Linda Needham

"Run, Culley! Run hard!"

Felicity Mayfield had a half-crown on the long-shanked village lad, money she should have kept in her purse. But she'd finally succumbed to the thrill of the Robin Hood Race, to the swirl of festive banners, and to all the shouting and cheering.

As the lad rounded the final curve of the intricate turf maze, he teetered for a paralyzing moment on the brink of falling off the narrow ground-level course into the sandy trench.

"Hang on, Culley!" Felicity shouted, jumping up and down like everyone else in the crowd, staying her next breath as he stumbled forward. But Culley righted himself and broke through the flower garland with a whoop of triumph.

"He won! Bravo, Culley!" Felicity didn't even know the lad but she was at the moment his greatest champion.

Mrs. Duffle clapped Felicity on the back. "You're a right lucky young woman!"

"I'm most grateful for the tip. He's every bit as fast as you said he was!" Felicity was as winded from all her shouting as young Culley was from his sprinting. "I've never made a wager on a race before! And I won!"

Mrs. Duffle beamed as if the Robin Hood Race, and the turf maze and the rowdy festival were all her own doing. "Happens every year here in Beacon Chase. You'll come back and spend May Day with us next year, won't you dear?"

"Absolutely! And I'll send all my loyal readers, Mrs. Duffle. You may count on it."

"Ah, that's very good to hear, Miss Mayfield. And now I insist you come have lunch with me at the Knotted Mazel--as my guest, of course. You'll find my pigeon pie's the very best in the county."

Felicity was hungry beyond decency; her stomach rattled, primed by the spellbinding smell of meat pasties rising from the warren of food stalls.

"I'd love to join you, Mrs. Duffle. Thank you." She collected her winnings from a man in a bright yellow hat, then hefted her portmanteau and followed Mrs. Duffle through the crowded street to the cottage inn tucked against a woodland at the edge of the village.

"Oh, you've lovely setting, Mrs. Duffle." Felicity approved immediately of the riotous flower garden and the ornately woven ridge of the thatched roof. Now, if the food and lodging proved as charming as the spacious, sunlit dining room, Felicity would give it an excellent review in her travel gazette. A perfect spot to recommend to her readers for a holiday in the Kent countryside.

Mrs. Duffle's tray of good silver clattered as she set it down on the table. "The very same tea served at Windsor, Miss Mayfield. True China tea, not that second-hand compost served across the street at the Skipping Toad. None but the best for my guests at the Mazel."

"It's truly delicious!" Felicity spoke overloud, hoping to mask the indelicate growl of her stomach as the tea collided with the emptiness there. Breakfast had been a withered apple from last season, plundered from a tree on the way from the tiny railway station. Not a meal she would recommend to her readers.

Mrs. Duffle spread a mouth-watering luncheon for her, and then talked in an unbroken stream about her grown children, her late husband, and her unconventional sister who had married a man half her own age. She was a charming little woman, Felicity's favorite kind of innkeeper and one of the reasons she liked her job so well.

The front door opened just as Felicity bit into a steaming, jam-filled scone. The glare of noonday darkened the details of the two figures who stood together in the portal.

"Sheriff Hinchcliffe!" Mrs. Duffle clapped her hands together and laughed. "That was quite a race your Culley won!"

The man's chest strained with pride at the buttons of his waistcoat. "Yup. Proud of the boy," he said, sauntering into the room, rubbing his palms together.

"Ooo, I know that look, Sheriff." Mrs. Duffle drew a steaming plate beneath the man's nose. "You come for a helping of my pigeon pie."

The gangly man beside him hissed something into his ear. Hinchcliffe straightened, and pushed the plate aside. "Actually, Mrs. Duffle," the sheriff said. "I've come for that pigeon over there." Then he pointed toward Felicity.

Felicity blinked and glanced over her shoulder. There was no one behind her. The man was pointing right at her! And for no reason at all that last bite of scone turned to lead as it hit her stomach. She stood up, wincing at the scrape of her chair across the stone floor.

"You came here for me?" she whispered, her mouth gone dry as dust. Felicity was a stranger to Beacon Chase, had only arrived that morning to make her notes on the May Day celebration. Few people knew she was here, and even fewer cared. Perhaps the sheriff needed only to ask a few questions.

But Hinchcliffe stopped a scant yard from her table and fixed her with a cold, professional stare.

"Are you sure this is the right girl, Cobson?" he asked from the corner of his mouth, still watching Felicity with a deep browed suspicion.

Cobson joined him, cocking his head at her as though sizing up a two-headed goat on display at the faire. "A young woman, seven-and-a-half stone. Five feet three'ish tall, wheat-blond hair, green eyes. Yessir. Just as the bailiff said."

"Just as what bailiff said?" As dumbfounded as she had ever been in her life, Felicity tried to make herself seem taller, and a bit bigger around. "Who are you, sir?"

The sheriff plunged his thumbs into the fob pockets of his waistcoat and squinted at her. "Tell me, girl, is your name Felicity Mayfield?"

Mrs. Duffle sucked in a long, awe-filled breath. "That it is, Sheriff! That's the name she gave me when she came in here with her notepad and all her fancy words about listing the Knotted Mazel in some kind of travel gazette. What wicked thing has she done?"

"I've done nothing wicked, Mrs. Duffle." Felicity felt very alone at the moment, and wished suddenly that she had a warm place to run home to. "If these gentlemen will tell me their business--"

"I have here an arrest warrant for a Felicity Mayfield." Cobson held up a sealed document.

"An arrest warrant? For me?" Felicity fought the urge to dodge her way between the tables, and out the door. This was all quite ridiculous. "What have I done?"

"Cobson, here, is an officer of the Queen's Bench, and authorized to take you to London--"

"To London?" Felicity tried to bluster away her quickening fear, but her heart was racing, her pulse pounding in her ears. "On what charge?"

Cobson snapped open the document and displayed it for her. "On the charge of criminal debt, Miss Mayfield."

"Debt?" Felicity laughed at the notion, and a huge weight lifted from her shoulders, though Cobson's scowl only deepened. "You have the wrong person. I owe nothing to anyone!"

Hinchcliffe snickered and poked Cobson with his elbow. "I'll bet you've heard that tune sung a few times, eh?"

Cobson snorted. "And all the verses. If I had a penny for every time, I sure's hell wouldn't be doin' this job! You're comin' along with me, Miss Mayfield." He reached for her, but Felicity stepped backward into Mrs. Duffle.

"I will not go anywhere with you, Mr. Cobson!" Felicity had heard quite enough. She gathered her anger into a hard knot of indignation to help shore up her wobbling knees. "This charge is entirely false. How do I know you're not going to kidnap me and force me to do your will?"

Cobson shrugged. "I guess you don't."

The scone in Felicity's stomach began to burn. "Sheriff Hinchcliffe, how can you let this man do this?"

"I know you're innocent, miss," the sheriff said, shaking his head in conspicuously false sympathy. "And I know this is a great mistake. But a warrant is a warrant."

"Let me see that!" Felicity tore the warrant out of Cobson's hands. The page was official-looking; the script was over-frilled, but it said quite clearly, "'Felicity Mayfield to be arrested for criminal debt owing to Mister Hunter Claybourne, London.'"

Felicity looked up at Cobson, more confused than ever. "The Hunter Claybourne?"

"I doubt there's more than one, Miss Mayfield."

Felicity doubted it, too. Just as strongly as she doubted that the sinfully wealthy Hunter Claybourne could possibly have any connection to her at all.

"Come along, Miss Mayfield," Cobson said, clamping his efficient fingers around her elbow, and starting toward the door. "The train to London's due any minute, and you've an engagement at the Queen's Bench Prison."

Felicity overran Cobson with her questions all the way to London, but arrived at London Bridge Station no wiser for her efforts, and completely unnerved. He led her from the platform into the rain-soaked, poorly lit street.

"This is a huge mistake, Mr. Cobson," Felicity insisted for the hundredth time since leaving Beacon Chase. "I don't know Hunter Claybourne. He doesn't know me."

"Master Claybourne is an important man. He don't make mistakes, Miss Mayfield."

"But you have! I suppose you round up all his debtors?"

"Been doin' it for seven years now." Cobson reeled an overlong kerchief from his coat pocket, and swabbed at his nose.

"All I know is: those that do come his way don't remain debtors for long. He always gets his pound of flesh... and then some."

Felicity fastened her thin shawl around her shoulders, her stomach reeling as if she'd dined on live eels. Hunter Claybourne? Railroads, shipping, foreign trade; no man was better known or more feared in the financial affairs of the nation. What the devil did he want with her?

Cobson loaded her portmanteau into a crowded hackney cab and they wheeled away into the drizzling night, only to be deposited in front of a clapboard house not a mile from the station.

"Inside, Miss Mayfield." Cobson took her elbow and started toward the house.

The windows and the front door in the sagging building were barred. The rain had lessened to a fine spray, giving the dirty clapboard a greasy look. It was a house of some sort, a house of evil intentions.

"What kind of place is this, Mr. Cobson? I'm not taking another step unless you tell me!"

"Then let me welcome you to Cobson's Rest, Miss Mayfield. The missus and I run a respectable sponging house."

"A sponging house!" The prelude to debtor's prison, designed to intimidate and insult as the debtor tried to arrange for repayment. This was a mistake, and even if it weren't, she had no money to spare. Her thousand pounds were tucked away in the Bank of England, intended only for the most dire emergency, a safeguard against starvation and utter homelessness. But what if no one believed her?

"You'll stay here with us until your trial. Unless, of course, you can raise money enough to pay off your debt."

"I tell you, I am no one's debtor!"

"Aren't you now?" Cobson chuckled low in his throat and pointed to the end of the block. "That building way down there's the Queen's Bench Prison. Unless you can come up with the sum you owes to Master Claybourne, you'll be living there for a very long time."

The eels churned again. Felicity had spent most of her life in the country, following her father from one railway engineering project to the next. She didn't know London very well, but she'd heard tales of the Queen's Bench, had read the horrible accounts of the Marshalsea and Fleet before they were closed.

"I owe Claybourne nothing. I don't even know him. This is a wasted effort, Mr. Cobson. And when this folly is done, I'll want my fare back to the Knotted Mazel."

But Cobson was a never-shirking force, a transportable jail. Felicity had no choice at all but to do as he bid. Come tomorrow he'd be sorry! So would Claybourne. She would weather this storm as she had weathered others.

Felicity allowed Cobson to lead her to the sagging stoop, where his three-part tap with the brass knocker was answered seconds later by a more intricate pattern. The latch rattled, then the door opened to the hovering light of a candle flame.

"Ooo! She's a little thing, Cobby." The soupy voice spilled from a fleshy female face that seemed to hover just behind the circle of light.

"May be. But she eats like one of Wellington's officers."

Felicity bristled. "A crust of bread and a carrot is hardly--"

"Bring 'er in, Cobby, a'fore she blows away in the wind."

Cobson's ever-present fingers pulled Felicity into the house. The air inside Cobson's Rest was as dark and close as its shadows: woodsmoke and rancid food and mildewed upholstery all sealed up together by windows long ago swollen shut in the damp.

"He's here, Cobby." Mrs. Cobson's whisper was clouded by the reek of day-old onions.

"Claybourne?" Cobson looked agitated for the first time all day. "Now? But it's near midnight."

"He come here just after dark," Mrs. Cobson hissed. "Brought the cold in with him, he did. I had to light the fire."

"He doesn't usually come himself. What does he want?"

Mrs. Cobson's gaze led right to Felicity. "He wants her, I think."

Felicity could only stare back at the woman, unwilling to imagine the confrontation to come. She knew Claybourne by reputation alone, and that was enough to keep her feet rooted to the sagging floor.

But Felicity allowed herself to be edged into a dreary parlor just off the cramped foyer. A low fire glowed red in the grate, the only light in the room, making monsters of sideboard and sofa. Wind rattled against the clapboard siding.

"A good eve to you, Master Claybourne," Cobson said, sliding his cap off his head. "I brought you your debtor. Like I said I would."

An enormous darkness moved across the hearth, cooling Felicity's face, reaching beyond the fragile windows to sap the light from the stars.

"Leave us, Cobson." The voice advanced like a midnight fog overtaking a lighthouse.

Felicity stepped backward, fearing that the sound had substance and might crush her. Shadows hid the man's face, hinting at sharp ridges and strong planes.

"As you wish it," Mrs. Cobson trilled as she bustled into the room and lit the lamp on the sideboard. "Shall I bring you a brandy, Master--"

"Take your wife and leave us, Cobson."

Like a pair of crabs dodging the tide, the Cobsons ducked out of the parlor and slammed the door.

Felicity had been to the Zoological Gardens in Regency Park, had seen the lions pacing the length of their cages. She felt that same restless power seething in the dark form in front of her. Yet Claybourne stood motionless, leaving his flickering shadow to stalk the walls and the ceiling.

"I know you only by your name, Mr. Claybourne," Felicity said in the void left by his unwieldy silence. "And couldn't possibly owe you so much as a ha'penny. You have arrested the wrong woman."

"And you have stolen from the wrong man, Miss Mayfield."

"Stolen?" Felicity laughed then, still vastly nervous but relieved at the nonsense. "I've never stolen anything from anybody."

Claybourne's greatcoat fluttered, then folded around him as he stepped away from the hearth. The simple act gave the room back its glowering light, but none of its warmth. His profile sharpened, as he bent to retrieve a sheaf of papers from a side table. She wished she could see more of him, the slant of his mouth, or the depth of his eyes--something beyond the shadows.

He turned then, looked up at her from his paper. But his eyes only drew her into a deeper darkness.

"Your uncle is Foley Mayfield."

"My uncle?" Felicity swallowed back a lump of foreboding and sidled over to a spindly chair. She gripped the rails of its laddered back, prepared to wield it should Claybourne choose to overtake her. "What does my uncle have to do with this?"

"Where is he now?" he asked evenly.

"My uncle is two days out of London, sailing for San Francisco and the gold fields." Felicity chided herself for confessing the information. Her dear Uncle Foley would be helpless against such a powerfully coercive man. "Why do you want to know about--"

"You gave Foley Mayfield the legal authority to sell the shares held by you as the sole owner of the Drayhill-Starlington Railway."

So that was it! The great financier come sniffing out an easy profit. "Mr. Claybourne, is this about the shares my father left to me when he died?"

"Your uncle was acting under your instruction in the matter?" Claybourne stepped away from the side table and moved toward her.

Felicity quickly countered his approach, feeling every bit the trapped rabbit. She left the chair, and caught her foot on the sideboard, causing the prisms dangling from the lamp to chatter.

"Did you give your uncle permission to sell your shares?" he repeated.

"Yes, he had my permission. I signed a promissory note indicating that I owned the shares and the railway." Felicity backed toward the hearth. Claybourne was mad. And he knew entirely too much about her and her family. "The papers are quite legal, Mr. Claybourne, drawn up by Francis Biddle, a solicitor of good repute. The shares were very valuable, but they've already been sold--"

"Yes, I know."

"Then why--"

"Your uncle sold the shares to me, Miss Mayfield. I paid him thirty thousand pounds for the privilege."

The hearth light seemed to intensify and Claybourne's shadow threw itself against the water-stained ceiling. The enormous shoulders she had thought hunched were actually broad and carelessly hooded by a half-cape. His hair was dark and unfashionably long, and he was watching her.

"Ah! So, now the shares belong to you, Mr. Claybourne. I don't see what--"

"No, Miss Mayfield. The shares still belong to you." He started toward her, motion without perceptive movement.

"Don't be absurd, Mr. Claybourne. You gave the money to my uncle: a great stack of it--piled into a satchel." Felicity backed away from his towering height until the fire became too warm at her back and she had to stop. "I saw the bank notes with my own eyes, just before he bought the store of goods he plans to sell in San Francisco. I saw the money."

"I'm sure you did." And now he was the whole of her sight, bearing a lime-laced heat all his own, despite the fog-born chill that had hidden itself among the folds of his cloak. "How old are you, Miss Mayfield?"

"That's no business of yours--"

But the horrible man reached out and wound his huge hand around the ribbon at her neckline and pulled her closer till his breath heated her hairline and her brow. He was blended spice and damp fog; his face was dark planes and brusque angles.

"How old?" he demanded.

"Twenty!" she whispered, and then flinched as the word brushed back against her mouth. "I'm twenty."

He drew her closer still, until his teeth blinded her in the firelight. "Then you have committed a felony, Miss Mayfield. Those shares aren't yours to sell until you are twenty-five."

Now she knew the color of his eyes, as she knew the color of cold malice. Her heart beat madly beneath the heel of his hand, thumping out her fear, confessing her shame.

"This can't be true--"

"Oh, it's true, my dear little thief. And now you will marry me, or I'll see that you spend the next five years in debtor's prison."