A Heart in Jeopardy

Book : Flowers & Thorns

by Holly Newman

Genres: Regency Romance

Synopsis

She risked her life for honor... And risked her heart for love.

The scions of Crawford's Dean did not like the family who rented Leona Leonard's ancestral home, and so they came to tell her. There was something strange going on in that house.

Leona promised to investigate, but she had never attempted anything so daring before – dressing in her brother's cast-off clothing to scale the walls of Lion's Gate Manor. Her actions led her to rescue a young, kidnapped child, Lady Christina Deveraux.

Nigel Deveraux, indebted to this bold beauty who risked her life for his young niece, extracted a promise from Leona to contact him should she received any threats of revenge. Leona readily promised, little believing any threats would occur.

But when danger forces her to seek sanctuary at Deveraux's ancestral castle, she discovered the passion beneath his honorable intentions ... and a soul-searing desire that would flame into a breathtaking love!

Release date: January 1, 2013

Publisher: Oliver Heber Books

Print pages: 247

Sample

Chapter One

Ice needles stung Leona’s cold-reddened face, obscured her vision, and slid under the collar of her oversized coat. She should have wrapped a muffler about her neck, but she’d been too impatient, too anxious to carry out her wild plan. She shivered as rivulets of melting ice tracked down her spine. Bracing herself against the rough brick wall, she clung one-handed to the vines that were at once handholds and safety line. She wiped her eyes clear.

This was the winter solstice night. Was there pagan magic in the air? Was there magic that fostered mad, im­petuous schemes? She stared out into the night. She knew the ground was ten feet below her, but it might as well be fifty, as much as she could see. The day had been veiled in soft, misting rains. No doubt tomorrow’s sun would reveal a world shrouded in a glittering ice mantle. But now, with a capricious north wind freezing rain into ice spears to fling against any so foolhardy as to leave the warmth of a home fire, it was winter’s hell.

It’s only a little farther.

Grimly she held that thought, held it like a shield against fear, fatigue, and discomfort. She repeated it endlessly, like a Gregorian chant.

She’d come this far; there could be no turning back.

Leona reached up higher, searching for another secure handhold. Then she raised her booted right foot, blindly seeking out a foothold on one of the jutting quoins hidden in the massive tangle of vines that climbed the west-wing walls of Lion’s Gate Manor. She pulled herself higher, pray­ing the vines would hold.

A fool's errand.

The errant thought, like the biting north wind, pierced her mind. She tossed her head to clear her thoughts and sharpen her determination. Her other foot left the narrow ledge of the decorative string course separating the ground floor from the first floor. A few feet more and she would be to the cornice ledge separating the first floor from the sec­ond. From there she could edge her way over to the second-floor window, where a solitary burning candle cast a soft beam of golden light out into the night. The only light in the wing, it beckoned her with the promise of warmth. Though even without the light, that window, that room, would have been her goal. Leona did not know what to expect when she attained her goal and looked inside. Until now, she’d not thought beyond looking inside.

The vines grew thinner with each hand and toe hold, weaker,  and the jutting stones farther apart. One patch of vine ripped loose from the wall where Leona grabbed it. The sud­denness of its release nearly sent her reeling backward. She swallowed a scream of fear.

Charlie always maintained that scaling the vine-covered walls of Lion’s Gate was a bit of child’s work—no doubt an attitude he formed in his youth when sneaking out at night to kick up a lark with Squire Hembridge’s son. Fool­ishly, Leona believed him. Under her breath she cursed, then bit her chapped lower lip in contrition.

The closer Leona Leonard came to her goal, the more the niggling thought that she was on a fool’s errand pervaded her mind. It hadn’t seemed so that afternoon when the idea came to her. She’d sat in the parlor of Rose Cottage with her companion, Maria Sprockett, and listened to the concerns of their visitors, Lady Hembridge, Mrs. Thrailwithe, Miss Semple, and Vicar Davidson about their estate renters. At the time, climbing Lion’s Gate's walls to peek into Charlie’s old room seemed the logical course of action. As the only member of the Leonard family in the neighborhood (and as the nominal estate manager in the absence of Lion’s Gate’s real owner, her brother, Captain Charles Leonard), Leona felt duty-bound to investigate.

The villagers did not like the new tenants at Lion’s Gate Manor, and so they—represented by those gathered in the parlor that afternoon—told her. Repeatedly.

Truthfully, Leona didn’t like the Norths either, particu­larly the son, Howard North. However, when she let the Leonard family estate to the Norths, she’d been more con­cerned with rental income than personalities, and the Norths did unflinchingly agree to the high figure she named.

They’d been at Lion’s Gate eight months, and for eight months they’d irritated the good folk of Crawfords Dean with their superior ways and secretive dealings. Those secre­tive dealings were what led Leona to be dressed in her broth­er’s cast-off clothes and climbing the old established vines and the odd jutting stonework that was peculiar to Lion’s Gate Manor to reach Charlie’s boyhood room.

A month ago, the Norths began to say a young relative was coming to stay with them. A young girl, they said, who was sadly demented. This unfortunate situation in itself was not an unbelievable event. Cases of insanity were blessedly rare; nonetheless, they were known to occur, and heated debate on the wisdom of home care for the afflicted invaded polite drawing rooms. What shifted the North situation into the realm of suspicion was the undeniable fact that in the months the Norths had lived at Lion’s Gate, they’d been singularly unfriendly. Re­peatedly they declined invitations to sup with one or another member of Crawfords Dean’s restricted society. Nor were they prone to social conversation should one chance to en­counter them in the village. Plainly spoken, they snubbed their neighbors. Why the sudden course of volubility?

When the child finally arrived, she was placed in Char­lie’s old room in the nursery wing of Lion’s Gate. The servants were not allowed to go near, nor even see the girl. She was kept locked in the bedchamber, at­tended only by Mrs. North and her daughter Joanna.

Mrs. Thrailwithe’s housekeeper’s daughter—a maid at Lion’s Gate—reported to her mother that she’d heard piti­ful sobbing coming from the room. On another occasion, she’d heard the child screaming at Mrs. North, telling the woman that her uncle would kill them.

The unmistakable sound of a resounding slap ended the screams.

The young maid’s disclosures rekindled the villagers’ dissat­isfaction with Lion’s Gate’s tenants. Finally, the vicar—prompted by outrage among his parishioners (particularly the more affluent ones)—called on the Norths and asked to see their afflicted young relative. He was refused.

These actions, coupled with their previous attitude and Howard North’s unspeakably lascivious behavior toward sev­eral young girls of the neighborhood, raised the hackles of Crawfords Dean’s inhabitants. Thus the reason for the as­semblage that afternoon at Rose Cottage.

It was ironic. When Leona assumed the steward­ship of Lion’s Gate three years before, upon the untimely death of her eldest brother, Edmund, the same self-appointed village representatives gathered in the Blue Sa­loon at Lion’s Gate. Their mission that day had been to urge Leona to desist in her foolish idea of managing the property for Charlie. It was beneath her and unlady­like. They flocked to insist she go live with her sister, Rosa­lie, and her husband, George Sharply.

She appeased them that day by saying she wished a quiet year of mourning away from the embarrassment she would most certainly feel as the sister of Edmund Leonard.

Socially, she explained, it could not do her favor to be known as the sister of the man who was killed by an enraged husband after being found in fla­grante delicto with the man’s wife. Though they all pro­fessed shock at her indelicate language, they were forced to concede her point.

By the time her formal full year of mourning ended ev­eryone in the neighborhood was used to her managing the Leonard property. In truth, she made amazing strides in the reorganization of the Leonard family fortune. She’d re­moved herself and her companion to Rose Cottage, leased the house, repaired the outbuildings, and turned a good profit on the harvest. The first lessees she found for Lion’s Gate had been a retired naval captain and his family. They were well-liked in the neighborhood. They might have been there still if, after two years, the captain hadn’t missed the daily sight of the sea. With mixed feelings, the captain and his family moved away to take a house nearer Bristol.

Given the popularity of the naval family, it was not to be surprised that the neighborhood would look at their re­placements with a wary eye. For a while, that was the excuse Leona gave to herself when she discovered the villagers did not like the new tenants of Lion’s Gate. Finally, she was forced to admit—albeit reluctantly—that she might have made an error in judgment. That admittance rankled. None­theless, she was bound by her duty to her family to see the situation set to rights.

Furthermore, she did not want any talk or even whispers that it would be best if she left the stewardship of Lion’s Gate in the hands of her officious brother-in-law and quietly went to live with Rosalie and him. That was a suggestion she would fight with every ounce of her being. She held a duty to her brother Charlie and a duty to her family name. She would not let Edmond’s profli­gate existence destroy the family honor. Not so long as she could draw breath and work to regain the dignity that Ed­mund so casually stripped from them all!

That was why she clung precariously to the side of Lion’s Gate, struggling to find a secure foothold on the rapidly icing quoins and ledges.

Her boot scraped down the rough brick before settling on another quoin, the sound unnaturally loud in her ears. How could they not hear her? The din of the new manufac­tories could not be more deafening. She reached up higher, her numb­ing fingers curving around a clump of vines. Her teeth clenched, and a quick prayer ran through her mind.

She allowed the vines to take her weight. A popping, rip­ping sound heralded the give of the vines’ grip on rough brick and stone. She panicked, and her other foot scraped frantically along the wall. The vine sagged an inch. She threw her weight sideways, forcing the foot still resting on a quoin to retake her weight. The scrambling foot found purchase on another jutting stone. Her free hand caught the edge of the cornice.

Pain shot through her fingers and down her arms, a sharp, knifing pain. She ignored it, fighting desperately against it. Her tired muscles quivered, but she held on. Slowly she pulled herself up until she could fling one arm and elbow onto the narrow ledge. Straining to throw her weight for­ward, Leona moved her feet up the wall until one knee joined the arm and elbow. Painfully she pulled herself up and rolled over, her back against the rough wall.

She sat for a moment on the narrow stonework ledge. She gulped cold air, her breathing ragged, her head tipped back.

She was oblivious for a moment to the icy sleet that struck her face. No matter what, she was not going back down the way she came up. She would find some other way—even if it meant revealing herself to the Norths.

Resolutely, she turned to kneel on the ledge. Her stiff muscles screamed pain, and her chest ached. She blinked and wiped her eyes again. Her gloved fingers felt like blocks of ice against her skin. The supple leather was stiffening in the freezing air. The fancy thin gloves offered little protec­tion, but without them, her hands would have been scraped and bloodied. She crawled stiffly toward the lighted window, vaguely wondering why the drapes were not yet closed against the night’s chill.

Carefully she crawled along the narrow ledge, her mind racing ahead with visions of what she would see when she looked into the room. An ugly, misshapen form or an elfin sprite? A wild-eyed individual with only the vestige of hu­manity, or a martyred saint? What was the truth behind the rumors? Were the Norths innocent victims of malicious vil­lage tongues, or were they the stuff of bogeyman stories told by nurses to frighten their charges into obedience? Care­fully, ruthlessly, Leona stamped down her more wayward thoughts, shoving them into shadowed recesses of her mind. At the window’s edge, she stretched her head and neck for­ward until the wavering light from a tallow candle spilled across her face.

Her attention diverted by the sight of the cheap, smoky candle, Leona wondered at the Norths’ affording Lion’s Gate if they needed to use tallow candles. Of course, she wryly conceded, it may have been an econ­omy forced by Howard North’s penchant for aping the Lon­don Town Tulips. His padded and wasp-waisted jackets were not the work of a country tailor.

Leona’s eyes swept the room. It was devoid of most of its furniture. Where were the old highboy and the inlaid chessboard table? Curiouser still, where were the bed hang­ings and window drapes? On the bed, in place of the heavily embroidered counterpane, were fur throws.

At first, Leona thought the room empty; then, a tangled mat of drab brown hair lifted from one of the fur throws. The hair belonged to a young girl, a young girl praying with every fiber of her being. Her skin was sallow and, where lashes brushed her cheeks, dark circles ringed her eyes.

Interesting—the eyelashes were as fair as were the eye­brows that framed her eyes. They did not match the drab brown hair for they were red-gold. The child’s lips moved in a silent “amen.” She straightened, one finger swiping a stray tear from her cheek. Her countenance bore the saddest expression Leona had ever seen on a human being. It was a look of utter hopelessness and defeat that wrung Leona’s heart

Was this a mad child, a child so far gone to humanity that she must be shut away from servants or God’s minister?

The bone-chilling cold forgotten, Leona studied the small, lithe figure. She watched the child slowly rise from her knees and approach the bedside table nearest the window. Leona caught glimpses of red in the girl’s hair when she leaned forward to blow out the candle. Startled, Leona realized the child’s hair was dyed—and poorly at that. Without a second thought, Leona rapped on the win­dow.

The child looked up. There was no immediate fear in her expression. Instead, curiously, there was hope.

It was the sudden shift from despair to hope that decided Leona. The child was a prisoner—but not because she was mad. And if she wasn’t mad, what was she?

Leona beckoned to the child, smiling as warmly as her stiff features would allow. She pantomimed the child open­ing the window. She was halfway through her dumb show when the child rushed forward to work the stiff latch. Fur­tively she glanced toward the door before pushing the win­dow open. Without waiting for Leona to come in, she ran back toward the candlestick to blow out the candle. The room went dark just as Leona’s leg settled over the window­sill.

“What?!” Her jacket caught on a splinter in the casement. In the dark, she ripped it free.

“Sh-shh! Oh, please, sh-shh! The clock’s struck ten! She’ll be here at any moment! I’m supposed to be asleep!”

Leona climbed into the room, latching the window shut be­hind her. “They check on you at ten?”

A vigorous nod.

“And you’re supposed to be asleep?”

Again, the nod.

Leona tiptoed over to the bed. “Then in you go,” she whispered, pulling aside one of the animal pelts. Her lips pursed when she noted that the entire bed was made up of pelts. There was not a sheet on it.

The child obediently crawled up on the big bed. Leona tucked the pelts snugly about her, her gloved hand lingering on the child’s hair where she pushed it away from her face. A sound from the hall caught her attention. She looked to­ward the door and saw a sliver of light coming from beneath it. Someone was indeed coming to check on this sad-eyed waif. Leona dropped to the floor and slithered underneath the bed. Dust boles attacked her nose, sending tickling shiv­ers into her head. She fought the urge to sneeze as she scrambled deeper underneath toward the darker shadows at the head of the bed. She clamped a hand over her nose, pressing hard to stifle the incipient sneeze. Her eyes watered with the effort. Then she heard the scraping sound of a key in a lock, and the door swung open with a grating squeal.

Leona watched dark skirts swish across the room toward the bed. The skirts stopped not three feet from her face. She could have reached out and touched them. The figure stood silently for a long moment. Leona felt the resurgence of tick­ling in her nose and pressed harder, her face screwing up in her effort to thwart the sneeze. Finally, the figure turned and left the room, squealing the door closed and turning the key in the lock. The room was still. Mentally Leona reached the count of fifty-eight when she heard rustling above her. A curtain of dark hair tumbled over the edge of the bed fol­lowed by a childishly round-shaped face.

“She’s gone. You can come out now,” the child whis­pered, then pulled her head up to be quickly replaced by bare feet.

Leona slowly released the hard pressure on her nose and deeply inhaled as she crawled out from under the bed. The waiting sneeze exploded from her, throwing her head hard against the bed frame. Bright colors swam in Leona’s head, and her eyes teared. She reached up to tenderly touch the top of her head as if to protect it from further mishap as she dragged the rest of her body out from beneath the bed.

The child stood by the fireplace where dying embers glowed. She was coaxing a punk to burn. Carefully she car­ried it to the candle, lighting the sputtering wick. She shook the punk out, then conscientiously touched the end to see that all sparks were out, her tongue caught carefully be­tween her teeth, the tip curving up to touch her upper lip. It was an endearing gesture.

Leona led her back to the bed and tucked the pelts around her for warmth.  

“Now,” Leona said, sitting at the end of the bed facing the child, “I suppose I had best introduce myself. My name is Leona Leonard. And yours is—?”

“Chrissy—I mean, Lady Christiana Deveraux, daughter of the sixth Earl of Nevin,” she amended, drawing herself up straight and proud.

Leona repressed a smile at the child’s unconscious for­mality. That formality also lent credence to the child’s words. Leona was sure that no child, unless she were of the aristocracy, would automatically assume such an atti­tude. “I’m delighted to meet you, Lady Christiana, even if it is under somewhat unusual circumstances.”

“Please, call me Chrissy.” The child blushed and looked down, nervously twisting her fingers together. “They always called me Lady Christiana,” she explained with uncon­cealed dislike.

“I see.” Leona paused, searching for ways to discern the truth. “The Norths say you’re one of their relatives . . .” she began slowly.

“That’s a lie!” The heated outburst surprised them both. The child bit her lower lip, her chin quivering as she stared intently at Leona. “I’m not. Really, I’m not. I’m telling the truth. Please believe me. Please help me!”

Leona compressed her lips and sat silently a moment, searching the child’s anxious face for the truth. Finally, she reached out to lay her hand on the child’s arm. “How can I help?”

“Get me out of here! Please! They . . . they kidnapped me while I was on my way to visit Nanny Hazlett,” she ex­plained, her words coming out in a rush. “They hit Walter on the head. There was so much blood! And then they threw a blanket over my head and carried me away, leaving Walter there to die!”

“Doucement, child. Doucement,” Leona soothed, patting her arm.

Chrissy sniffed and rubbed her nose with the back of her hand. When she looked up at Leona again, there was a re­newed expression of mulishness on her face.

“It’s not that I don’t believe you. I’m merely trying to understand. Now, where and when did they capture you?”

“I was driving my little pony cart on my way to visit Nanny Hazlitt. She used to be my nurse. She lives in a little cottage by herself, and she shouldn’t. She’s blind now, you see. She was my daddy’s nurse, too. And my Uncle Nigel’s and Aunt Lucy’s.” Her forehead furrowed, and she bit the tip of a finger as she thought. “I don’t know how long ago. It seems like years! Sometimes they give me this awful-tasting stuff that makes me sleep and sleep!” Laudanum, most likely, Leona thought. And lamentably, that is standard practice for treating the insane. Instinc­tively, though, she believed the child. Rationally she was forced to gather further evidence. “Where is your home?”

“Castle Marin.”

Leona shook her head. “I’m afraid I’ve not heard of it.”

“It’s in Devon, not far from Axminster.”

“Is that where your parents are?”

Her face fell. “No,” she answered on a thread of sound. “They’re in Switzerland. Papa’s sick. The doctors said Swit­zerland would make him better. But Grandmamma, Uncle Nigel, and Aunt Lucy are at Castle Marin. They’ve been taking care of me until Mama and Papa can come home. If they ever can,” she finished softly. She looked away, swal­lowing thickly.

Something was terribly wrong here—as if kidnapping weren’t enough! “Do you know what it is the kidnappers want?”

“Money, I guess, but they won’t take it from Uncle Nigel. They want it directly from Papa! They don’t care that it would kill Papa to come back to England. I don’t understand,” the child wailed softly, then crumbled forward, weeping, her face in her hands.

Leona sighed and stroked her head. “I don’t either, my dear. But it seems to me that if we’re to save your father, we’ve got to get you out of here.”

Chrissy gulped and sniffed as she straightened. “I know, and I’ve tried to escape several times.”

“You have?”

“Uh-huh. First, I took a fireplace iron and tried to use it to bash the old lady’s head in, but it was too heavy and I missed. So they gave me that stuff to make me sleep and took all the fireplace stuff out of here. Then I dragged the chess table over by the door and stood on it with the wash basin in my hands. I thought I could drop it on her head. But the table fell over while I was standing on it.”

“So they took the table away, along with any other items you might use as weapons,” Leona said.

The child nodded.

That explained the room’s bareness. “I gather you also tried to use the highboy and the bed linens? How were you going to use those?” she asked with a hint of admiration and humor in her voice.

“I wiggled behind the highboy and tried to push it over onto Joanna when she brought me food. That didn’t work either. It was so heavy, and I couldn’t do it quickly. She heard me.”

Leona repressed a smile. “Ah, yes, that would be a hard piece to maneuver. And let me guess, you tried to tie the sheets together to form a rope to lower yourself to the ground.” Chrissy nodded. “You are quite a resourceful young lady. Your parents would be proud of you.”

“No, I’m not. I’m not resourceful at all. I’ve botched up everything.” Her little chin quivered again, and her eyes leaked tears out the corners. Defiantly she swiped them away.

Sensing pity could destroy the last vestiges of the child’s strength, Leona kept her voice calm and matter of fact. “Well, sometimes we all have to know when we need help. As much as we like to do everything ourselves, sometimes it isn’t possible. I think this is one of those times.”

“Then you’ll help me?”

Leona nodded, then watched—astounded—as the glow of hope turned the drab waif into a dimpled charmer. “But how will we escape? Do you have a ladder?”

“No. I climbed the vines that grow up the side of the house.”

“Vines! Oh, how I wish I’d known of them! I could have climbed down them!” She scrambled to the edge of the bed. “Come on! What are we waiting for?”

Leona grabbed her hand. “Chrissy, wait! It’s freezing out­side. You are hardly dressed to go out, let alone climb down those vines. Besides, we can’t. They were ripping loose as I was climbing up. We would most likely fall and break our necks.”

“But. . . but, how am I to escape?”

“By going out the door.”

“What? But I can’t! I’m locked in. We're locked in.”

Leona smiled and dug her hand into her pocket to pull out a ring of keys. “The Norths rent this house from my family.”

“You have the keys!”

“Every one of them,” Leona said as she walked toward the door.

“But if you have the keys, why did you climb up vines?”

She sorted through the keys. “Two reasons. First, the Norths said they had a mad child here. For all I knew, that could have been true. I didn’t know what to expect. Better to look through a window first than to open a door when I didn’t know what was on the other side. Second, the manor house doors are dead-bolted from the inside. Bring the candle here.” She took the candlestick and handed the keys to Chrissy to hold. “I was shocked at first to see them using such cheap tallow candles over wax ones. Now I think we should be grateful.” She dripped tallow over the door hinges, then took the keys back and dripped tallow over one of the keys. She thrust the candle into the child’s hands. “Let’s hope this works; I didn’t like the loud sound this door made when your warder entered. We don’t need anything that could call them down upon us.”

She thrust the key in the lock and carefully turned it. The door lock clicked open. She and Chrissy exchanged happy smiles. Carefully she pulled the door open, grimacing at the squeal that sounded fainter than before but still evident. She took the candle back from Chrissy and grabbed her hand, leading her out into the dark hall. Stealthily they made their way to the back servant’s staircase and on down two flights of stairs. At the bottom, a hallway branched off toward the kitchen and an­other toward the butler’s pantry. Leona led her toward the kitchen wing and through to the scullery. In the scullery, there was a door leading outside. On the wall beside the door were two cloaks hanging on wooden pegs along with an apron. Leona set the candlestick down on a worktable. Grabbing one of the cloaks, she wrapped it around the child. It was woefully long. Plus, there was still the problem of her bare feet. Leona grabbed a kitchen knife and attacked the cloak's long hem, biting her lower lip whenever it ripped loudly. She cut strips to wrap around the child’s feet from the piece she removed, binding the heavy wool in place with apron strings.

“Ready?” she whispered.

Chrissy’s eyes gleamed with excitement. “Ready.”

Leona carefully pulled back the bolt and lifted the latch. She pulled the door open. It groaned loudly. Leona and Chrissy exchanged panicked glances. Leona had not thought to grease this door. Of course, when she lived in the house, the doors never needed greasing. It was some­thing the servants regularly did.

“Quickly!” she urged the child as they stepped through the door. Together they ran toward the woods. Leona glanced back once to see a figure standing in the open door­way, a branch of candles held high. She grabbed the child’s hand and pulled her deep into the forest, now thankful for the moonless night.

She didn’t know if they would be pursued, or if they were followed, how quickly, but she would not take any risks with this child’s life. They would go by a slightly circuitous route to Rose Cottage. There she would entrust the child to Maria’s care while she sent messages to one Nigel Deveraux at Castle Marin in Devon and Sir Nathan Cruikston, the local magistrate. She would have the Norths apprehended and out of Lion’s Gate—and out of her life—before morning.