A/N: Man, having an editor sitting on the same bed is brutal. She makes me actually write better stories. Yikes.
Thanks for all the reviews and the guesswork. Some wondered about the story length. This will be a short novel, about 16 chapters or so.
Wade
Once the young girl was on her way back to whatever she was to make of the rest of her life, the elder sighed and tried to make her courage rise at this attempt to intimidate her. The lady knew full well that things would never be the same… ever. Her life was irrevocably changed. That did not alter the fact that she had to do her best to protect herself, or at the very least, protect her family.
Leaning on her courage, she finally moved to the other side of the villain laid out on the ground and looked carefully at his face. It would have been a handsome face, a face that would have had young women everywhere swooning, if it did not contain staring, lifeless eyes. There was little doubt that this particular villain had committed his last of probably a long series of heinous acts, and all that remained was to make sure this chapter of his life ended with the right punctuation.
The plan to just walk away and leave him was thought of and discarded quickly. Any serious investigation of a dead man with bruised knuckles and a walking stick with blood on it would not require a genius to decipher. Any non‑trivial investigation would find both her and her young accomplice within days. Both ladies would likely be hauled up on charges, which could easily result in at least one lady being transported or hanged. The other might get by because she had actually done nothing wrong, or because she was probably part of a very rich and influential family. The victim might just get away with it, but a lady with no particular standing, no reputation… no money… well, she might not be so lucky.
A passion for literature had informed the young lady that prostrate villains could be moved when necessary. With a resigned sigh, she decided to see if the novels were correct. Carrying a feeling of dread, and a shiver that could not be repressed, she grabbed the dead meat by its coat sleeves, and pulled it half upright. She looked carefully at the ground that needed to be covered and could see no alternative to dragging. Standing carefully behind his back, she reached under his shoulders, clasped her hands together across his chest, and with a mighty heave, lifted him off the ground and dragged him backwards one step. Inch by inch, step by step, she continued the process. One big breath, one big heave, one more step backwards, and another foot of ground covered. She counted it most fortunate that the grass, covered in dew that would evaporate within the next quarter hour, showed two parallel lines where the heels of his boots dragged, but no further evidence of what had taken place. Nobody would see those, for which she was eternally grateful.
Once she felt the last of her heaves propel her against the seawall, she paused for only a moment to catch her breath. Looking around to be sure she was unseen, the lady searched inside the man's coat to see what could be found. She was undecided if it would be better or worse for the cretin to be identified, but at least wanted to know what her options were. Quite surprisingly, she found a billfold with £137 in bank notes, yet more than £700 of vowels, so called debts of honor. Apparently, the man was yet another type of scoundrel, a gambler. It took no more than a moment to find a small hidden hole in the face of the seawall, stuff the money inside and cover it with a rock. If all went to plan, she would return for it before she left Ramsgate. The lady had no intention of swinging for this man, and £137 was plenty of money for a sensible lady such as herself to get to the continent, or even one of the colonies, and to live very simply for long enough to establish a profession. She could and would, if necessary, go somewhere the laws of England could not catch her. She even, for a moment, thought she might do it now, if it would not harm her family or Miss Darcy. She just hated that she knew that name, and she would endeavor to forget it.
The man also had a hipflask, engraved with the letters 'GW', although whether that was the cretin's name, or it was something else stolen, she had no idea. It mattered not, but the lady thought it was probably better for the man to be identified than not, so she put it back where she found it. With one last mighty heave, she lifted the body up and laid it out on the seawall. The thought of saying a prayer for such a spawn of the devil filled her with revulsion, so with a feeling of 'good riddance', she gave a mighty shove and rolled him off the seawall for his last journey.
In the first bit of pure indulgence since the incident began, the young lady leaned as far out as she could on the seawall and watched the body bounce off one rock, then another, then another, and thence finally into the crashing waves. She even indulged herself for a full minute of watching the waves gradually pound what was left of the body against the rocks again and again and again. Once she had satisfied her sense of justice, knowing that the man was dead enough, she looked around to judge the conditions.
The body would either be washed out to sea and disappear forever, or it would be pounded into so much meat within the hour. Nobody would ever be able to determine anything at all about the manner of the cretin's death. The walking stick was still sitting by the seawall, so she debated for some time, and then she finally tossed it into the sea to follow its owner. The money was well‑hidden, and the twin drag marks from his boots were already faded to practically nothing. A good careful examination of the area where the altercation took place showed not the slightest evidence that three lives had been irrevocably changed less than an hour before.
Now the only problem was the massive bruise on her face, the gash on her leg and her stained and bloodied dress. Those were not things that could just be explained away, so the next part of the plan commenced.
The young lady took a careful look at her leg, and she decided it would survive what needed to be done. With a resigned sigh, she picked up her skirts, and started running. She chose a path that she had never seen a single person on before, that ran somewhat steeply down closer to a beach, and ran with abandon, looking for a specific place she had seen on her first day in Ramsgate. A quarter hour placed her in the exact spot she was looking for. There was a grassy bank, with a sharp and unstable looking edge, that nobody in their right mind would walk close to. She needed witnesses, so she walked along until she saw two men fishing from the beach, forty or fifty yards below.
The spot was perfect. The footing at the top was weak, then there was about six or ten feet of very steep sand, followed by a good dozen feet of shale. This was going to hurt. Making sure nobody was looking, she went right to the ragged edge of the path, and then she stomped her foot enough times to cave a good foot of the earth away. Then, when she felt herself start falling, she let out the most blood-curdling scream she was capable of.
True to plan, she fell into the steep sand and started rolling. Not to her plan, she found herself nearly rolling to a stop a few feet short of the shale, so she then had to consciously, working hard every step of the way, roll three more times until she managed to land on the shale. Once in the shale, sliding down became much less of a problem. In fact, if anything the whole plan nearly worked too well, as she cascaded the last two-dozen feet to the beach accompanied by dozens or hundreds of stones. She very nearly gave herself the same fate as the vermin she had dispatched the hour before, but fortunately, she managed to stay just on the right side of the line the Grim Reaper called his own. Hiding the damage done during her altercation at the seawall was easily accomplished, as she had bruising now on both sides of her face, and cuts on both legs and both arms. As per plan, the cuts and bruises she started with were completely obscured with the new ones, and there was not a single inch of any bit of clothing she was wearing that could be salvaged.
The two fishermen were in every way the opposite of the cretin she had last encountered. They were not gentlemen, but very rough laborers. One was a dock worker, and the other a carter. They were however exactly what gentlemen should aspire to be, kind hearted and concerned. They reached the lady within less than a minute of the time she finally arrived on the beach, had her injuries assessed within another minute and had her laid out and ready for transport within two more minutes.
After that, the first problem arose. They had no idea where to take her. Being sensible men, the obvious thing to do was to take her to either of their wives, and they were just discussing which wife would be best, when the young lady stirred. The quicker of the two asked her where she was staying. She managed to give the direction before she once again succumbed to darkness.
Both men had some vague idea of how the quality liked to behave and thought that a young lady wandering around alone and thence falling down a cliff face was probably out of the ordinary. They had no idea if that would affect her 'reputation', whatever that was, and did not want to test their luck, so the question became a very practical one. They could not in good conscience leave the girl unattended, nor did they particularly want to own the problem themselves. The obvious solution was to make it somebody else's problem. They had an address, so the right action was easy enough to take.
Both men would have no problems carrying a donkey, let alone a little slip of a girl, so they thought that if they would just quietly take her to her lodgings, then all would be well, and they both had flagons with their names on them at the pub. Now, carrying one of the quality through the streets might raise questions, so they simply wrapped her up in one of the blankets they had with them. There was little chance anybody would be considered a lady when wrapped in a fisherman's blanket. Taking turns, they managed to carry the limp body through back streets that were mostly empty at this time of the day, and more importantly, entirely devoid of the quality at any time of the day. There was little point in getting involved with that class of people.
Once they reached the back entrance of the house, everything became quite easy. They were uncomfortable with the whole neighborhood knowing the young lady's business, so they sought to return her quietly. They drew straws, and the unlucky one went to knock on the servant's entrance. He asked for the housekeeper, and when she appeared, he explained the problem and asked for instruction.
The housekeeper in fact did know exactly what to do. She called for the mistress of the house, and then set out quietly shuffling the rest of the servants out of the way. Then she sent the most trusted footman she had out to fetch the young lady back and take her to a bedroom. She proceeded to take some of the money she kept for the household accounts and paid the men handsomely for their diligence in bringing the young lady home, and a bit extra to ensure that the incident never happened.
The master of the house managed to appear just at that time, and he very graciously thanked both men, asked to be sure they had been generously compensated and sent them on their way.
The mistress of the house took it upon herself and a single trusted maid to disrobe the victim and tend to her wounds. A physician was called in, but by the time he arrived the young lady had woken up, and other than having quite a lot of cuts, scrapes and bruises to deal with, appeared healthy. She would end up stuck in that bedroom for a week, and barely managed to get away to recover her survival money a fortnight later. She was owed that money and had no intentions of giving it up.
Within a month of the unfortunate incident, both young ladies took their separate leaves of Ramsgate. Both devoutly hoped to never return there again. One lady went back to her father's house. The other went back to her brother's house, without her companion who had been dismissed, but not for the actual crime she committed.
The companion wondered what happened to her partner in crime, but since he had never been a particularly reliable man, and he had a bad habit of getting into debt with the entirely wrong sort of people, it seemed likely he had met his fate at the end of a bottle or a sword. She went back to her life and forever gave up on her previous dream of untold riches at the expense of a spoiled little girl's excessive dowry.