The Apple Blossom Bower (Historical Romance Novella)

by Margaret Evans Porter

  The Apple Blossom Bower

  Historical Romance novella by

  Margaret Evans Porter

  First published in the BLOSSOMS anthology, Signet Historical Romance,

  April 1995, copyright © Margaret Evans Porter

  Amazon Kindle edition copyright © 2012 Margaret Evans Porter

  License Notes

  All rights reserved. No part of this edition may be downloaded, published, reproduced, reconstituted, transmitted, distributed or used in any form or manner whatsoever, electronic or mechanical, without written permission of the copyright holder, except in cases of brief quotations embodied in reviews or articles. Any unauthorized use is illegal. This eBook is licensed only for your personal enjoyment and may not be resold or given away to other people. Thank you for respecting the author’s rights.

  This book is a work of fiction. With the exception of real historical figures and events, all names, characters, places, and incidents are either products of the author’s imagination or used fictitiously. Any resemblance to persons living or dead is entirely coincidental.

  Learn more about the author and her novels at http://www.margaretevansporter.com

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  Table of Contents

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  About Margaret Evans Porter

  Kissing a Stranger, Prologue and Chapter 1

  The Apple Blossom Bower

  Margaret Evans Porter

  ~ Chapter 1 ~

  Guiding his horse along the rutted road leading out of Painsford village, Sir Edwin Page acknowledged that the fine weather should have put him in a more cheerful frame of mind. The sun shone brightly and the mild breeze so common to Devonshire’s southern extremity carried the scent of young grass and spring flowers. His view of the winding Harbourne River and the vista of low hills to the south was sublime.

  His bachelor state contradicted nature’s immutable law, for songbirds had paired to make their nests and young otters dwelling along the riverbank had selected their mates. He’d soon turn thirty—1794 was four months old now. In all likelihood he’d celebrate his birthday alone.

  There was, he reminded himself, a solution to his problem.

  A curve in the hedge-bound track brought him to a straighter stretch where he generally guided his mount from a trot into an easy canter to make up time. Two other riders had halted just ahead of him, blocking the way, and he was forced to rein in.

  A man in mud-spattered breeches, the local Exciseman, stood in the road arguing with a young female seated upon a sturdy Dartmouth pony. The animal also carried a pair of small wooden kegs, which had apparently attracted the officer’s attention.

  “If you won’t permit me to inspection those casks,” he was saying sternly, “I’ll have to seize them.”

  “But I’ve told you,” the girl replied, “they contain naught but cider. My mother’s Easter gift to my uncle.”

  “If that’s so, why can’t I open them to make sure?”

  Edwin was happy to intervene. “Good day, Miss Kelland,” he called out. “And my respects to you, Captain Harper.”

  The antagonists turned their heads in unison.

  The Exciseman was the first to address him. “Sir Edwin, you’re a justice of the peace, are you not? Please be so good as to inform this young woman that I bear the authority to inspect any and all goods being transported in this district.”

  “True,” said Edwin agreeably. “And you have my word that Miss Kelland carries no contraband. You’ve no cause for concern.” He studied the girl’s impassive face. His own mood had improved substantially, and he was thankful for the necessity of his journey to Dartmouth. If fate were truly kind, that was also Annis Kelland’s destination.

  “No cause for concern?” Harper echoed. “She’s the daughter of a villainous smuggler, who was tried and committed to Exeter Gaol for his crimes.”

  “My father died more than a decade ago,” said Annis, her pointed chin jutting upward. “So I can hardly be considered guilty by association.”

  Edwin could well imagine how little she liked having her parent’s unlawful trade and imprisonment held against her. Seeking to spare her further embarrassment, he said firmly, “Captain Harper, you’ve made a grievous error, and the possible consequences will not reflect well upon you. Squire Dundridge is a mild-mannered gentleman, but h’d be displeased to learn you detained his stepdaughter on the high road and accused her of being a free trader.”

  The officer was clearly affronted. “I was doing my duty, sir. The gentry may choose to close their eyes to what goes on hereabouts, but I must keep vigilant. If all smugglers had pretty faces,” he grumbled, climbing into his saddle, “I’d have no luck catching any of ’em.” He rode away at a brisk trot.

  A blushing Annis turned to the baronet. “I thank you for rescuing me from that land shark, Sir Edwin.”

  Her use of smuggling cant amused him. Grinning, he asked, “It is really cider you’ve got in those casks?”

  She failed to dignify his teasing question with a reply. Flicking her pony with the peeled willow switch that served as her whip, she rode on.

  He urged his own mount forward, for he’d not found an opportunity to speak privately with her since last autumn’s apple harvest. And this time, he thought with satisfaction, she could not escape so easily.

  Her pony’s large black eye rolled to the side when the taller horse came abreast, and he tossed his head in agitation. His mistress regarded Edwin with a similar wariness.

  Her light brown hair was woven into a long braid that hung down her back, much to his disappointment. Edwin preferred it unconfined, flowing loose and long—as it had one evening some six months ago, when he’d raked his fingers through the curling mass to learn its texture.

  The girl’s loveliness was far from conventional yet Edwin had been enchanted by it for the past two years. He especially liked her hazel eyes, so large and clear, and her pink mouth with its lusciously plump lower lip. The bones of her oval face were delicate, surprisingly refined for a country lass. Her complexion was lightly and unfashionably tanned, and the freckles scattered across a straight nose and along her cheekbones bore testimony to her aversion to hats. A snowy white kerchief was crossed over her full breasts, and the rest of her figure was flattered by a flowered bodice worn over a serviceable skirt of russet cloth.

  Annis Kelland’s charming countenance and superbly endowed figure had first caught his eye. On becoming better acquainted, he’d found himself admiring her calm demeanor, and a contradictory mischievous quality. Unapologetic about what her father had been, neither did she boast of her mother’s unusually advantageous second marriage. She kept her thoughts and feelings to herself. For Edwin, in whom she inspired something stronger than neighborliness, her detachment was a barrier to intimacy—and damnably frustrating.

  “Where are you bound this morning?” he asked her.

  “To Dartmouth.”

  “So am I.”

  “But I shan’t be riding all the way,” she added quickly. “Pippin needs to be shod, so I’ll leave him with the blacksmith at Tuckenhay and continue to the town by boat.”

  Co
ncealing his regret, he hastily concocted a plan. “A fine day to be out on the river,” he commented. “I’ve a mind to travel by ferry myself.”

  She reacted with such obvious consternation that he knew his suggestion found no favor with her. Nettled by her apparent indifference, he wondered if he’d ever find a way to please his elusive charmer. All these months he’d been thinking about her, wondering if she was also thinking of him. If so, it hadn’t been with affection.

  “At this season your stepfather’s orchards must be a splendid sight,” he said, renewing his efforts to draw her out.

  “Old William the furze cutter says this is the loveliest spring he’s ever seen.”

  “Dartmouth is rather far to go all on your own,” Edwin ventured, determined to accompany her.

  “I don’t mind,” she said blithely. “My stepfather disapproves of my riding about the countryside unescorted, but I prefer it.”

  They came to a spot with an unobstructed view of the river, higher and broader than usual after recent rains. The large wooden wheel that powered Bow Mill spun steadily, churning up the water.

  Breaking the silence, Edwin said, “Squire Dundridge is well?”

  He noticed that her mobile mouth drooped slightly before she answered, “He enjoys his customary good health. My mother also.”

  “I shall soon call upon them. And,” Edwin added with a meaningful glance, “I hope to find you at home. Perhaps by catching you unawares I can save you the trouble of hiding yourself, as you did when I last called at Orchard Place.”

  A blush transformed her face from sun-kissed gold to glowing pink. “I was busy. Lambing had just begun, and Shepherd Martin required my assistance.”

  Edwin doubted her assertion. Although Squire Dundridge’s flock was hardly the largest in the neighborhood, his shepherd was the most highly skilled and respected. But he let her excuse go unchallenged.

  They said nothing more while passing through Bow village, a clutch of houses clustered near a stone bridge over the river.

  Edwin silently and heartily damned Garth Corston to hell. His friend’s untimely arrival presented him from taking Annis to Totnes Fair on Easter Tuesday. As his horse followed the marmalade pony across the narrow bridge, he wondered whether she would spurn the invitation. There’d be another fair in May. He had three weeks to persuade her to go with him.

  This impromptu meeting affirmed what he’d suspected for several months: time had intensified rather than lessened his interest in Annis Kelland. Where it would lead he couldn’t be sure—he had no reason to believe his tender feelings for her were reciprocated. He’d thought so last autumn, holding her in his arms beneath her stepfather’s heavily laden apple trees. On that starry October night, lust and an excess of the Squire’s heady cider had prompted a passionate interlude, and Annis had done nothing to discourage it. When he’d kissed her she’d been anything but aloof and her eager response had confirmed that she did care for him, if only during that brief, heated moment.

  All too soon they arrived at Tuckenhay. Edwin, not yet ready to part from Annis, went with her to the blacksmith’s shop. He was helping her to dismount when a trio of children darted out of the adjoining cottage.

  “Miss Annis, Miss Annis!” a red-cheeked little boy cried ecstatically. “Come inside, do, and see the new kittens!”

  “Our mam baked fresh buns,” the little girl volunteered shyly. “We’re selling them to the travelers for a penny apiece. But you can have one for nothing.”

  “I’ll gladly pay,” Annis assured her with a fond smile. “Let me see these kits. How many are there, Tim?”

  “Four,” was the boy’s prompt reply. “I’m to have one of the toms for my very own.”

  Turning to the oldest of the group, a gangly youth, Annis explained that she wanted to leave her horse to be shod. “Is there room in your stable to keep him overnight, Ned? I can’t collect him till tomorrow.”

  She meant to spend the night in town, Edwin realized, and decided to do the same.

  “’Twill be no trouble, Miss,” the lad declared, untying the cords that secured the casks to the sidesaddle. “We can always find a stall for old Pippin.” He asked whether Sir Edwin also wanted to have his horse shod, and on receiving a negative reply he led the pony away to the forge.

  Edwin waited patiently while Annis went inside to speak to the blacksmith’s wife and to inspect the new kittens. She returned within a few minutes, the little boy and girl tagging along beside her, by which time he’d transferred her kegs to his own horse.

  “You can’t carry them to the boat yourself,” he explained.

  “Ned can take them. Don’t delay your journey on my account.”

  “I’m happy to be of service, Miss Kelland.”

  She bade farewell to her young friends, promising to bring each of them a present when she returned on the morrow. Then she and Edwin set out down the narrow, winding street that lead down to the quay, their progress hampered by carts, livestock, and dogs.

  “Sue would like a new ribbon, but I’ve no idea what I should buy for Tim,” she admitted. “What do boys like? The last time I bought him a whistle carved from a reed. His parents have not yet forgiven me.”

  “He might be glad to get a spinning top,” Edwin opined as he led his horse around the village pump. “That was my favorite toy when I was his age. They’re engaging children, but why do you give them presents?”

  “Because I remember how much I enjoyed receiving trifles from customers at the Castle Inn, when my mother worked there.”

  Edwin was familiar enough with her history to know she alluded to a darker period of life. During her father’s imprisonment in Exeter Gaol, her mother had served the drinkers and diners at Dartmouth’s principal inn. There Nancy Kelland met Squire Dundridge, who made her his wife within a year of the smuggler’s demise—much to the amazement of the Devonshire gentry.

  The fact that Annis Kelland, so very pretty in her close-fitting bodice and simple russet petticoat, sprang from the farming class did not trouble Edwin. He was a baronet, possessor of a vast property and a stately mansion, but despite these essential differences he sensed that they’d be well matched.

  She wanted nothing to do with him, which meant his advances during the harvest home had left a bad impression. Rescuing her from Captain Harper and delivering her cider kegs to ferry were not enough, he feared, to repair the damage done by his eager mouth and greedy hands, or to erase the residual mortification she must feel whenever she recalled what they had done together on that memorable night.

  Entering the kitchen at The Castle, Dartmouth’s busiest and most popular Inn, Annis felt she’d stepped back into her past life. The smells wafting from the bread oven and the range and the turnspit were as mouth-watering as they had been in her youth, when she’d either scurried out of the way of all the activity or else assisted the servants, depending upon the cook’s whims and commands.

  She’d pulled a stool into a dim corner to observe the busy folk preparing meals for the inn’s guests and regular customers. Her uncle, a waiter, poked his head into the room and told her breathlessly that he would join her after the taproom quieted down.

  News of Annis’s presence brought the landlady to the kitchen. Mrs. Russell’s arrival curtailed the quarrelsome chatter of cook and maids, and she broke their respectful silence by advising them to carve the roasted goose.

  “What are you about, my dear, hiding away in here?” she chided Annis gently. “Come into my parlor.”

  “Later I will,” Annis answered, “after I’ve spoken with Sam.”

  “I’ll arrange for one of the other men to take over his post for a little while. A reliable worker, your uncle. I’d be sorry to lose him.”

  “Does he think of leaving you?”

  The landlady shook her head and the ruffles of her mobcap fluttered. “I hope he won’t, but my best people always seem to move on. Your mother did, and I’ve never ceased to miss her. How is she?”

  “Quit
e well, thank you.”

  “But why wouldn’t she be, living as she does? A squire’s lady now, and no soul ever deserved good fortune more than she. No sooner did the news get ’round that her man had died in the gaol than Squire Dundridge started coming into town twice a week instead of once a month. I guessed how ’twould end.”

  “I certainly didn’t,” Annis murmured.

  “No, I suppose not, for you were no more than twelve. I’d better return to my ledgers,” Mrs. Russell said regretfully. “Pray give her ladyship my greeting. Her ladyship,” she repeated reverently. “She was plain Nan Kelland when she came to me all those years ago seeking work. And whatever your poor papa may’ve been, your mother was honest and reliable.” With a sharp glance at the aproned females clustered about the fireplace spit, she added, “You’d all do well to conduct yourselves as she did.”

  Upon delivering this shot, she swept grandly toward the door but turned back to address Annis once more. “A chambermaid will make up the same room you and your mother occupied when you lived here, the one at the very top of the stairs. The Squire wouldn’t want you riding back to Orchard Place at night, which it will be before you know it. Besides, if you lengthen your stay, you’ll see more of your uncle.”

  Since going to live on her stepfather’s farm years ago, Annis had felt cut off from her Kelland relations. She’d always been particularly close to Sam. Her father’s younger brother was near enough in age that she regarded him more as cousin than uncle.

  Within minutes he reappeared, saying, “I’ve been given half an hour to eat my dinner, and you’re to share it—Mrs. Russell’s orders. Polly, bring us something tasty, and be quick about it.” He removed his green baize apron and hung it upon a peg before sitting down at the kitchen table.

  Annis joined him, and they were soon provided with a bowl of soup and a meat pie.