The Rebel’s Daughter by Anita Seymour Page B

doesn’t deserve your anger,
Mistress.”
    “ I
know.” She folded her arms tightly across her chest, as if to keep
her fury inside. “Father’s the one I’m angry with, for leaving us.
For making Mother so distressed she has made herself ill. For
taking Aaron away from her when everyone knows he’s her
darling.”
    The rhythmic clop of hooves continued
along the dirt road, and the birds sang in the trees above them.
Bayle did not react to her bitter tirade, as if he knew she needed
to say the words that she had kept pent up aloud. He simply kept
the reins loose across one bent knee, his foot on the guard, and
his gaze straight ahead.
    “ Do you
think we’ll find them?” Helena asked at last, her voice
small.
    “ Whether
we do or not,” he replied slowly. “Loxsbeare Manor is no longer
your home.”
    “ What
are you saying?” She clasped her hands tightly in her lap. How could this be
happening?
    Her great-grandfather, Julius
Woulfe, had built the house for his fifteen-year-old bride when the
first King Charles occupied the throne some sixty years before. In
an effort to make the nervous girl’s transition to married life easier, and the
prospect of her twenty-four-year-old groom less terrifying, he
named their new home after the village near Tiverton, where she was
born.
    His son, Thomas, Helena’s grandfather,
possessed a more artistic nature than his Puritan father. He had
the interior white plasterwork painted with swathes of leaves and
flowers that trailed up the staircase and across the tops of
doorways.
    “ Now the
Duke has been defeated, the soldiers will come,
Mistress.”
    The thought of soldiers trampling through
her home made her grip the rough wood of the cart so hard that
splinters cut into her hand.
    Her rage subsided, and her breathing
slowed down somewhat, as her rational side took over. Everything
had changed and harping back to the past would not help them now.
The thick branches above them swayed and collided in the wind,
throwing off the remains of the last storm to sprinkle the cart
with droplets of cool water.
    Helena took a deep breath. “Then you had
better stop calling me Mistress.”
     
     
     

Chapter 5
     
    The sound of steady
hoof -beats
approaching brought Hendry’s gaze to the wrought iron gates that
separated the courtyard from St David’s Hill. He leaned on his
broom, grateful for a break in the hot and arduous task of sweeping
the cobbles, watching as Samuel Ffoyle rode into the courtyard and
summoned a groom.
    The youth moved with insolent slowness
until Samuel reprimanded him for being kept waiting.
    The groom had come into his elevated
position since the departure of the original incumbent for
Monmouth’s army. However hard he tried, Henry couldn’t like
Benjamin.
    Henry propped his broom against the
nearest wall and fell into step beside Samuel. “Is something wrong,
Master Ffoyle?” he asked as they mounted the steps side by
side.
    “ Not
here,” Samuel barked, ushering him to where his mother, clothed in
a cream gown from neck to toe and bathed in a shaft of light,
waited in the entrance hall like a nervous wraith.
    On catching sight of them, her face
closed, as if in anticipation of more bad news.
    Samuel bowed over her hand, though he
wasted no time on preliminaries. “Lady Elizabeth. Monmouth’s army
has been routed, and the king will show no mercy to known rebels.
You must leave here at once.”
    “ My
husband could return at any time, Master Ffoyle.” She withdrew her
hand from his, and lifted her chin, defiant. “I cannot possibly
leave.”
    “ Somerset is swarming with troopers.” Samuel persisted.
“Devon will be too, in a day or so. My lady, if you don’t depart of
your own volition, you may find yourself taking flight with only
the clothes on your back.”
    “ We must
listen to Master Ffoyle, Mother.” Henry placed a hand on her
shoulder. “He would never give us bad advice.”
    She stared about wildly. “Where would we
go? We have no