The Highwayman Came Riding Read online

  Table of Contents

  Title Page

  Dedication

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  Chapter Thirty

  Chapter Thirty-One

  Chapter Thirty-Two

  Chapter Thirty-Three

  Chapter Thirty-Four

  Chapter Thirty-Five

  Chapter Thirty-Six

  Chapter Thirty-Seven

  Chapter Thirty-Eight

  Chapter Thirty-Nine

  Chapter Forty

  Loose Id Titles by Qeturah Edeli

  Qeturah Edeli

  THE HIGHWAYMAN CAME RIDING

  Qeturah Edeli

  www.loose-id.com

  The Highwayman Came Riding

  Copyright © June 2017 by Qeturah Edeli

  All rights reserved. This copy is intended for the original purchaser of this e-book ONLY. No part of this e-book may be reproduced, scanned, or distributed in any printed or electronic form without prior written permission from Loose Id LLC. Please do not participate in or encourage piracy of copyrighted materials in violation of the author's rights. Purchase only authorized editions.

  Image/art disclaimer: Licensed material is being used for illustrative purposes only. Any person depicted in the licensed material is a model.

  eISBN 9781682523445

  Editor: Kerry Genova

  Cover Artist: Valerie Tibbs

  Published in the United States of America

  Loose Id LLC

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  San Francisco CA 94117-0549

  www.loose-id.com

  This e-book is a work of fiction. While reference might be made to actual historical events or existing locations, the names, characters, places and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

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  Dedication

  To the tiny waistcoat-loving gem who always reads them first!

  Acknowledgment

  “The Highwayman” by Alfred Noyes (1880–1958) inspired this tale.

  Chapter One

  England, May 1803

  Highwaymen were a common nuisance on the English roads leading from the village of Kitwick. All roads were said to be from Kitwick and never to it, for no one but those who had the misfortune of being born there could ever wish to visit, according to locals. Kitwick was like any other Georgian-era English village: peaceful, pretty, and insufferably boring. It lacked the history of Bath, the erudition of Oxford, the sophistication of Cambridge, and the glam and intrigue of Town. That was what everyone called London: Town. For no other settlement could rival its splendor. The wealthier inhabitants of Kitwick, who usually lived in grand estates away from the village center, holidayed there and brought back awe-inspiring tales of bustling streets, endless balls, sinful extravagance, and high society.

  Elias lived with his father and sister on the top floor of a modest inn and tavern in the heart of Kitwick. He had lived in Kitwick his entire life, knowing nothing of the world beyond the confines of his insular community until the age of nineteen, when, against all odds, he secured a job as a post boy. He had strong suspicions he was hired because the postmaster’s wife pitied him and remembered his mother, but he had no way of confirming this. It was his job to collect the local post from Mr. Scorsby’s every morning and walk five miles to the neighboring town of Mitton, where he deposited Kitwick’s post destined for Mitton and beyond, collected the return post, and walked home. This was a time-consuming endeavor, particularly for him, for Elias had been blind since birth.

  Where his twin sister, Bess, had arrived without incident, Elias emerged from the womb looking as no child in Kitwick ever had. Their parents knew something was amiss with his eyes, for where Bess’s were a blue that became a deep brown, Elias’s were black as tar, without a speck of color. He cried well enough and responded to sound, but even after many months, he did not give any indication of useful sight. He wept in bright light and covered his queer eyes with his fists. It took him ages to learn to walk, even with Bess’s help, and he was always clumsy, falling over things and getting covered in frightful bruises. Eventually, his mother took him to a physician who declared him sightless, with nothing but near-debilitating light sensitivity to guide him through the otherwise nondescript landscape of his life.

  Elias had only the dimmest memories of his mother: a gentle voice, a soft touch. She had disappeared one overcast Saturday afternoon when he and Bess were five. Bess always said she ran away with traveling folk and now spent her days journeying across Britain and telling fortunes. Elias liked to think she had run away to Town and drowned herself in the River Thames. There was finality to it, with a bit of class. He longed to go to Town, but as the son of an innkeeper, he had not the means. Besides, he was blind. Whenever he talked about Town with Bess, she inevitably brought up the fact he would never be able to manage in such a busy environment. “You’d be run over by a carriage in a minute,” she would say. “They don’t wait for you there. That’s what Kitty Moreton told me, anyway. It’s not like Kitwick. They don’t care about anyone in Town.”

  Bess was fiercely protective of Elias and the single most important person in his life. She was his confidante and adviser, his sister, and his best friend. Though he could not see, he had no shortage of intelligence or wit, and so Bess’s childhood tutor made her read her lessons aloud that Elias might learn too. They studied together, thick as thieves. One was every bit as educated as the other, but Elias’s memory was sharper, for where Bess could review her lessons whenever she liked, Elias had no such luxury.

  Everyone said they resembled each other in both coloring and character. Bess helped calm him down after frequent rows with their father, and more than once she had intervened when he took the back of his hand to Elias’s face. It was not fair, she argued, because Elias could not see it coming. They were both saucy and hot-tempered, prone to bantering with each other in a way outsiders found antagonistic and, often, downright rude. But they were comfortable with each other, loving, and, in their own way, respectful. One distinguishing feature between the two of them
was that while Bess could act civilly if the situation called for it, Elias never bothered to rein in his sass. He possessed an acerbic wit and spared no one.

  As he aged, Elias learned to wear broad-brimmed hats to protect his eyes from the painful sunlight whenever he went out. He was no longer brought to tears by short garden excursions, and this granted him more independence than he had ever known. Hats were expensive commodities, but a rare article his father purchased for him. Bess delighted in the hats, joining him at the haberdasher’s to select outfits she thought became him.

  Aside from being his protector, his sister, his twin, his teacher, and his stylist, Bess was also the only person who knew everything about Elias. She knew how he wanted to get out of Kitwick for good someday, how his favorite pie was raspberry, how he had a freckle in the shape of a heart on his left shoulder, and how he liked boys the way boys were supposed to like girls. Bess did not care about Elias’s unusual predilections. On the contrary, she enjoyed them.

  “What do you think of Kenneth Davies today?” she would ask quietly as they walked through town on their way to church. Kenneth Davies was a dapper dresser, with blond hair and sparkling blue eyes to boot, Bess told him. None of these things meant anything to Elias. Not really. The idea of “blue” was very pleasant to him; Bess said the sky was blue and promised him it was beautiful. When he turned his closed eyes to the sky, it whispered prettily against his lids. Elias thought Kenneth Davies had a nice voice, despite his lisp. Bess suspected he might have compatible interests with Elias, but Elias was skeptical.

  “Ugh, please,” Elias would say, shaking his head. “I spoke with him just the other day. He seemed to think Napoleon was a Portuguese red wine. What an idiot.” Elias always had a reason for why he ought not to like Kenneth Davies. If it was not because he still could not name the capital of France, it was because he said “sat” and “that” the same way. When Bess chided him for his cruelty, saying Kenneth Davies was a kind individual if Elias ever cared to listen beyond his lisp and ignorance, Elias would cluck his tongue and say jumping at the first man with compatible interests was no way to find a suitable beau.

  It was hard for anyone to catch Elias’s fancy. At twenty years of age and very sheltered, he was not sure what he liked yet beyond liking boys. Or the idea of them, anyway, since the moment any of them opened their mouths, he tended to lose interest. Kenneth Davies was flighty and immature, and the only other man about Kitwick who seemed like he could ever be interested in Elias was Barnaby Smith, a bachelor sheep farmer nearly twenty years his senior. Just thinking about Barnaby Smith made Elias’s mouth turn sour. He did not know what his type was, or if he even had one, but Barnaby Smith was specifically not his type based on what Bess said of him.

  And so Elias led a quiet and uneventful life. The most interesting thing that had happened to him in the past year was that he was held up by a highwayman between Kitwick and Mitton. The highwayman had apologized profusely and left him unmolested when he realized Elias was blind. That was one advantage of being different. People treated him nicely, no matter how rude he was to them. But since he knew their charity was motivated by pity, Elias hated it.

  Carrying the post between towns was not an impossible feat for Elias for a number of reasons. Firstly, Bess walked the route from Kitwick to Mitton with him every day for the first two weeks of his job as he memorized the distances, potholes, bends, hills, valleys, fences, and gates of his journey. Secondly, he was usually accompanied by his temperamental though faithful cat, Lord Nelson (Bess, who, like Elias, had a passionate crush on the famous admiral, had named him). Lord Nelson, who was unusually astute for a feline, pressed into Elias’s calf and directed him away from obstacles in his path. Of course, this method of avoiding calamity was only effective if Lord Nelson was not distracted by a mouse or a bird, which happened often enough, so Elias sometimes tore his trousers tripping over errant stones cast about the post roads by hooves and carriage wheels. Fortunately, Bess was a decent seamstress and mended his clothes for him in record time.

  It was one sunny Monday morning that Elias’s life started to become more exciting than it had been for the past two decades. He was walking the long stretch after the third last bend on his way to Mitton, Lord Nelson padding at his side, a bundle of letters in his satchel. He wore his hat, as always, low on his brow, and his shoulder-length curls were tied back loosely. Bess had selected his outfit for the morning, and she swore he looked dashing. Ever since he had mentioned the postmaster in Mitton had a youthful, pleasing voice and smooth hands, Bess had devoted more attention to Elias’s appearance before he left for work. He was lost in a daydream about the Mitton postmaster’s strong handshake when his reverie was rudely interrupted.

  “Stand and deliver!”

  Elias froze midstride. He remembered the feeling of helplessness when the last highwayman had swooped down on him from the forested hills and held him up, and he fought to repress his unease now. He was useless in a fight and he knew it. But who would steal from him, poor blind boy that he was?

  He heard pounding hooves and then grinding dirt behind him. The man had apparently jumped from his horse before it stopped. Elias snorted. He was trying too hard.

  Lord Nelson hissed and, by the sound of it, leaped at the approaching highwayman.

  “Fuck! Get it off me!”

  Lord Nelson yowled and spit.

  “Mind my cat,” Elias said, without turning around. “He bites.”

  “Yes, I can feel that, thank you!”

  Elias smiled.

  “Tell your cat to cease and desist or I shall be forced to shoot it!” He sounded harassed.

  “Can you only say two verbs at once? Is that a highwayman thing?”

  “What?”

  “Stand and deliver! Cease and desist! It’s predictable and boring.”

  There was a rustling sound, and Elias heard the cocking of a pistol.

  “Lord Nelson, stop that,” he snapped at once. “Come here.” He felt a pressure against his calf a moment later and knew it was Lord Nelson resting at his side.

  The highwayman was panting. He sniffed and took a step closer. Lord Nelson gave another low hiss as the highwayman circled them and came to stand face-to-face with Elias. He tipped Elias’s hat back from his brow; Elias clutched it desperately.

  “Why are your eyes like that?” the highwayman asked.

  “Like what?”

  “All black and wobbling about in your face. They’re creepy.”

  “Oh, are they? I had no idea.” Growing up, the children of Kitwick used to tease Elias something fierce about his eyes.

  Elias felt something heavy and hard press into his breast. He could only assume it was the barrel of a pistol.

  “I believe I asked you a question.”

  This red-blooded display did nothing to impress or intimidate Elias. “I’m blind, you imbecile.”

  There was a long pause.

  “How blind?”

  “Excuse me?”

  “My gran was blind, but she could see out the corner of her eyes. How blind are you?”

  Elias huffed, but decided against withholding information from the man who held a pistol to his chest.

  “Blind enough.”

  “Can you see faces?”

  “If they’re very close and in dim light, I can sometimes estimate the general shape of a face,” he exaggerated. “I do better in the dark.”

  “Right. Look at me.”

  Elias sneered.

  “What?” the highwayman asked.

  “Obviously I never know exactly where to look, not that I can control my eyes much anyway. Bess tells me I always overestimate height.”

  “Who the fuck is Bess?”

  “My eyes.”

  There was a sigh. “What do you see when you look in my general direction?”

  Elias concentrated a long moment. It was too bright for him to see anything, but he did not want the highwayman to know just how big his advantage was.

&
nbsp; “You’re about my height and build,” Elias guessed.

  “And?”

  “Come closer, my pretty.” Where had that come from?

  “No. Now take off your clothes.”

  “I beg your pardon?”

  “Clothes. Off. They’re nice and they’ll fit. I want them.”

  Elias stood still for a moment. He was not about to take a bullet through the heart over an outfit, but he was reluctant to strip in front of a stranger. Besides, how would he get home?

  “Are you in earnest?” Elias demanded. “You would steal the clothes off a blind man’s back?” He never played the pity card, not unless he was being sarcastic with Bess. But he wanted to know what this highwayman would say.

  “Yes,” the highwayman replied. “It’s not like you can give an accurate description of me to the authorities, is it? Now clothes off, before I shoot a blind man.”

  Cheeks aflame, Elias shed his clothes. Boots, stockings, trousers, shirt, waistcoat, and jacket. He took off his hat to get out of his shirt, but crammed it back on his head once he was done. He even had to forfeit his satchel with the post. It was a mild day but too cold to be naked, and he wrapped his arms around his torso, shivering.

  “Hair ribbon,” the highwayman said, so Elias untied his hair and dropped his ribbon to the ground, then hugged himself again.

  “Hat.”

  Now the highwayman had gone too far. “No.”

  “What did you say to me?”

  “My father bought me this hat. It protects my eyes. Without it, I would cry every minute I was outside. We don’t have money for a replacement right now.” And they never would if his father continued to drink as he did and Elias still wanted to attend his pianoforte lessons. No matter that Elias had four more hats at home; the highwayman did not need to know that. “You can’t have the hat.”

  With a whistle, the hat was swept from his head. Elias shook with fury but held most of it in when he felt the pistol’s muzzle poke into his bare skin. His eyes burned as the quiet shade was replaced with screaming light. He closed them, hot tears spilling down his cheeks. How he hated those tears! How he hated the highwayman! Lord Nelson’s soft fur against his now bare leg provided small comfort.