Corey McFadden

DECEPTION AT MIDNIGHT

Corey McFadden

Prologue

The two children tumbled like puppies through the long grass on the hill behind Romney Manor. Hidden from view of the once grand house, they rolled over and over, the girl’s frock and petticoats picking up dirt and twigs with every bump. They landed at the bottom of the hill, all of a heap, laughing and winded.

Maude had watched in elation as the old family carriage lumbered off behind two nice but dull old nags, bearing aunt and cousins off for the calls inflicted weekly on the neighborhood. Maude was too naughty to call upon ‘nice people’. She was punished and could not go. Of course, she was always punished for this or that infraction—her aunt imposed too many rules to keep inside of her eight-year old head.

Sitting up, the boy listened for sounds of trouble. Unlike his playmate, he wore nothing to cause worry about getting dirty—an old hand-me-down shirt, too big, and breeches, too small—everything dingy and worn.  Although he heard nothing, his face was anxious. It was a thin face, rather pinched, and would have been too pale, but for the browning from the sun. There were dark rings under the young eyes.

“Oh, come on, Joe, they’ll be gone for hours. And no one will tell on us. Let’s go to the stables.”

With a laugh, Maude picked herself up and made a feeble attempt at tidying up. Joe scrambled quickly to his feet and brushed at her hair and dress, not that it helped much. With smiles of shared conspiracy, they ran pell-mell for the stables, now more home to the girl than the great rambling house with its sweet memories and bitter present.

The children had great plans for the day. Yesterday, Maude, hiding in the stables from the wrath of her Aunt Claire, had discovered something wonderful, coming unexpectedly upon the hidden storage place for a brace of marvelous pistols. Today would be Maude’s crowning achievement! Her father had been a superb shot, and though he had promised to teach her to shoot when she was older, his pistols were the only thing he had forbidden his tomboy moppet. She had never disobeyed her father—it had never occurred to her to do so. But now, of course, things were—different. And anyway, she was older—she was eight.

Maude beat Joe into the stables by a nose. Oblivious to the stable muck, they dove into an old tackle chest. Reaching down into the back, a crow of delight escaped her lips as her hands closed on the treasure.

“Here they are! Right where they were yesterday!” She pulled the two pistols from the chest and brandished them the way she imagined a brigand would do.

“Easy, Miss Maude! Point them down. You’ll blow me ’ead off!” Joe cried, as he stepped quickly to the side.

“Oh,” said Maude, in a small voice, lowering the pistols to point at the earth. “I’m sorry, Joe, I wasn’t thinking. I do know we must be more careful than that.” Now that the first euphoria was fading, she noticed how heavy the pistols were. And so large! Surely they were not so big when her father had held them. What if her fingers were too little to pull back the pin and make the gun fire? Well, she had Joe to help. Between them they should be able to manage. Then a new doubt assailed her. “Are they loaded, do you suppose?” she asked, holding one up and eyeing it with concern. It would be dreadful if they were not.  She had no idea how to load pistols, or even where to find the gunpowder.

“Aye, that I do know, miss, for I’ve ’eard Old Tom say as ’e’s ready to fire at anyone wants to break into ’is stables an’ cause trouble.”

“Well, let’s be off then, Joe, out the back so no one from the house can see us. Anyway, if anyone does hear anything, they’ll think it’s the earl’s people after rabbits.”

“Where is your uncle, miss? And what about Cook?” the boy asked timidly.

Maude felt the usual twinge of sadness when she thought of her poor uncle, so lost in his drink and disappointment. She didn’t much understand why things were the way they were with her father’s younger brother. He had been lots of fun and full of the devil before....

“Uncle James is...unwell this morning,” she stammered, knowing he would sleep off his brandy until noon, at least. “He’ll not hear us, and, anyway, his windows face the other way. And Cook has gone to market. We’re almost all alone. Here...you carry one and I’ll carry the other.” She thrust one of the heavy pistols at Joe who eyed it warily and then took hold of it as if it might bite him. “Let’s hurry! Let’s go!”

The children sped from the stables, Maude’s short legs bared to the knee as she ran, holding her encumbering skirts high.
One of these days
, she thought,
I shall get some proper clothes. I’ll borrow them from Joe and then I shall do as I please without worrying about getting dirty!
She had, at least, had the forethought this morning to wear an old, too-tight, faded smock that had lain for ages in the bottom of her wardrobe for important emergencies such as these.

Behind the hill at last, the children sank, laughing, to the ground. It did seem that their ambitious plans would succeed now, for they had heard no angry shouts behind them, and the precious cargo had not gone off with a bang in flight. With a triumphant flourish, Maude held up her pistol. She turned it over in her small hand and gently touched the old elaborate chasing. She and Joe stared in awe and silence for a moment, examining the pistols. The guns were old and very beautiful. They had belonged to Maude’s grampa, a gift from the old earl when they were young men and the families were close. Relations were more formal in this generation. As Radford had prospered, Romney Manor had dimmed, some unknown turn of the wheel at play, and although all was neighborly, there was little commerce now between the houses.

Reverence for the power of the firearms made the children uncharacteristically careful. At last, their wide young eyes meeting in silent agreement, Maude stood, and slowly raised the pistol to eye level. There was a long pause as she tried to hold the heavy piece steady in her two hands. She pointed it high, far into the distance, away over the hill, but not, of course, anywhere near the large Radford edifice. Closing her eyes, she pulled back on the trigger. Nothing happened. Keeping the pistol as steady as she could, she wrapped her other fingers around the large trigger and pulled again, with all her strength. There was a blinding explosion, and Maude fell with a squeal to the earth.

“Miss! Miss Maude!” screamed Joe, as he scrambled toward her. Maude lay stunned, ears ringing with the power of the blast. She had not expected such noise! A tiny, rare flicker of guilt flared in her mind. She could hear her beloved father saying, “Maude, never touch my pistols! Do you understand me? Guns are not for children.” Well, perhaps eight was not quite old enough. Perhaps nine....

A bellow of rage from over the hill interrupted these thoughts. At that instant a magnificent stallion came hurtling, saddled but ominously riderless, toward them. Scrambling furiously, they managed to get out of the way as the horse, maddened with fear, missed them by inches. Maude looked at Joe. Now they had done it! With a resigned sigh, Maude arose, and with all the dignity she could muster, mud and stable muck notwithstanding, she proceeded over the hill.

It was most unfortunate that the sight that met Maude’s eyes was so funny. Knees in the air and on his rear end in ever-so-much mud, sat a gentleman, struggling to rise, but succeeding only in slipping back into the mire. Maude began to giggle, of course, and he turned a frigid glare in her direction, his gaze fixing pointedly on the pistol still clutched in her hand. It did seem to be the size of an elephant at this moment. Finally succeeding in heaving himself to his feet, the gentleman, too, seemed to increase in size. Sprawled in the mud he had not seemed quite so tall! Maude took an involuntary step backward as he advanced menacingly toward her.

“I see I have you to thank for frightening my horse almost to death and nearly breaking my neck,” he began. His voice was low and deceptively calm. His blue eyes bored holes in her. He continued to walk toward her as she shrank back, matching him step for step.

“I...I did not know you were there,” she stammered. “I would not...”

“Of course you did not know, chit, nor did you bother to find out! You could have killed me and my horse with your idiotic blind shooting! Who are you? Who do you belong to? I can see you are nothing but a child. Who the devil allowed you little monkeys to lay your grubby little hands on pistols, anyway?”

Well, that was really too much! Drawing herself to her full height, such as it was, she stated, “I am Maude Romney, and I live at Romney Manor, and this is Joe, our stableboy, and I’ve said I was sorry, or at least I would have, had you not so rudely interrupted, and you are NOT dead, so....”

“Silence, brat! I’ve heard quite enough from you. It’s no thanks to you, or your frightened friend that I’m alive, and now, if you don’t mind, I shall relieve you of those pistols and retrieve my horse.”

The pistols! No! Maude jerked her pistol behind her back, gesturing to Joe to get behind her. “I...I cannot give you the pistols, sir, they were a gift from the old earl to my grampa. I must return them. You simply cannot...” she broke off, gasping, he reached out, and, twisting her arm from behind her back, grabbed the pistol from her tight grasp.

“You, boy! The pistol, now!” he gestured peremptorily. Joe, accustomed to taking orders from his betters all of his life, never gave a thought to resistance. He handed the gun over, head and shoulders bowed.

“Now then, the new earl is my father, so you could say I have some interest in these pistols, and a fine pair they are, too, not playthings for babes. If you will tell me to whom they now belong, I shall see to it they are returned at once.”

The earl’s son!  Edward Almsworth. Worse and worse! Aunt Claire would have the skin off her for shooting him off his horse. Her aunt was so fawning over the earl’s family. This was just impossible! Desperately, Maude tried to think of some way to talk her way out of this one, but she feared all was lost.

* * * *

Edward Almsworth, heir to an impeccable, ancient earldom, stared at the two bedraggled little souls who had damned near been the death of him. His consequence was much crushed. Father said a gentleman should always keep his seat, no matter what the provocation.

Had the ragamuffin not had the gall to laugh at him, he might almost have felt sorry for her. As it was he would never hear the end of complaints from his valet about the state of his breeches and Hessian boots. There would be no keeping this mishap from the staff.

The girl took a deep breath and seemed to settle herself. “Sir,” she began, her tone a bit more deferential now, “the truth is, we rather, er, borrowed the pistols; that is, well, no one knows, at least, not yet. And if you take them back, well, they’ll know then, won’t they? And it won’t go so well with us, Joe and me. We’ll get thrashed, you see. You don’t know my aunt...” the child’s rushed confession trailed off, a look now of genuine fear in her eyes.

Gone was the fierce
braggadocio
of a moment before. Edward knew something of the aunt—a pushy, nasty piece of work by all accounts. However obsequious the woman might be to her social superiors, he had no doubts as to the thrashing the girl would get. Not that it wasn’t richly deserved. His own father would have had the hide off of him for pulling such a fool prank. And the chit was obviously the brains behind the crime. But the boy, well, that was a different matter. Edward watched Joe drag a shaking, filthy hand across his eyes. Perhaps a year or two younger than the girl, definitely a servant, he was underfed and gangly, his wrists and ankles protruding from his ill-fitting, ill-kempt garments. He shook with fear and the expression in his sad eyes was bleak but resigned. It would go badly with this boy, deserved or not, and Edward Almsworth, who fancied himself a fair-minded young man, could not bring himself to be the cause of the boy’s ill-treatment—or, worse in these times—dismissal from his post, at least not for the sort of prank he himself would have been proud to pull off at that age.

“I think a sound thrashing is just what you need, Miss Romney, but I’ll warrant you have dragged your servant into this mess without regard to the possible consequences to him. Do you understand that he will be beaten within an inch of his life?” He paused for effect, and watched as the girl visibly paled. Instinctively, she placed her arm around the boy’s thin, shivering shoulders, Edward noted with approval. If the chit had a conscience, so much the better. “That is the least of it,” he went on, mercilessly. “He will be dismissed, of course, for recklessly endangering my life.  Without a reference. Do you know what that means to a young serving boy? He will die, Miss Romney, in a ditch, or, worse, at the end of a rope in Tyburn for thieving a crust of bread to feed himself.” Poor Joe sagged against Maude who tightened her arm about him, even as she gave a choking sob.

But Edward was relentless. This was a lesson she needed to learn and perhaps he was the only one to teach it. “One of the things you should have learned by now, young as you may be, is responsibility toward your servants. If they must obey your orders, you must be certain your orders are fair and will not imperil their safety. I’ll warrant this dangerous play with ‘borrowed’ pistols was your idea, and not Joe’s. Am I right?”