It seemed the missionary hadn’t believed his daughter’s story about Alaric’s adoration for her.
“Keep walking,” Prudence barked.
Willa continued, more slowly. “Do you intend to shoot me? It is obvious Alaric is nowhere ahead of us on this path. Do you mean to commit murder?”
“Absolutely not!” Prudence snapped. “You are a harlot, yea, an openly shameful woman who belongs in a brothel, but it is not for me to take your life.”
“In that case, where are we going, and why?”
“You will go into the bog,” Prudence replied, her voice once more clear and amiable. “I cannot abide to exist near such a filthy thing as you are. Alaric has eaten of your words and tasted of your body. He is poisoned.”
“If you allow me to return to the castle,” Willa said, “I will return to London without delay, leaving Alaric behind. You needn’t have my death on your conscience.”
“I won’t,” Prudence said, obviously surprised. “If I had to shoot you, it would be different. But I shall leave your fate in the hands of God. My heart is like a lion’s; I will not shirk from the Lord’s cause.”
When Prudence fell into the rhythms of that particular kind of speech, her eyes took on an unhinged look.
“Don’t you think the Lord might take his vengeance on me on the road to London?” Willa asked. “I could keep walking on this path and not return to Lindow Castle at all.”
Prudence glanced over her shoulder. The castle was little more than a speck on the western horizon, and the afternoon was drawing in. “Time for you to test your fate,” she said. “Get off the plank.”
She waved the pistol at Willa. “Put that animal down first.”
“What are you going to do to her?”
“Nothing,” Prudence said impatiently. “It is an innocent, and as such, must be protected by the godly.”
This was madness in its purest, starkest form. But unquestionably, Sweetpea was better out of the bog. Willa put the basket down slowly, keeping an eye on the pistol.
“Step off the footpath,” Prudence said, almost sounding bored.
Sweetpea sat up so Willa stroked her head with one finger, willing her to stay put.
“You’re not going to weep and beg me for mercy?” Prudence asked as Willa straightened.
“Would it make any difference?” Willa couldn’t jump at Prudence without being shot; the woman’s finger was curled around the trigger.
She would have to cross the bog without falling into a water sink. As soon as she was out of Prudence’s sight, she would sit still and wait to be rescued.
“No difference at all. You are in the hands of God,” Prudence said. “His will be done. We are placed as pilgrims in this flesh, and must keep it pure lest the ungodly contaminate us.”
Down on the ground, Sweetpea had put her paws on the edge of the basket. “No,” Willa said to her. “Stay there. Miss Larkin will take you home.”
With a wrinkle of her nose, Prudence reached down with her free hand and took up the basket. “Putrid animal,” she complained. Sweetpea lost her balance and tumbled on her side. “I’d encourage you to pray, but I have seen from your manner that you are entirely profane. If you feel the wish to prepare yourself for the spiritual life, you may kneel and pray. If you believe the Spirit will move you.”
Willa was pretty certain it wouldn’t, so she said, “I think you’ll have to shoot me, Prudence. I’m afraid to step into the bog.”
“That would endanger my soul,” Prudence explained. “Off you go or I’ll blow this creature’s head off.” She pointed the pistol at Sweetpea.
“You said she was an innocent!” Willa protested.
“It is an animal. You, on the other hand, live in a Temple of the Lord, which you have defiled and polluted. Why are you taking off your hat?”
“I can’t enter the bog in a large hat designed for a garden party,” Willa stated, hoping that Prudence would accept it as a fashion edict.
“That is a work of darkness,” Prudence said broodingly.
The afternoon was fading and their shadows were stretching across the surface of the bog. If Willa delayed any longer, she wouldn’t be able to discern dark moss from lighter grass. What’s more, she had a shrewd feeling that Prudence would find it easier to shoot her as time went on.
Prism had told them that the bog was dotted with peat cutters’ huts, and if she wasn’t mistaken, there was a low roof in the distance.
“Go!”
Willa stepped from the footpath, testing a hassock of grass with her toe. A crack of gunfire broke the silence and she screamed. With a hiss, the hot bullet sank into wet grass to her right.
“I’m reloading,” Prudence said, her voice utterly calm. “I advise you to run. If you are godly, you will survive the bog. God will show your feet the way. If you are scurrilous and infectious, you will sink.”
Willa looked ahead, committing to a meandering trail of sturdy-looking hassocks that went as far as she could see. Before Prudence could finish reloading, she threw her hat onto an openly wet area, praying it would float, picked up her skirts, and began to run.
Her entire being focused on reaching one hassock after another. The peat was spongy under her feet. More than once a hassock shifted and rolled under her weight, but she had already left it for the next one.
No more shots were fired; Prudence shouted something but Willa was too focused to catch what she said.
She stopped only when she lost a shoe, grabbed by the bog when she put her foot wrong. She turned and watched as it sank with a sucking noise, and then took a shattered breath, fighting down a sob.
Meanwhile, the light had turned golden and would remain so for an hour, perhaps longer. Her frantic dash had taken her to a place where she could no longer see the plank path, or the castle on the horizon.
In this light, the jade-green patches were fading to a mossy brown, like the kind of rocks you see in a Highlands stream. But this was no stream. A whole sea of peat gently rolled to the horizon.
Chapter Thirty-one
Alaric spent an hour or so with the ledger containing the buttery accounts, but he kept thinking of Willa’s question about Horatius. It was such a simple one: what kind of person was Horatius? It made him realize that younger Wildes would have little or no memory of their eldest brother, which was inconceivable.
He finally put the ledger to the side and began to write a story drawn from his childhood, about a time when the Duke of Lindow took their family to a hunting lodge high in the Pennines hills one December.
Horatius dug a snow house for Alaric, Parth, and Roland, with two exits and three separate rooms. He’d dropped his dignity and played with them, chasing them on hands and knees through warm, snowy tunnels. Howling at them like the great warrior he was named after.
It was, hands down, the best Christmas of Alaric’s life.
He was just finishing when the door was thrown open and North appeared.
“She’s left me,” he roared.
“What?” Alaric looked up as his brother slammed the door shut behind him.
“Diana’s run away. She’s left me.”
“Bloody hell,” Alaric said, dropping his pencil. “That’s rotten luck.” Of course it wasn’t a question of luck, but he didn’t think his brother was ready to hear that he was better off without that particular woman, or that he’d find someone better.
North ripped off his wig and threw it at a chair; it bounced and fell to the floor. To Alaric’s surprise, his brother’s head was shaved. He took off his coat and threw that to the side as well. “She’s left me,” he repeated, obviously stunned.
Alaric leaned back in his chair. “Just now?”
North strode forward and slammed his fist on the desk. “She didn’t even write me a bloody note. Nothing.”
Alaric felt a surge of anger toward Diana Belgrave. To go away without an explanation was rude and unfeeling. Cruel, even. Any fool could see how devoted North was.
“Do you know who told me that my sniveling, cowardly fiancée had fled to London?” North demanded.
“Prism?”
“Prudence Larkin!” he bellowed. “That unmitigated, rubbishing Puritan woman was entrusted with a simple message: ‘Miss Belgrave has changed her mind about the wedding.’ ”
“I wasn’t aware they were more than acquaintances.”
“They aren’t,” North snarled. “As I understand it, if Prudence hadn’t seen Diana sneaking away and demanded an explanation, my fiancée would have left the house without bothering to tell me that she was jilting me. She lied to Prism, who thought she was paying a visit to the village.”
He dropped onto the settee and rubbed his hands over his scalp, his jaw clenched in a rigid line.
“I’m sorry,” Alaric said.
“No, you’re not. You never liked Diana and now you’re proven right.”
“I didn’t dislike her. I just thought she wasn’t as deeply attached as you are.”
“As deeply? She’s not attached at all. She prefers to ruin herself rather than marry me.”
“Is Diana ruined?” Alaric had never paid much attention to the rules of polite society. And, at his brother’s nod, “Simply because she left you?”