Hester, ever practical and always kind. Ever since Gwen brought me here you have been a pillar of strength. As for helping me—you shouldn’t. You know your father will find out. He always does and then you will be in trouble as well as me.’
Hester smiled. ‘I’m prepared to risk it. Sometimes I fear what will become of us—but it’s right that you go. At least you have somewhere to escape to, whereas we will have to stay under his authority until he finds us husbands,’ Hester retorted, in a voice made harsh by the hostility of her thoughts. ‘Indeed, Jane, I cannot wait. Nothing could be as bad as this—no man as cruel as he is. His behaviour is abnormal, deranged. I believe his mind is twisted—in fact, there are times when I am sure he is quite mad. How else can his cruelties by explained?’ Tears were glistening in her eyes and on her lashes when she asked, ‘Is there always a man to be found behind women’s suffering?’
Her words were met by silence, then Jane took out a handkerchief and handed it to her. Jane was worried about what would happen when Jacob Atkins discovered she had left. ‘It certainly looks that way, Hester. God help us all,’ she whispered. ‘I believe there is.’
With her few possessions secured to the back of the horse and Scamp, her little dog, curled up in front of her, with the end of her journey in sight, Jane focused her eyes on the road ahead. With the war not long over, the countryside was infested with footpads, vagrants and displaced soldiers. She was armed with an ancient matchlock pistol, one of a brace that she had taken from the house. She would not be afraid to use it should anyone try to accost her.
After a long and weary ride, having reached the borders of the Bilborough estate in the heart of Cambridgeshire, suffering from aching limbs and a severe headache, she rode slowly. She tried to ignore her discomfort in the joy of being close to Bilborough Hall, telling herself there would be plenty of time to rest when they were home.
She was going home in peace—at least, it was peace of a sort, for although England was now a Commonwealth, the Civil War had ended. She let her gaze move lovingly over the achingly familiar landscape. The countryside around them was beautiful, the land rich and fertile, with ancient woods full of game and huge oaks and elms stretching to the sky like a benediction. Marsh birds came in flocks to settle on a large lake, wheeling and calling overhead. Corn standing tall and golden in the fields indicated that harvest wasn’t far away.
Halting her horse to let a young swineherd cross the road to the next field, she noted sheep and cattle grazing contentedly in meadows; in another, half-a-dozen splendid-looking mares had foaled. She was impressed. Long before her father had died all the horses at Bilborough had been requisitioned by the army. She wondered where all these horses had come from.
There was no sign of neglect here, as had been the case of other manors she had passed through. Despite the ten years of Civil War, it was plain that their steward, Silas Thorpe, had done his work well, and was a good taskmaster in managing the tenants and obtaining from them the requisite labour.
Jane’s eyes had been fixed on the horizon for the past hour. At last she was rewarded when the turrets and rooftops of the hall came into view. In recent years she had often thought about the past and now, seeing the pink-and-gold stone walls, with ivy growing around the facing windows, it brought it all back with a strange force. With poignancy she found herself thinking of her father and all he had tried to do for her. Sadly she had never known her mother, who had died shortly after her birth. The memory of her father’s death flashed into her mind and brought tears to her eyes. She blinked them aside. Bilborough Hall had been a place of peace and happiness, and she vowed it would be again. It was home, and this was where her heart was, for always.
‘There it is, Scamp. Does the sight of it not gladden your heart?’
In reply, the little dog twitched his ears and licked her hand. Her eyes switched to the left of Bilborough, settling on the picturesque rooftops of Avery in the distance. On a note of gravity she said, ‘I wish I could say the same for the town.’
She was remembering the last time she had been there, when Gwen, her stepmother, had been attacked by hostile locals, who had accused her of being a witch. Jane felt her heart contract with remembered fear.
‘It will be better now, Scamp. What happened was a long time ago. Things have moved on and people forget. Please God the people of Avery have done so.’
Not to let any unpleasant memories mar her homecoming, she thrust them away. Dropping Scamp to the ground, she laughed joyously, gathering the reins firmly in her hands. ‘Time for some exercise, Scamp. We are home at last and I can’t wait to get there. Let’s see who can get there first.’ With a tap of her crop and a kick of her heels against the horse’s flanks, she took off in a flurry of skirts.
As a child, no one but Jane’s father had been able to control this wayward, headstrong girl. In Northampton Jacob Atkins had subdued her spirit and it had lain dormant but for ever simmering. And now, within sight of Bilborough, it was resurrected and ready to fly free.
Jane’s father had been killed in a skirmish near Oxford, leaving his widow with not a penny in the house. The country at that time was racked with civil war, plague, food shortages and high prices. Gwen had no liking for Bilborough Hall or the people of Avery, who on the whole supported Parliament and were making their lives at Bilborough a misery. When the threat of being charged with witchcraft became a reality, Gwen had fled Bilborough, taking Jane with her, and returned to live with her widowed brother at the family home in Northampton, much to Jane’s disgust, who, despite her fondness for her stepmother, had thought she should do as other women with absentee husbands were doing all over England and play the soldier and stay and defend her home with prudence and valour.
Jacob Atkins had prospered in the provision of trade before the war. He had married the widow of a cloth merchant, who had brought him a small fortune and given him three daughters. He had promised Gwen on her deathbed that he would look after Jane until she married, but having his sights set on Bilborough Hall since the estate was not entailed to the male line and was now Jane’s inheritance, he had a mind to marry her himself.
His anger would be fierce when he returned home and found her gone, but Jane had no qualms about leaving. When she’d put the house behind her, she’d felt like a gilded bird freed from its cage. But she feared that he would come after her and threaten her life and her future. Every waking moment from now on she would expect to see him. The picture of him coming after her for revenge was so bright, so vivid—inescapable. But she would not regret her decision to leave.
As she galloped towards Bilborough Hall with Scamp running along beside her, she was unaware of the three mounted men who had paused to watch her on the edge of a copse, their open-mouthed expressions revealing their astonishment and at the same time their masculine appreciation.
‘Good Lord! Where the devil did she come from?’ one of them exclaimed.
‘Wonder who she is?’ asked one of his companions.
The third man and the employer of the other two, Colonel Francis Russell, his eyes also following the female rider as she flashed across his sights in a blur of red, her long black hair streaming out behind her like a jaunty pennant on a ship’s masthead, replied, ‘I’m sure the young woman, whoever she is, must be a stranger to these parts—dressed as she is.’ His eyes sparkling with appreciation, he chuckled low. ‘If he were to see her, Justice Littleton would lose no time in having her whipped and clapped in the pillory.’
Francis continued to watch the young rider a moment longer before turning his horse and heading for home, for there was something totally distracting about watching a young woman racing a horse across the countryside without regard to how fast it was moving, or how uneven the
