A Place For Repentance (The Underwood Mysteries Book 6) Read online

  “Your secret is safe with me, my friend, and now, I think I should be on my way, otherwise it will be dark before I reach Dacorum-in-the-Marsh.”

  “I’ll ride with you, if I may, at least part of the way, to see you safely back.”

  “There’s no need, I assure you,” said Underwood, “I’m reliably informed that my brush with the highwayman was unprecedented and not expected to occur again.”

  “I’ll come, all the same, it will get me out of the house,” said the younger man decidedly.

  Underwood began to see that Rutherford Petch’s problems were greater than he was acknowledging in the presence of his female relatives. It really seemed that he could not bear to be in the house at all. Underwood knew that he had been out riding almost all day and had returned only to eat – now he was insisting on going out again – these were not the actions of a man who was relieved to be home. He made no further demur and accepted the offer of company. He wished the ladies farewell and assured them that he and Verity would be delighted to accept their hospitality the following Wednesday evening for dinner, and with that he and Rutherford took their leave.

  Once they were well away from the town and sure that they would not be overheard by anyone who might carry tales back to his aunt, sister and cousin, Rutherford began to talk to Underwood and it seemed he was mightily relieved to be able to unburden himself. Underwood knew only too well what a priceless gift silence could be, so he said nothing and merely listened to the young man as he finally allowed himself to say all the things he had been bottling up since his return from the antipodes.

  “I’m sorry, Underwood, it must seem dashed ungrateful to you, the man who secured my release, but I do not think I can endure much more. I’m more a prisoner now than I ever was in Australia. The chains that bind me here are stronger than the thickest iron. One look into my sister’s face and I’m unmanned and I cannot say her nay, no matter how irritating her request or silly her comment. I ride to try and escape for a while, but out there on the estate it is almost as bad. One tenant after another; always with requests, demands, complaints. If I have to inspect one more cottage for damp, or give an opinion on whether a plough horse is too old for the job and needs to go to the knackers for glue, I shall go mad. There is nothing for me here, nothing that makes me feel alive, just one grinding day after another of nothingness. Out there I was hungry, I was tortured under a blazing sun, or too cold and wet, flogged and over worked; every day was a fight for survival – but at least I knew I was alive!”

  Though Underwood could not understand the younger man’s desire for such disquieting adventures – he was far too fond of his home comforts for that - he could certainly sympathize with the core of his complaint. Underwood, too, lived in a house almost entirely comprised of women – especially now that Toby, his black servant and friend, was married and had built his own small cottage in the grounds of Windward House.

  Underwood adored his wife and idolised his two daughters, but there were times when the utter femininity of the atmosphere in the house grated on his nerves. If a man could not find a chair to sit upon for reams of taffeta and muslin, and his desk drawers were found to be secured by the handles to each other by a length of pink ribbon which refused to come undone until attacked with a pair of scissors, then he could happily return to his bachelor quarters at Cambridge University. It made little difference that his eldest daughter Horatia had tearfully explained that she was only trying to make Papa’s desk ‘pwetty’, he still wanted to bar her from ever entering his study again – but what kind of a domestic tyrant would he be, to smother kindly meant urges in a small girl?

  “I quite see that the ladies can be trying, my friend, but what can be done? They are as they are.”

  “Dear God, don’t I know it,” groaned Rutherford, “but mistake me not, Underwood, no matter how hard I try, I am not going to be able to maintain this facade of happiness. And I fear for them when they realize how miserable I am and how utterly I despise the life they foresee for me.”

  “I can see that the life of a country gentleman will never satisfy you, Rutherford, but what can you do about it? It was the life you were born to, after all, and has not exactly been forced upon you, nor should it be such a shock to your system to come back to it, no matter how many and varied your wanderings.”

  Rutherford shifted awkwardly in his saddle, causing a loud creaking, and momentarily disturbing the horse’s steady plodding, so that Underwood was forced into controlling his own mount, which was pushed aside by the rump of the other animal.

  “I’m going back,” said the young man decidedly, when equilibrium was restored.

  Underwood thought he had misheard him, “What?” he exclaimed, startled, then he relaxed, thinking that Rutherford meant that he was turning about and going back to Pershore House, “You are going home?” he asked.

  “No, I’m going back to Australia,” repeated Rutherford, more forcefully, “It’s where I belong now.”

  “Can you do that?” asked Underwood, very vague as to the rules which governed a penal colony, but also with the notion of earning himself some time to try and assimilate the extraordinary statement his companion had made.

  “Of course,” said Petch, impatiently, “They need all manner of men out there to create civilisation. Not all who go are convicts. Many free men are attracted to the idea of making a new and better life there than they could ever hope for here.”

  “But what about the Pershore Estate and your sister? You cannot mean to desert them again and leave them to the tender mercy of vultures like Ormund Luckhurst and Attridge.”

  “Don’t concern yourself with that. I shall settle all before I go. I’ll find a man I can trust to help Cressy run the place – she did a fine job before our beloved cousin Ormund interfered. And she will marry soon enough, and her husband can take over the burden.”

  Underwood could see that there was little point in arguing with him, he had obviously thought long and hard about his future, but even so, he could not resist a few timely reminders of how tough he was making his life when it could be so very easy – or relatively so, at any rate.

  “It seems a very long way to go to find freedom, my friend. Would not a frank discussion with your sister and a new way of doing things here in England suffice?”

  “I don’t believe I could ever prevail upon her to understand how stifling I find life here. She will expect me to marry and produce a parcel of children.”

  “Would that be so very bad?” asked Underwood softly, recalling his own horror at the idea of offspring until the moment arrived that he became a father and the advent of that small, helpless baby, who had been laid in his arms and had wrought a miraculous conversion.

  Rutherford looked uncomfortable, Underwood could almost detect a slight reddening of his cheeks, “I’d like children,” he said, “but I find the idea of another woman ...”

  “Another woman?” exclaimed Underwood, not slow to pick up on nuances when it suited his purposes, though Verity could well have doubted this ability. “You met someone for whom you care in Australia?”

  “I suppose I did,” admitted the young man, “But I am a fool for even thinking of her. She is married already or at least I assume she is, the laws there are very different, you see. She certainly has children, but her husband is a wretched little bully who beats her and I intend to take her and her little ones away from him as soon as I am able.”

  Underwood began to vaguely see what might attract a man like Rutherford Petch to the new country with which he had fallen in love – normal rules of society held no sway there. He would be perfectly able to take a woman away from her husband and live with her without a hair being turned. There would be no consequence for his actions, no disbarring of her from other women, no hypocritical criticism of their situation. In short, as he had so graphically described, he had complete freedom to live his life as he chose.

  “This young lady is amenable to your proposal, is she?” asked Underwoo
d, with what Rutherford thought was a remarkable degree of astuteness.

  “I have no idea. I have not asked her – I had not the opportunity, but she put herself at risk to help me and I want to return the favour.”

  He was lost for a moment in thought, recalling how Florrie Taggart had pretended to go along with her husband’s plan to accuse him of raping her, so that he could see him hanged rather than freed, jealous that the hated rich man was about to resume his old, untroubled life. Instead she had used their time alone together to warn him of the plot and encourage him to run to the garrison in town, fully aware that she faced a beating from her thug of a spouse. She had shown him small kindnesses before that too, finding extra bits of food from her own rations, knowing the Taggart was keeping his convict workers on the verge of starvation. Such selflessness meant a great deal more in the wilds than it did here in safe and civilised England. Here it was mere comfort; there it could mean the difference between life and death. He could see her still, standing in the blazing sun, one child on her hip, the other two little urchins clinging to her ragged skirts. It took courage to be kind in so inhospitable a place and in such circumstances, but Florrie had managed it. She deserved compassion for that if nothing else.

  “You could not help her in some other way?” Underwood asked diffidently, aware that it was always unwise to appear to be in opposition to young love.

  “I have sent her money, but I cannot be sure she has received it. Taggart is all too likely to have taken it for himself. I need to see for myself that she is well and happy.”

  Underwood gave him a long, considering look, “You know what your trouble is, don’t you Petch?” he asked, at length.

  “I’m very sure you are going to tell me,” said the younger man amiably, not in the least put out by this plain speaking. He had lived too hard a life to take offence at anything said by a mild-mannered man like Underwood.

  “You are a fixer. You want to mend everyone around you. You were brave, but foolhardy in rescuing Major Thorneycroft, when you had no particular need to do so – he was just another soldier in battle, but you saw him in trouble and had to intervene. You are doing the same for this young woman – but you should know that it is not always possible. Some lives simply cannot be mended, no matter how hard you try.”

  Petch laughed, “Damn you, Underwood, you seem to know me better than I know myself, for all you have only just met me – but let me tell you that your homily falls on deaf ears. The moment I can arrange my affairs, I’m off on the first ship I can find bound for Australia.”

  Underwood gave a slight shrug, “I never doubted it, my dear fellow, but pray do me one favour before you leave,”

  “Anything,” said Rutherford heartily, “After all I owe you my life. It would be churlish indeed to deny you any reasonable request.”

  “Then promise me that you will not sail away from these shores before you have attended the birthday celebrations of my friend Jeremy James Thorneycroft. He attained his forty years months ago, but due to my own ill-health and your absence, the party was delayed until this summer. I cannot begin to tell you the disappointment which will ensue should you absent yourself again!”

  Rutherford smiled, “Fear not, my dear sir, it will be a good few months before I leave again. I have much to do for others before I can even consider my own feelings. If at all possible, I’d like to see my sister married to a good man before I go.”

  “Hanbury may be just the place for that eventuality, Captain. The place is positively heaving with eligible young men at this time of the year, all gathered about their elderly, rich and invalid relatives in the hope of scoring a few marks on the plus side of the ledger! If I but mention to my wife Verity that you are in search of a husband for your sister, she will be on the scent like a fox-hound!”

  They laughed together and trotted towards Dacorum-in-the-Marsh in perfect amity.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  (Extract from a journal discovered by C H Underwood, Winter 1829)

  When my father employed X as my personal servant, little did he realize that he was signing his own death warrant.

  Of course I could not know that myself either at first, nor that my association with X would ultimately not only rid the world of the putrid scum that was my Pater, but also scores of others; bullies, liars, cheats, child killers, wife-beaters, misogynists, misanthropes.

  X was destined to start me on a career of protecting and avenging the poor, the helpless, the disadvantaged. If there was a widow cheated out of her rights, an orphan sold into the slavery and misery of unpaid toil and undeserved beatings by the workhouse, I would be there – and if I could not save them, I made sure that those who had been responsible for their downfall met a gruesome fate themselves.

  But all that came much later – after I had been blooded at my first kill.

  I can see now that perhaps he might have been a different man had my mother not died giving birth to my younger brother – but I doubt it. His was an evil that grew and matured, as the years passed he thought of ever more subtle ways to feed his perversions.

  I recall now small clues which later confirmed what I always suspected – that my mother had been one of his victims – I had no illusions that he must have been a wicked child and young man, who would have taken pleasure in tormenting servants, pets and school-fellows – his lack of real friends give credence to that! After all, which of them attended his funeral?

  She tried to hide his actions from me, to protect me, but even she succumbed in the end and left me, aged five, alone in the house in the sole power of that monster. My only comfort at the worst times, was trying to remember her, her soft hands reaching out to hold me, the scent of her as we cowered, hiding, praying that he wouldn’t find us until the worst of his anger had cooled.

  He educated me to a degree – he had to, for how could he explain his neglect to his peers had he not? But he put about the lie that I was too frail of mind, to be allowed out in society, and thus he kept me tied to him, restricted to the four walls of that dark and forbidding house. He did not know that I sneaked books from his library and saw to my own enlightenment – reading was my only escape until X came and rescued me.

  CHAPTER SIX

  ‘Iuniores ad Labores’ – The younger people should go to work

  Rutherford did not accompany Underwood all the way back to the vicarage of St Eustace at Dacorum-in-the-Marsh, though the older man did assure his young companion that he could rely upon both Verity and Lindell Draycott to offer him a very warm welcome.

  “No, really Underwood, I do thank you most sincerely, but I have no stomach for vicarage manners just at the moment. You’ll give my compliments to your wife, of course, and tell her that I promise to play the perfect host when she comes to Pershore House for dinner.”

  “I’ll do that, Rutherford, and pray do consider my advice about speaking frankly to Cressida and Miss Fettiplace – I suspect you may be pleasantly surprised by their reactions despite your fears.”

  Rutherford smiled sadly, “I’ll certainly think about it, I can say no more than that.”

  The two gentlemen parted company and as he guided his mount along the narrow lane which led to the church, mindful of the other road-users in the hemmed-in, over-crowded thoroughfare, Underwood suddenly realized just how tired he was, but not, he reflected with some satisfaction, that bone-aching, head-thumping exhaustion to which he had grown so sadly accustomed after the slightest exertion over the past months, but the normal weariness of a man who has endured a long ride and a pleasantly active day amongst friends. It seemed that he might finally be seeing some light at the end of a very long tunnel indeed.

  The lane opened out onto a large square, across which stood the old church and beyond it the vicarage and Underwood hesitated for a moment to view, as though for the first time, the beauty of the little town. His mind had been elsewhere in the past week and he had scarcely taken note of his surroundings. It did not occur to him just then, but it was a sign
of the lifting of the melancholy which had dogged his footsteps for so long.

  The church was all that remained of the monastery and its worn stones gave hints of both Norman and Saxon influences, with a squat, square tower and much carving of gargoyles and other grotesques. Underwood thought it rather charming, despite its mongrel history.

  The vicarage looked as though it too were a relic of the monastic past; probably it had been one of the working buildings, such as a dairy or more probably the guest house for visiting dignitaries. It was hard now to trace the lines of the past under the present buildings but Underwood had a few happy moments trying before dismounting and leading his hack back to the inn. After paying his shot, which was pleasingly reasonable, he wended his weary way back home, to find Verity waiting for him, her face suffused with a mixture of joy and relief. He would never know how much it had cost her to let him out of her sight for a whole day. She had grown accustomed to being responsible for his safety and she had experienced very similar feelings to a doting mother seeing her boy off to school for his first day.

  She tried to sound casual and unconcerned as she ushered him into the parlour where tea awaited him and asked him about his adventures, “So, did you find the lady, Cadmus?”

  “The lady?” he repeated slowly, sipping from a delicate china cup. This was a trick he employed when he had no idea what was being asked of him as it gave him a time to ponder the question.

  “The widow? Surely you must have found her name when you went to the Stagecoach booking office?”

  Light dawned, but he did not have the heart to tell her that he had performed this task months before to no avail. Verity had been so very proud of herself for finding a solution to the puzzle that she thought her clever husband had overlooked that he could not now tell her that it had been his very first action.