I pitied my coachman, driving into the rain.
Poor Ethan—poor Caleb.
Dark so intense it was almost like being blind wrapped me in woolly-headed introspection. The carriage swayed hypnotically. My mind picked at the realization of my newly discovered duality, skirting around the remarkable ability of being two complete people at the same time. As Boothenay, I knew that dual feeling well. As Belle, once I got over the alarm, I began to find the situation fascinating.
Earlier this morning, I had believed Boothenay would be in control.
As a modern woman, she had an independence of thought and action unheard of in Belle’s world. Then I considered a while longer and decided that the era called for Belle’s expertise. How would Boothenay know how to go on, shoved nearly two hundred years into the past? Yet in a situation where Belle might cry and wring her hands, Boothenay would be in the thick of the fray, ready to stand up for herself. The conclusion I came to was that perhaps this journey called for both.
Chapter 10
Our morning’s travel seemed to last an eternity. We pressed on while thunder rumbled all around, the coach swaying under the snarling onslaught of a wind that passed under and around the leather window curtain as if it were no more than mesh. The plaque covering the royal insignia banged dismally on the door with every revolution of the wheels. The coach slithered in and out of foot-deep ruts when the rain turned the road to muddy goo, causing a touch of motion sickness as further aggravation.
Poor Ethan must be worse off than I am, I thought. Probably drenched to the bone with his hands frozen to the reins. How did he stand it?
The raucous squawk of chickens announced our first stop on the road to Exeter. Their wings beat the air as they fled certain death beneath the horses’ hooves. The call of the hostler who rushed to grab the horse’s heads and Ethan’s gruff croak as he brought the team to a halt in the yard filled me with distinct relief. I’d been wondering for the last few miles if the man ever tired.
I popped the door open by myself and, without waiting for assistance, jumped down into the mud, catching the nearest boy by the sleeve.
“Privy?” I asked, about ready to disgrace myself. A flash of lightning shot through a sky still nearly as dark as it had been at dawn.
“Oi, mum,” he replied, jerking a thumb over his shoulder. “Thet way.”
“Thanks.” I lifted the skirt of my gown to keep the hem out of the mud which, in this area of the yard, I suspected owed as much to horse piss as to the rain. I skittered off as fast as my legs could carry me without actually breaking into a run. A glance back, just to see if anyone noticed my unseemly haste, brought me to the blush as Ethan caught my eye and raised a sardonic eyebrow.
My heavens, the stench! I gagged, although a part of me took the conditions for granted. What else do you expect? this self said. This is the way things are.
That self got a lesson on hygiene as practiced in the modern world.
Ethan was waiting for me when I returned to the coach, his face set in that expressionless manner men assume when they don’t want women to know there is a problem.
“We’re making fairly good time considering the state of the road.
I’ve decided we can spare a half-hour to stretch our legs and have a bite to eat,” he said. He took my arm to steer me into the inn. I saw his limp had grown more pronounced and his breath puffed out hard every time the foot on his wounded side struck the ground.
“About time,” I replied, pretending I didn’t notice his distress. “My stomach is beginning to think my throat has been cut.” Worry began a slow nag at my consciousness. How bad is he? I wondered.
“I beg your pardon?” Ethan stared down at me, looking a little shocked, a little amused, and as if he didn’t quite believe his ears.
“I said, good. I’m starving,” I replied.
I’d best watch my language. My phrasing must have been too, too vulgar for a lady in this day and age—shoot, it was vulgar for any day and age. I didn’t want to shock the poor man too much. He’d discarded his disreputable hat and the oilskins somewhere and looked very much the gentleman in his caped overcoat. His boots may not have borne the shine so admired by the gentry, but, I noticed he’d managed to scrape off most of the mud. I felt distinctly outclassed.
Certainly it didn’t occur to any of the servants, or to the proprietor himself, to question my escort’s station in life. Ethan summoned the innkeeper with one raised finger, demanded a private dining room, and was shown to one, just like that. I’m sure the innkeeper thought him a passenger from inside the coach.
Oh, yes. Ethan passed the innkeeper’s scrutiny with flying colors.
Me, he eyed with a disapproving frown, his manner indicating he suspected me of being Ethan’s mistress or a runaway wife. On one hand, I felt ready to sink with embarrassment, while on the other, I itched to flip the toad off. I wondered what his reaction would be if I told him I was neither a mistress nor a wife, but merely a woman on a mission to break a man out of jail.
“Temper, temper,” Ethan whispered, not quite concealing his amusement as we entered the dingy little parlor. “We don’t want to draw attention to ourselves. Ignore him.”
While the innkeeper’s smarmy examination of me raised my hackles, I knew I’d have to let the man draw his own conclusions. What astounded me was that Ethan even noticed my reaction to the innkeeper. I’d begun to believe he hadn’t noticed me at all, except as a burden the queen had saddled him with.
I’d formed a notion that all buildings in this time were built along the lines of Buckingham House. I expected spacious dimensions with high ceilings, hand-carved moldings and inlaid parquet floors. This place squelched those delusions in a hurry. In a room no more than eight feet by eight feet square, a tiny window was covered with a heavy growth of ivy that darkened the chamber to midnight. The one whale oil lamp emitted a mere glimmer of light. An extra candle the innkeeper jabbed into a brass holder did little to dispel the gloom.
Perhaps we were the most important guests at the inn today for the innkeeper bustled around muttering apologies, and acting so servile I was embarrassed for him. “I’ll send a serving girl for your order,” he promising, bowing to Ethan. “Immediately, sir!”
Curious, I poked a finger into the underside of the thatched roof, marveling at a building material that seemed deceptively fragile, but which proper construction methods rendered strong and waterproof.
Not bug-proof, however, as I discovered when a beetling insect dropped past my nose and crawled across the floor.
Moreover, I reached the ceiling while standing flatfooted on the imperfectly sanded floor, the rough boards reminding me of nothing so much as a cattle barn. God forbid the hem of my gown catch on the slivers lest it be shredded.
Ethan looked around. “Not quite what you’re used to, I fear, although at least the roof isn’t leaking.”
“That’s true.” I longed for stainless steel and anti-bacterial soap.
When Ethan declared this inn, The Black Bull, to be very reputable, I wrinkled my not inconsiderable nose at him.
“No way!” I broke into a laugh. “This place is a pit.”
“I assure you, Miss Winthrop,” he said, watching me dust an assortment of crumbs left by previous diners from the plain deal table onto the floor. “This is a most popular staging inn on the Exeter-Plymouth road. Queen Charlotte keeps a relay team of horses in the stable. You may be surprised to know the gentry regularly break their journey for a mid-day meal here. The Bull is quite renowned in these parts.”
I sniffed. “Yes, I am surprised. If you ask me, they must be pretty hard up. This place could do with a good, thorough cleaning and polishing. And some stiff competition to keep them on their toes.” With a clean handkerchief I found in the pocket of my cloak, I wiped my hands and the seat of the chair for good measure.
Ethan grinned at my housewifery. “We’re only havin’ lunch, Miss Winthrop. We’re not fixin’ to take up residence, let alone
buy the place.”
When he said that, I felt as if my heart literally jumped and turned over in my chest. My Boothenay side heard Caleb Deane’s soft southern accent as surely as if he’d been standing right beside me—as, of course, he was, in a way. Belle heard the accent and finally had the mystery of its sound solved. Foreign, yes. Not, however, garnered from the Spanish campaign.
His observation held a great deal of wisdom although his wry humor is what struck me. “We’re not fixin’ to take up residence.” I smothered the laugh that tried to burst from behind my hand, turning it into a cough. “No. We’re not, are we? We’re only here for a little while, and then we’ll go home again. What right have I to interfere with the way these people live? I’m sure everyone will get along just fine without my advice.”
Caleb/Ethan arched a dark eyebrow, staring at me in a puzzled fashion. “I expect they’ll be grateful for that concession,” he said, his voice dry.
I had almost chewed my tongue off holding to that decision when the serving girl came to take our order. I eyed her stained, soiled dress, took in the state of her apron and the reek of her body, unwashed for many a day. Almost enough to steal my appetite—but not quite.
We didn’t need a menu because the girl recited the bill of fare from memory, talking fast, as if a speedy delivery would ensure she didn’t forget anything. “Roast beef, rare,” she said. “Mutton chops, potted hare and a nice pork pie. We have fresh oysters, and cauliflower and cream tarts to follow.” She paused expectantly, while a flash of lightning brightened the room, and flinched as thunder boomed directly overhead.
“I’ll have the beef,” Ethan said, just as though he hadn’t heard the storm.
I took my cue from him.
“Do you have soup?” I’d thought to try the pie, until at the last moment I caught sight of the dirt embedded beneath the girl’s fingernails and changed my mind. “Hot soup?” Hot enough to kill any bugs, I hoped. “And tea? I need tea.” It occurred to me that I didn’t even like tea, that I much preferred coffee. In this case, my likes and dislikes had not been consulted.
“You might not want to take too much liquid,” Ethan said, after the girl departed, moving at a near run. “Our next stop is thirty miles down the road.”
“Thanks for the warning,” I said, amused, and grateful, too, at the way he broached the subject. “I guess I’ll just have to manage until the next change of horses. Anyway, don’t you know you should take breaks when you’re driving? Otherwise, your concentration can wander and leave you open to an accident.”
Ethan stared at me, and while I’d have liked to believe he was only intrigued, I was afraid he more likely thought me crackbrained.
“I dare say,” he said, refusing to be drawn. He stirred a finger through the crumbs littering his side of the table. “Remember yesterday, when you asked Queen Charlotte why she had selected you as her emissary?”
“I remember.” Crackbrained though I might be, I hadn’t quite turned senile. “Write a report, she says. Ridiculous! Anyone could make up a satisfactory report. I wonder what she thinks I can do that almost anybody else can’t do better?”
What I really didn’t understand was why I’d had to come from such a long way and in such a roundabout manner.
“She told you why, you know, although I don’t think you believed her. She said you are imaginative and a quick thinker, always ready for an adventure. And…” He paused as the serving girl returned, thumped a gigantic bowl of soup down in front of me, ignoring the glistening fatty broth that sloshed over the side. Bits of carrots and potatoes and onions bobbed amidst cabbage and beef chunks. My mouth watered at the smell. Best of all, the girl didn’t quite have her thumb in it, or on the board with the thick slabs of dark, fresh baked bread and golden globs of butter.
With my spoon poised over the bowl and my salivary glands working overtime, I tried to use some semblance of good manners until she had served Ethan his rare roast beef. Did I say rare? I think I heard a moo as it ran in from the pasture.
“And? What else did the queen say?” I asked when the servant had gone.
He grinned as he picked up the threads of the interrupted explanation. “She said you fall into scrapes—or at least you used to fall into scrapes easier than any other young lady she ever knew. In fact, perchance trouble did not come find you, then you went looking for trouble. She said she thought you thrived on the challenge of conniving yourself out of it.”
“Oh, unfair,” I said, yet I knew as Belle I did have that characteristic, and as for Boothenay, well, I’d spent nearly my whole life wiggling out of the predicaments magic sent my way.
“Unfair? Not untrue?”
“Not entirely,” I admitted. “She really told you all of that?”
“She did. She didn’t tell me any fibs, did she?”
I shook my head, amazed at the queen’s perspicuity. Amazed, really, that she’d ever noticed so much about me.
Ethan took up his knife and fork, sawing at his thick slice of meat.
My impression is it was tough as a rubber dog chew—not that he seemed to mind. His teeth and jaws must have been strong for he chewed vigorously with every evidence of enjoyment. With his mouth full of food he couldn’t talk so, almost matching his gusto, I started shoveling in my soup.
A little later my tongue probed a big, puffy blister on the roof of my mouth, hinting a bit of caution with the soup might have been wise. I applied this wisdom to the cup of hot tea I held between my hands, letting the heat warm my cold fingers while I watched the loose leaves swirl in the bottom of the cup.
Somnolent, comfortable and warm, with a pleasantly full stomach, the hypnotic drip of the rain outside allowed last night’s sleepless hours to catch up with me. At first I sat erect, then I began to slump. My half-shut eyes looked through a blurred and hazy filter. My surroundings, this grubby, little room in this dingy, old inn, slipped and faded. Before I could stop, as if I wanted to, I found myself staring down the same long tunnel I had seen last night. At the end of that tunnel, under a ticking clock, a man sat in the light. A flash of gold shone in one of his ears, his dark hair curled on the back of his neck and a row of black lashes marked his closed eyes. He looked asleep, yet through a certain tenseness in his still body, I knew he did not sleep. Caleb clasped a woman’s hand—my hand.
Her eyes, my eyes were shut as well; my face dull and empty.
Soulless. Waiting. Well, of course. My essence had fled that body. It occupied this other woman’s. Belle’s. Annabelle Winthrop’s. I hated seeing myself like that, as if I were dead, yet not dead. Or perhaps worse yet, as if I were not there at all. Only the warmth of Caleb’s grip anchored me. My other hand lay flaccid atop the cold steel of an old gun.
And I saw now what had always frightened my father and my brother. I saw how transparent and ethereal we both looked, as if a breath of wind could blow what were no more than shadows of ourselves completely out of existence. While our tenuous grasp on realness scared me, too, I did discover one positive thing. I didn’t drool.
But I couldn’t go back there now. Not yet. The magic had set up a mission for me, and I couldn’t go home until I was finished. I shouldn’t even allow a look into that other world.
Somehow I wrenched myself out of that tunnel, away from the sane, familiar room where Caleb held my hand. With a lurch, I teetered on the edge of this one. Caleb/Ethan still held my hand, his strength fixing me in this present. A gasping little sob escaped as I blinked my eyes.
“Miss Winthrop…Annabelle? Annabelle…for God’s sake…”
Caleb—no—Ethan’s worried green eyes stared into mine as I blinked a couple more times for good measure.
With a separate kind of vision, I distinguished differences between Caleb and Ethan, just as I recognized a basic sameness. Same eyes, grass green and fringed with eyelashes any woman would kill for.
Same dark hair, although Ethan wore his tied into a queue, so it must be longer and seemed straighter than Caleb’s. A
lmost the same features. I thought perhaps the battlefields of the Napoleonic Wars took a greater toll on the soldiers who fought them than did the wars our modern armies endured.
Whatever the cause, whether battle fatigue and the pain of his wounds, or because being alive in 1811 was just plain harder, Ethan’s features were harsher, more tautly drawn than Caleb’s. And surely it was miraculous for a man to look so much like his distant ancestor, although I guess sometimes there is no accounting for genetic mutation.
If this is a case of genetics, I asked myself, why is Belle so nearly my twin?
With a final blink, I snapped completely back to this grubby roadside inn, leaving the question unanswered. I came back to Ethan who looked so like Caleb Deane and most wresting of all, to this version of myself. Ethan bent over me. I had the impression he had been calling my name, as well as patting my hand, for quite some time while he attempted to bring me out of my trance.
Had the impression, I said. Before he’d picked up the pitcher of water.
“You aren’t thinking of dumping that on me, are you?” I asked.
“Because if you are, forget it. I’m cold enough already.”
He swore, a string of words both short and violent. “You’re spooky, you know that? Are you some kind of haunt? At first, I thought you might be the woman of my dreams, the woman I’ve been looking for all of my life, but I was wrong. Wrong!
“You’ve turned into my worst nightmare. My God, there are times I actually believe I’m someone else, as though I’m split all apart. Listen to me. I sound like an hysterical woman speaking in a foreign language.
Can you believe that? And it is you, Miss Winthrop, I know it is you, who makes me feel…”
His tirade shut down as though a wet blanket had dropped over his fire. He had the most appalled expression on his face. “That’s impossible,” he muttered.
“Nothing is impossible,” I said. Nobody knew the truth of that better than I, yet I hesitated to say a word for fear he would march me out to the coach and cart me off to Bedlam this very minute. Ethan had the upper hand over Caleb in this world, and I didn’t think he’d believe my explanation of magic and time and transference of self. I had a hard enough time believing and I was the catalyst.
In The Service Of The Queen (The Gunsmith Book 1) Page 13
