The Duke's Messenger

by Vanessa Gray

  The storm, while subsiding, was not over. The wind blew hard, driving the rain nearly horizontally before it. The water deepened on the cobbled pavement, sudden gusts piled it into miniature seas, and she and Mullins were soon drenched to the knees.

  Nell herself did not complain. Brought up in Essex, in what was after all a domesticated neighborhood, she considered herself an outdoors person, a veritable countrywoman. She had loved London’s giddy whirl and manifold entertainments, but now with the fresh wind buffeting her, she knew that living in the city was not the goal of her existence.

  She wondered how Rowland would consider the question. His duties of course would keep him in London, if they did not lead him to stations abroad. She felt a pang of dismay. She believed she could live a contented life in the city, if he were with her. But her distress stemmed from the fact that she did not in truth know what Rowland thought about a great many things.

  She was willing — even eager — to put her future into the hands of a man she knew nothing about. But, she told herself stoutly, he loved her, and between them they would sweep away all misunderstandings, all conflicts…

  She clenched her fists in her pockets. The thought of conflicts between them was a completely unwelcome, unwarranted intrusion on her state of bliss. She was too tired, that was all.

  She became aware of a voice whining in her ear, above the wind.

  “Miss Nell, can’t we go back?” panted Mullins, her breath taken by the gale. “Bain’t nothin’ to see here anyway more’n what we seen already on the boat. I had enough of that.”

  “All right, Mullins,” said Nell, philosophically adding, “it won’t do us any good to come down with a congestion on the chest.”

  They turned their backs on the wind and the waterfront and started back toward the inn. They had taken only a few steps when feet pounded behind them, and Potter burst out, “Oh, Miss Nell! Come quick!”

  Nell stopped short. “What — oh, it’s you, Potter. What are you doing here?”

  “It’s Stuston! Come, quick!”

  “Where is Stuston? I thought he was — Never mind, Potter. What about Stuston?” The thought came to her that Potter had garbled the message. “Is my aunt all right?”

  “No, miss. I mean, yes, miss. It is Stuston! He’s dead!”

  Nell breathed, “Oh, no!” Potter was a fool, he must be, to alarm her so. But a second look at the footman’s ashen face told her he was in deadly earnest. She spared a thought for the appropriateness of the word that came to her before she demanded to be taken to her aunt’s coachman.

  Potter hurried before her along the waterfront to an area nearer the main body of the fishing fleet than she and Mullins had reached. The elderly coachman was stretched out on the wet cobbles, one leg twisted beneath him, his face as gray as the pavement and streaming with the falling rain.

  The little knot of jersey-clad fishermen that had gathered apparently out of nowhere moved aside to make way for her. Absently she noted the strong residual aroma of their latest catches as she knelt beside Stuston.

  He was not dead. His eyes were open, even though they seemed at first not to recognize her. “Stuston! What is amiss? Are you ill?”

  Recognition came to his eyes. He made a convulsive movement to rise. “Please, Miss Nell, I’m sorry. I just don’t know rightly what came over me. I’ll be all right and tight. Just give me a jiff, by your leave, and I’ll get my breath back.”

  His eyes closed. Nell caught her forefinger between her teeth in a gesture of extreme dismay. How would she get him back to the inn? She looked wildly around at the faces of the fishermen, set in lines of compassion or skepticism according to their various temperaments. Suddenly Stuston opened his eyes wide and cried out, “I must ‘a been pushed, that’s what!”

  She heard the voices of the men surrounding her, speaking in a patois she did not fully understand. “Fell, didn’t he? Came all over sudden. Nobody near him. That garcon there, he was. Didn’t see him pushed, vous savez. Only tried to help, that’s all I did.”

  Nell knew there was no help to be had from them. Mullins was worse than useless, and Nell thought she would do well to deal with only the coachman and not have to drag Mullins back as well.

  Stuston struggled to rise. The movement of his leg forced a groan of pain from him and he fell back, this time mercifully unconscious.

  “Pushed, did he say?” said one of the men. “Going to make trouble for us, is he? Nobody saw him pushed, did they?” The speaker glanced around the group, sending them a clear message. In a body, they removed themselves from the scene as quickly as they had come.

  “Wait!” cried Nell, “ s’il vous plaît!”

  Only one of the roughly clad men lingered. Her eyes went to him in mute appeal. She saw that he was a man of somewhat stocky build with irregular features — his nose seemed awry as though it had at one time been broken — and a general appearance of having slept in his salt-encrusted clothes for a sennight. His grizzled hair and his manner put his age at around fifty, she guessed.

  “ S’il vous plaît?” she ventured.

  His voice was husky, but to her vast relief he spoke in native English. “This gent’s yours, miss?”

  “He is my aunt’s coachman. Do you think — it’s serious?”

  “Bad enough,” he grunted. His hands, surprisingly clean, moved competently over Stuston’s supine body. “Nothing vital broken, as it seems, miss. But that leg’s not right.” He looked at her from under thick eyebrows. “What shall I do with him, miss?”

  Nell bit her lip in frustration. “We’re staying at the Blue Dolphin, just up that street. Can we get him there? I could take one foot, and Mullins — Mullins, where are you?”

  She looked around for her aunt’s maid. Mullins was standing well away from them, clearly torn between her duty to stay with Nell and her strong desire to run on tottering legs back to safety at the inn.

  “Don’t count on her,” said Nell’s companion, “we shall be fortunate if she does not give way to hysterics.”

  His comment was so at variance with his appearance that Nell could only gape at him. His eyes glinted oddly for an instant before he seemed to gather himself together and attend to the task before him. When he spoke again, it was with a strong flavor of English countryman. “Tha’d best see him to his bed.” Then, with a sidelong glance from under his heavy brows, he added stiffly, “Miss.”

  Suddenly the balance of authority seemed to shift. Nell was, in spite of her misgivings, quite willing to leave the next step in the rescue of Stuston to this man. To quell her doubts, she simply told herself that she had not heard correctly.

  “Can you — would you help?”

  “Yes.” He glanced around, and caught sight of Potter, lingering beside Mullins and wearing a helpless air. “You there, come here. Off with your jacket, lad.”

  With Potter’s help, he slid the jacket underneath Stuston’s legs, carefully moving the injured one to lie parallel with the good one. Handing the jacket sleeves to their owner in the form of a makeshift sling, he ordered, “Hoist ‘im up. I’ll take the shoulders. Now, then, miss, lead the way.”

  Obediently Nell turned and, gathering up the tearful Mullins, led the way across the waterfront while the two men carried Stuston the short distance to the Blue Dolphin.

  Chapter Nine

  After they had put Stuston to bed and the surgeon had come to examine him, Nell waited for the doctor in the parlor. The coachman’s rescuer had disappeared for the moment, but when the surgeon came to report to Nell, she was glad to see the stocky figure just behind him.

  “The leg, mademoiselle, is mal, très mal,” the doctor pronounced, proud of his uncertain grasp of English. “And even if I encased it, vous savez, the man cannot go on. Two ribs are also damaged. Much pain. I have given the laudanum. As well, the jolting that even Madame’s well-sprung carriage will of necessity provide this poor man” — clearly the doctor was on the side of the downtrodden populace liberated by the Revolut
ion — “will of a certainty put a hole in — how is it, puncture? — what you Anglais call les lumières. Is it not?”

  Nell’s features reflected bewilderment. Lamps? Her schoolroom French failed her, not for the first time since she had arrived in Calais. Mystified, she turned automatically to the man who had followed the doctor into her parlor. She raised an eyebrow, and murmured, “Torches, perhaps? I do not quite understand.”

  The stranger translated, “Lights, miss. Damage to his breathing lights.”

  “Oh. Lungs. I see. Of course he must not travel.” With words of thanks and reassurance as to the proper care of the patient, she paid the doctor’s fee and bade him farewell.

  Thinking that Stuston’s rescuer had left with the doctor, she thought herself alone. Eyes filling with unwelcome tears, she turned blindly to the window, trying to control her sudden longing to throw herself on the settee and howl in disappointment.

  All her scheming had come to naught. To give her credit, she was much more distressed at the moment for the harm that had befallen Stuston, through her, than she was over the sudden disruption of their journey to Vienna.

  “All my fault,” she scolded herself. “I should never have conceived this dreadful scheme.”

  A slight sound behind her caused her to turn swiftly. The man from the waterfront was standing just inside the door, watching her.

  “I thought you had left with the doctor!”

  “No, miss. I was wishing to speak with you, by your favor. Miss.”

  “Not now,” she told him. “I must go to see Stuston.”

  She was halfway up the stairs before she realized he was just behind her. She half turned to bid him go down, but she was certain that he would not obey. Setting her chin and firmly resolving to put the man in his place, she climbed to the attic room where the coachman lay in a clean bed, propped against pillows no whiter than his face.

  “Dear Stuston,” said Nell affectionately, “I am sure you understand the doctor’s instructions. We cannot allow you to travel until you are quite well. You will stay here in the Blue Dolphin.”

  “But, Miss Nell, I ain’t leaving you in the lurch, pardon my expression, miss, but you can’t go across Europe with only the footmen and a groom to do for you. I’ll be up and about in the morning,” he insisted, his words becoming slurred as the laudanum took-effect, “sure as — my name — . Stuston.”

  Nell turned to Stuston’s rescuer who had followed her up to the attic room, but not in time to notice a sudden alertness in his hazel eyes.

  *

  Had she seen that expression and coupled it with the odd unevenness in the man’s speech, which veered from broad countryman to educated English, she might not have been so relieved when, later in the day, the man returned to the inn, his fisherman’s beret in hand, and sought an audience in the small sitting room that had been placed at her disposal.

  “I am glad you came,” she told him, “for I should like again to thank you for your timely assistance. I cannot reward you as is your due, but certainly —” She rummaged in her reticule for coins.

  He protested. “Nay,” he said in a gruff voice. “I did not come for blunt. I’m sorry about your man. Lucky I was on the spot.”

  “I truly do not know what I would have done,” she said, still hunting for coins.

  “Mebbe my luck’s still in.”

  Something in the tone of his voice caught her attention. She looked up quickly. “And what do you mean by that, pray?”

  “Begging pardon. I meant only that you don’t have a coachman and I don’t have a job.” As an afterthought, he added, “Miss.”

  “But you’re a fisherman!”

  “Am I? A’course. I have druv horses afore, though, miss. Noth — naught to it.”

  He puzzled her. His accent was rude, as was his voice. He was not a gentleman, judging by his clothing. Even his features spoke of a rough and ready, not to say violent, past. But his hazel eyes looked steadily at her, without humility, and she was visited suddenly by a feeling of confidence. This man was competent, as revealed by his immediate authority with Stuston. If he said he druv — I mean drove, she corrected herself — horses, then she was sure he could.

  Not like herself, she thought, who says I can do many things that I cannot do and trusts to learn them before disaster comes.

  Yet she hesitated. He spoke English without a French accent, but his speech was oddly variable. She finally decided that he must often have been in contact with those of the upper classes, and being ambitious, had tried to ape his betters.

  “But you have no references?”

  “Nay, miss, but then you see, we’re not in England.”

  “How very convenient for you.”

  The man waited in the public room until Nell gave him the news that he had been hired. He said only, “Call me Reeves, miss.”

  She had not, remembering the level look in his eyes, expected any obsequious phrase of gratitude. But she had not quite reckoned with his easy acceptance of his new employment. Indeed, when he added, “What time do we start in the morning?” she was quite put out. We indeed! She and Reeves were in no sense of the word partners in this expedition. He was merely a coachman, hired because accident had befallen old Stuston.

  It occurred to her dimly that perhaps she would be glad of Reeves’s ability to manage affairs before they reached Vienna. Their company was becoming sadly depleted, since Samuel was to stay here in Calais with Stuston. When they had left London, Nell was content to travel lightly. One cumbersome chariot, providing space in the interior for Lady Sanford, Nell, and Mullins, seemed sufficient for their needs as well as enabling them to travel more swiftly.

  Accompanying them at the start were a minimum of servants — Stuston and Samuel, Potter, and young Hayne as groom. Now the company had dwindled by half. Only the footman Potter and the groom Hayne, both young and without experience, remained. Reeves was clearly a worthy addition. Nell had no reason for the uneasy feeling that remained with her, but she was acutely aware that its source was the new coachman.

  Reeves remained a vivid figure in her thoughts the rest of that day.

  It had been a much easier task to convince Lady Sanford to employ the stranger than she had expected. She was prepared to use her not inconsiderable powers of persuasion and would have pointed out that in two days they would reach Paris, where they could, with the advice of the ambassador, seek out a coachman of more reliable background.

  Her arguments were not needed. Lady Sanford was still too weak to care inordinately. She was only mildly distressed to hear about Stuston, saying only, “They’ll take care of him here. And he was far too slow a driver. I feared we would never, at his rate, get to Paris. I do hope your protegé will really put them to it.”

  “I thought you did not wish to make this trip, Aunt?”

  Lady Sanford dismissed her about-face with an airy gesture. “Now that we are started, it seems foolish to give it all up. After all, Tom will be along shortly.”

  Nell hoped he would indeed.

  “And besides,” continued Phrynie, “everyone I know has traveled to Paris since May, and I felt quite out of it. There may be some excitement at court, although I have little hope of it. In truth, Pamela Wright said that ditch water wasn’t in it for dullness. But the Bourbons did once know how to live, and one can only hope that the present king has not forgotten everything he knew.”

  Enlivened by her speculations, Phrynie threw the covers aside. “Call Mullins, my dear. I do not choose to lie abed any longer. Go hire your man, Nell, and let’s be on with it.”

  She had done her aunt’s bidding and then, stricken by the realization that she had neglected Stuston too long, made a visit to the attic room.

  He made an ineffectual effort to rise when she entered. “Pray do not disturb yourself, Stuston,” she told him, “for I am persuaded movement gives you great pain.”

  “That it does, miss, for a fact. And a’ course, the leg don’t move less I take it in han
d, so to say.”

  After a word of commiseration, she said, “I have not heard just what happened to you, Stuston. Pray tell me.”

  She nursed a secret suspicion that perhaps Reeves, who spoke confidently of his luck, might have given that luck an assisting hand. After all, Reeves alone was to profit from Stuston’s mischance.

  But a few words from Stuston put that suspicion to rest.

  “It’s only, miss, that I’ve always had this longing, you might say, to go to sea. It was like the ferry put me in mind of old times. I know it’s a hard life, for my father and his father afore him sailed afore the mast. Not an easy life, like the one I got now.”

  He hesitated, clearly fearing to jeopardize the easy living that was his. But after a glance at his mistress’s niece from under tufted gray brows, he bumbled on. “So it seemed like, having the chance, I had to go down and look at all them little boats. Not so grand as His Majesty’s fleet, a’ course, I know that. But there’s something about them tidy little vessels that says summat to me, you might say. And I was watching them, thinking, don’t you see, how it would be to straddle the deck and feel the sea pushing up from under.”

  He fell into silent recollection. At last, Nell ventured, “Stuston, you did say that you were pushed. Do you know who did it?”

  “Now that I don’t remember, miss. Did I say pushed?”

  “Yes, Stuston, you did.”

  “I must ‘a thought a man could stand on his own feet less he got shoved. But I reckon I was a bit off me head for a bit.”

  “There was no one near you? A stocky man, for instance, with a navy-blue fisherman’s jersey? A man with a crooked nose?”

  “Ah, now, miss, I see which way you’re thinking, if I may say so. It’s the gent that got me back here and into bed, right? I don’t recollect seeing him afore, and that’s a fact, miss.” He shook his head. “Maybe I got shoved and maybe I didn’t. Maybe I slipped and maybe I didn’t. But first thing I knew, that is first thing I’m sure of, I was flat on my back and that fool Potter yelling his head off his shoulders, and that was it, miss, until you come.” Shyly, he added, “And I thankee.”