Chapter 18

An accomplished strumpet Charity Graves certainly was, Roland Vawtry thought. Clever, too, to come up with a fresh plan on the spur of the moment, with the village louts bearing down on her on one side and Lady Dain on the other.

As a mother, however, she was utterly useless.

Vawtry stood at the window overlooking the inn yard, trying to ignore the revolting sounds behind him and the more revolting stench.

Immediately after the encounter with Lady Dain, Charity had hide to her tiny cottage in Grimspound, collected her belongings, and hurled them into the broken-down Denned gig she'd bought a week ago, along with an equally broken-down pony.

The brat, however, had balked at getting into the gig, because of the thunder miles away.

Unwilling to risk his bolting from the vehicle and disappearing into the moors, Charity had pretended to sympathize. Promising they'd wait until the thunder stopped, she'd calmly set out a bit of bread and a-mug of ale for him. To the ale, she'd added "the tiniest bit—not half a drop—of laudanum," she claimed.

The "half a drop" had quieted Dominick to the point of unconsciousness. She'd stuffed him into the gig and he'd slept the whole way to the inn at

Postbridge and for some time after, while Charity explained to Vawtry what had happened to destroy their original plans and what she'd contrived instead.

Vawtry trusted her. If she said Lady Dain wanted the loathsome child, then it was true.

If Charity said Her Ladyship would tell Dain nothing about it, that must be true as well, although Vawtry had rather more difficulty accepting this truth. He'd gone to the window more than once to survey the inn yard for signs of Beelzebub or his minions.

"The worst that can happen is he'll turn up tomorrow instead of her," she'd told him. "But you only have to keep a sharp lookout. It's not like you can't see him coming from a mile away, is it? Then all we do is make ourselves scarce, quick-like. And if we can keep the pesky boy quiet another week, we can go back to the first plan." The first plan involved criminal acts.

The second plan merely required keeping a sharp lookout—and listening to common sense, meanwhile. Even if Lady Dain had tattled, even if Dain decided to hunt Charity down, the bad weather would keep him at home for the present. In another two hours, the sun would set, and he was not likely to set out in the dark, through the mud, for Postbridge, especially when he couldn't know Charity was there already. That, anyone would agree, was too much bother for Dain.

All the same, Vawtry couldn't help wishing that Charity's common sense extended to child care. If she'd minded the boy properly in the first place, matters wouldn't have reached a crisis with Athton's populace. If she'd beaten the brat in the second place, instead of dosing him with laudanum, he wouldn't now be vomiting up the dinner he'd just wolfed down and working on spewing up whatever he'd had for breakfast as well.

Vawtry turned away from the window.

Dominick lay on a narrow cot, clutching the edge of the thin mattress, his head hanging over the chamber pot his mother held. The retching had stopped, for the moment at least, but his dirty face was grey, his lips blue, his eyes red.

Charity met her lover's gaze. "It weren't—wasn't—the laudanum," she said defensively. "It was the mutton he ate for dinner. Spoiled, it must've been—or the milk. He said everything tasted bad."

"He's got rid of everything," said Vawtry, "and he doesn't look any better. He looks worse. Maybe I'd better fetch a physician. If he D-I-E-S," he added, hoping Charity's spelling abilities were better than her mothering ones, "Her Ladyship won't be pleased. And someone I know might find herself closer to a gibbet than she likes."

The mention of the gallows washed the color from Charity's rosy cheeks. "Leave it to you to look for the worst in everything," she said, turning back to the sick child. But she made no objection when Vawtry collected his hat and left the room.

He had just reached the top of the stairs when he heard an ominously familiar rumble… which might as well have come from the bowels of the inferno, for it was Beelzebub's own voice.

Vawtry did not need a whiff of brimstone or a puff of smoke to inform him that during the moment he'd looked away from the window, the Golden Hart Inn had turned into the black pit of Hell and that, in a very few more moments, he would be reduced to a shriveled bit of ash.

He raced back to the room and flung open the door. "He's here!" he cried. "Downstairs. Terrifying the landlord."

The boy sat up abruptly, to gaze wide-eyed at Vawtry, who ran frantically about the room, snatching up belongings.

Charity rose from the boy's side. "Never mind the things," she said calmly. "Don't fly into a panic, Rolly. Use your head."

"He'll be here in a minute! What are we to do?"

"We're going to hustle out real quick-like," she said, moving to the window and surveying the inn yard. "You take Dominick out this window and scoot along the ledge down to that hay wagon and jump."

Vawtry darted to the window. The hay wagon looked to be miles below

—with not very much hay in it, either. "I can't," he said. "Not with him."

But she'd left the window while he was assessing the risk, and she'd already opened the door. "We daren't chance meeting up tonight. But you must take my boy—I can't carry him, and he's worth money, remember— and look for me in Moreton Hampstead tomorrow."

"Charity!"

The door shut behind her. Vawtry stared at it, listening in numb horror to her footsteps racing toward the back stairs.

He turned to find the boy staring at the door, too. "Mama!" he cried. He crawled off the cot, managed to stagger three steps to the door, then swayed and crumpled upon the floor. He let out a gagging sound Vawtry had heard all too often in the last hours.

Vawtry hesitated, halfway between the sick child and the window. Then he heard Dain's voice in the hall outside.

Vawtry ran to the window, unlatched it, and climbed out. Not ten seconds later, as he was edging cautiously along the ledge, he heard the door to the room crash open. He heard the bellowed oath as well. Forgetting caution, he scuttled hastily to the spot above the hay wagon and leapt.

Roaring into the room like the juggernaut, intent upon mowing Charity Graves down, Lord Dain very nearly crushed his son under his boots. Fortunately, one angry stride away, he noted the obstacle in his path and paused. In that pause, his glance took in the chamber, strewn with various items of female attire, the remains of a meal on a tray, an empty wine bottle, an overturned cot, and some unidentifiable odds and ends, including the disgusting heap of dirt and rags at his feet.

Which appeared to be alive, for it was moving.

Dain hastily looked away and took three deep breaths to quell the bile rising within him. That was a mistake, because the air was rancid.

He heard a whimper from the animate pile of filth.

He made himself look down.

"Mama," the thing gasped. "Mama."

Ave Maria, gratia plena, Dominus tecum, benedicta tu in mulieribus, et benedictus fructus ventris tui, lesus.

Hail Mary, full of grace, the Lord is with you, blessed are you among women, and blessed is the fruit of your womb, wounded.

Dain remembered a child lost, alone and despairing, seeking comfort from the Virgin Mother, when his own was gone.

Sancta Maria, Mater Dei, ora pro nobis peccatoribus, nunc et in hora mortis nostrae.

Holy Mary, Mother of God, pray for us sinners, now and at the hour of our death.

That child had prayed, not knowing what he prayed for. He had not known what his sin was, or what his mother's was. He had known, though, that he was alone.

Dain knew what it was to be alone, unwanted, frightened, confused, as Jessica had said of his son.

He knew what this hideous child felt. He, too, had been hideous and unwanted.

"Mama's gone," he said tightly. "I'm Papa."

The thing raised its head. Its black eyes were swollen and red-rimmed, the great beak dripping snot.

"Plague take you, you're filthy," Dain said. "When was the last time you had a bath?"

The brat's narrow face twisted into a scowl that would have sent Lucifer running for cover. "Sod off," he croaked.

Dain grabbed him by the collar and hauled him up. "I am your father, you little wretch, and when I say you're filthy and need a bath, you say, 'Yes, sir.' You do not tell me—"

"Bugger yourself." The boy choked out a sound halfway between a sob and a laugh. "Bugger you. Bugger, bugger, bugger. Sod, sod, sod."

"This is not puzzling behavior," Dain said. "I am not in the least puzzled. I know exactly what to do. I shall order a bath—and have one of the stablemen up to scrub you. And if you happen to take in a mouthful of soap in the process, that will be all to the good."

At this, the wretch let out a hoarse stream of invective and began writhing like a fresh-caught fish on a hook.

Dain's grip remained firm, but the boy's threadbare shirt did not. The ragged collar tore off and its wearer broke free—for exactly two seconds, before Dain caught him and swung him up off the floor and under his arm.

Almost in the same heartbeat Dain heard an ominous rattling sound.

Then the boy threw up… all over His Lordship's boots.

Then the squirming bundle under Dain's arm turned into a dead weight.

Alarm swept through him and surged into blind panic.

He'd killed the child. He shouldn't have held him so tightly. He'd broken something, crushed something… murdered his own son.

Dain heard approaching footsteps. His panicked gaze went to the door.

Phelps appeared.

"Phelps, look what I've done," Dain said hollowly.

"Got them fancy boots mucked up, I see," Phelps said, approaching. He peered down at the lifeless form still wedged against Dain's hip.

"What'd you do, skeer his dinner out o' him?"

"Phelps, I think I've killed him." Dain could scarcely move his lips. His entire body was paralyzed. He could not make himself look down… at the corpse.

"Then why's he breathin'?" Phelps looked up from the boy's face into his master's. "He be'nt dead. Only sick, I reckon. Mebbe took a chill comin' here in the bad weather. Whyn't you put him down over there on the bed so we can have a look at him?"

Addled, Dain thought. Jessica would say he was addled. Or highstrung. His face burning, he carefully shifted the boy up, carried him to the bed, and gently laid him down.

"He looks a mite feverish," said Phelps.

Dain cautiously laid his hand over the lad's grime-encrusted forehead. "He's—he's rather overwarm, I think," said His Lordship.

Phelps' attention was elsewhere. "Mebbe that be the trouble," he said, moving to the small fireplace. He took a bottle from the mantel and brought it to Dain. "As I recollect, laudynum didn't set right with you, neither. Nuss give it to you when your ma run off, 'n you was sick some'at fierce from it."

Dain, however, had not been half-starved at the time and had not been dragged through a Dartmoor drenching as well. He had been safe in his bed, with servants in attendance, and Nurse there to feed him tea and bathe his sweating body.

… it was better to leave him where he would be safe, and where she was sure he'd be provided for.

Dain had not been loved, but his mother had left him safe enough. He'd been looked after, provided for.

His mother had not taken him with her… where he would surely have died with her, of fever, upon an island on the other side of the world.

This boy's mother had left him to die.

"Go down and tell them we must have a pot of tea immediately," he told Phelps. "See that they send up plenty of sugar with it. And a copper tub. And every towel they can find." Phelps started for the door.

"And the parcel," said Dain. "Fetch my lady's parcel." Phelps hurried out.

By the time the tea arrived, Dain had stripped off his son's sweat soaked garments and wrapped him in a bed sheet.

Phelps was ordered to build a fire, and set the tub near it. While he worked, his master spooned heavily sweetened tea into the boy, who lay limply against his arm, conscious again—thank heaven—but just barely.

Half a pot of tea later, he seemed to be reviving. His bleary gaze was marginally more alert, and his head had stopped lolling like a rag doll's. That head, an untidy mass of thick black curls like Dain's own, was crawling with vermin, His Lordship noticed, not much surprised.

But first things first, he counseled himself.

"Feeling better?" he asked gruffly.

A dazed black gaze rose to meet his. The sticky childish mouth trembled.

"Are you tired?" Dain asked. "Do you want to sleep for a bit? There's no hurry, you know."

The boy shook his head.

"Quite. You slept a good deal more than you wished, I daresay. But you'll be all right. Your mama gave you some medicine that didn't agree with you, that's all. Same thing happened to me once. Puked my guts out. Then, in a very short time, I was all better."

The boy's gaze dropped and he leaned toward the side of the bed. It took Dain a moment to realize the brat was trying to see his boots.

"There's no need to look," he said. "They're ruined. That's the second pair in one day."

"You squashed me," the child said defensively.

"And I turned you upside down," Dain agreed. "Bound to unsettle a queasy stomach. But I didn't know you were sick.

Because Jessica wasn't here to tell me, Dain added silently.

"Still, since you've found your tongue at last," he went on, "maybe you can find your appetite."

Another blank, shaky look.

"Are you hungry?" Dain asked patiently. "Does your belly feel empty?"

This won Dain a slow nod.

He sent Phelps down again, this time for bread and a bowl of dear broth. While Phelps was gone, Dain undertook to wash his son's face. It took rather a while, His Lordship being uncertain how much pressure to exert. But he managed to get most of the grime off without scraping half the skin away as well, and the boy endured it, though he shook like a new-foaled colt the whole time.

Then, after he'd consumed a few pieces of toasted bread and a cup of broth, and had stopped looking like a freshly dug-up corpse, Dain turned his attention to the small copper tub by the fire.

"Her Ladyship sent clean clothes for you," Dain said, indicating a chair upon which Phelps had heaped the garments. "But you must wash first." Dominick's gaze darted from the clothes to the tub and back again several times. His expression became anguished.

"You must wash first," Dain said firmly. The boy let out an unearthly howl that would have done an Irish banshee proud. He tried to struggle up and away. Dain caught hold of him and picked him up off the bed, oblivious to pounding fists, kicking feet, and deafening shrieks.

"Stop that racket!" he said sharply. "Do you want to make yourself sick again? It's only a bath. You won't die of it. I bathe every day and I'm not dead yet."

"No-o-o-o!" With that piteous wail, his son's louse-infested head sank onto Dain's shoulder. "No, Papa. Please. No, Papa." Papa.

Dain's throat tightened. He moved his big hand up the lad's woefully thin back, and patted it gently.

"Dominick, you are crawling with vermin," he said. "There are only two ways to get rid of them.

Either you have a bath in that handsome copper tub" His son's head came up.

"Or you must eat a bowl of turnips."

Dominick drew back and gazed at his father in blank horror. "Sorry," said Dain, suppressing a grin. "It's the only other remedy." The struggling and wails ceased abruptly.

Anything—even certain death—was preferable to turnips.

That was how Dain had felt as a child. If the boy had inherited his reaction to laudanum, one might reasonably deduce that he'd also inherited Dain's youthful aversion to turnips. Even now, he was not overly fond of them.

"You may have the hot water sent up now, Phelps," said His Lordship. "My son wishes to bathe."

The first wash Dain was obliged to handle himself, while Dominick sat rigid with indignation, his mouth set in a martyred line. When that was done, however, he was rewarded with a glimpse of the peepshow, and told he might play with it as soon as he was clean.

Dominick decided to conduct the second wash himself.

While he was making puddles about the tub under Phelps' watchful eye, Dain ordered dinner.

By the time it arrived, the boy had emerged from the tub, and Dain had toweled him dry, got him into the old-fashioned skeleton suit Jessica had found, and combed his unruly hair.

Then the coveted peepshow was put into Dominick's hands, and while he played with it, Dain sat down with his coachman to eat.

He took up his knife and his fork and was about to cut into his mutton when he realized he'd taken up his knife and his fork.

He stared at the fork in his left hand for a long moment.

He looked at Phelps, who was slathering butter on an enormous hunk of bread.

"Phelps, my arm works," said Dain.

"So it does," the coachman said expressionlessly.

Then Dain realized his arm must have been working for some time now, and he hadn't noticed. How else had he held his son's head up while spooning tea into him? How else had he carried him and patted his back at the same time? How else had he moved the boy's rigid body this way and that while bathing him and washing his hair? How else had he dressed him in that pestilential impractical suit with its rows and rows of buttons?

"It stopped working for no known medical reason and now it's started working for no reason." Dain frowned at the hand. "Just as though there had never been anything wrong with it."

"Her Ladyship said 'tweren't nothing wrong with it. Said—meanin' no offense, me lord—'twere all in your head."

Dain's eyes narrowed. "Is that what you think? That it was all in my head? That, in other words, I am addled?"

"I only tole you what she said. Me, I reckon there were a sliver o' some'at them sawbones didn't get. Mebbe it just worked itself out."

Dain brought his attention back to his plate and commenced cutting the mutton. "Exactly. There was a medical explanation, but the French quack wouldn't admit he'd made a mistake, and all his friends stuck with him. There was something in there, and it simply worked itself out."

He was swallowing the first bite when his attention drifted to Dominick, who lay on his belly on the rug before the fire, studying the Battle of Copenhagen.

The problem of cosmic proportions had shrunk to one sick and frightened little boy. And somehow, during that shrinking, something had worked itself out.

As he gazed at his son, Lord Dain understood that the "something" had not been a sliver of metal or bone. It had been in his head, or perhaps in his heart. Jessica had aimed left of his heart, hadn't she? Mayhap a part of that organ had been immobilized… with fear? he wondered. Se mi lasci mi uccido, he'd told her. He had been terrified, yes, that she'd leave him. He realized now that he'd felt that way since the day she'd shot him. He'd feared then that he'd done the unforgivable, that he'd lost her forever. And he had not stopped being afraid. Because the only woman who'd ever cared for him before had abandoned him… because he was a monster, impossible to love.

But Jessica said that wasn't true. Dain left the table and walked to the fire. Dominick looked up at his approach. In his son's dark, warily upturned countenance, Dain saw his own: the black troubled eyes… the hated beak… the sullen mouth. No, the child was not handsome by any stretch of the imagination. His face wasn't pretty and his body was awkwardly formed—scrawny limbs, overlarge feet and hands, and great bony shoulders.

He did not have a sunny disposition, either. Nor did his filthy vocabulary enhance his appeal. He wasn't a pretty child and he certainly wasn't a charming one.

He was just like his father.

And just like his father, he needed someone—anyone—to accept him. Someone to look upon him and touch him with affection.

It was not very much to ask.

"As soon as Phelps and I finish dinner, we're setting out for Athcourt,"

he told Dominick. "Do you feel strong enough to ride?"

The boy gave a slow nod, his eyes never leaving his father's.

"Good. I will take you up on my horse, and if you promise to be careful, I may let you hold the reins. Will you be careful?" A quicker nod this time. And then, "Yes, Papa." Yes, Papa.

And in Lord Beelzebub's dark, harsh Dartmoor of a heart, the sweet rain fell and a seedling of love sprouted in the once barren soil.

By the time Lord Dain finished his neglected dinner, Charity Graves should have reached Moreton Hampstead. Instead, she was in Tavistock, some twenty miles in the opposite direction.

This was because Charity had collided with Phelps at the back entrance through which she'd planned to escape. He'd told her Lord Dain had come to collect his boy, and if Charity knew what was good for her, she would quietly and quickly disappear. Before Charity could summon up the required maternal tears and wails of grief at giving up her beloved son, Phelps had produced a small parcel.

The parcel had contained one hundred sovereigns, another fourteen hundred pounds in bank notes, and a note from Lady Dain. In the note, Her

Ladyship pointed out that fifteen hundred quid was better than nothing and a great deal more agreeable than residence in New South Wales. She suggested that Miss Graves book passage to Paris, where her profession was better tolerated, and where her advanced age—Charity was perilously near the dreaded thirty—would not be considered so great a drawback.

Charity had decided she was not a grieving mother after all. She held her tongue and made herself scarce, just as Phelps recommended.

By the time she'd found her gig, she'd done a simple calculation. Sharing twenty thousand pounds with her lover was an altogether different matter from sharing fifteen hundred. She was fond of Roily, yes, but not that fond. And so, instead of heading northeast for Moreton Hampstead, on the road that would take her to London, Charity had headed southwest. From Tavistock, her next stop would be Plymouth, she decided. There she would find a vessel to take her to France.

Five weeks earlier, Roland Vawtry had tumbled into a pit without realizing it. By now he was aware he was at the bottom of a very deep hole. What he failed to see was that the bottom was made of quicksand.

Instead, what he saw was that he'd betrayed Charity's trust.

Yes, she'd raced to Postbridge, straight to the inn where she knew Vawtry was staying. Yes, she'd sent for him, instead of discreetly hiring a room of her own. And yes, that meant that the occupants of the Golden Hart knew the tart and he were connected. Still, since Vawtry had used a false name, there had remained a chance Dain wouldn't discover the truth.

That chance, Vawtry belatedly discovered, had died when he'd panicked and abandoned the brat. The boy would have heard Charity call him "Rolly," and worse, would be able to describe him. Dominick had stared at his mama's "friend" throughout the meal he'd started spewing up minutes after finishing it.

Charity, being so quick-witted, had perceived the problem. She'd told Vawtry to take the boy because that was the safest, wisest thing to do. He was "worth money," she'd also said. Vawtry had considered all this while cowering under a damp pile of hay, undecided which way to run and wondering whether he had a prayer of escaping the inn yard unnoticed once he did decide.

But the place had not erupted with men commanded to hunt Roland Vawtry—or anyone else—down. No more Satanic roars had issued from Vawtry's recently abandoned chamber.

Eventually, he had collected his courage and crept from the hay wagon.

No one accosted him. He walked as coolly as he could to the stables and asked for his horse.

It was there he learned of his reprieve.

The Marquess of Dain, he was informed, had all the inn servants—and not a few customers as well—running themselves ragged because his boy was sick.

Then Roland Vawtry saw that Fate had given him a chance to redeem himself in his beloved's eyes.

It did not take long to figure out how to accomplish that.

After all, he had nothing to lose now.

He was not only five thousand pounds in debt, but facing, he had no doubt, a rapid dismemberment at the Marquess of Dain's hands. Dain had other things on his mind now, but that wouldn't last forever. Then he would hunt his former comrade down.

Vawtry had one chance only and he must take it.

He must carry out Charity's plan… and he must do it all himself.