The Devil's Mistress by David Barclay (summer reads txt) 📗

hand at him without looking back. “I told you, servant boy. I do what I like.”

Chapter 11

She rode hard and fast, spurring Lily onward as if her troubles were a pursuing bandit she might leave behind. For a time, it worked. Then the path muddied as she entered the forest shade, and she was forced to slow. There came a fork ahead, and she stopped completely, at a sudden and somehow awful moment of indecision. The two branches looked much the same as the two paths in her own life.

Upon one, she saw herself returning to Marianne, groveling for forgiveness and picking up the mantle of the wedding. She saw herself surrounded by great wealth and power, respected by all the members of the town, at wont for nothing when it came to luxury and fashion. She saw herself growing pregnant. Three, and four, and five children with fine, long faces, and thick, dark hair, and the glint of madness in their eyes. Perhaps there would be other children, as well. Half-white, half-negro babes who appeared mysteriously from the stable of pretty slaves the Huxleys kept upon their grounds. She would ignore them, just as she would ignore Thomas’s antics, his abuse, his odd mannerisms and torturous games. She would ignore the blood that ran thick beneath the Huxley house. And one day, if Thomas decided she was no longer his equal, but a plaything to be poked and pricked like all the others, she would ignore that, too, because she had been allowed such a sweet and meritorious life.

Then there was the other path.

A much darker path it was, with no visible end. Perhaps it would be short and brutal. Her father would succumb to his illness, and she would be turned upon the street. Or perhaps he would last a while, and she would grow into an old spinster, with no man to take her. Or perhaps, just perhaps, she would find someone new to marry, someone who would love her, and cherish her, and take her from this awful town.

Whatever futures we may have had were etched in stone long ago.

She didn’t believe that, and no matter what Jacob said, she didn’t think he believed it either. Could he be the one, the man who would love and protect her for all days? He watched her from afar. Served her. Did whatever she asked, no matter the consequence to himself.

Of course, the thought was laughable. He was just a servant, with no more ability to care for her than a dog grabbing at scraps beneath the table.

Yet, the choice remained. Stand by her father on her own two feet, or return to Marianne on her knees.

“So what is it to be, Elly?” she asked the empty road.

The wind picked up in response, a restless gust that crackled through the trees and whispered the promise of another storm. It did not frighten her. She had the love of her father, and she had the love of a young man. No matter how short-lived or silly they might be, they each gave her strength in their own way. Aside from that, she had the Lady’s medicine. The weight of the vial hung heavy against her bosom where she had stowed it, promising at least a longer, if not brighter future.

There was no choice after all. Isabella had made it the moment she went riding into the forest the night before, with nothing but hope in front, and a young servant boy behind her.

She turned Lily about face and began riding back to the house.

Chapter 12

There was a commotion beyond the gate. The patter of running footsteps. The sounds of men shouting and cursing.

Isabella’s first thought was that there had been an accident on the roof, but as Lily cantered in through the gate, she saw that couldn’t be right. The servants were rushing into the house. She tied Lily to the fence and started after them. She got halfway across the grounds when Delia appeared from the front door, her kind face choked with misery.

Isabella swallowed a lump in her throat. “Is it Jacob?” she asked, not wanting to hear the answer and knowing she must.

“No,” Delia said. “It’s Mister Ashford. I’m sorry, darling. He passed on. Just collapsed right there in the kitchen.”

Isabella’s breath caught in her throat. “What?”

“It’s your father, dear. Oh my.”

The words were coherent, but their meaning made no sense. Isabella had just seen her father at midday, and he was the very definition of health.

Delia threw her arms round the girl. She might have been expecting tears, but Isabella was too confused to cry. She had used the medicine, had seen her father drink the tea she proffered the night before.

She might have continued to stand there were it not for another shout from inside the house. The hard, gravelly voice of Sebastian Sands. “Leave him be, you old fool. They’ll be wanting a look at him.”

Isabella pulled from Delia’s grasp and stumbled in through the hall. The entire staff was crowded about the kitchen doorway. They were staring at something. When she pushed her way through, the object of their scrutiny became all too clear.

John Ashford lay on his back in the corner. His eyes were open, his face twisted in a grimace. There was vomit on the floor around him. A thin strand of it still hung from the corner of his lips. His shirt was open at the throat, revealing a bloated, swollen neck.

Delia stepped in behind. “He was a sick man.”

“No sickness about it,” Sands barked. “This is witchcraft, it is.”

Isabella fell to her knees, paralyzed by a single thought: the Lady of the Hill had lied.

“Make way, there. Make way in front.”

Tiberius Sloop and two members of the town watch pushed their way through the crowd, followed by Jacob. The boy’s shirt was soaked with sweat, and he was limping badly upon his wooden leg. Isabella realized he must have run