Better to stick with what I knew, I decided. Especially since I’d never had an experience anywhere except in the workroom. “The shop, I guess.”
“You’re the boss.” He headed down the hall to the shop’s back entry. “Want me to build a fire?”
The shop was arctic, but I still decided against the fire. “I vote for the electric heat. Depending on how long this takes, we could wind up like frozen vegetables if the fire burned out.”
Caleb stared at me a moment. “I hope that’s a joke.”
“So do I,” I said, knowing I shouldn’t have put the thought in his mind. “I just want you to know the possibility is there.”
His lips tightened. “Are you ever afraid?”
“Always,” I admitted. “As well as dazzled by the power, and fascinated by the stories.”
Caleb shook his head. “You’ve got no back-up. I gather you don’t plan on inviting your dad or Scott in as observers.”
“Do you want me to?” I understood him to be a wee bit worried about the whole deal. “You’re not going to chicken…er…back out, are you? Although I’ll certainly understand if you do.”
“No, I’m not going to chicken out.” He slanted a weak grin at me.
“I’d probably be a lot smarter if I did.”
“This is gonna be fun,” I said . Please God. Honesty forced me to add, “Or if not fun, it’s bound to be interesting.”
“Yeah, well.” Caleb thumped the gun case onto the workbench while I turned on heat and lights. “A medical practice at the Riverside Clinic is interesting, too, but I don’t think I’d call it fun exactly.”
“Satisfying, then. You want to know the history of your blunderbuss, don’t you? It has to be compelling in order to draw the magic, so you can be sure your time won’t be wasted.”
I punched in the numbers that unlocked the vault, then went in and got his blunderbuss. Dad had put the gun away last night, first taking the precaution of packing it in a foam-lined leather case. He knew more about the use of power than he let on. He’d picked it up from my mother, I suppose, because I carried the encased gun with no more problem than a faint hum in my head. I’d have to remember about the dampening effect of inert materials.
We seated ourselves on stools at the bench where Caleb had placed the mahogany chest containing his pistols. He grinned at my obvious anticipation and unlatched the case with the air of a showman. I gasped at my first sight of a set of original condition blunderbuss pistols. They were almost as exciting as the adventure I sensed just seconds away.
The steel of the old pistols gleamed. The brass and silver work in the furniture had been created by a master craftsman—more, by an artist. The simple utilitarianism of the long gun varied sharply with the intricate decoration and workmanship of the pistols. They weren’t really part of a set with the long gun, I discovered. Caleb had called them a set only because they’d been handed down as one over the generations. Same owner, even made by the same smith, but with conflicting clues to their history.
“They’re wonderful,” I said reverently, all the while feeling the heat their powerful magic emitted.
After a while, a person runs out of excuses. A glance around the deserted shop with the doors secured against intruders assured me that if we were going to do this, now was the time. Caleb’s face may have shown a little apprehension, but mostly he just looked set, ready for whatever happened. I wished I felt more confident.
“Do you remember how to load a flintlock?” I asked, more just to delay a while longer than for any real reason. Still, he’d been tired last night—I wouldn’t blame him if he’d forgotten.
“I should,” he answered shortly, though with a certain dry humor. “I dreamed about it the whole damn night.”
I had him load the pistols because I didn’t know for sure where the magic would carry us. His hands were quivering, I noticed.
“Will we remember who we are?” Caleb asked. He concentrated on his work. “Will we know each other?” My hesitation went on too long.
He looked up. “Will we?”
“Caleb—I thought you knew. When we do this, we are no longer Caleb and Boothenay. We’re the people who made the history in these guns. I already know we’ve just now met, that your name is Ethan and I am Annabelle Winthrop. But I don’t know how much self can transfer to the past. I’m always aware of myself. Somehow, I can both witness and take part in events at the same time. This time…”
His gaze pinned me. “Yes?”
“I’ll know you. I really don’t have any idea if you’ll know me. I hope you will.” My power had grown in quantum spurts, but I couldn’t be sure of my control over it. Not solidly for myself, and not that much for him.
Still, Caleb had made his decision and was not a man to draw back.
Nothing I said now dissuaded him.
As we settled on our stools, nerving ourselves for the quest, I made him a silent promise. I promised I wouldn’t abandon him, or let him be lost there. When he came back, he’d still be Caleb, not Ethan, the coachman. Unless he was already the coachman, come to haunt us in this time. I gave up on such fruitless speculation. There were just too many questions, fraught with a sense of predestination. We’d have to go with the flow.
“Put the pistols in your belt,” I advised him, and then reached out my hand when he complied. “Last chance,” I said. “If you want to stop, say so now.”
His hand was warm as it clasped mine. An answer without words.
Not hot or sweaty from nerves. Strong and comforting, our fingers twined together.
“I like your perfume,” he said.
“Hang on.” With my other hand, I took hold of Caleb’s blunderbuss and, for the first time ever, purposely called the power. I felt myself smiling.
We traveled, Caleb and I. Up, down, to, fro, with our hands linked, not to be separated in this cauldron of noise and cold. Not an instantaneous transition this time. Caleb dragged at me.
Then we were there—Caleb sharing a single psyche with Ethan—I at one with Annabelle.
Even as I smiled up at Caleb/Ethan, relieved beyond words to know we had arrived safely, I saw that Caleb did not recognize me as Boothenay. He saw only Annabelle.
Insolent green eyes, cold as cold could be, raked me with the kind of look a gentleman of quality might give an importuning wench of questionable morals. My goodness. All I’d done was bump into him.
How dare he stare at me like that? Who on earth did he imagine himself to be? Is this how gentlemen looked at women in the year of our Lord, 1811?
Then I remembered. At this moment, he was not a gentleman. He was a coachman—a most impudent coachman.
“I am Lady Annabelle Winthrop,” I announced, and in that moment became Belle. “You, I presume, are Ethan?”
A frown crinkled between his eyebrows. “For a moment I thought you… Pardon me, my lady. Yes, I am Ethan.”
“The queen is expecting you. Not best pleased, I might add, that she has been kept waiting.” He might as well be prepared for Charlotte’s displeasure.
Ethan had a sheepish, guilty look on his face. “No one warned the guards to expect me. They refused to let me pass.”
He had a point. So why did he act so disgruntled when, upon my offer to vouch for his good behavior and to act as his escort, said guards immediately paroled him into my charge?
The hem of my green silk gown tickled my ankles as I strode along the marble floored corridor of the palace. We walked shoulder to shoulder, my slippers whispering, Ethan’s tall boots striking a measured, rhythmic thump like a march. His coat, on which I counted four capes, swept nearly to the ground as he paced beside me.
Four capes . Where had he gotten that coat?
“I don’t remember seeing you before, sir,” I said. “Have you been in the queen’s service for long?”
Not bloody likely. Not as proud and insolent as he acted. Even his walk seemed the swagger of an arrogant man.
“Ethan,” he said, with a sid
eways look of reprimand. “I’m the coachman. You must call me Ethan.”
Just as if I didn’t know the rules. There was something about him though… I suspected “Sir” was a more appropriate appellation.
“And I,” I replied, blushing self-consciously, “expect servants to either lead the way, or to follow behind, but never to walk alongside of me.”
And never to give me lessons in deportment.
His footsteps faltered, and he dropped half a pace to the rear.
I turned my head, enough to catch the narrowing of his eyes as he stared straight ahead. “You didn’t answer my question, Ethan. Have you been in Queen Charlotte’s service long?”
His hesitation lasted until I stopped in the middle of the corridor and turned fully around to face him. “Is that so hard to answer? Either you have, or you have not, one or the other.”
A muscle jerked along his jaw. “Then in simple terms, no, not long.
Not in the capacity of coachman.”
“I didn’t think so.” We both ignored the stream of people, palace servants mostly, who eddied around us like ducks around an island.
Simple terms, eh? I thought I’d heard an implication I didn’t care for in his words. “Cavalry, was it? What regiment? Where did you take your wound?”
His jaw dropped, rather unattractively, I decided with a total lack of charity. “Wha…how did you…”
“Boots,” I said. “Bearing.” It didn’t seem polite to add that his limp told its own story. “Why? Is all of that a secret, too?”
“Who said anything about secrets?”
His clipped speech indicated, among other things, that he had not been a common soldier. He must have been an officer of some kind, considering his air of authority. I suspected if he’d had fifteen more seconds with Queen Charlotte’s guards, he’d have had them saluting him and yanking at their forelocks.
One might as well have tried to subdue the Irish, for all the luck I had in extracting information from the man. I turned, my skirt belling around my legs, and began walking again.
“Really,” I said, a latent flare of anger bursting into flame. “Does everyone around here consider me an imbecile? Secrets! You know.
Those thoughts and actions one wants to keep hidden from everyone except co-conspirators. First Queen Charlotte calls me to the palace, and then hesitates to tell me why. She sends me to meet you, and you won’t even enjoin a normal conversation. Too involved in playing a part of some kind. Secrets? Now why should I suspect any such thing?”
I didn’t add I knew Queen Charlotte had manipulated me into meeting him, with the meeting arranged to appear an accident. Any fool could have seen through such a timeworn plot. I just didn’t know what prompted her action.
Sally met us at the door to the queen’s apartment, shaking her head at the noise we made. I could see Ethan was no stranger to her. She accorded him the same amount of respect—just slightly more than none—she always paid me, from which I surmised this unusual coachman ranked in approximately the same class as I. And why would a gentleman of rank play the role of a coachman? Didn’t he know his coat gave the act away? Did he mean it to?
Queen Charlotte, who had gone to supervise more of her packing while I searched for Ethan, came quickly when she heard our voices, closing the door upon the overworked maids, as well as shutting out Lady Georgina and Miss Emma Westmore.
Sally set herself as guard upon our privacy while the queen once more directed me to a sturdy Chippendale chair. I waited until she sat before I seated myself. Ethan remained standing, looming over us both.
Charlotte did not seem to mind his shadow. He made me nervous.
“Have you two been quarreling?” she asked, her eyes round and incredulous as she observed our high color and stiff posture. “Already?
But you have only just met, have you not?” She made a “tch, tch,”
sound. “Children, children.”
Ethan shifted from one booted foot to the other. “Miss Winthrop doubts the veracity of my claim to being your coachman, I’m afraid. I seem to have failed you already, Your Majesty.”
“Oh, Annabelle is very quick, sir. Which is why she is the perfect person to send upon this errand. Tell me…did my guards attend their duty?”
“Indeed,” Ethan said. “Although they scarcely looked at me beyond my coat. I doubt they can give any but the most rudimentary description of me only five minutes later. They turned me over to Miss Winthrop on the instant.”
“Vunderful!” Charlotte clapped her hands, her accent slipping in her excitement. “Just as we planned.”
“Planned? What plan? What is so v-wonderful?” I’d known I’d been set up. Known the queen had demanded my presence for a reason other than the pleasure of my company or, I suspected, to discover the names of rogue ship captains willing to run the blockade. “Would someone please explain to me what you’re talking about?”
Queen Charlotte, Ethan and Sally each sent suspicious looks around the room, although I could not imagine where they thought a spy might hide, or by what device he might listen. But then, I didn’t know why they should suspect an eavesdropper. Sally bent her ear to the door between the sitting room and the bedchamber where the maids worked.
She must not have heard any untoward sounds, for she nodded to the queen.
Queen Charlotte settled upon her chair like a plump dove of peace, the whisper of her drab gray woolen gown like the flutter of wings. I might laugh to think of her nose deep in some dark plot, yet I saw by her solemn expression that she was very serious. As royalty, she must be used to plots. It would be naive of me to think otherwise, no matter that she had always stayed in the background, more concerned with raising her large family than in leading society. If I, who had lived in the same house with her for years was unaware of any intrigue, it might be a sign that she was good at it. And at covering her tracks.
Now where had that expression come from, I wondered? Something I had heard from my sister? An Americanism? That sounded odd as well. I must be getting confused.
“Are you acquainted with one another?” Charlotte asked, ignoring my question as she looked from me to Ethan.
We shook our heads.
“Oh, my dears. How rude of me.” Color rose in her cheeks. “Miss Annabelle Winthrop, please make the acquaintance of Captain Ethan Delaney. Captain, Miss Winthrop is one of my most resourceful ladies—quite up to snuff, I assure you.”
Ethan—I could not yet think of him as Captain Delaney—and I shook hands just as though we had not come close to quarreling only moments ago, and murmured polite nothings to one another.
“How strange for you to have never met,” the queen went on. “At a ball or a party you both may have attended.”
“I assure you, madam, I wouldn’t have forgotten,” I said. They could take that any way they wished. Judging by Captain Delaney’s expression, he knew what I meant.
“Don’t forget I have been in the peninsula these last two years,” he said. “As I still should be, had not a French infantryman gotten in a lucky shot.”
I knew I had detected a limp in his stride. What truly piqued my curiosity, however, was his odd speaking accent, which I did not recognize.
“What part of England are you from?” I asked. Of course, the accent could be an affectation he’d picked up in Spain, although none of the other gentlemen I knew who had served there had returned with such a queer brogue. But no.
“Exeter,” he said, “down south.”
He placed an odd inflection on the word south, as though it was a place rather than a direction, and for a moment, I wondered if he really came from Exeter or if he had just told a lie.
“Isn’t it the most providential luck for you to know that country so well?” Queen Charlotte said. “I suppose you are used to riding all over.”
“In my younger days,” Captain Delaney agreed. “Not in the last several years— although I do not expect I’ll get lost.”
“No,” the queen answer
ed, and I fancied I heard a trace of sadness in her words. “I believe the way is well marked.”
“What way?” I had time to ask before Sally, from her post beside the closed door into the queen’s bedchamber, jumped erect. Ethan—or Captain Delaney, as I suppose I should call him now—stiffened and stood at attention in front of Queen Charlotte, quite as though he was intent on absorbing special instructions from her.
The queen fiddled with the blue china teapot while I stirred my spoon in an empty cup. Lady Emma paid no particular attention to us other than to drop the queen a curtsy and appraise Ethan’s physique as she passed through the room.
In my eyes, considering the studied busyness of each of us, we must be condemned as inept conspirators. And I, with growing indignation at being kept in ignorance, still had no idea of the conspiracy afoot.
“What kind of rigmarole are we running here?” I demanded. Then I listened to the replay of those words in my head. Rigmarole? Replay? I didn’t even know what those words meant—and yet I did. My memory said someone had used that very same course of words to me not so long ago, but I couldn’t remember who, or why, nor even when, exactly. I knew it had been because of… And there the thought petered out.
“I beg your pardon?” Queen Charlotte asked, her eyebrows arched in surprise. “I don’t understand.”
A small quirk lifted one side of Captain Delaney’s upper lip in the faintest of sardonic grins. Perhaps “rigmarole” is a Spanish word, I decided, or one I’d heard in that context. Perhaps it was not quite a polite word, therefore unsuitable for a lady to use before her queen.
“No, Your Majesty,” I said. “I beg your pardon. Only you’ve aroused my curiosity most dearly. Can’t you tell me why you’ve called me here?”
“Captain Delaney?” Queen Charlotte asked, a question in her voice as if telling me or not was Ethan’s decision.
His green eyes hard, he stared at me long enough to start me wondering if I had developed a bad rash when I wasn’t looking. After what seemed an age he shrugged, saying, “Lady Annabelle is your choice, madam. I told you I would leave this part to you. As for me, I’ve been away from England too long to know of a female any more suitable for this affair. Or if a female is necessary at all.”
In The Service Of The Queen (The Gunsmith Book 1) Page 10
