Author: Megan Shepherd
Category: Young Adult
Go to read content：https://onlinereadfreenovel.com/megan-shepherd/page,12,54767-a_cold_legacy.html
“She’s mad,” Montgomery said. “The coach will never make it through those woods.”
He tugged on the reins as hard as he could to direct the stallion in between the trees. The pony trap bumped over roots and dips so hard, I had to hold on to the sides of the trap to keep from getting thrown out.
“Ride alongside her, if you can!” I yelled.
“The path isn’t wide enough,” Montgomery answered. Soon we were close enough that I could see her dark hair whipping in the wind.
“Valentina, stop the coach!” I yelled. She tossed me a look of pure hatred before we were separated by a stand of trees. Balthazar had to duck to narrowly avoid a low branch. We passed the trees and I could see her again. “Valentina, stop and we can talk about this.”
“I wanted Ballentyne!” she yelled. “I planned for years to get into Elizabeth’s good graces. I was fifteen years old, an orphan, when I first overheard actors talking about her at a fair. A woman who lived as free as a man, and could perform miracles without witchcraft, and who would teach girls anything they wanted to know—but only girls with deformities. I knew that was the life I wanted. I did whatever I had to.” She held up one of her hands, gloveless despite the cold, so porcelain white against the dark skin of her wrist. Bile rose up my throat as I started to comprehend what she was saying.
“Don’t you understand, you spoiled girl? I cut off my own hands to gain admittance to Ballentyne. I did the left one myself, paid a man to do the other.” She whipped the horse harder. “I sacrificed everything; then you came along and ruined it!”
“It wasn’t my fault!” I yelled back.
“Yes it is, and I’ll see you in jail for it!”
I shrieked as another tree blocked our path, and Montgomery narrowly steered us out of the way. Valentina wasn’t as lucky, nor was she as good a driver. She saw the tree too late. Her horse leaped out of the way, but the back of the lumbering coach clipped it, and a wheel spun off. The entire hackney coach went smashing to the ground, freeing the horse, which took off wildly into the trees with half the harness still around its neck. The rest of the carriage went hurtling at incredible speed. Screams filled the air—Valentina’s and my own, as I watched in horror.
Her coach slammed into another tree. The rear end tipped over, flipping once, then twice. The sound of splintering wood ricocheted through the forest. I gasped. Time seemed to move too fast. There was nothing any of us could do to stop it. I caught a glimpse of her dark hair as she was thrown from the coach, her porcelain white hands desperately reaching for something to stop her but finding nothing.
The coach shattered against a tree.
I knew I’d hear the echo of that crash for years to come.
SIXTEEN
MONTGOMERY DREW THE CARRIAGE up sharply and the three of us jumped out. We tore over twisting roots to reach Valentina’s coach. It was on its side, nearly unrecognizable in its destruction. I was the first to hear Valentina moan.
“She’s here!”
I raced around the wreckage, tripping on a shattered strut, and stopped short at the sight. I cupped my hand over my mouth to stifle a gasp. The driver’s portion of the coach had been torn completely off and now lay across Valentina’s middle.
“Balthazar,” I called. “I need you!”
I knelt in the wreckage, tossing off the scraps of wood that were light enough for me to lift. Her hair streaked her face, and when I brushed it back, it caught on a line of blood seeping from her mouth. She coughed, and more blood came. I glanced at the beam pinning her down—right across her essential organs. Balthazar and Montgomery came stomping through the wreckage behind me.
“Hold on,” I said. “We’re going to try to get you free.”
“Juliet Moreau,” Valentina whispered angrily, voice barely a sound. “Just a spoiled girl with her pretty toys, who cares nothing for anything or anyone else.”
“Shh,” I said, and signaled to Balthazar. “Over here. Can you lift this beam?”
“Aye, miss.” He wrapped his big hands around the end, then strained with all his strength to lift it off Valentina. She moaned painfully as more blood poured from her mouth. Balthazar tossed the beam to the side.
“Montgomery,” I said, kneeling next to her again, “is there anything you can do?”
He bent next to her but didn’t bother to inspect her wounds. He grabbed her shoulder instead. “Where were you going?” he demanded. “You veered off the road to London. If not to Scotland Yard, where?”
“Montgomery, she’s dying!”
He ignored me and fixated on Valentina instead, but she just coughed more blood, and then let out a joyless laugh. “You might have stopped me, but I’m not alone. Someone is very desperate to find you, Miss Moreau. All of you.”
“Who were you going to meet with?” Montgomery demanded.
She convulsed once, twice, her lips stained with blood, and then she sagged against the wreckage.
I put a hand over my mouth. “She’s dead.”
Balthazar removed his cap out of respect. Montgomery leaned over, letting his loose hair hide his face, and then he took a deep breath and tossed his hair back. He started going through her dress pockets.
“Montgomery, must you do that?”
“She was planning on meeting with someone. We need to know who. She was going to have you arrested, Juliet, so don’t spare her any sympathy.”
He dug through her coat pockets and came up with nothing, then picked up a leather satchel strapped across her chest. He freed the strap with his knife and pulled out a handful of telegrams.
“Let me see those,” I said.
There was a blank where a telegraph operator would normally type the address of the sender; Valentina must have sent it from Quick but specified that she wanted her location kept confidential.
Her first telegram read:
RESPONDING TO SPECIAL MEMORANDUM
KNOW WHEREABOUTS OF JULIET MOREAU
INQUIRING ABOUT REWARD
I felt a burst of panic. She’d already contacted Scotland Yard? I hurried to read the next few telegrams.
REWARD £10,000
PRIVATE INVESTIGATION DO NOT GO TO THE POLICE
WHERE IS YOUR LOCATION
I paused. A private investigation led by someone who didn’t want the police involved? That was even more frightening. Who would want to find us without the police’s knowledge?
Valentina’s response read:
YOUR IDENTITY IS ANONYMOUS
SO IS MINE
WANT TO MEET TO DISCUSS TRADE
The final telegram read:
MEET AT STONEWALL INN NEAR INVERNESS
ON THE EVE OF SAINT TIMOTHY’S DAY
“What do they say?” Montgomery asked.
“It isn’t the police looking for us, at least not in any official capacity,” I said in confusion. “But that doesn’t make sense—the police were looking for us at the inn.”
Montgomery studied the telegrams. “Perhaps someone is paying off a few officers. Running their own investigation outside of official police business. But who? We killed all the King’s Club members who would have attempted any kind of retribution.”
“We must have overlooked someone,” I said. “Or perhaps a member of Dr. Hastings’s family.”
A crow cawed overhead and I jumped.
“We have to go to that inn near Inverness,” Montgomery said. “We have to know who she was meeting. It’s never going to end, not unless we know who’s behind this search.” He looked up at the sky, where the sun was getting low. “It will be another few hours to Inverness. If we don’t leave now, her contact might leave.”
“What about her body?” Balthazar asked. “It isn’t right to leave it here.”
“I know, my friend,” Montgomery said. “The Christian thing to do would be to bury it, but I’m not feeling very Christian at the moment, and time is running out. We can say a prayer for her on the road.”
Balthazar whined low in his throat, unhappy t
o leave her body amid the crows, but he followed Montgomery obediently back to our pony trap.
I rested a hand on Balthazar’s shoulder. “Someone will find her horse,” I said softly. “They’ll follow its tracks back here and give her a proper burial.”
Montgomery cracked the reins. I looked overhead, where the sun was murky behind a film of thin winter clouds. A gust of cold wind chilled me and I took a swig of the brandy Elizabeth had given me. It sat in my belly, stickily warm, like a sense of foreboding.
Who were we going to encounter at that inn, I wondered, and why were they so desperate to find me?
INVERNESS WAS A MODERN industrial city, dirtier than London and substantially colder. The pony trap must have made for an odd sight, but no one spared us a glance as they huddled in their coats, hurrying home to supper. We stopped to ask directions and learned the Stonewall Inn was the city’s grandest hotel. As we pulled up and saw the palatial inn’s lights, my sense of foreboding grew.
“Whoever her contact is, he must have plenty of money to stay here,” I said.
“I should imagine so,” Montgomery said. “If they are paying off Scotland Yard, that doesn’t come cheap.”
We climbed out of the pony trap in an alleyway between two millinery shops. “We’ll have to be cautious,” Montgomery said. “They’re sure to recognize you if they see you, Juliet, and chances are our mysterious pursuer knows my identity as well. Perhaps even Balthazar’s.”
I peeked around the edge of the shop at the gentlemen and ladies climbing out of their carriages in front of the inn. All of them were dressed in finery, a stark contrast to our drab northern clothes. “I have an idea,” I said. “There’s more than one way to blend in. Balthazar, you stay here with the horse and be ready to make our escape. Montgomery, come with me.”
We silently climbed the inn’s garden gate and slipped into the hotel’s rear entrance, where grocers were unloading boxes of cabbages. I signaled for Montgomery to pick up a box so it looked like we belonged there. We entered the kitchen, which was in the midst of hectic preparations for the feast of St. Timothy. That was fortunate for us—no one gave us a second glance.
I tugged my hair lose from its chignon and pulled it back into a loose braid, then tapped the shoulder of the youngest-looking kitchen girl. “I’m supposed to start today, but they haven’t given me my uniform yet.”
The girl barely glanced at me as she strained under a heavy dish. “Second door there,” she said, jerking her chin toward a hallway. “And hurry, we need all the help we can get.”
I grabbed Montgomery and pulled him down the hallway into the linen room. He already wore dark pants, so all he needed was a crisp white serving shirt and an apron. I changed into a kitchen maid’s dress.
“Trust me, this will work,” I said, fumbling with the apron ties. “I spent years as a maid. No one makes eye contact with you. You might as well not even exist.”
“You don’t have to tell me,” Montgomery said, turning me around to finish doing up the buttons of my dress. “I recall quite well what it felt like to be a servant.” He spun me back around, and in the cramped room we were only inches apart. His hands lingered on my waist. “I remember wishing desperately that you would look at me. Speak to me.”
I swallowed, suddenly very aware of his proximity. There had been a distance between us ever since the King’s Club massacre, a tension that ate away at my insides like hunger. But beneath it all, I still loved him fiercely. “I did speak to you.”
“Only because you were lonely for a playmate. Or to ask me to make a fire in your bedroom hearth.”
I slid my arms around his neck, looking him fully in the eye. “Well, I see you now,” I said softly. “I’d like to spend the rest of my life looking at you. And from now on, I’ll make the fires.”
He kissed me. It was quick, before anyone might walk in, and it made me believe that somehow we’d work out all our differences. He tucked a strand of hair behind my ear. “Be careful tonight, Juliet.”
“You too.”
I opened the closet door and we snuck back into the kitchen. Maids were carrying rows of identical serving trays, and I picked one up. Montgomery joined a group of male attendants preparing to serve the wine. We gave each other one last look before the doors opened and we filed into the dining hall.
After the blazing lights of the kitchen, I wasn’t prepared for the abrupt shift to dim candle lighting, quiet music from a string quartet, and the soft chatter of the upper classes. For a moment I felt torn between the various stations in life I had held—I’d been born into this world of wealth only to have it torn away and been left as a maid.
To be honest, I wasn’t certain which I preferred.
I glanced at the line of male attendants across the room. Montgomery was taller than the others by a few inches, and his long hair stood out even swept back, but I doubted any of the diners noticed since they were so caught up in their own trivialities.
The girl at my rear jostled me, and I realized I was staring. I followed behind the two girls ladling soup into china bowls and set down a dinner roll with silver tongs. I kept my head down so the strands of hair that had slipped out of my braid would partially hide my face, but tried my hardest to search the room for familiar faces. The man or men searching for me had to be in this room somewhere.
My group of serving girls moved to the next table, where Montgomery was serving wine counterclockwise to us. I caught his eye as we passed.
“See anything?” I whispered.
“Not yet. Check the empty seats—they’ll have saved a seat for Valentina.”
I nodded and we continued serving in opposite directions. I had no idea who I was looking for. What if it was a family member of Dr. Hastings, furious at me for killing the man? Or someone who knew I was related to the Wolf of Whitechapel’s killing spree across London?
I was so lost in my thoughts that I bumped into the maid in front of me and accidentally dropped my roll. I gasped as it landed in the lap of a black-haired young gentleman. The other maids froze.
“Terribly sorry, sir,” I stammered, and reached down with my tongs to pick up the roll.
He gave me a disgusted look, shaking out his napkin angrily. “I thought the Stonewall had a higher standard for quality,” he said, and the rest of his dinner party laughed.
It was then that I noticed the empty seat at his table. I went stiff.
Across the table, a man was staring directly at me. An older man with white hair and pale blue eyes. A man I’d thought about only in passing ever since leaving London.
Mr. John Radcliffe, financial backer for the King’s Club, and my father’s former colleague.
Lucy’s father.
SEVENTEEN
I DROPPED THE BASKET of rolls. The other girls shrieked as I pushed past them, running for the door back into the kitchen. I looked frantically for Montgomery. In the commotion, he was heading back to the kitchen, too.
I burst through the door, found Montgomery, and pulled him into the closet.
“The man pursuing us,” I gasped. “It’s Radcliffe. I thought he was just a banker, easily swayed by the others. That article he wrote for the newspaper claimed he’d repented of his connections with the King’s Club.”
“He must have written that article hoping that we’d see it,” Montgomery said, “and that it would throw us off his track. It worked, didn’t it? Whatever he’s planning, we’ve underestimated him. We’ve got to get out of here.”
I peeked into the kitchen, which was especially hectic after the incident.
“There’s no sign of Radcliffe yet,” I whispered. “We don’t know if he’s alone or has a team of men with him. He could have men already stationed at each of the doors.”
Montgomery studied the chaos in the kitchen. “He hasn’t sounded any kind of alarm, or announced that there are fugitives loose in the building, so he must want to keep it quiet.”
“Why is he after us? Is this is all about Lucy? He said in the
article how sick with worry he and her mother are.”
Montgomery raised an eyebrow. “How many times did your own father manipulate your love for him to get what he wanted? I’d wager whatever he wants, he’s only using Lucy to get it. Look—the back door!” It was wide open for more vegetable vendors to carry their wares in. “I say we make a run for it. Get back to Balthazar in the carriage and try to lose Radcliffe that way.”
“God, I hope this works,” I said, and took a deep breath.
“Now!” he whispered.
We shoved open the closet door, running as fast as we could through the kitchen, trying not to knock over the cooks at the oven or the men carrying crates of vegetables. There were yells of surprise—if Radcliffe didn’t know where we’d hidden before, he certainly would now.
Montgomery and I burst through the back door into the frigid night air, away from the commotion in the kitchen. “This way!” Montgomery called, and I ran after him. I tore off my apron, letting it fly behind me.
At the same time, a police alarm cranked to life down the street.
“So much for not sounding the alarm,” I muttered.
The sound of footsteps came behind us but I didn’t dare look back, not once, as we ran through the inn’s gardens and the maze of alleyways behind the fine shops. My eyes watered in the freezing air. At last we rounded a corner, where Balthazar waited with the carriage ahead.
“Ready the horse,” Montgomery called. “We’re leaving!”
A shot rang toward us, and Montgomery cried out.
I skidded to a stop. The sound tore into me as though I’d been the one hit. I whirled around. Blood poured out of Montgomery’s shoulder. A startled-looking officer with a shaking pistol stood a block away, no doubt summoned by the alarm.
“Balthazar, Montgomery’s been shot!” I yelled.
Balthazar steadied his rifle toward the officer, who leaped back to take cover behind a shop. It gave me just enough time to help Montgomery stumble to the pony trap. Balthazar tossed me the rifle while he took up the reins.
“Go!” I cried. Balthazar whipped the horse, which tore into the narrow streets while Montgomery winced with pain. I remembered our quick, stolen kiss in the closet. I wasn’t ready for that to be the last.