Page 60 of The Rebellious Lady and the Phantom Lord
Phaedra detected a hard edge in Gilly’s voice she had never heard before. When he whipped her about to face him, all thoughts of chasing after Armande were momentarily forgotten. She stifled a gasp at the sight of the ugly bruises purpling one side of her cousin’s face. His lower lip was puffed and split, one green eye fairly swollen shut. The other glared at her with no trace of Gilly’s customary roguish twinkle.
Phaedra’s gaze shifted downward to where his hands gripped her arms. His knuckles were raw.
“What on earth?” she breathed. He released her and she gently touched his bruised jaw. He flinched.
“Curse it, Gilly. You’ve been fighting again. Who the devil was it this time?”
“That doesn’t matter. The more important question is-what the devil have you been writing while I was gone?”
Phaedra offered him a blank stare. “Writing? I don’t under-stand.”
Gilly started to speak, but glanced at the stableboy who had come to take charge of Furlong, as though fearing the lad showed far too much interest in their conversation. Seizing Phaedra by the wrist, he hauled her into the stable itself, past the horse stalls to the small tack room at the back. It was completely deserted now, and Gilly rounded upon her.
“I had just disembarked, and I barely managed to keep those rascally customs agents from having the very shirt off my back. The next I know, three dockhands approach me. ‘Ye’ve the sound of an Irishman,’ they said, none too friendly-like. ‘That’s right, me fine buckos,’ I replied.”
Phaedra grimaced, well able to imagine the defiant manner in which Gilly must have thickened his brogue.
Gilly continued, “Then the tallest one-a lout with squinty eyes like my grandmother’s meanest sow-he up and says, ‘Then ye must be one of those Irish Papists that there RobinGoodfellow wants set free to vote all God-fearing English Protestants out of the government, aye and bring in a Catholic king to murder our good King George and have us all up before the Inquisition.”
“Why,I never wrote any such thing,” Phaedra cried. “All I did was call for an end to English rule in Ireland, and say that Irish Catholics should have their rights to vote and sit in parliament.”
“All!” Gilly groaned, slapping his palm against the side of the last stall, startling the coach horse within into emitting a frightened whicker. “You must be completely daft, woman!”
“I’ve written about Ireland many times before, and you’ve never thought so!”
“All you have done before is complain about absentee English landlords exploiting the Irish. That’s another matter entirely, so it is.” Gilly paced before her, raking his hands through his disorderly curls. “But when you start stirring up this Catholic business, you’re like to get us all lynched. There’s too many Londoners as still remember the Scottish attempt to sweep out these dull Hanoverians and bring back the Pretender. Or have you forgotten the bonny, and most Catholic, Prince Charlie?”
“But Gilly, the Jacobite rebellion was years ago.”
“The English have damnable long memories. I know some as are still jawing about Bloody Mary feeding the Protestants into the fires at Smithfield. You don’t understand your fellow countrymen as well as I thought, Fae. They are more afraid of Catholics than they are of the devil.”
“I’m not exactly sure anymore who my fellow countrymen are,” Phaedra said bitterly.
Gilly stopped his pacing long enough to give a sigh laden with exasperation. “I know you were meaning for the best when you did that bit of writing, but it hasn’t worked out that way. I saw them burning copies of the Gazetteer down on the docks today,and I think they’d like to do the same to Robin Goodfellow and any Irishman they can get their hands on.”
Phaedra sank down upon a bale of hay. Burning copies of her work? They might as well set fire to herself. Never had she heard anything but popular acclaim for her daring essays. She felt strangely betrayed. She had always imagined those who bought her paper as honest, simple men whose common sense taught them to loathe injustice as much as she did. Now she saw them as naught but thick-skulled fools, understanding nothing, only looking for another excuse to riot and break heads. How unfair it was that the winds of opinion could sway so easily. It was even more unfair that Gilly should bear the brunt of her careless pen strokes.
Stricken with guilt, she glanced up at him. “Then it was my fault that you’ve been beaten. And God knows how many other innocent people will suffer. I-I never thought ...”
Gilly scuffed the toe of his boot against the stray bits of straw littering the stable floor. “Whist now,” he said gruffly. “You know fretting over a deed that’s done never remedied anything.”
“But what can I do?” she asked. “I have to try to make it right.”
“I don’t see as how you could be doing that.”
“Well, I could write another article and say?—”
“And say what? That you didn’t really mean it-that it is a proper thing that a man’s religion should bar him from the freedoms granted other men? No! Perhaps it is wrong of me to be scolding you. You wrote from the heart, only saying what is right.”
“But you might have been killed! And a poor consolation it would be to me then, simply knowing I was right.”
Gilly’s swollen lip curved into a lopsided smile. He looked a trifle sheepish as he confessed, “We-ell, the affair at the docks today was not entirely one-sided. I did make a remark to the pig-eyed one concerning his mother, but I think what clinched the matter was when I made the sign of the cross over him.”
“Oh, Gilly!” Phaedra choked, torn between horror and amusement at his recklessness. He plunked down upon the hay bale beside her, draping his arm about her shoulders.
“Ah, it was not much of a set-to at that. There was only the three of them, and one was but a scrawny fellow. I’ve been in far grander fights.”
Phaedra shook her head, resisting his efforts to make light of the incident.”I just wish there was something I could do.”
