by Mira Stables
THE REGENCY ROMANCES OF MIRA STABLES
Part One
Mira Stables
© Mira Stables 2019
Mira Stables has asserted her rights under the Copyright, Design and Patents Act, 1988, to be identified as the author of this work.
First published in 2019 by Endeavour Media Ltd.
Table of Contents
EMMA DISPOSES
A MATCH FOR ELIZABETH
QUALITY MAID
EMMA DISPOSES
For
ANNE WALKER
Table of Contents
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Eighteen
Chapter Nineteen
Chapter Twenty
Chapter Twenty-One
Chapter Twenty-Two
Chapter Twenty-Three
Chapter One
The colonel folded the sheaf of papers together with neat precision and laid them on the table. “If all these promises are fulfilled, we shall be almost up to strength again,” he said thoughtfully.
“The new drafts have already landed and are on their way,” said his companion. “The equipment was being disembarked when I left Bilbao. I pushed on ahead because I was anxious to complete my mission. But I can assure you that those lists are not empty promises. Men, stores and equipment are already ashore.”
The colonel nodded his satisfaction. “It is very good of you to have taken so much trouble,” he said with stiff courtesy, “and your news is all the more welcome because our losses in the recent fighting have been heavy.” Over the past five years he had grown hardened to the steady disappearance of friends and comrades. One simply concentrated on how best to fill the gaps left by death or wounds. After all, it might be one’s own turn next.
The visitor allowed him a brief reverie. Then—“And the other matter?” he reminded gently.
The colonel’s mouth tightened and his brows creased into a heavy frown.
“A preposterous suggestion,” he snorted. “I’ll have nothing to do with it. If he chooses to apply for furlough I must grant it of course, in view of your representations, but don’t expect me to add my persuasions to yours.”
His visitor was quite unperturbed. “In such a case it must certainly be the young man’s own decision,” he said gently, “but I think I shall find him quite amenable to my arguments.”
The colonel’s brows rose slightly, and a humorous quirk lifted one corner of his grim mouth. “Aye—do you so?” he queried. “You know him well, I take it?”
“I have never met Captain Trevannion himself, though naturally I am well acquainted with his uncle. But I believe that my case must command his willing service. You, I apprehend, do not share my opinion. And you must know him as well as any. Pray tell me about him.”
The colonel shook his head. “I cannot claim to know him well. Not so well as Colonel Colborne for instance. It so happens that he had never come much in my way until I took over the regiment. And he is not an easy man to know. There is a reserve—a coolness. One is kept at a distance. But he’s well enough liked in the Mess—and his men would follow him to Hell and back. In fact”—and his voice developed a snap that was barely courteous—“he’s a damned good officer, and to be sending him off on a wild goose chase like this when any day may see us in action again is just the sort of stupidity that we’ve come to expect from those idiots at Horse Guards.”
“I fear that they have shown little sympathy with your difficulties,” said the civilian soothingly. “But I understand that Captain Trevannion is peculiarly well qualified to undertake this—er—wild goose chase. He is intimately acquainted with the district—it is his calf country you see—so he would be the more apt to perceive anything unusual. Nor would his arrival cause comment—the so recent death of his grandfather would explain it. Obviously—a visit to arrange his affairs. While in view of the well-known proclivities of the late Sir Richard, a meeting with these smuggling fellows might well come about quite naturally.”
“Yes, yes,” interrupted the colonel, breaking impatiently across this mellifluous flow, “all quite true no doubt. But why now? What difference can it make at this stage, even if there is a leakage of information? We shall be over the Pyrenees before it can possibly affect the situation, and then”—he shrugged his powerful shoulders—“farewell Buonaparte.”
“In military matters one can never be completely certain,” said the civilian. “Last year, for instance,” he waved his hands deprecatingly, “his Lordship cannot have wished to retire from Madrid. But let us not argue on that head,” he went on hastily, seeing the colonel’s deepening frown. “I can only repeat that they are quite determined at Horse Guards that this informer must be tracked down. For my own part,” he went on, dropping to a more confidential note, “I believe that their determination is strengthened by personal motives, apart from national necessity. They have had two of their agents murdered while engaged on this particular quest. The last one was the Penderby boy,” he finished significantly.
“Good God!” ejaculated the colonel. “I hadn’t realised that he was old enough to—but there—of course he must be twenty turned. Why in heaven’s name didn’t his father send him out to us instead of letting him get mixed up with a lot of dirty spies and traitors? Young Penderby! What a waste!”
If it seemed to the listener that young Penderby’s life might just as easily have been wasted in the ditch at Badajos, or more recently at Vittoria, he was given no opportunity to voice such a revolutionary opinion. The adjutant knocked at the door and announced Captain Trevannion.
They were a new and quite distinctive type, these officers of the Light Division, decided the watcher, his keen analytical gaze weighing the externals of the man he had travelled so far to find. There was a certain air of tough competence rather than the swaggering pride of some of the older regiments. Tall, spare, deeply tanned—this latter characteristic accentuated by the neat white bandage which circled his head, covering one ear and temple and giving him a slightly piratical appearance—the captain was politely bowing his acknowledgement of the introduction to “Mr. Gressingham, who is new come from England and desired most particularly to make your acquaintance.”
There was an awkward little silence, the captain awaiting further enlightenment, the colonel and Mr. Gressingham each waiting for the other to take the initiative. At last, since Mr. Gressingham seemed disinclined to open his budget for himself, the colonel, in growing irritability, said brusquely, “Mr. Gressingham wishes you to apply for extended furlough so that you can return to England.”
The captain’s dark brows rose slightly, so that the right one almost disappeared behind his bandage. Otherwise he turned a comparatively imperturbable gaze on Mr. Gressingham, his expression one of mild enquiry.
Really, thought that gentleman, there was no need to blurt the thing out like that. It was quite the wrong approach. He broke in hurriedly, his usual smoothly persuasive manner distinctly ruffled.
“It is a matter of great urgency,” he said firmly, “or naturally we would not dream of recalling an officer from active duty with his regiment.”
The colonel noted with interest that betraying ‘we’, and spared a mo
ment to ponder Mr. Gressingham’s precise function in the hierarchy at Horse Guards. The insignificant little man was probably more powerful than he looked. Certainly he was outlining his proposals to young Trevannion with a clarity and brevity that indicated a trenchant mind.
The captain listened gravely, nodded his understanding, and promptly put forward the same objections that the colonel himself had used. Patiently Mr. Gressingham repeated his rebuttal. At the mention of the name Penderby there was a brief flash of some kind of emotion on the captain’s impassive countenance.
“Murdered, you say? How?”
“His body was found on the beach, but it had not been in the water. He had been tossed over the cliff. His arms were bound behind him, and his throat had been cut.”
This callous disclosure of the brutal details was deliberate, and it was not without its effect. The captain’s lips tightened and his head jerked upward in an irrepressible gesture of sick disgust. Charles Trevannion was well accustomed to the ghastly sights of the battlefield. He had seen the atrocities committed at the sack of Badajos. But there was still something peculiarly shocking in this blunt account of a young man murdered in such a beastly fashion as he lay helpless to defend himself; a young man, moreover, whom he remembered well as an impudent and rather scruffy schoolboy.
This was the line that the envoy was now exploring.
“I believe that you were quite well acquainted with the Penderby boy?” he suggested gently.
Charles shook his head. “I knew him slightly. I was at school with his elder brother, and spent one or two holidays at the Place.”
“Ah yes! That would be the brother who was killed at Salamanca. It has been a sad blow to the Earl—losing both his heirs, and the younger one in such tragic circumstances.” He waited hopefully for some response to this implicit appeal, but none was forthcoming. Instead, Charles’s face settled into lines of determination.
“Tragic indeed,” he allowed quietly. “But no efforts of mine can restore his sons to life, and if I know the Earl, he would be the last to wish me to desert my duties here. In face of all the trouble to which you have been put I regret that I must be disobliging, but I am quite untrained for the kind of work that you describe and could be only a clumsy blunderer, while here I may be usefully employed.”
The colonel nodded approbation. Mr. Gressingham seemed quite unperturbed.
“I must ask you to consider once more. It is true that you are untrained, but you possess advantages that outweigh this. Your presence in the district would seem perfectly natural, so that you would escape the suspicion that would focus on a stranger, however well trained. Your very lack of training might well produce a valuable fresh approach. And I know well,” he ended with a charming smile, “that no one can surpass the pupils of Moore in their intelligent appreciation of the salient features of terrain.”
If, however, this delicate tribute to his dead hero was designed to move Charles from his decision, it failed of its intent. He remained adamant.
Mr. Gressingham sighed. “I would not have you think that I begrudge my own small efforts in this cause,” he said softly. “But I really cannot accept that I have undertaken this most uncomfortable and tedious journey in vain. Since you are so—er—devoted to your military duties, it seems that I must make my representations to his Lordship. I feel sure that he will lend a more sympathetic ear.”
Charles’s expression of blank dismay was not untouched by a twist of wry humour. Not so ineffective after all, this soft spoken little man. Evidently he was quite prepared to use threats and blackmail to achieve his ends. Neither Charles nor the colonel would wish to have Lord Wellington approached on a matter that he would regard as trivial and time consuming. His views on officers who were always requesting leave of absence in order to attend to private affairs were well known and unequivocal, but in this one case his reaction would probably be different. Leakage of information had done damage enough in the past. It seemed probable that he would quite cheerfully offer up one insignificant captain on the altar of military intelligence, and doubtless turn his co-operative attitude in the matter to good purpose in his never ending battles with the authorities at home.
Charles looked at his commanding officer’s frowning countenance, and shrugged resignedly.
“I think, sir, that we must capitulate to superior strength. Mr. Gressingham’s reserves are rather formidable,” he suggested, and on receiving a slight affirmatory nod, turned to the attentive Mr. Gressingham. “Very well, sir, you have made your point and may now command my services. Perhaps you will accompany me to my quarters, where you can furnish me with such further information as may be of value. Believe me, I shall need it all, and the devil’s own luck to boot if I am to make aught but a sorry botch of the job.”
Chapter Two
England offered an indifferent welcome to her returning sons thought Charles, riding through relentless rain in the deepening dusk. First she choked you with the dust of the appalling roads, then she drenched you with an unseasonable July downpour that was fast turning the said roads into a quagmire. True that the pleasant green countryside and the homely rounded Downs were a delight to the eye after the arid plains and jagged peaks of Spain. But in Spain there were comrades and friends a-plenty to share the hardships and curse the weather, and there was work that he knew and enjoyed, work that he could do well. Here he was alone, save for Giles. He contemplated the immediate future with growing distaste. Trying to make bricks without straw, he thought. How could anyone deliberately choose such work? Lonely, chancey, dangerous. His thoughts turned for a moment to the dead boy whom he was expected to avenge. He too must have ridden these lonely lanes. Who, among the people he had trusted, had betrayed him to his death? How long had he lain a helpless prisoner, knowing what his ultimate fate must be? Such thoughts were not calculated to dispel the gloom that overlay his normally equable spirits. Resolutely he pushed them aside, and checked his weary horse, waiting for Giles to come up with him.
The one stipulation that he had made to Mr. Gressingham had been the admission of Giles into the scheme. Since the hobbledehoy of thirteen had first come to work in the stables at Trevannions, the two had been fast friends, cheerfully helping one another into various light-hearted pranks and out again. When Charles had gone off to join the army, Giles had been left behind, but the separation had been short-lived. At the end of his first furlough Giles had begged to go back with him. No, he had no fancy for army life himself. His brother had been army mad, and all he’d got out of it was the loss of a foot at Corunna. But surely the services of a reliable groom were indispensible, even to a young ensign in the 52nd Foot? Giles had had his way, and though he never ceased from grumbling at the impossibility of keeping horses in peak condition on army forage rations, he accepted all the other privations of a campaign with sublime indifference. In England the boyish friendship might have weakened and sunk into limbo. In Spain the years of shared tragedy and triumph had deepened and strengthened it.
Charles had insisted that he would not involve his old friend and ally in a maze that might well end in throat cutting unless he was permitted to warn him of the risks he would be running. Reluctantly, Mr. Gressingham had consented to a partial confidence. This indeed was all that was necessary. Giles cared nothing for the details. There might be danger—so obviously he must go along to haul his master out of trouble where necessary. As for keeping the matter secret—why—Giles was Sussex born and bred. Trust him to keep mum, and to present to the world a front of bovine stupidity that must baffle any suspicion. There was a comforting warmth in Charles’ heart as his stolid supporter ranged alongside.
“We’ll not reach Trevannions till well after dark with the roads in this state,” he said, “and your poor brute has had enough already by the look of him.” He eyed the jaded looking bay consideringly, for Giles rode over fifteen stone. “Better to rack up at an inn for the night and push on in the morning. We might try the Fleece at Wintringham.”
; Giles contemplated the suggestion with due care. The Fleece might promise shelter and comfort for man and beast. It was also the hostelry that had occasionally sheltered Gareth Penderby. To the Fleece his body had been carried by the fisherman who had made the shocking discovery. Nothing was known against the inn or its keeper. It might well be a perfectly respectable establishment, and in their present circumstances a claim upon its hospitality would be a natural proceeding. Yet Giles discovered in himself an instinctive aversion to that proceeding. Somewhere around the Fleece and its environs lay the secret that had brought Gareth Penderby to his death. Giles was no soldier. But he had rubbed shoulders far too long with the wily warriors of the 52nd not to have absorbed the basic principles of a tactical approach. You did not charge blindly into possible danger and ambush. He shook his head.
Charles waited patiently. Giles was slow to speech—but his ideas were generally worth waiting for.
“Better to sniff around a bit in Wintringham village afore we go busting into the Fleece,” was his final conclusion. “Besides, it wouldn’t seem natural like. Our Jasie keeps the Lamb, just this side of Springbourne. It’s only to be expected that we’d go there, me only brother, and him a colour sergeant in the regiment before he lost his foot.”
“Springbourne it is then, and the Lamb,” accepted Charles. “Let’s hope your brother can take us in. Maybe he’ll be able to give us a pointer or two about the set-up in Wintringham. It’s only a couple of miles away. He’d be bound to hear a deal of talk at the time of the murder.”
“Well, Jasie was always one to see as far through a bush as the next man. I’d as lief as not harken to aught he has to say. And as for taking us in”—his face creased into a wide grin—“Emma’ll see to that. A great one for the Light Bobs is Emma, having seen service herself in a manner of speaking. She was maid to Colonel Easton’s lady afore she wedded Jasie. I fairly believe she’d turn out the Prince Regent himself to make room for anyone from the old regiment. Mind you, the Lamb’s only an ale house, though cosy and clean if Emma’s got aught to do with it. We’ll lie snug enough there, I’ll be bound,” and quite exhausted by this burst of oratory he urged the weary bay into action and set off through the gathering murk in the general direction of Springbourne.
