Page 38 of Exile's Return
‘Why? What did you do?’
He pulled himself up in the bed. The distress in her voice betrayed the shock she must have felt — as any woman must feel. There had been a girl in Fort Royal who had recoiled from him and refused to touch him. That memory still stung like a raw nerve.
The spoon rattled in the bowl she held as she trembled — with cold, or emotion?
‘Who did it?’ she asked in a tight voice.
He shut his eyes and took a deep breath. How could he explain a man like Outhwaite, who delighted not only in the subjugation of his fellow man but the infliction of pain?
‘It was a long time ago. I survived. I escaped. Are you going to give me that broth or let it go cold?’
She looked down at the bowl in her hand as if she had forgotten she held it. ‘Do you need help?’
He glared at her. ‘I can feed myself, thank you,’ he said, and she handed him the bowl.
‘Is Kit your brother?’ she asked.
His hand jerked, spilling some of the soup on the bedclothes.
Agnes had cloths to hand and as she sponged the sheets, she said, ‘You called his name in your sleep.’
He handed her the bowl and lay back, the memory of the dream still harsh and clear. ‘Yes, Kit is…was…my brother. I dreamed I saw him on the gallows — a rotting corpse.’
She regarded him, her head slightly on one side, a gesture he had come to recognize in their short acquaintance.
‘Were you close to your brother?’ she asked.
Close? Had he been close to Kit? There had been a ten-year age difference and he had worshipped the ground Kit walked on,driving him mad when Kit graced Eveleigh with his presence. But Kit had always shown great patience with his young brother. Daniel smiled at the memory of his brother teaching him how to use a sword. He lacked Kit’s natural grace and ability, but he had tried so hard.
‘Yes, as close as we could be given he was ten years my senior,’ he said. ‘When the war broke out he and my father raised a regiment in support of the King. They fought side by side through the years of the war, returning home with stories of adventure and great victories. I yearned to join them and ride into battle under the banner of the Midhursts, side by side with my father and brother — all in the King’s cause. Guardians of the Crown.’ He could not hide the bitterness in his voice at the last words.
Agnes frowned. ‘The Midhursts?’
He glanced at her. What harm in her knowing?
‘My grandfather is — was, I can only assume he is dead now — Lord Midhurst.’
‘So if your father and brother are now dead, does that make you Lord Midhurst?’
Daniel’s tired mind grappled with that concept — grandfather, father, older brother, all dead.
‘I suppose I am — whatever that means,’ he said.
A smile caught at the corners of Agnes’s mouth and she laid her hand over his, her mouth curving in amusement. ‘Don’t expect me to start calling youmy Lord…my Lord.’
He smiled in response, and his fingers closed around hers.Such a little hand, he thought.
‘Go on with the story,’ she said.
His eyes felt heavy. He needed to sleep and gather his strength for the next bout of the fever, but the dark and the candlelight and a desire to talk after all the years of silence had loosened his tongue. ‘It all ended for us when the country rose again in ’48.Kit and my father fought at the Battle of Preston and lost. They returned to Eveleigh with half the Parliamentary army on their tail. The house had never been built for a siege and my father surrendered, only to be shot in cold blood on the steps of his own home by…’
Agnes’s fingers tightened on his and she finished the sentence for him. ‘Tobias Ashby?’
Daniel closed his eyes. ‘Tobias Ashby. Before my father was even buried, he ordered the house destroyed. He took Kit prisoner, but somewhere along the way Kit escaped and fled to France, leaving us all but destitute with only a few habitable rooms to live in.’
It was the next part that made the hard telling; Kit’s return in 1651, full of braggartly tales of how the King would march into England and claim his throne. The angry confrontation with Daniel’s mother, when Daniel had announced he would go with his brother. Anger…so much anger. It seemed to be all he could remember now.
He swallowed. ‘I followed Kit to Worcester with dreams of honour and glory…and revenge for my father’s death. The battle itself was anything except that.’ The pressure on his fingers encouraged him to go on and his voice cracked as he said, ‘I saw Kit fall just before the butt of musket took me down. When I came around I was a prisoner in Worcester Cathedral, and the nightmare had only just begun.’ He turned his face away so she wouldn’t see the pain that the illness would not let him disguise.
