The Highwayman's Daughter by Henriette Gyland Read Free Book Online

have good reasons for thinking ill of him if he found out. However, he hoped to catch her before other travellers fell victim to her thieving.
    And win the wager with Rupert in the bargain.
    At sundown the labourers had finished raking the hay into wind cocks and began to disperse in different directions, some joking and laughing with relief that a long day of hard labour had finally come to an end, others in a more contemplative mood.
    Walking a few yards behind Ned, Cora offered her arm to Mrs Wilton, a widow who lived on the outskirts of the forest. She liked the older woman, on whose face years of deprivation, toil and grief had left their mark. A gentle soul, she had borne nine children and seen five of them, as well as two husbands, to the grave, but she remained as cheerful as ever and leaned gratefully on Cora’s arm.
    As the last rays of the sun bathed the treetops in a golden glow and warmed the back of her neck, Cora listened contentedly to the widow prattling on about this and that with no clear direction, as was her wont.
    ‘And did you hear about the robbery on the Heath?’ She squeezed Cora’s arm. ‘Frightful story and no mistake.’
    Cora pricked up her ears and she sensed rather than saw Ned doing the same. ‘Which robbery?’ she said, keeping her voice level.
    ‘Well, as I’ve heard tell, there’s them two fine noblemen travelling along the road last night, when they’re stopped by a gen’leman of the road, as it were, except he was no gen’leman at all, because after he’s robbed them of all their worldly goods, he attacks one of them and shaves the poor man’s head clean.’
    ‘That’s not tr—!’ Cora checked herself and amended her tone. ‘That’s not true, surely? Who would do such a thing?’
    ‘Aye,’ said the widow, ‘who indeed? If I hadn’t seen him hang with my own two eyes, I’d say it was that brigand Blueskin come back to haunt us. Bears all the hallmarks of his dealings, nasty piece of work that he was.’
    Horrified and bemused in equal measure at having her own modest exploits compared to those of the infamous cut-throat, who had even turned against his own partner, Cora allowed the widow to give her a full account of the hanging, which she had witnessed as a child.
    The reminder that her actions were leading her closer and closer to the rope made her shudder, but she quickly suppressed it. Ned’s illness gave her no other choice but to make money any way she could.
    With the widow safely escorted back to her cottage, Ned and Cora returned home in silence. After their evening meal, rabbit stew with carrots, cabbage and coarse bread, Cora took herself off to her mother’s grave, in a small clearing a little way from the cottage. It had been her mother’s last wish to be buried here, close to those she loved. At first Ned had protested that she should be in consecrated ground, but in the end he had given in to her dying wish. Cora’s mother had rarely left the cottage and the area surrounding it, and had insisted that neither should her mortal remains.
    There was no headstone, but Ned had lovingly carved a wooden board, which was now weathered and grey with age. A smaller board next to it marked the grave of Cora’s baby brother, Tom, whom had lived for no longer than his first day.
    Her heart ached at the sight of both the graves. Her mother – once a lady’s maid from a grand house – had not been cut out for the harsh living conditions in the forest, and the effects of several premature births and a difficult labour following her last pregnancy had been more than her frail body could cope with.
    Worn out and grey with fatigue, her last breath had been a sigh of relief, but before she had died, she’d grabbed Cora’s hand and squeezed it while her lips moved. Cora had had to bend very close to her mother to hear what she said.
    ‘Remember, you’re a lady,’ she had whispered.
    Sitting on the soft moss, Cora cleared away weeds and fallen leaves from the