone just the same. “It is my duty, after all, to take care of the whole affair. Her things will arrive safely, and so will you, my dear.”

  “Of course. Thank you.”

  “Which is why I shall accompany
you.”

  Beth’s blood seemed suddenly taken by the winter frost. “You’ll what?”

  “I’ll come along, of course. There’s much to discuss with your father and his solicitor regarding the will and the estate. With the Halliwells having had no children, it’s all very complicated.”

  “It isn’t, though. It’s already been read. The estate was bequeathed in fee simple. To me. Ashecote belongs to me now.”

  Desmarais cocked his head and pushed out his thin lip—a pitying expression that she’d come to know too well.

  “Of course, dear—”

  “Miss Clarke.”

  “Yes . . . of course, Miss Clarke. And we want all of that to go smoothly. So don’t worry your lovely brow about it, because the men will see that it’s all settled back at Greenthorne. We’ll deal with the bankers, the deeds, the drafts . . . You won’t have to lift a finger.”

  Trapped in an overnight carriage with an utter worm. And who does he mean by we? She was too mad to think.

  “You may leave.” Beth folded her hands in front of her like a proper lady of the house and leveled a glare at him that commanded obeisance. At last, he bowed and left her.

  To Beth, he was the archetypal snake. He did all the right things so that no one could be angry that he did them with the glitter of ambition in his ghoulish eyes. He’d been expertly picking his way through the estate’s ranks for decades. Upon James’ death, Desmarais devoured so many responsibilities as to render him utterly indispensable to the widow’s household.

  Soon his social ladder would be cut down. Beth had been looking forward to signing his termination letter once she was far away, but now that small joy had been taken from her. It was clear from his own, patronizing opinion of the will that he would not accept her as his superior if she tried to dispatch him now.

  Desmarais was now some fifty-odd years of age, but anyone might be fooled into thinking him older. Grayness defined him, be it his skin, his eyes, or the stringy queue of hair that trailed down his neck and right into the gray velveteen collar of a frock coat too fine for him.

  His disconcerting nearness to her had only intensified the sicker her aunt became. Although Beth recruited many of the servants to look out for her, the snake still seemed an expert at catching her off guard. He’d made her months of caregiving into a nightmare. He insisted so much on chaperoning her outside of the home that she simply stopped going anywhere and kept to the gardens instead. The poor weather had robbed her even of that. Now she was trapped inside a home that seemed more infected by his grayness with each day that passed.

  It had been easier for Beth to force Desmarais to the back of her mind when Dahlia still needed her. In Dahlia’s final week, the man grew reviled by the sickbed, only stopping in to mutter insipidly into his kerchief about the odor that the bedchamber was taking on. A blessing. It had kept him out of the room when Beth sat down to read aloud the final letter that arrived from her father, who had been informed the end was coming:

  Dear Sister,

  It distresses me to be so far from you as you ail and as you prepare to leave this world behind. The doctor, as you know, recommended that I myself should not travel so far in the winter. But I take heart that you are receiving my love through the love of my daughter. I am glad to remember you as my vibrant, creative, full-spirited and—sometimes foolish, but mostly clever—sister, who taught me much, and with whom I spent a most blessed childhood. I know I cannot hold your hand, but I am there. I promise, I am there.

  All my love,

  Your family for eternity,

  Barnaby

  Beth’s tears had dripped onto her aunt’s wrist as she squeezed her hand. A hand that, shortly thereafter, ceased to be warm. Dahlia’s passing seemed a release from both their sufferings.

  Beth could finally escape the heat of Desmarais’ breath. She’d grown ever more dismissive of him, imagining that by tonight, her freedom would be complete. Evidently, she’d been wrong.

  Beth tied the necklace’s ribbon over her neck stock and cast a final look to Dahlia’s mirror. Her eyes widened in the reflection as a jolt of memory struck her, and her attention turned to a tiny drawer at the mirror’s base. From it, she took the smallest leather notebook, with a little pencil tied to it. Almost forgotten. She opened it and examined a fragmentary passage.

  The courage of the flower to open

  When pummeled down by storm

  Her chilled fingers fumbled the tiny pencil into their grip and wrote:

  The strength to push the earth up

  As the new’st growth is being borne

  Beth fished through her petticoats for the pocket that she’d tied over her shift and thrust the notebook inside for safekeeping.

  The frosty window drew her eyes. A stripe of dull gold cut through the obscured landscape. Sunset. Though, one might have been forgiven for concluding from the gloominess that it were perpetually night.

  The plan was to drive through the night, stop for breakfast and a rest, and then arrive at Greenthorne by evening next—the final step before she would be home. By the time she ran into her father’s arms, what would it matter who she’d shared her carriage with?

  Beth crossed the threshold into the sharp January air. Her heart was as heavy as the oak door that closed behind her as she bade farewell to what had been a second home. Someday she would see it again, but it would never be the same without Dahlia.

  Beth looked up. Mist clung to the house’s decorative pinnacles, making the home’s once familiar facade as uncertain as its future.

  Turning herself toward the waiting berline carriage, everything loomed gray and cold. The melting snow along the stone path had been muddied by the boots of footmen loading things up. Large droplets fell from the trees overhead, and Beth couldn’t tell if it was rain or snowmelt. The elegant conveyance seemed cut from a single piece of obsidian. Two black hackney horses were hitched, and two men in dark greatcoats and tricorns sat on the driver’s bench. Beth didn’t recognize them, and they both stared down at her as she neared. Desmarais stepped ahead, opening the carriage door and pulling out the step for Beth.

  Taking her hand, Desmarais acknowledged the men staring at them from above. “This is Tom.” The short young man with the reins and whip tipped his hat at her without changing his scowl. “And this is Mr. Shelby, your aunt’s solicitor.”

  Strange. Beth didn’t recognize him from the reading of the will. The roughened man looked briefly at Desmarais, then back to Beth before tipping his own hat. Neither said a word.

  Something wasn’t right. Why wasn’t the solicitor riding inside with them? Where was Dahlia’s coachman? Beth’s heart began to pound, but Desmarais had already led her up into the carriage, as if in a trance, and before she could snap out of it, a footman clapped the door shut behind them both.

  Desmarais fell heavily into the back-facing seat. Beth perched lightly on the bench across from him and reached for the door. “I believe I forgot something,” she uttered breathlessly. But she’d hardly moved before Desmarais rapped on the wall twice, signaling the driver to go. The hard lurch knocked Beth back into her seat.

  Desmarais shook his head gently. “You didn’t forget anything. And if you did, they can always send it after you.”

  “It was a book,” she said and hoped that the fear in her voice was less evident than the menace in his. “I forgot my book and will be quite bored without it. It would be so easy to get, while we’re still right here.”

  Desmarais simply shook his head again, in a slower, more sinister manner. “It will be far too dark for reading.” The sound of the horses’ hooves changed as they left the gravel of the drive and hit the muddy lane.

  Something terrible, something tight and poisonous was welling inside her . . .

  Beth lunged for the latch.

  But Desmarais’ hand intercepted her wrist like the talons of
a hawk, and her eyes followed his other hand to where it reached into his coat. He withdrew a pistol and pointed it at her heart.

  She went for the door again anyway, kicking out at him and screaming for help, but her voice was trapped inside the box—her muffled banging and screams carried away on the winter wind.

  Desmarais moved fast to pin her to the carriage’s cramped floor. She couldn’t bear the feeling of him—those awful bones jabbing at her, the strength of his stringy limbs. Her hands flew out at him with claws bared. She caught him straight across his sallow cheek, and it tore like crepe beneath her nails.

  He reared back.

  Where had he dropped the bloody pistol?

  Beth’s fingers stretched upward, searching his seat.

  Her wrist was perfectly vulnerable when he swooped on it again. This time, his grip was a shackle. He pulled a long length of fabric from his coat pocket and tied her wrists together in front of her. Within seconds he had wrested her back into a seated position across from him.

  There was a long silence as he situated himself in a pistol-drawn position of calm. Beth took the opportunity to regain her own dignity. She used her bound hands, rather gracelessly, to drag the hood of her cape back over her head. Retaking her composure, she demanded, “Why?” Though she was certain she knew.

  Desmarais smiled.

  “You are soon to be a wealthy woman.”

  She’d smelled the thirst for such wealth emanating from this man since she was just a little girl. Her nose scrunched as though a fowl odor had consumed the space. She’d asked an obvious question, and she’d received an obvious answer.

  She turned her attention to gazing out the foggy window. She would not give him the pleasure of her attention. Desmarais reached across her to close the velvet curtain and cut off her view.

  “Not to mention your beauty.”