Hope - Lesley Pearse [252]
She did back up further, pleading with him all the time, and with each step she came slightly nearer to the pitchfork. He was heavier and slower than he had been eight years earlier, and she hoped that in his disturbed mental state he wouldn’t consider that she would attempt to fight him.
‘Where have you been all these years?’ she asked, playing for time rather than wishing to know. ‘Have you been working on another garden?’
‘How could I work anywhere when I was being hunted!’ he snarled. ‘I’m the best gardener in England but I was forced to live like a vagabond. Ruffians stole my money when I was sleeping. And it’s all your fault, and now you’re going to pay.’
‘Please, Albert,’ she whimpered, knowing it was vital to impress on him she was helpless to keep him off his guard. ‘Just let me go and I’ll never tell anyone I sawyou.’
‘Turn round to the wall,’ he shouted at her. ‘And shut yer bloody mouth!’
She turned, but as she did so she grabbed the pitchfork and wheeled right round to face him, pointing the prongs at him.
All she had in her favour was that she was quick and light on her feet. She knew that if he managed to grab the fork she was done for.
‘You back off!’ she yelled, lunging forward at him, and as he moved back she jumped nimbly to one side. ‘Come on, grab it if you can,’ she said. ‘I’m dying to run you through with it.’
She cursed her heavy cloak weighing her down, and knew she hadn’t the strength to hold him off for long, but if she could just manoeuvre him around so his back was to the wall, she might be able to take a run at him and stab him with it, or at least hold him off until Rufus came back.
She danced around him like a butterfly, jabbing then jumping back as he tried to grab the pitchfork from her or slash her with the knife. Her hat fell off, her hair began to tumble down, and several times the blade of his knife came within a whisper of her arm.
He was tiring, his breathing laboured and his movements becoming more sluggish. She thought it likely he was very hungry too. ‘Come on,’ she taunted him. ‘What’s happened to you? Too much drink, is it?’
She had one ear out for Rufus, for surely he must by now be wondering why she hadn’t come down to the gatehouse. Yet her overriding fear was that Betsy would start crying, for even if Albert had lost his mind he’d surely realize a baby was the perfect hostage to get everyone where he wanted them.
Her dancing and jabbing were growing increasingly feverish, and finally she had him with his back to the wall, and hers to the door. Then Betsy began to cry.
Albert stopped moving and he listened, a sneer twisting his lip grotesquely. ‘So you’ve got a babby!’ he said, bringing the knife up threateningly.
He could easily throwthe knife at her, but she thought it was more likely he would charge her with it.
‘Don’t,’ she warned him, getting a firmer grip on the pitchfork. A cold sweat broke out all over her, for she knew if she didn’t prevent him leaving the stable he would go for Betsy first. All the hatred for this man she’d kept inside her for so many years bubbled up. He wasn’t going to lay one finger on her daughter. She would have to kill him to prevent that.
‘You can’t stop me with that,’ he sneered, and took a step forward.
She knew that his weight and strength put all the odds in his favour. He only had to charge her and she’d be brushed aside as easily as a cobweb. But she had to stop him; her daughter’s life, her own and possibly Rufus’s and Lady Harvey’s too were at stake.
The image of the soldiers in the Rifle Brigade up on the Heights before Sebastopol practising attacks with fixed bayonets suddenly came to her. She remembered the Sergeant screaming at them, Kill or be killed.
A surge of white-hot fury rushed through her veins. So what if she was smaller and lighter than him? She had right on her side, and her cause was a far greater one than his.
‘Die, you bastard!’ she screamed, and charged at him just the way she’d seen soldiers do.
She caught