by Jayne Davis
“Not really, mainly the barn roof. He was telling me his plans for improving the fields. I certainly know a lot more about farming than I did this morning.” Stevens’ explanation had been very detailed, and for the second time in two days Will had felt like a schoolboy.
“That’s a good thing, surely.” Connie looked at him, her lips curving in amusement. “Is it just that you don’t care for being lectured?”
He laughed. “I think you might be right there. I hope you didn’t mind waiting so long.”
“Not at all. I had a nice long chat with Mrs Stevens. You’ll be pleased to know that the house is in good repair.” She patted her stomach. “She also makes excellent apple pies.”
“Hmm. I must stop in at the farmhouse next time I’m here. And we should go to Knap Hill for our next visit. Nancarrow tells me there are excellent pies to be had there, too.”
“Are we going there now, Will? I sent Sukey with a message to ask her mother to call later today.”
“No. It’s best if I make some notes about what Stevens told me.”
“Before you get lectured by someone else.”
“Indeed.”
That amused smile lit up her face, and he didn’t mind in the slightest that she was poking gentle fun at him.
Sukey clearly got her looks from her mother, Connie thought, as Warren showed Mrs Trasker into the sewing parlour. The same curling black hair showing beneath her cap, the same slightly tilted nose and grey eyes. From Sukey’s chatter, Connie had learned that she was the oldest in the family, so that would put Mrs Trasker in her mid thirties, at least. She looked older than that, her face gaunt and dark shadows under her eyes. A young girl clung to her faded skirts.
“My lady, thank you for asking me to come.” She glanced down at the child. “I hope you don’t mind me bringing Bessie, my lady. There be no-one else to keep an eye on her.”
Connie kept the surprise from her face. In Nether Minster, the women of the village regularly helped each other out.
“That’s all right, Mrs Trasker. Sukey, please take Bessie to the kitchen and tell Mrs Curnow you are both to have some milk and a piece of cake.”
“Ooh, thank you, my lady.”
Connie smiled at Sukey’s enthusiasm as the girl led her little sister out of the room. “Do sit down, please, Mrs Trasker.”
Mrs Trasker hesitated, then brushed non-existent dust from her skirts before sitting on the edge of a chair.
“Sukey tells me you have made dresses in the past?” Connie said.
“Yes, my lady. I done a little work for the late Lady Marstone the last couple of summers she was here, and I do… used to do some sewing in the village. I can do other work as well, if you…”
“We may need some more staff in the house soon, yes,” Connie said, wondering why Mrs Trasker was so hesitant. Examining her more closely, Connie thought her dress fitted rather loosely; was the family so short of money that the mother was starving herself to feed the children? She got up and rang the bell. “Tell me about Lady Marstone,” she went on, wanting to put the woman at her ease.
“She was a lovely lady. Treated the servants with respect, she did. She—” Mrs Trasker stopped talking as Warren appeared in the doorway.
“Warren, please ask Mrs Curnow to provide tea, sandwiches, and cake. For two.”
He glanced towards Mrs Trasker with a tiny lift of one eyebrow. “Yes, my lady.” He bowed and left.
She let out a small breath of relief; Mrs Strickland would have queried her order, she was sure.
“My lady…”
“I prefer not to eat alone,” Connie said. That was a plausible motivation; enough, she hoped, to allow Mrs Trasker to accept what she might regard as charity. “Now tell me, if you please, what work you did for Lady Marstone.”
Connie listened as Mrs Trasker described gowns altered to cope with pregnancy, then taken in again afterwards, the stitching of baby clothes, and the mending of tears in breeches and coats caused by overenthusiastic play.
“Lord Wingrave?” Connie asked, trying to imagine Will as a small boy.
“That was the older brother then, my lady. But yes, this Lord Wingrave and his brother. Right little hellions—” She broke off abruptly, putting a hand over her mouth in a gesture so like Sukey’s that Connie had to laugh.
Warren brought the refreshments, and Connie explained what she needed doing as Mrs Trasker ate and drank. When the food was gone, she showed Mrs Trasker what she’d done with the yellow gown, and then they went up to her room to look over her other clothing.
Will let himself out of the house at eleven, moving as quietly as he could. Although more than an hour had passed since sunset, the western horizon still showed as a paler streak of sky beneath the ominous clouds that had been building up in the western sky all evening. Archer waited by one of the clipped yews at the bottom of the steps and they set off together.
This night was little different from the previous times he’d gone to watch. The western cliff rose in a dark mass beyond the village, its top visible only as a change from black to grey. The village itself was no more than a few faint patches of light in windows—not many, for most people would be in bed at this hour. The breeze made enough noise in the bushes to mask any sounds from below.
It would be a new moon in a couple of days, making it more likely that a smuggling run would be made. Surely something would happen soon.
Over the next few hours Will struggled to keep awake, seeing only an occasional glimpse of light in the village as a cottage door opened.
Finally, Archer nudged him, and pointed. The cliff top opposite was no longer straight. A moving shape—a man on horseback?
“Riding officer?” Archer asked.
“Could be.”
The breeze freshened as they lost sight of the man on the far cliff. Large drops of rain began to patter on the leaves around them.
“In for a storm, I reckon,” Archer said.
It must be only a couple of hours before dawn by now. Nothing would happen tonight. “Time to go back,” Will decided.
The rain turned to a downpour as they climbed back up through the woods, and by the time they reached the house they were both soaked to the skin.
“Hope she was worth it,” Will said, as Archer headed for the stables. He heard only an answering chuckle.
Will stood by the front door in the shelter of the porch and considered his options. Entering through the window in the dining room after this rain would mean leaving muddy footprints on the floor. Taking his boots off between the flowerbed and the windowsill was likely to end up with him falling in the bushes. His coat would drip water wherever he went anyway.
He shrugged. The front door was still unbolted, and the tiles in the hall would be easier to clean than the polished floor in the dining room. He would not skulk around hiding from his staff any longer. If Mrs Strickland, or anyone else, couldn’t keep a still tongue in their head about his movements, they were welcome to find another job.
Connie awoke to the sound of rain and flapping as gusts of wind blew the curtains about the open windows. Throwing back the sheet, she carefully made her way across the room in the dark, and closed the windows far enough to stop the rain coming in. Properly awake now, she sat on the window seat. There was nothing to see outside, but she’d always enjoyed listening to rain when she was dry indoors and it wasn’t spoiling her plans for the day.
After a while she wondered if Will had woken to close his own windows against the rain. Crossing to the connecting door, she put her ear close to it. Yes, that was the sound of the sashes sliding—but why had he left it so long? Was he a sound sleeper?
About to return to her bed, Connie paused when she heard a muffled thud, then another, sounding remarkably like boots being removed and dropped on the floor. A drawer scraped open, accompanied by a muttered curse.
Had he been outside in the night?
Last week, on the night the smugglers had emptied their cellars, he’d left the hou
se to see what was happening. But nothing had occurred since then—had it? She thought he would have told her if he had found anything out. Many men would not, but she’d come to believe Will was different.
They were dangerous men. What would happen to her if Will was killed? Her father hadn’t mentioned any kind of settlement, nor had Will, and she’d been too concerned with other aspects of her new life to ask about it.
Don’t think the worst.
There could be a different explanation. Perhaps Mercury was unwell and he’d been to the stables.
Has he been seeing another woman?
Mrs Hepple and Fanny had been talking about him duelling over a woman on the day Lord Marstone’s footman called. It was not unusual for men of his class to have relations with other women, she knew. In fact, it was almost expected.
Connie went back to the window seat, sitting at one end with her feet tucked up under her chemise, her pleasure in the sounds of the night gone. She’d thought things were progressing well between them, but if he was already seeing someone else, her dream of having a marriage like the Fancotts’ was just that—a dream.
She took a deep breath. There could be other explanations for what she’d heard—she’d thought of two others herself. She should at least ask him before making assumptions.
Whatever it turned out to be, her situation was still far better than it had been only a couple of weeks ago.
Chapter 26
Thursday 3rd July
Barton knocked on the door with the morning coffee. Will sat up, catching the footman glancing at the wet clothing on the floor as he placed the tray on a table. No doubt by now someone had also spotted whatever traces of mud he’d left in the hall.
“Barton.” Will waited until he had the footman’s full attention. “You will instruct Warren that no-one is to leave the house until I have spoken with you all later this morning.”
“Yes, my lord.”
“You may go. I will join Lady Wingrave for breakfast at ten.”
Although he’d not spent much time in his bed, the cooler air following the storm had allowed him to sleep better. Well enough, certainly, to manage an hour or so with the estate ledgers again, and then conversation over the breakfast table.
Will smiled as he entered the breakfast parlour. Connie was already there, sitting with her back to him and gazing out of the window at the puffy white clouds scudding across the sky. The haze of the last week was gone, washed out of the air.
“Good morning,” he said, taking his seat at the table. His good mood diminished as she looked at him with no answering smile.
“You must have got very wet last night,” she said, taking a roll and breaking it in half. She was buttering the roll and spreading jam as if nothing was wrong. But the set of her lips and the tension in her jaw belied that calm demeanour.
“Yes, I have been going out in the night. Why does…?”
Ah, of course. The usual reason for sneaking in and out of houses at night was not to look for smugglers. How could she think that of him?
Easily. If she’d heard talk of his life in London, it wasn’t surprising she’d jumped to that conclusion.
“Connie, I intend to keep my marriage vows, and I have done so. It is not what you are thinking.” He was surprised to find how much he wanted her to believe him.
She put down the knife. “I was trying not to make assumptions.”
“I wanted to see if there was any more smuggling activity going on. The dark of the moon is the usual time for smuggling runs.” He realised as he spoke how little thought he’d given to what he was doing. He’d treated it like some kind of boys’ adventure—spying on smugglers, creeping around at night with no-one knowing.
Keeping secrets from my wife.
“Connie, I’m sorry. I should have told you what I was doing.”
She was still not happy, although her expression did relax a little. “Why are you watching, Will? Are you going to report them to the authorities?”
“I… no, not right away, at least. I wanted to know more before deciding what to do. I wasn’t going to try to stop them myself.”
That didn’t seem to have reassured her. “I came to no harm,” he added, venturing a smile. “You needn’t worry about me.”
Connie looked away again, concerned by the way he seemed to be treating the whole thing as a game, and irritated by the satisfied smile on his face. Was he pleased that she was worried? Worried about him.
“I’m not,” she said, pushing away the thought that she had been. “I am worried about myself.”
Good. That had wiped the smile off his face.
“What will happen to me if you get yourself killed? I’ll be returned to my father ready to be sold to someone else.”
He hesitated. “You’ll be a widow, independent.”
“Oh, yes. Free to starve. Unless you know what provision was made for me in the marriage settlements.”
He didn’t know; she could see that from the way his face reddened.
“You did sign some kind of settlement, I suppose.” She took a deep breath, and calmed her voice. If anyone was at fault here, it was their fathers, not Will. “Do you think that my father, or yours, would give any consideration to what would happen to me if you died?”
“No, I don’t suppose they would. Or did. Unless you’d… we’d already had a son.”
“But then your father would be the legal guardian of our children, with the right to dictate how they are brought up and educated, and the right to forbid me to see them if he wishes to.”
She was angry, and rightly so. When he accepted this marriage, he’d promised himself that he wouldn’t turn into his father, yet he’d not given a moment’s thought to how his actions might affect Connie.
Finding out more about the smugglers was justified, but he should have considered all the implications. He didn’t recall signing a settlement—no property was being transferred and, as she’d said, neither of their fathers would have been concerned with her possible future. In fact, it would be like Marstone to deliberately not make provision for her being widowed; she and any children would then be completely in his power.
What could he do? He had no money of his own; the income from Ashton Tracey would revert to his father as long as Marstone owned the place.
Guardian. He latched onto that thought. Uncle Jack, possibly, but what use was a guardian in India?
A rattle of cup against saucer roused him from his thoughts. He pushed back his chair and stood. “You are quite right, Connie. I apologise for my thoughtlessness.” He took a deep breath. “I… we… need to talk, but I’m too angry to think at the moment. With myself, not you.”
Her expression softened, but he spoke before she could reply. He didn’t want her to apologise to him. “I’m going to see Mercury. We will talk when I return, if that is convenient.”
She nodded, and smiled. It didn’t quite reach her eyes, but it was a smile.
Mercury, at least, was pleased to see him this morning, whickering gently before turning back to his hay.
Seeing the animal was just an excuse. Will leaned on the edge of the stall, mentally berating himself for his lack of thought. And telling Connie where he’d been off to in the night would have spared her this morning’s upset, so why hadn’t he?
You knew she wouldn’t like it.
It was possible that Connie might agree with his wish to know more before deciding how to act, but by keeping his activities secret he’d avoided having to persuade her that his choice was right.
It was time he grew up. They’d been getting on so well, and he could have ruined the progress they’d made.
“My lord?”
Will turned. “Archer.”
“Excuse me, my lord, but how long are the…? I mean, Mrs Curnow wants someone to go down the hill for some fish.”
Damn—he’d forgotten about that.
“Tell them all to be in the entrance hall in an hour, Archer. I need to talk to Lady Wingrave,
then I will explain matters to them.”
He’d intended to say that anyone who passed information on would be out of a position, but he needed to start thinking things through properly before rushing into action.
“Archer—whatever I say in there, our arrangement about Mrs Strickland’s letters will still stand.”
“Right, my lord. I’ll let Mr Warren know it’s an hour’s time.” Archer went off.
Total honesty. It was the only way. He’d take Connie for a walk around the gardens, or the orchard, where they could not be overheard. They would decide, together, what was best to be done.
Connie greeted him with a tentative smile, and they strolled in the formal gardens, as they had a couple of days ago.
Will started with the easier topic. “This morning, I sent orders for Warren not to let anyone leave Ashton Tracey until I’d spoken to them. Someone is bound to know by now that I’ve been going out in the night, and I didn’t want word of that getting to my father or to the village.” In considering what to say to Connie, he found that he was thinking more clearly himself. “But I think I’ve reasoned myself out of saying anything at all.”
“Oh.”
“Your idea about Archer intercepting letters solves the problem of people reporting to my father. I wanted to find out if anyone else was doing so, but either they report to Mrs Strickland, or they write their own letters.”
“In either case, Archer will intercept them.”
“Indeed.” And how would he have found out if anyone else was spying on him? They were hardly likely to admit it. “The other problem is finding out whether or not Mrs Strickland is the only one in league with the smugglers. However, even if the staff are loyal to me, it would be unfair to expect them not to pass on information if they’re threatened with a beating.”
“Are you going to continue watching?”
“I cannot allow someone to injure and threaten my staff without trying to do something about it.”
She didn’t argue this time, but he could see a crease of anxiety on her brow. Was she still worried about his safety?
