A Reluctant Courtship

by Laurie Alice Eakes

  Honore had just risen to order some light refreshment when someone hammered on the front door as though using a battering ram rather than the knocker. She jumped, yanking the bellpull so hard half of it broke off in her hand. Miss Morrow stabbed a needle into her finger and gasped with a little squeak.

  “Bad news!” Honore cried. “No one knocks like that except with bad news.”

  One of her sisters had died in childbed. It happened all the time. Nothing else mattered so much to make such a cacophony.

  She darted for the door, eyes burning.

  “Miss Bainbridge, wait,” Miss Morrow called.

  “I cannot. If it is Lydia or Cassandra, I promise I will—” She flung open the parlor door.

  Lord Ashmoor stumbled over the threshold, fairly knocking Soames off his feet. “Where is that mine engineer?”

  “My lord, I—”

  “My lord!” Honore’s cry rang above the butler’s protest.

  Ashmoor’s coat and shirt were torn. Blood stained the ragged edges. Dirt streaked his face, and his hair looked as though someone had shoved their hands into it and tried to lift him by the roots.

  “Miss Bainbridge, I beg your pardon for this intrusion.” He was breathing hard as though he had been running, was in pain, or both. “If you please, I must speak to Polhenny.”

  “Then fetch him, Soames,” she commanded the butler.

  “Miss Bainbridge—”

  She glared at him. “And fetch tea—no, coffee—into the parlor immediately.” Softening her voice, she turned back to Ashmoor. “My lord, do come sit by the fire.”

  “There’s no need. I can wait here.”

  “And fall down on this marble floor? I think not.” She clasped his hand and led him into the parlor.

  “I’ll get your chairs dirty.”

  Honore rested her hand on his shoulder and pushed him onto a plain wooden seat. “This will wipe clean. Now tell us what happened. An accident? Were you set upon by highwaymen?”

  “I honestly don’t know. I was returning from the Devenish picnic, and my carriage—” He stopped. “I shouldn’t trouble you ladies with this.”

  “If you stop—” Honore did not need to come up with an appropriate threat, as a footman arrived with the news that Mr. Polhenny had been sent for and would arrive momentarily.

  Calmer after the servant’s departure, Honore turned back to Ashmoor. “My lord, you know I am no milk-and-water miss, and neither is Miss Morrow.”

  “I know, but this—” He covered the jagged hole in his sleeve with his hand.

  Miss Morrow stood. “I shall have one of the footmen see you to a room where you can make yourself a bit more presentable. The housekeeper has a fair hand at doctoring. She can see to that gash on your arm.”

  In moments, servants whisked Ashmoor away. They would attempt to find him something to wear, but none of the Bainbridge men had ever been quite so large as Ashmoor.

  Honore looked to her companion, shaking and lacking the will to hide it. “What could have happened?”

  “He has been attacked in some way, that is obvious.”

  “But why the insistence on seeing Mr. Polhenny? That is, I suppose he could have been foolish enough to walk home from the Devenish party and had difficulties with the cliffs too. But that seems highly unlikely. I haven’t heard of the cliffs falling away twice in one year.”

  “And only at all after hard rains, which we have not had,” Miss Morrow murmured.

  Honore started to ask what her companion meant, but a footman arrived with the requested coffee plus several platters of simple viands—apple slices and cheese from the Cheddar Gorge in nearby Somerset, a plate of macaroons, and another of tiny cakes.

  “Cook is so good to me.” Honore’s eyes stung. She was turning into a regular watering pot of late. “We shall wait for his lordship.” She tried to sit but managed to for only a handful of minutes, then sprang up and paced the room, tried to sit again, leaped up and paced some more.

  What felt like an eternity later but was only a quarter hour by the hands of the ormolu clock on the mantel, Ashmoor returned wearing a clean but many times mended shirt that must have belonged to a groom or gardener, for it fit him well in shoulders and arms. Whose ever it was, Honore would give him two new ones for being so generous. As for Ashmoor, his face, though free of dirt, still looked pale, his eyes the dark swirl of forest hues, absent of the flecks of gold.

  He returned to the wooden chair despite his breeches having been brushed clean, accepting a cup of coffee from Honore with a smile that did not quite reach his eyes. “You are hospitable as always.” He cradled the cup as though his hands were cold. “I should have gone on to Clovelly, but my brother isn’t home, and I would like Polhenny to look at something on the cliffs, if you will be so kind as to lend him to me.”

  “Of course, and you are welcome here.” Honore called on her training to remain a gracious lady rather than a silly chit who too easily tumbled head over heels for the wrong man. “But please, tell us what has happened to you.”

  “Of course.” He downed half of his coffee, and some color returned to his face. “I think I must tell you.” He set his cup on a side table and clasped his hands on his knees. “My carriage went over the cliff.”

  “The horses, your coachman!” Honore cried.

  “How?” Miss Morrow demanded.

  “How indeed?” Ashmoor nodded at Miss Morrow. “That is why I wish to see Polhenny for his opinion. As to the horses and coachman?” He turned his gaze on Honore, and the gold lights returned with a softness that set her belly quivering. “You are kind to think of them, but all I can tell you is that they did not go over the cliff with the carriage—or me, as I believe I was expected to go.”

  “Believe you were expected to go?” Honore slid off her chair to her knees. “But, my lord, that would mean someone—are you saying someone tried to kill you?”

  “That’s exactly what I mean. The coachman freed himself and the team while I was teetering on the edge of the cliff.”

  “But how? Why?” Honore persisted.

  “The coachman would simply have had to jump off the box and cut the traces for the horses.” He breathed hard as though running. “Disappearing is easy, especially if he was paid to do me in and he sells the horses.”

  “How did you free yourself, my lord?” Miss Morrow asked. “I presume the door was on the downward side if you were returning home.”

  “Yes, indeed it was. And the hatch appeared to be jammed shut.” He stared at the mangled toes of his boots. “I kicked out the side of the carriage, and not a moment too soon.”

  Honore’s head spun. She pressed her hands to her temples to steady herself. “This is awful. This is beyond awful. We should send for a constable. We must find your coachman. Where is your brother? Shall I send a groom to fetch him? No one goes about trying to send peers off the cliffs. It is barbaric, unconscionable. It is—”

  “Shh.” Ashmoor crouched before her. He cupped her chin in his hand and brushed the pad of his thumb across her lips. “I’m alive. That’s all that matters for the time being. It might have simply been a terrible accident and my coachman ran off to fetch help. Right now he might be frantic, thinking I am at the bottom of the cliff with the carriage.”

  “Yes. Yes.” Honore’s heart raced. Breathing proved difficult, and the affirmative words emerged in a breathy whisper.

  “May I send a groom to Clovelly and down to Ashmoor to assure them I’m well?”

  “Yes, of course, straightaway. I will give the order.” Honore started to rise.

  “I will go.” Miss Morrow sprang up and left the room.

  Ashmoor caught Honore beneath the elbows and lifted her to her feet, then stood holding her arms and gazing down at her. “You are kind to a man who all but jilted you outright, Miss Bainbridge.”

  “You saved my life. This is the least I can do.”

  “Indeed.” He released her and stepped back hard enough to send his chair skitterin
g across the floor. “I believe Mr. Polhenny has arrived.”

  “Has he?” Honore heard nothing through the roaring in her ears, the racing and pounding of her heart.

  She did not care about mine engineers or carriage accidents. She wanted to cup her fingers over her lips and preserve the tender caress of his thumb, somehow more intimate, more appealing than the naughty kisses she had received from the two men who had lured her into their nets, then ruined her reputation.

  She dropped onto her chair before her knees gave way.

  Mr. Polhenny, with Tuckfield and Miss Morrow close behind, entered the parlor. No one invited the men to sit. Miss Morrow moved to stand beside Honore’s chair, her hand on her shoulder, and the three men stood in the center of the carpet while Ashmoor told his story again.

  “What is it you wish to know, my lord?” Polhenny asked at the end of exclamations over the incident.

  “If the cliff gave way on purpose or by accident.” Ashmoor’s tone was calm, matter-of-fact.

  Honore shivered. Miss Morrow’s hand tightened on her shoulder.

  “I see. Aye, that makes sense to wonder under the circumstances.” Polhenny clasped his hands behind his back and glanced around the room. “’Tis strange circumstances to me. And I can do naught now. Even with the moon nigh full, ’tis still too dark for a good inspection.”

  “I doubt anything will change by morning,” Ashmoor said. “Can you meet me there at, say, eight o’clock in the morning?”

  “Aye, but I can tell you one thing now, my lord.”

  “Not in front of the ladies,” Tuckfield admonished him.

  Honore made herself rise. “What, Mr. Polhenny? Have you learned something about our cliff?”

  “Aye, and I think you’ve a right to know.” Polhenny glared at Tuckfield.

  “I am trying to spare your sensibilities, Miss Bainbridge. His lordship—Lord Bainbridge, that is—can hear—”

  “Tell me.” Honore barely stopped herself from stomping her foot. “I was the one who nearly fell off that cliff when it broke. I have a right to know why it happened.”

  “Aye, that is my thinking.” Mr. Polhenny gave her a slight bow, then looked to Ashmoor. “You see, that cliff didn’t break apart from natural causes.”

  17

  Miss Bainbridge turned as white as the kerchief around her neck, and Meric closed the distance between them to clasp her hand between both of his. Beside him, Tuckfield slipped his arm around Miss Morrow, also the color of new-fallen snow.

  “Why?” Miss Bainbridge whispered. “Why would someone be so—so cruel as to risk someone’s life?”

  “I suspect that’s the idea.” Meric’s jaw hardened. “To take a life.”

  “But why?” Miss Bainbridge repeated.

  “Who is usually in the way of walking those cliffs?” Polhenny asked.

  Everyone looked at Miss Bainbridge.

  Her fingers moved convulsively in Meric’s, and he laced his fingers through hers, holding them fast. Improper or not, she needed something solid to cling to, and he was the most appropriate person present.

  “Don’t be too hasty,” he told her. “You had just gotten home, hadn’t you?”

  “The day before, but it was raining, so I did not go for my usual walk. Oh my, oh my.” She pressed her free hand to her brow.

  “’Tis sorry I am to overset you so, Miss Bainbridge,” Polhenny began.

  “I told you not to tell her,” Tuckfield lashed out. “See how you have distressed the ladies?”

  “No, no, I am glad he told us.” Miss Bainbridge didn’t release Meric’s hand. “I am all right, truly, just a bit shaken. No one would wish to be rid of me, I am quite, quite certain. It makes no sense. Killing me off solves nothing.”

  “And killing me off only benefits my brother,” Meric said. “And I wouldn’t suspect Philo for a moment.”

  He wouldn’t say why. No one needed to know that Philo’s loyalties lay with America and the last thing he would want was an English peerage. These Englishmen and women wouldn’t understand caring about anyplace but Great Britain, especially not an upstart nation like the United States with its joke of a Navy and poorly led Army.

  “We do not know for certain anyone wanted you dead on purpose, my lord,” Tuckfield pointed out. “But I understand why you presume so.” The steward turned to Miss Morrow, who wasn’t objecting to the man’s arm around her. “Do you still wish to attend the assembly tomorrow?”

  She smiled. “Of course. We shall all attend. It is just the thing to distract us. But right now, I think I would like to go to my room. Miss Bainbridge?”

  She slid her fingers from Meric’s with gratifying slowness. “I must go too, then. Mr. Tuckfield, will you see that Lord Ashmoor has everything he needs? A way home? And all of you, feel free to eat what is here. No sense in letting it go to waste.” Dropping him the most graceful curtsy he had seen a female give anyone, Miss Bainbridge followed her companion from the room.

  “I think I’d prefer to walk home,” Meric said.

  “My lord, it is all of five miles,” Tuckfield protested.

  “Then I shall fortify myself first. But right now, I feel safer on my own feet than in any vehicle. I only wish I had a horse pistol along.”

  “I can help you with that if you feel more comfortable.” Tuckfield glanced at the plates of food from Miss Bainbridge, such a kind and generous lady.

  Kind, generous, and poised. The news had overset her all right, but she had regained her composure in moments and intended to go to a party the following night—a party he was committed to attending with the neighbors who had decided to ostracize her.

  Foreseeing a different sort of trouble brewing beyond damaged cliffs, Meric asked the two men to join him, then proceeded to quiz Polhenny about how he knew the cliff had been tampered with.

  “Even after these two weeks or more, my lord, a body can see the marks of hammer and chisel. There are natural cracks in the rock, and someone drove in wedges to make them worse. If a body could look, I’d wager we’d find those spikes in the sea.”

  “Along with Miss Bainbridge’s shoe,” Meric murmured.

  The two men stared at him.

  He shook his head. “Never mind me. Thinking aloud. Do continue, Polhenny.”

  Polhenny continued with descriptions of erosion marks from rain and wind and roots digging into the rock versus those fissures created by the hand of man. Meric knew which they would find in the place where his carriage had gone off the road and struck the edge of the cliff.

  That he’d gone off the road in the first place suggested something quite, quite amiss. The coachman had participated all the way. If he hadn’t done the planning, he had at least carried out specific orders for someone else. If they ever found him . . .

  But the coachman and horses were gone. A few minutes later, Chilcott arrived with the information that neither servant nor team had returned to the mews stables.

  “I have informed the constable,” Chilcott said, “but I doubt we will ever see man or beasts again.”

  Chilcott had ridden out to Bainbridge and brought an extra mount for Meric, a beast he agreed to ride back simply because it boasted a brace of pistols with the saddle. On the way back to town, they dismounted long enough to study the area where the carriage had left the road for its final journey over the cliff. Scarred rock gleamed white in the moon’s glow.

  “Why?” Meric asked aloud.

  “Someone doesn’t want you finding answers,” Chilcott suggested. “Either whoever is smuggling prisoners out of the country, or whoever killed that revenue man twenty-eight years ago.”

  “They wasted their efforts. I have no knowledge to even hint at whom it might be.”

  “You must know something and not realize it,” Chilcott said.

  The thought plagued Meric in sleep that night and upon waking the next morning. The thought plagued him as he met Polhenny at the site of the mishap, heard him say the carriage’s iron wheels had created too much dam
age of their own for any other marks to come through with clarity. “I do not know why this has eroded so, though, milord,” the mine engineer admitted. “Seems odd.”

  “And should be repaired at once?” Meric suggested.

  “Aye, that it should.” Polhenny stroked his chin and stared into space. “It cannot be done until spring, I’m thinking, like the Bainbridge cliffs. The weather is too uncertain.”

  “Then we must put up warning signs,” Meric said.

  Polhenny shrugged. He was the engineer. Warning signs were not his duty.

  “Are the Bainbridges having their cliffs repaired in the spring?” Meric asked.

  Polhenny sighed. “Tuckfield tells me nothing can be done without his lordship’s permission, and that I may not receive before I must return to Cornwall.”

  “I will talk to his lordship,” Meric said.

  He would try to get the work done before spring, he decided, then nearly forgot the cliffs as he made plans with Chilcott to purchase new carriage horses and order a new coach. He would get his curricle at the same time. Now, more than ever, he was determined to drive himself about rather than sit back and be delivered like a sheep to the slaughter.

  Not in the best of humors, he would have begged off from meeting the Devenish party at the harvest moon assembly ball that night, but Miss Bainbridge would be there. He couldn’t leave her to her own devices like a canary amongst a colony of cats. He should have warned her ahead of time. Yet if he had, she wouldn’t attend, and the dear girl needed some entertainment in her life. From the way they had talked the day before, the Devenish crowd merely intended to make an appearance then leave. They would expect him to leave with them. If Miss Bainbridge was there, he had no intention of doing so.