Free When Love Comes Calling: Two Short Stories by Samantha Kane

step toward him.
    The coachman laughed again. “What you gonna do, Vicar? Nothing, that’s what.” He scoffed in disdain. “You gentry, so afraid of what everyone thinks. Well I can make it better, can’t I? Tell ‘em what you wants ‘em to hear.” His look turned sly and calculating. “Or I can tell ‘em what I just seen. You and the sainted Lady Bartlebyrne fucking like animals in the parlor. Cost you a livin’, eh, Vicar?”
    “You wouldn’t dare,” Edmund said, his voice throbbing with anger.
    “Oh, ho, that’s what the lady said to me, and I did it, didn’t I?” He laughed as he said it. Laughed about the horror he put Sylvie through this morning. Edmund didn’t think, he just charged.
    “Edmund!” Sylvie screamed, but it was too late. He would only be satisfied with the little bastard’s blood.
     
    Sylvie was horrified at John’s words, at the utter shame she felt for having put Edmund in such an untenable position. Then Edmund charged without warning and she screamed. She scrambled to her feet as the two men tumbled out the door onto the terrace. When she ran out after them she saw Edmund jump to his feet and race at John, still struggling to regain his footing. Edmund grabbed the front of John’s shirt and punched him in the face, the impact spinning John’s head to the side. The coachman grabbed the lapels of Edmund’s jacket and threw him into the wall of the terrace, and the two men wrestled, brute strength against pure unadulterated rage. They rolled along the wall once, twice and then the wall abruptly ended at the stairs. Neither man was paying attention and their momentum carried them into the empty space before they fell and rolled down the stairs still grappling.
    Sylvie screamed again as she watched Edmund hit the stairs, his descent rough and frightening on the stone steps. She heard the door of the solar burst open and turned to see Jernigan race into the room, two footmen behind him.
    “Jernigan!” she cried. “Help him! Help Mr. James!”
    She pointed to the green in the garden just as John landed a punch on Edmund’s jaw, sending him sprawling. John fell on Edmund, choking him, but Edmund grabbed his wrists and forced his hands back, bucking until John fell off.
    “You can have the bloody, cold bitch,” John snarled, rolling to his feet gracelessly. “She weren’t much of a fuck anyway, Vicar.”
    “You goddamned little guttersnipe,” Edmund growled, circling the wary coachman. “You’ll pay for that remark, and for everything else you’ve done to her.”
    John grinned evilly. “Well I certainly wouldn’t pay for that fuck.”
    Sylvie sobbed and retreated to the back wall of the terrace covering her face with her hand. Oh God, everyone could hear him. They knew!
    “She never let you touch her,” Edmund snarled and Sylvie looked up in surprise, meeting Edmund’s eyes. He was lying for her. She’d never loved him more than at that moment.
    “What?” John yelled. “Is that what she told you? She’s lying! I fucked her but good, in the carriage on the side of the road, like she weren’t no better than she ought to be. And she was bloody panting for it, I tell you.”
    “You lie,” Edmund growled, his voice low and contemptuous. “Do you expect anyone to believe that Lady Bartlebyrne would let scum like you near her?”
    John’s face contorted with rage. “You were just fucking her on the floor, you bloody lying pig!”
    Before he could say any more Edmund tackled him. They went down and Edmund began to brutally hit the other man, who managed to block some of the punches and throw a few of his own.
    “Jernigan,” a calm, deep voice said from the doorway, “fetch me a gun.”
    Sylvie spun around to see her son Geoffrey standing in the door positively vibrating with rage.
    “Mother, are you all right?” Geoffrey asked, sparing her a glance.
    Sylvie cringed at the anger in his eyes. She nodded and he turned back to the brawl in the garden.
    “Stay