Patricia Veryan - [Sanguinet Saga 10] - Lanterns by Patricia Veryan

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and affected an odd style of dress, but he suspected that this lady
once had been a beauty. He was startled then to realize that her big
dark eyes were fixed upon his own unblinkingly. Disconcerted by a
sudden feeling that she could see into his mind, he replied, "I—thought
he was someone else. May I ask if he makes a habit of attacking
strangers?"
    "He has a vivid imagination and spends much time in his
make-believe worlds. Which is not such a bad thing, the real world
being what it is… But he has never attacked anyone before."
    "Did he say why I caused him to change his behaviour?"
    "No. Do strangers make a habit of attacking you from behind,
Mr… ?"
    Diccon stood very still, meeting her penetrating gaze
narrowly. "My name is Mallory Diccon—"
    Irritated, Sir Lionel interrupted, "I do not care what your
name is, and I see no call for this discussion." He marched to fling
open the front door. "If you take my advice, sir, you will leave this
area without delay. Lord Temple and Cloud, who owns this estate, is
returning to the neighborhood momentarily, and will no doubt set his
dogs on any vagrants who loiter about."
    Diccon bowed and left them.
    "So I crep' up a'hind him," said Arthur, pale but bright-eyed
as he lay on the sofa in the withdrawing-room next morning. "An' then I
charged into battle on my trusty steed."
    "You must have been going quite fast to hit him so hard."
Marietta dusted the mantelpiece clock carefully. "You might have
knocked him over the edge, you know. Didn't you think of that?"
    "I jus' thinked he was a bad man. An' I wanted to rescue the
lady. The one you was talking about."
    It occurred to Marietta that although his retaliation had been
far more violent than was justified, Mr. Diccon had some small basis
for complaint.
    Arthur saw her faint frown, and explained, "I wouldn't have
been going so fast, but when my trusty steed started to run, well, my
armour was awful heavy, an' going downhill like that, I couldn't stop.
If he
had
falled—"
    "Fallen, dear."
    "—fallen over the edge, would he have been killed stone dead?"
    "Yes, I'm afraid he would." Marietta laid down her duster and
went to sit on the sofa beside her brother. "And that would have been a
very terrible thing, Arthur. Something you would never be able to
forget for as long as you lived. Because when a life is taken, it
brings pain and grief to many other lives. You wouldn't want to cause
anything like that, would you?"
    "But s'posin' he was a bad man?" he said earnestly. "A
very
bad man. S'posin' he'd hurt someone else? Even someone you loved?
Wouldn't it be right to make him dead then?"
    "But he's not a bad man, my dear one. He's just a wanderer
who's borrowing Lord Temple and Cloud's house because he doesn't have
one of his own. Still, I know what you mean. That's why we have the
Watch, and the constables, and Bow Street to punish people who do very
bad things. We don't punish them ourselves."
    "Oh. But there's not a Watch or a Bow Street here, is there
Etta?"
    "There's Constable Davis in the village." With a sudden vision
of future embarrassments, she added, "But if we had absolute proof that
somebody had done something evil, we'd still talk it over with our
family before we bothered Mr. Davis. And above all, dearest, we don't
ever
deliberately hurt anyone. You might have hurt Mr. Diccon quite badly,
hitting him in the back like that. Will you promise to be more careful
in the future?"
    He hung his head, and nodded.
    Marietta stroked his curls fondly. He was such a sensitive,
lonely little boy, too often left to himself in his 'make-believe
world,' as Aunty Dova had said. He had already paid a high price for
his actions and she had no wish to make him feel crushed with guilt.
"Were you pretending that Mr. Diccon was the Sheriff of Nottingham?"
she asked kindly.
    Arthur sighed. "I 'spect ladies don't know much 'bout things.
Robin Hood doesn't wear chain mail. It was Sir Lancer Lot who was
jousting with the Black Knight."
    "I